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ABSTRACT
Say that a ‘practical decision’ is a momentary intentional mental action of intention formation. According to what I’ll call the ‘Decisional Prior Intention Thesis’ (‘DPIT’), each practical decision is intentional at least partly in virtue of the representational content of some previously acquired intention. DPIT is entailed by the following widely endorsed thesis that I’ll call the ‘General Prior Intention Thesis’ (‘GPIT’): each intentional action is intentional at least partly in virtue of the representational content of some previously acquired intention. Alfred Mele argues that a certain kind of case impugns DPIT. I defend DPIT from Mele’s argument by showing that his focal case is impossible. I then develop a new argument for an important portion of DPIT – viz., the thesis that, necessarily, if at t you decide to A, then just before t you have an intention whose representational content enables it to play an intentionality-grounding role relative to an act of deciding to A. The defense of DPIT and argument for the indicated portion of it jointly foreground and shed new light on the phenomenon of practical unsettledness – i.e. the felt unsettledness about what to do that precedes a practical decision.
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Notes
1 I assume that momentary intentional mental actions of intention formation are possible. For careful discussion and defense of the possibility of such actions, see Shepherd Citation2015; Clarke Citation2010; and Mele Citation2003, ch. 9.
2 Following Mele (Citation2017), I assume that ‘[t]he representational content of an intention is an action-plan’ (18).
3 Writes Mele (Citation2017, 14): ‘According to another popular thesis [which Mele (Citation1992) himself endorses], in every case of overt intentional action, some intention or other plays an action-producing role … If it is plausible that our best account of overt intentional action places intentions in causal roles and that practical decisions are mental analogues of some overt intentional actions, we should expect intentions to play a role in the production of practical decisions’ (see also Clarke Citation2003, 125). This passage highlights a conjunction of claims about intentional action that is widely endorsed and commits its proponents to a thesis that is logically stronger than (i.e. that entails but isn’t entailed by) GPIT—viz., that each intentional action is intentional at least partly in virtue of its causal relation to the representational content of some previously acquired intention. Moreover, GPIT is consistent with each of the views about the nature of intentional action that Mele (Citation2005, 146; see also Bratman Citation1987, 112) highlights in the following passage: ‘Two competing views about the place of intentions in intentional actions have been vigorously debated in the action theory literature. Michael Bratman (Citation1987, 112) calls them ‘the Simple View’ (SV) and ‘the Single Phenomenon View’ (SPV). SV, which Bratman rejects, is the thesis that, necessarily, any agent who intentionally A-s has ‘an intention to A’ (ibid., 112). SPV, which Bratman affirms, is the thesis that ‘to A intentionally I must intend to do something’ (ibid., 113) but need not intend to A. SPV is more precisely formulated as follows: (i) necessarily, in any case of intentional action the agent executes some relevant intention, and (ii) an agent who lacks an intention to A may A intentionally’. (Thanks to an anonymous referee for comments that led me to clarify DPIT and GPIT so as to emphasize the intentionality-grounding role that these principles attribute to the representational content possessed by the pertinent prior intention. Such emphasis makes DPIT and GPIT all the more interesting, thus further motivating the project of defending them.)
4 Hugh McCann (Citation1986) denies DPIT (and so, GPIT) partly on the basis of the claim that one’s acquiring an intention to decide to A suffices for one’s having decided to A. For critical discussion of McCann’s claim (including a clear counterexample to it), see Mele Citation2017, 14–16. (Thanks to an anonymous referee for a comment that led me to add this note.)
5 DPIT adds (to the consequent of the thesis for which I’ve just said I’ll argue) that the indicated prior intention in fact plays an intentionality-grounding role relative to your subsequent decision to A.
6 According to Mele (Citation2005, 153ff.; see also Mele Citation2021, 372–3), the possibility of Al’s Decision is entailed by a certain species of (metaphysical) libertarianism which itself isn’t clearly impossible. (‘Libertarianism’ here denotes the thesis that free action exists and is incompatible with physical determinism, where ‘physical determinism’ in turn denotes the thesis that there is at any instant exactly one physically possible future.)
7 For simplicity, I focus throughout on agents who are contemplating exactly two mutually exclusive courses of conduct (where ‘conduct’ here covers agents’ actions as well as their omissions to act).
8 Writes Mele (Citation2017): ‘Being uncertain about what to do should not be confused with not being certain about what to do. Rocks are neither certain nor uncertain about anything’ (24, note 7). As is indicated by this and other passages in Mele’s work on the topic of practical decision (see, e.g. Mele Citation2017, 12–14 and 22–3), practical unsettledness is a mental state that has representational content and experiential properties. (Thanks to an anonymous referee for a comment that led me to add this note.)
9 As is indicated by the quotation to which this note is appended, Mele uses the terms ‘uncertainty’ and ‘unsettledness’ interchangeably throughout his work on the topic of practical decision. The latter term is preferable to the former: unlike ‘uncertainty’, ‘unsettledness’ does not invite the mistaken view that the phenomenon in question can be resolved simply by an agent’s acquisition of a purely cognitive attitude (see also Mele Citation2017, 10–12 and 21-2).
10 Any readers who don’t yet find (4) intuitively plausible may find the following two related points helpful. First point: (4)’s antecedent concerns active intention acquisition (i.e. intention creation), not intention acquisition in general (many instances of which are passive). Second point: (4) is perfectly consistent with the possibility of a ‘change of mind’ case in which one loses an intention to A and gains an intention not to A without ever becoming unsettled about whether to A (here it’s important to keep in mind that one’s not being settled upon A-ing doesn’t suffice for one’s being unsettled about whether to A). For a particularly vivid example of the indicated sort, consider a version of Mele’s (Citation1992, 165ff.) ‘Alex’ case in which Alex’s intention to cut his right hand with a knife is ‘replaced’—passively and mid-movement—by an intention not to cut his hand. (Thanks to an anonymous referee for comments that led me to add this note and, more generally, urged me to expand my discussion of 4.)
11 Thanks to some anonymous referees for comments that enabled me to significantly improve the above argument for the impossibility of Al’s Decision.
12 See note 24 below for critical discussion of a different argument for (14) that’s somewhat simpler, but less promising, than the one I’ve just presented.
13 Practical decisions are momentary actions, and only non-momentary (i.e. temporally extended) actions can be guided to completion. So (13)’s proponent can’t support (13) with the claim that an intention whose content includes a representation of your A-ing is capable of guiding to completion an act of deciding to A. As numerous action theorists have noted, though, action-guidance is not the only intentionality-grounding role that an intention may play relative to an action. Mele (Citation2005, 152) points out that action-triggering (or, action-initiation) is an intentionality-grounding role that (the acquisition of) an intention may play relative to a momentary action like a practical decision. Writes Mele (Citation2005): ‘The acquisition of a proximal intention to decide what to do—an intention to decide straightaway what to do—is well suited to trigger an act of deciding if any event is’ (152). I agree with Mele’s assertion here and hasten to add (in further support of 13) that an intention whose content lacks a representation of deciding may trigger—and so, play an intentionality-grounding role relative to—an act of deciding. Example: You want to consume a single piece of fruit. You come to confront both an apple and a banana. You house motivation to eat just the apple alongside motivation to eat just the banana. In response to this overall motivational state, you passively acquire an intention to eat the apple or instead the banana. Your acquisition of the indicated ‘disjunctive’ intention triggers your act of deciding to eat just the banana. Here, an intention whose content lacks a representation of deciding triggers an act of deciding. (Notably, Mele [Citation1997, 240–42] himself takes seriously the possibility of a decision’s being triggered by reason-states that lack a representation of deciding.) For additional relevant discussion, see my objections to claims (16), (18), and (19) below. (Thanks to an anonymous referee for comments that enabled me to significantly improve the above pro-DPIT argument.)
14 Two notes in one. First: neither becoming, nor being, committed to a positive answer to a certain question is essentially actional (see Audi Citation2015, 31). Second, I assume that the question whether to A or instead B arises for you at t only if, at t, you’re committed to a positive answer to the question whether to do one of A and B. (Thanks to some anonymous referees for helping me see the need to clarify the potentially problematic expression ‘considering the question whether to A or instead B’.)
15 Audi (Citation2006, 86ff.) and Shepherd (Citation2015, 340ff.) present similar views of the connections among the four aforementioned items, as do Clarke and Reed (Citation2015, 22–3).
16 I don’t mean to attribute endorsement of the upcoming argument for (16) to Mele (or anyone else, for that matter). What I claim is that the upcoming argument is suggested by the view that Mele articulates in the relatively long passage just quoted (see also Mele Citation2012, 64).
17 Following Audi (Citation2006, 86–7), I use the term ‘concluding’ to denote a particular mental event (as opposed to the content of such an event).
18 Recall the following line from the relatively long passage quoted above: ‘This settling motivation [i.e. motivation to settle upon one of a certain collection of courses of conduct] naturally disposes agents to intend in accordance with the reasoning’s evaluative conclusion … ’ (Mele Citation2003, 87). This claim suggests that an agent who is disposed to acquire a first-order intention whose content matches that of the concluding of a particular piece of evaluative reasoning is so disposed at least partly in virtue of their having a certain higher-order motive—viz., a motive to settle upon one of a certain collection of courses of conduct. Endorsement of (Assumption) would help to explain a theorist’s endorsement of the thesis that the identified disposition is grounded in a certain higher-order motive.
19 A ‘proximal’ desire to A is a desire to A straightaway. Your desire, D, is ‘preponderant’ iff D is stronger than any desire of yours whose satisfaction you regard as incompatible with D’s satisfaction.
20 According to Kushnir and colleagues (Citation2015, 88ff.), children typically acquire the concept of decision between the ages of four and six.
21 Writes Gibbons (Citation2010, 353): ‘Usually when we’re deliberating about what to do, we’re thinking about the world. We’re not thinking about our own mental states’ (see also Mele Citation2021, 371).
22 Writes Mele (Citation1992, 146): ‘Practical reasoning is aimed at action’. This action-focused characterization of practical reasoning contrasts with the following intention-focused characterization that appears frequently throughout Mele’s work on the topic: ‘Now, practical reasoning … is reasoning with a view to settling upon a course of action’ (Citation1992, 139). Like Mele, Audi (Citation2006) seems to vacillate between (i) the view that practical reasoning aims at the acquisition of a certain mental item, and (ii) the view that practical reasoning aims at the performance of a certain action. On the one hand, Audi (Citation2006, 99–100) says that practical reasoning ‘is undertaken in order to determine … what to do; and one’s drawing the conclusion will normally count as responding, by making a practical judgment, to the question what to do’. This passage suggests that the main point of practical reasoning is the acquisition of a practical judgment. But one paragraph later, Audi provides an action-focused characterization of practical reasoning similar to the one from Mele quoted at the outset of this note: ‘Broadly speaking, practical reasoning is guided by a desire, search, or felt need for appropriate action … ’ (Audi Citation2006, 100).
23 Writes Mele (Citation2017, 18): ‘ … [T]here is a kind of intention that is plausibly involved in the production of garden-variety practical decisions—an intention to decide what to do. (Since practical decisions include decisions not to A, the intention may be described more fully as an intention to decide what to do or not to do.)’ This claim suggests the following pro-DPIT argument: ‘(P1) If at t you decide to A, then just before t you have an intention to either decide to A or decide not to A. (P2) The content of the intention described in (P1)’s consequent enables that intention to play an intentionality-grounding role relative to a decision to A. (C) So, if at t you decide to A, then just before t you have an intention whose content enables it to play an intentionality-grounding role relative to your subsequent decision to A’. But just as a subject who lacks the concept of intention (belief, desire) may nevertheless acquire intentions (beliefs, desires), an agent who lacks the concept of decision may nevertheless make decisions (see Coffman Citation2018, 824–6). (Consider, for example, a younger toddler who makes decisions about what to eat or wear, but hasn’t yet acquired concepts of representational attitudes like belief, desire, and intention.) And an agent who lacks the concept of decision can’t yet intend to make a decision. So (P1) is false, and the relatively simple pro-DPIT argument suggested above therefore fails.
24 In some of his most recent work on the topic of practical deciding, Mele (Citation2021) explicitly leaves open the thesis that ‘it is possible for [an agent] to decide what to do in the absence of an intention to (try to) decide what to do’ (371). I completely agree with Mele that the modal thesis he highlights should be left open; indeed, I presented an argument for the indicated thesis in the last note. Mele then asks this question: ‘But what is to prevent [an agent] from deciding to [A] in the absence of any intention that plays an important role at the time in producing that decision?’ (371). The second argument for (11) suggests the following answer to Mele’s question: ‘An agent decides to A only if, just beforehand, they were unsettled about whether to A. But if an agent is unsettled about whether to A, then some or other of their intentions are playing an important role in producing that practical unsettledness. And if some or other of an agent’s intentions are playing an important role in producing practical unsettledness that itself plays an important role in producing a subsequent decision, then the indicated unsettledness-yielding intentions play an important role in producing the subsequent decision. So, an agent decides to A only if some or other of their prior intentions play an important role in producing that decision’.
25 Recall that neither becoming, nor being, committed to a positive answer to a certain question is essentially actional.
26 To see that this claim is true, recall Al’s Decision. We can imagine this case such that, just before noon, Al houses motivation to toss the coin at noon alongside motivation to hold the coin at noon and is sufficiently confident in his ability to toss the coin at noon as well as in his ability to hold the coin at noon (see Mele Citation2005, 157). But ‘ … Al decided a minute before noon to toss the coin at noon and did not reopen the question’ (Mele Citation2005, 155) whether to toss the coin at noon or instead hold the coin at noon. So, just before noon, Al is (still) committed to a positive answer to the question whether to toss the coin at noon or instead hold the coin at noon. So, just before noon, Al is not considering the question whether to toss the coin at noon or instead hold the coin at noon. So, an agent’s having features (i) and (ii) does not suffice for their considering the question whether to A or instead B.
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E. J. Coffman
E.J. Coffman is professor of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee. He has published on a range of topics in epistemology and philosophy of action.