SOCREAL 2010: 2nd International Workshop on Philosophy and Ethics of Social Reality. Sapporo, Japan, 2010-03-27/28. Session 3: Responsibility and Collective Agency.

En quoi consiste l’explication d’une action ? La question, fondamentale pour toute réflexion méthodologique sur les sciences de l’homme, renvoie d’abord à une pratique commune. Dans nos rapports à autrui, il arrive que la compréhension fasse défaut. C’est alors que surgit le besoin d’explication, afin de comprendre la conduite d’autrui ou encore éclairer les autres sur ce que nous faisons… Qu’est-ce qu’une action intentionnelle ? Les pensées d’un agent causent-elles son comportement ? Comment caractériser le savoir qu’un agent (...) possède de sa propre action ? Quel rapport l’explication d’une action entretient-elle avec ce savoir ? À quelles conditions est-il possible de comprendre autrui ? S’appuyant sur l’approche logico-grammaticale de Ludwig Wittgenstein et d’Elizabeth Anscombe, Rémi Clot-Goudard récuse les conceptions faisant des prédicats psychologiques les noms d’états ou d’événements internes aux agents et connus d’eux seuls. Il fait valoir que le caractère intentionnel des actions doit se comprendre à partir des règles qui gouvernent leur mode de description et qu’il faut rapporter les intentions au raisonnement pratique et à la connaissance pratique pour cerner leur force explicative. Il soutient ainsi que la maîtrise des concepts psychologiques est un savoir-faire enté sur l’expressivité naturelle du corps humain et la dimension intrinsèquement sociale et institutionnelle de la vie humaine – invitant ainsi ses lecteurs à se déprendre de l’illusion moderne d’un “sujet désengagé”. (shrink)

It is nearly 10 years since Patrick Haggard and colleagues first reported the ‘intentional binding’ effect . The intentional binding effect refers to the subjective compression of the temporal interval between a voluntary action and its external sensory consequence. Since the first report, considerable interest has been generated and a fascinating array of studies has accumulated. Much of the interest in intentional binding comes from the promise to shed light on human agency. In this review we survey (...) studies on intentional binding, focusing, in particular, on the link between intentional binding and the sense of agency . We suggest that, whilst it is yet to be fully explicated, the link between intentional binding and the sense of agency is compelling. We conclude by considering outstanding questions and future directions for research on intentional binding. (shrink)

Brian Loar [1976] observed that communicative success with singular terms requires more than correct referent assignment. For communicative success to be achieved, the audience must assign the right referent in the right way. Loar, and others since, took this to motivate Fregean accounts of the semantics of singular terms. Ray Buchanan [2014] has recently responded, maintaining that, although Loar is correct to claim that communicative success with singular terms requires more than correct referent assignment, this is compatible with direct reference (...) approaches, as long as one also endorses an independently motivated Gricean view of communicative intentions. This paper argues that Buchanan's Gricean view cannot account for the full range of Loar cases. In doing so, it aims to explicate the structure of Loar's cases and thus to clarify the conditions that a theory must meet in order to adequately meet his challenge. (shrink)

For the first time, Robert Audi presents in Action, Intention, and Reason a full version of his theory of the nature, explanation, freedom, and rationality of human action. Ove the years Audi has set out in journal articles different aspects of a unified theory of action. This volume offers the unity of a single, seamless book with thirteen self-contained chapters, two of them previously unpublished, and a new overview of action theory and the book's contribution to it. The book is (...) divided into four parts, each addressing a major problem area. The chapters in Part One describe the motivational grounds of action, explicate desire, belief, intention, and volition, and give a distinctive account of their interconnections. In the second part, Audi sets out a theory of the explanation of action and argues that actions can be both law-governed and performed for reasons. The third part provides an account of free action and its relation to causation and responsibility. Chapters in the fourth and final part construct an account of rational action and its connections with practical reasoning, self-deception, and weakness of will. (shrink)

In this paper, we reconsider the highly underrated Carnap–Sellars relationship, arguing that Sellars might be able to provide an interesting resolution to some of Carnap’s finest problems around explication by offering a grand-scale picture of science/common-sense or manifest interactions. The narrative developed here points toward the need for some stratification and re-evaluation of a field of scholarship that all too often still engages in challenging and contradictory dichotomies, undermining the genuine intentions of scholars who were collaborating with, as well (...) as living and researching in parallel with each other. We would like to explore what these figures can offer to each other, and whether, for example, a truly Sellarsian perspective could illuminate any problematic points in Carnap that have not yet been problematized by Carnapians but could still improve the original system. (shrink)

The problem of intentional identity, as originally offered by Peter Geach, says that there can be an anaphoric link between an indefinite term and a pronoun across a sentential boundary and across propositional attitude contexts, where the actual existence of an individual for the indefinite term is not presupposed. In this paper, a semantic resolution to this elusive puzzle is suggested, based on a new quantified intensional logic and game-theoretic semantics (GTS) of imperfect information. This constellation leads to an (...) expressive intensional language with a property of informational independence, argued to produce a purely semantic explication to intentional identity statements. One consequence is that various extra-logical and pragmatic factors become of secondary concern; it is possible to solve the puzzle by logico-semantic methods, albeit somewhat radically renewed ones. (shrink)

Certain belief-ascription statements suggest that people can think about the same object, even if that object doesn't exist. Peter Geach, who in 1967 first discussed these statements, gave them the name of statements of intentional identity. In an especially puzzling form of these statements, a pronoun in one belief clause has its antecedent in another: "Hob believes a witch is F, and Nob believes she is G." In this form, the statements raise three interesting problems. They generate puzzles for (...) a program in philosophy of mind, according to which intentional properties of thought are to be analyzed as theoretical analogs of something independently explicable. They are beyond the scope of standard intensional logic , and therefore jeopardize its explanatory value in certain respects. For instance, they jeopardize the received theory of the de dicto/de re distinction in terms of the scope distinctions of SIL. They pose problems for certain theories of anaphoric pronouns, in the context of SIL. ;At first it seems possible to modify SIL so as to yield a quantificational interpretation of the recalcitrant intentional identity statements. In the modified theory, the statements are analyzed so that a wide-scope quantifier binds variables in separate belief contexts. The problem with such quantificational theories is that they are unable to account for another puzzle about intentional identity. Intentional identity appears not to be a symmetric relation: it can be argued that the inference from "Hob thinks a witch is F and Nob thinks she is G" to "Nob thinks a witch is G and Hob thinks she is F" is not a plausible one. A better formal approach than the quantificational ones contains two key components. The first is a framework for anaphoric pronouns combining certain features of quantificational, discourse referential, and demonstratival interpretations of pronouns. The second is the use of structured domains in the formal models. Various interpretations of the new formalism are possible, each drawing on a different analogical theory of the nature of thoughts and their intentional properties. The new framework explains in a unified fashion not only the apparent asymmetry of intentional identity, but a number of other perplexing features of belief. (shrink)

The power to exercise control is a crucial feature of agency. Necessarily, if S cannot exercise some degree of control over anything - any state of affairs, event, process, object, or whatever - S is not an agent. If S is not an agent, S cannot act intentionally, responsibly, or rationally, nor can S possess or exercise free will. In my dissertation I reflect on the nature of control, and on the roles consciousness plays in its exercise. I first consider (...) the fragmented state of philosophical and empirical work on control. I argue that a mature philosophy of agency stands in need of a detailed personal-level account of control, and I begin by explicating a notion I call intentional control. On this explication, an agent J exercises intentional control in service of an intention X to the degree that behavior of J's for which X plays a (non-deviant) causal role approximates the representational content of X. With this explication in hand, I offer analyses of theoretically salient points along a degreed spectrum (covering, e.g., the exercise of minimal, successful, and perfect intentional control). Next, I develop an account of the degrees of intentional control's possession. This involves elucidation of ingredients of intentional control, i.e. those features of agents and environments that constitute an agent's causal potency and skill. It turns out that an agent's possession of control regarding an intention is intimately tied to her ability to repeatedly execute that intention across some specified (hypothetical) set of scenarios. Finally, I discuss a number of potentially fruitful applications of the account. In chapter three I confront a strong intuition, persistent in both philosophy and cognitive science, that consciousness is somehow intimately involved in the exercise of control. In this connection recent empirical work indicates the causal powers of consciousness remain poorly understood. I argue that Functional Agnosticism - the view that any claim regarding a function of consciousness for behavior is currently underdetermined by the data - is the wisest position on the causal powers of consciousness. Recognition of this unsatisfying state of affairs motivates reflection on what might enable progress beyond it. I argue that establishing a causal function for consciousness is facilitated by clarity on several issues. First, what is the sense of consciousness at issue? I isolate state consciousness, discuss the potential relevance of various types of conscious states, and distinguish between ambitious and modest approaches to the causal powers of state consciousness. In short, ambitious approaches seek to understand the causal contributions of a conscious mental state in virtue of the fact that the state is conscious; modest approaches seek to understand the causal contributions of conscious mental states, full stop. I argue that for various theoretical purposes, both approaches can be useful. Second, what is the sense of control at issue? I argue that for many important theoretical purposes, intentional control is the relevant sense. Finally, I illustrate the usefulness of clarity on these issues by examining recent work on the roles of conscious and unconscious vision for action. This work suggests that some important subset of our overt action is controlled by non-conscious processes. I apply insights developed earlier, noting common mistakes made in this literature, and highlighting important empirical possibilities these mistakes obscure. In later chapters I develop a novel account of conscious control. In chapter four I develop a central part of the account, which involves a view on the intentional structure of conscious trying. The leading view entails that conscious trying possesses a descriptive (or thetic) structure. Based on relevant empirical work concerning deafferented and paralyzed patients, I argue for the view that conscious trying is (at least) partially constituted by directive (or telic) structure. Finally, I argue that the exercise of conscious control is best understood as an exercise of intentional control for which the experience of trying plays a constitutive role. After presenting arguments for this view and defending the view against objections, I discuss the importance of conscious control for a mature philosophy of mind and agency. (shrink)

This paper aims to offer a preliminary explication of the role of and the relation between mental states, action, and blame in Medhātithi’s commentary on the most influential juridical text of the Sanskrit world – the jurisprudential text attributed to Manu. In defining what it means to act and what constitutes engaging in intentional and unintentional action, this paper makes three claims. First, enjoined actions (e.g., sacrifices) require particular mental states to be performed. Notwithstanding the role of mental (...) states in enjoined actions, actions lacking the corresponding mental states can be blameworthy. In fact, unintentional actions (including also actions done intentionally, but under a description that foregoes what renders the conduct sanctionable) can indeed constitute blameworthy conduct. Second, although unintentional action still meets the threshold for constituting blameworthy conduct, mental states generally play an important role regarding the degree of blame assignable to a person. Third, there are several possible rules that make sense of the seemingly inconsistent use and impact of intention throughout Manu’s Code of Laws as Medhātithi’s commentary shows. The paper also sheds light on the relation between intentions and desires according to Medhātithi. (shrink)

According to a popular interpretation, Carnap’s interpretation of probability had evolved from a logical towards a subjective conception. However Carnap himself insisted that his basic philosophical view of probability was always the same. I address this apparent clash between Carnap's self-identification and the subsequent interpretations of his work. Following its original intentions, I reconstruct inductive logic as an explication. The emerging picture is of a versatile linguistic framework, whose main function is not the discovery of objective logical relations in (...) the object language, but the stipulation of conceptual possibilities. Within this representation, I map out the changes that the project went through. Seen from such an explication-based perspective, inductive logic becomes quite hard to categorize using the standard labels. (shrink)

This paper is a critical response to Mark Schroeder’s recent “The Ubiquity of State-Given Reasons.” In this essay, Schroeder claims that it is possible for a right-kind reason to bear on an intention without that reason bearing on the object of the intention. I examine Schroeder’s central argument for this claim and conclude that it does not deliver the result Schroeder desires. My critique turns on explicating and extending some of G. E. M. Anscombe’s remarks in Intention on the structure (...) of practical reasoning. (shrink)

"My argument is as follows. In the first section, I sketch briefly the ways in which intentionalism might provide a solution to the problem of vagueness. The second section describes the different areas in which counterfactuals must be invoked by intentionalism. In the third section I point out that on a classic analysis of counterfactuals - that of David Lewis and Robert Stalnaker - the truth conditions of counterfactuals depend on relations of similarity among possible worlds. Since similarity is vague, (...) so are counterfactuals. Finally, I show that there is no unique solution to the problem of vagueness for the specific types of counterfactuals required by intentionalists - those referring to authors' or legislators' mental states, and those attempting to transport historical authors into the present. Although some counterfactuals are relatively 'insensitive' - in Lewis's sense -- those required in intentionalist interpretation are at least moderately sensitive. This means taht different contexts will resolve the vagueness in different ways. The choice among contexts must be made by the interpreter and is not determined by author's intentions. Hence the vagueness due to counterfactual reasoning about author's intention leads to indeterminacies that cannot be resolved by intentionalism itself. Intentionalism is a solution neither to the problem of vagueness nor to the problem of indeterminacy." Distinguishes between strict intentionalism and moderate intentionalism. Both are often seen as a means for reducing vagueness in legal language. However, counterfactual intentions are needed to resolve certain problems. First, in combining actual intentions, e.g. in a legislature, where different combinations may result in different legislation. Second, it is needed to resolve conflicts between intentions, particularly between different levels of abstraction. Third, reducing vagueness, which will be necessary even with enactment intentions. Fourth, there may be no determinate intention that would even, in principle, resolve a borderline case - e.g. when intentions are conflated. [For discussion of application and enactment intentions, see Goldsworthy, "Originalism in Constitutional Interpretation," Federal Law Review 25: 1.] Lastly, counterfactuals may be necessary to distinguish between application and enactment intentions. Lewis on counterfactuals: "For Lewis and Stalnaker, the key idea in the explication of truth conditions of counterfactuals is that of 'comparative overall similarity' of possible worlds. A counterfactual is true if and only if in the closest, most similar world to the actual in which the antecedent of the conditional is true, the consequent of the conditional is also true." Thus, there may be a determinate relevant world for some cases - i.e. there may be a counterfactual that determines the answer to a counterfactual question. This, however, will not always be the case. For example, counterfactuals concerning Caesar being the leader of N. Korea. Here, for Lewis, where there are ties of closeness of counterfactuals, all tied CFs will be false. When considering counterfactual intentions for the sake of interpretation, some may be determinate or insensitive. Normally, however, this will not be the case. "For intentionalism to resolve the matter of whether the regulation prohibiting vehicles prohibits toy cars as well, one of these counterfactuals must be true and the other false. Imagine a possible world in which the oncsideration of the borderline case is added to the authors' mental states. It is likely that connected belief will be affected as well. For example consideration of the aim of the regulation will occur as a consequence of the consideration of whether the regulation applies to the borderline case: Is ensuring peace and quiet in the park overriding, or are there exceptions to accommodate children's games? When there are changes in a constellation of men tal states, we will have to imagine a situation in whichh the legislators' beleifs are very different from what they in fact were. This creates at least a profound epistemological problem, because, as Dworkin puts it: "[it] has the effect of sharply reducing the amount of historical evidence that is relevant to answering the counterfactual." More important, however, in some worlds in which the legislators consider the case of a child's toy car, they will treat the peace and quiet purpose as overriding, whereas in others they will treat the children's play purpose as overriding. This means that different worlds will resolve the truth-value of the counterfactuals differently." "If I am right that counterfactual reasoning is ubiquitous in intentionalism, intentionalism suffers from an extra dimension of vagueness and is therefore at a disadvantage when measured against theories that do not rely on counterfactuals.". (shrink)

This chapter raises the question of how far some recent philosophy of action assists in explicating the moral psychological notions that are of concern in jurisprudence. The focus of the overall argument is on a distinction used by Antony Duff in his Intention, Agency and Criminal Liability — a distinction, Duff says, between ‘a broader and a narrower conception of intention’. It is doubtful that the distinction can do the work that Duff wants it to. Duff rests as much upon (...) it as he does only because of a certain optimism: he hopes that conceptual analysis of intention may reveal what many of the interesting questions about mens rea really turn on, and so deliver the goods for the criminal lawyer. But this hope is vain. The chapter begins with some basic philosophy of action. A presentation of an account of actions which highlights some essential conceptual connections, and which introduces the concept of attempt into the framework, can provide a setting for a clear view of Duff's distinction. Exposition of this material takes up the first part of the chapter. This is brought into relation with issues in criminal liability in the second part, where its connection with the notions of actus reus and mens rea is shown. The third part explains and argues for the view taken of Duff's distinction, which differs from his. The remainder of the chapter considers how far an understanding of the concept of intention can take the criminal lawyer. (shrink)

Egon Brunswik is one of the most brilliant, creative and least understood and appreciated psychologists/philosophers of the 20th century. This book presents a collection of Brunswik's most important papers together with interpretive comments by prominent scholars who explain the intent and development of his thought. This collection and the accompanying diverse examples of the application of his ideas will encourage a deeper understanding of Brunswik in the 21st century than was the case in the 20th century. The 21st century already (...) shows signs of acceptance of Brunswikian thought with the appearance of psychologists with a different focus; emulation of physical science is of less importance, and positive contributions toward understanding behavior outside the laboratory without abandoning rigor are claiming more notice. As a result, Brunswik's theoretical and methodological views are already gaining the attention denied them in the 20th century. The plan of this book is to provide, for the first time, in one place the articles that show the origins of his thought, with all their imaginative and creative spirit, as well as thoughtful, scholarly interpretations of the development, meaning and application of his ideas to modern psychology. Thus, his views will become more understandable and more widely disseminated, as well as advanced through the fresh meaning given to them by the psychologists of the 21st century. (shrink)

Within the phenomenological tradition, one frequently finds the bold claim that interpersonal understanding is rooted in a sui generis form of intentional experience, most commonly labeled empathy (Einfühlung). The following paper explores this claim, emphasizing its distinctive character, and examining the phenomenological considerations offered in its defense by two of its main proponents, Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein. After offering in section 2 some preliminary indications of how empathy should be understood, I then turn to some characterizations of its (...) distinctive structure, considering, in section 3, the Husserlian claim that certain forms of empathy are perceptual in nature, and in section 4, Stein’s insistence that empathetic experience frequently involves explicating the other’s own intentional experiences. Section 5 concludes by assessing the extent to which their analyses lead support to a conception of empathy as an intuitive experience of other minds. (shrink)

Is vision informationally encapsulated from cognition or is it cognitively penetrated? I shall argue that intentions penetrate vision in the experience of visual spatial constancy: the world appears to be spatially stable despite our frequent eye movements. I explicate the nature of this experience and critically examine and extend current neurobiological accounts of spatial constancy, emphasizing the central role of motor signals in computing such constancy. I then provide a stringent condition for failure of informational encapsulation that emphasizes a computational (...) condition for cognitive penetration: cognition must serve as an informational resource for visual computation. This requires proposals regarding semantic information transfer, a crucial issue in any model of informational encapsulation. I then argue that intention provides an informational resource for computation of visual spatial constancy. Hence, intention penetrates vision. (shrink)

Research suggests a direct negative relationship between peers’ unethical behavior and employees’ ethical intention. But several possible mechanisms might explain this relationship in more detail. For example, Machiavellianism is a personality trait characterized by interpersonal manipulation and the use of unethical means to achieve certain self‐interested ends, whether useful or pleasant. This article adopts an Aristotelian understanding of philia, related to three goods on which human relationships rest: useful, pleasant, and honest. We propose that Machiavellianism, a self‐interested, pragmatic personality orientation, (...) might explicate the relationship between peers’ unethical behavior and ethical intention. The results of a structural equation model applied to a sample of 436 banking employees in Spain reveals that Machiavellianism partially mediates the relationship between peers’ unethical behavior and employees’ ethical intention. We also find that with a greater level of peers’ unethical behavior, the negative effect of Machiavellianism on ethical intention increases, and that when peers’ unethical behavior is nonexistent, the negative effect of Machiavellianism on ethical intention disappears. These findings advance current literature by revealing that unethical peers can indirectly influence ethical intention, through shaping Machiavellianism. Our study is also the first to show that pairing high Machiavellians with ethical peers can help to cancel out the negative influence of Machiavellianism on ethical intention. (shrink)

We may begin with Grice’s view. In an extended series of papers, a number of which are unpublished, Grice sought to explicate what it is for a given utterance to mean something—in the way in which linguistic utterances mean something; and what it is for a given speaker to mean something by his utterance—again, in the way in which speakers mean something in speaking their language. "Utterance" we may understand as neutrally as possible, as a bearer of meaning—in Grice’s sense, (...) "non-natural meaning". One of the distinguishing marks of meaningNN is given as follows: that, of an utterance x, "x means that p and x meant that p do not entail p.". (shrink)

This dissertation focuses on teleology and functions in biology. More precisely, it focuses on the scientific legitimacy of teleofunctional attributions and explanations in biology. It belongs to a multi-faceted debate that can be traced back to at least the 1970s. One aspect of the debate concerns the naturalization of functions. Most authors try to reduce, translate or explain functions and teleology in terms of efficient causes so that they find their place in the framework of the natural sciences. Our approach (...) here is radically different, as we question the premise that teleological explanations are disguised causal explanations. On the contrary, we defend that they are acceptable in natural sciences and in biology in particular. We challenge the idea that teleological explanations are immature causal explanations, as well as the idea that teleology and functions are some sort of intentional explanations. We therefore reject the accusations of anthropomorphism, vitalism and finalism. On the contrary, we defend that teleology, causality and intentionality correspond to different, autonomous and complementary modes of representation of the outside world. -/- ———[FRANÇAIS]——— -/- Ce travail de thèse porte sur la téléologie et les fonctions en biologie. Plus précisément, il porte sur la légitimité scientifique des attributions et des explications téléofonctionnelles en biologie. Il s’inscrit dans le cadre d’un débat à plusieurs facettes que l’on peut faire remonter au moins jusqu’aux années 1970 et qui est encore très actif aujourd’hui. L’un des aspects du débat porte sur la naturalisation des fonctions, c’est-à-dire sur la manière de les réduire, de les traduire ou de les expliciter en termes de causes efficientes de sorte qu’elles trouvent leur place dans le cadre des sciences de la nature. Notre approche ici est radicalement différente, car nous remettons en question la prémisse selon laquelle les explications téléologiques seraient des explications causales déguisées. Nous défendons au contraire qu’elles sont acceptables en tant que telles aussi bien de façon générale que dans le domaine scientifique et en particulier en biologie. De façon générale, nous remettons en question l’idée selon laquelle la pensée téléologique serait une pensée causale immature, ainsi que sa dépendance présumée vis-à-vis de la psychologie, c’est-à-dire de l’intentionnalité. Nous rejetons donc les accusations d’anthropomorphisme, de vitalisme et de finalisme formulées contre elle. Nous défendons au contraire que la téléologie, la causalité et l’intentionnalité correspondent à des modes différents, autonomes et complémentaires de représentation du monde extérieur. (shrink)

The scheme of concepts we employ in daily life to explain intentional behaviour form a belief-desire model, in which motivating states are sorted into two suitably broad categories. The BD model embeds a philosophy of action, i.e. a set of assumptions about the ontology of motivation with subsequent restrictions on psychologising and norms of practical reason. A comprehensive critique of those assumptions and implications is offered in this work, and various criticisms of the model are met. The model’s predictive (...) and explanatory value exploits realistic notions of beliefs and desires as inner states underlying behavioural patterns. It is argued that the popular explication that beliefs and desires differ in their “direction of fit” is insufficient and inescapably normative. Essential to the model is the causal role given to desires. ‘Desire’ is therefore focussed. A dispositional and functional characterisation of desires is compatible with an eliminative view of dispositions. These views taken together do not exclude regarding desires as causes. Desires have propositional content. Content is a feature of desire’s dispositionality, and thereby causally relevant. This functional characterisation of content allows for non-linguistic content. The phenomenal conception of desire is criticised and diagnosed. A theme defended in various ways throughout the work is that desires mostly are unknown to agents and that the agent is in a less privileged position when it comes to analysis of his own motivational states, than e.g. people close to him. There are formal and empirical reasons to be pessimistic about agents’ abilities to make reliable predictions about their own intentional behaviour. The BD model’s concept of ‘intention’ is discussed and compared with non-reductive views of intentions. Criticisms of the common view that David Hume defends a BD model are presented, but it is argued that the BD interpretation of Hume is plausible, although this reading requires important qualifications in order to preserve internal consistency. The BD model leaves room for focussing attention, making foregrounded practical judgements, higher order desiring and other activities affecting one’s decision process. However, these various forms of deliberation in many cases are overrated. Three suggested norms of internal structural rationality are criticised in favour of simple Humean instrumentalism about practical reason. That position implies that criticism of other people’s ultimate ends is not a matter of internal rationality, but an inevitably social practice; it is dependent upon our concern for others, our view of their social roles and our own intrinsic desires. (shrink)

The distinction between the personal and the subpersonal is often invoked in philosophy of psychology but remains surrounded by confusion. Building on recent work by Zoe Drayson, this paper aims to help further improve this situation by offering a satisfactory explication of the distinction that remains close to Dennett's original intentions. Reasons are offered for construing the distinction as applying to representational (as opposed to worldly) items, for not building contested theoretical assumptions into it, and for taking it to (...) apply in the first instance to descriptive statements and only derivatively to explanations. An explication of the distinction that accords with these points is then developed, according to which the distinction should be drawn in terms of what personal and subpersonal-level statements are ‘transparently about’. The theoretical role of this explication is discussed, and potential objections are addressed. (shrink)

The intentional stance1 and the contextual stance2 are inextricably interdependent in the production of a comprehensive explanation and means of predicting complex human behaviour. This is illustrated in the context of the expectation of attitudinal-behavioural consistency which has long lain at the heart of both marketing science and social psychology. In practice, cognitively-inclined attitude theory and research leans on the contextual stance in order to formulate the heuristic overlay of mental interpretation in which it primarily presents its predictive and (...) explicative accounts of behaviour. Behaviour analysis has traditionally eschewed this approach, maintaining that it can generate an exclusively extensional account of complex behaviour. It is argued that while the cognitive and behaviour analytic approaches produce equally effective predictions of behaviour, an adequate explanation of human activity requires the addition of the kind of interpretive overlay advocated by Dennett3 in which the relationship between extensional science and intensionalistic interpretation is clarified. The resulting framework of analysis, intentional behaviorism4 provides an inclusive paradigm. (shrink)

The critics of rational choice theory frequently claim that RCT is self-defeating in the sense that agents who abide by RCT’s prescriptions are less successful in satisfying their preferences than they would be if they abided by some normative theory of choice other than RCT. In this paper, I combine insights from philosophy of action, philosophy of mind and the normative foundations of RCT to rebut this often-made criticism. I then explicate the implications of my thesis for the wider philosophical (...) debate concerning the normativity of RCT for both ideal agents who can form and revise their intentions instantly without cognitive costs and real-life agents who have limited control over the formation and the dynamics of their own intentions. (shrink)

Based on a field study, this paper explores the differential role that perceived top management trustworthiness has on female and male employees’ negative emotions and turnover intentions in organizations. A theoretical model is established that explicates a negative indirect effect of perceived top management trustworthiness on employee turnover intentions through employee negative emotions. The results reveal that there is a negative relationship between perceived top management trustworthiness and employee negative emotions and resulting turnover intentions and that this effect is stronger (...) for female employees than for male employees. These results demonstrate the pivotal role played by top management trustworthiness, provide an explanation for the turnover gender gap, and highlight the subjectivity in reactions to trustworthiness perceptions. The implications for organizations are discussed in line with the need for top management to positively influence employees and particularly women, to retain them in their workforce. (shrink)

My concern here with the possibility of an acceptable intention-involving explication of intentional action is, specifically, a concern with the possibility of such an explication that treats intentions as attitudes.

In current philosophical research the term 'philosophy of social action' can be used - and has been used - in a broad sense to encompass the following central research topics: 1) action occurring in a social context; this includes multi-agent action; 2) joint attitudes (or "we-attitudes" such as joint intention, mutual belief) and other social attitudes needed for the explication and explanation of social action; 3) social macro-notions, such as actions performed by social groups and properties of social groups (...) such as their goals and beliefs; 4) social norms and social institutions (see Tuomela, 1984, 1995). The theory of social action understood analogously in a broad sense would then involve not only philosophical but all other relevant theorizing about social action. Thus, in this sense, such fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as Distributed AI (DAI) and the theory of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) fall within the scope of the theory of social action. DAI studies the social side of computer systems and includes various well-known areas ranging from Human Computer Interaction, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Organizational Processing, Distributed Problem Solving to Simulation of Social Systems and Organizations. Even if I am a philosopher with low artificial intelligence I will below try to say something about what the scope of DAI should be taken to be on conceptual and philosophical grounds. (In the later sections of the paper the central notion of joint intention will be the main topic - in order to illustrate how philosophers and DAI-researchers approach this issue.) Let us now consider the relationship between philosophy - especially philosophy of social action - and DAI. Both are concerned with social matters and in this sense seem to have a connection to social science proper. What kinds of questions should these areas of study be concerned with? In principle, ordinary social science should study all aspects of social life (in various societies and cultures), try to describe it and create general theories to explain it. (shrink)

What is it to understand a sentence of a language? This question lies at the very heart of philosophy of language due to its intimate connections with two other issues: the nature of linguistic meaning and the workings of linguistic communication. This book presents a systematic attempt to explicate the concept of sentence understanding, guided by two questions: What exactly is the role played by states of sentence understanding in enabling linguistic communication? And what do such states have to be (...) in order to play that role? Adopting a broadly Gricean picture of communication as background, the book reviews some main proposals from the literature and then develops an original line of Argument for a non-standard version of the view that understanding a sentence consists in possessing propositional knowledge of its meaning. A key to a satisfactory account of this sort, it is argued, lies in a particular view of the nature of propositional attitude states. Apart from dealing successfully with a number of challenges, the resulting account also forms part of an attractive general picture of how philosophers of language may go about explaining our use and interpretation of language. (shrink)

In recent years, a significant amount of research has investigated the Vienna Circle’s ramifications. Otto Neurath has received much attention as one of the most prominent and energetic adherents, but less conspicuous philosophers now find themselves at the center of historical research. This article’s aim is to investigate Arne Naess’s connection to Logical Empiricism. Two crucial influences on Naess’s work are identified: Otto Neurath and the psychologist Egon Brunswik. This article’s most significant contributions are that, from the perspective of a (...) historian of philosophy of science, (a) Brunswik’s notion of “depth of intention” and his scientific methodological standards are reflected in Naess’s philosophy, (b) both Naess and Brunswik are adherents of Neurath’s physicalism, (c) Naess explicates Neurath’s notoriously vague concept of “congestions” in his “empirical semantics,” and (d) the latter is applied in Naess’s deep-ecology approach. (shrink)

This essay presents Husserl’s Formal and Transcendental Logic (1929) in three main sections following the layout of the work itself. The first section focuses on Husserl’s introduction where he explains the method and the aim of the essay. The method used in FTL is radical Besinnung and with it an intentional explication of proper sense of formal logic is sought for. The second section is on formal logic. The third section focuses on Husserl’s “transcendental logic,” which is needed (...) to make Husserl’s conception complete, i.e., to understand what makes Besinnung radical, how the proper sense of formal logic has been reached and how all this relates to transcendental constitution of an object in the world. Husserl’s work is connected to his context (in exact sciences) and the relevance of his views for the contemporary approaches is discussed. (shrink)

This essay argues that current theories of action fail to explain agentive control because they have left out a psychological capacity central to control: attention. This makes it impossible to give a complete account of the mental antecedents that generate action. By investigating attention, and in particular the intention-attention nexus, we can characterize the functional role of intention in an illuminating way, explicate agentive control so that we have a uniform explanation of basic cases of causal deviance in action as (...) well as other defects of agency, explain cases of skilled agency and sharpen questions about the role of thought in agency. This provides for a different orientation in the theory of action. (shrink)

Groups behave in a variety of ways. To show that this behavior amounts to action, it would be best to fit it into a general account of action. However, nearly every account from the philosophy of action requires the agent to have mental states such as beliefs, desires, and intentions. Unfortunately, theorists are divided over whether groups can instantiate these states—typically depending on whether or not they are willing to accept functionalism about the mind. But we can avoid this debate. (...) I show how a more general view of action captures what is central to action without mentioning mental states, and I argue that a group’s members can fulfill the role in group action that mental states play in our actions. Group behavior is explicable in terms of reasons, regardless of whether the group itself cognizes those reasons. After discussing the kind of reasons at issue and arguing that groups can act in light of them without minds, I assess how this account bears on the question of group responsibility. (shrink)

Stakeholder theory usually focuses on the moral responsibility of corporations towards their stakeholders. This article takes the reverse perspective to shed light on the moral responsibility of stakeholders—specifically, investors or 'financiers'. It explicates a distinction between two types of financiers, creditors and shareholders. Many intuitively judge that shareholders have greater or more extensive moral responsibility for the actions of the corporations they invest in than do bondholders and other creditors. Examining the merits of possible arguments for or against treating owners (...) and creditors differently elucidates which arguments can support the moral duties of investors generally, and different duties for different groups of investors specifically. The paper considers three possible lines of arguments, rooting investors' responsibility, respectively, in how they enable corporate conduct, how they benefit from it, and to what extent they are complicit in it. The paper argues that a notion of complicity is the only tenable ground for holding investors liable; sketches an account of complicity based on the recent philosophical literature on collective intention and collective action; and concludes that shareholders but not creditors can generally be seen as complicit on this account. (shrink)

Once intent on being good to people, Jane Addams later dedicated herself to the idea of being good with people, establishing mutually-responsive and reciprocal relationships with those she served at Hull House. The essays in Jane Addams in the Classroom explore how Addams's life, work, and philosophy provide invaluable lessons for teachers seeking connection with their students. Balancing theoretical and practical considerations, the collection examines Addams's emphasis on listening to and learning from those around her and encourages contemporary educators to (...) connect with students through innovative projects and teaching methods. In the first essays, Addams scholars lay out how her narratives drew on experience, history, and story to explicate theories she intended as guides to practice. Six teacher-scholars then establish Addams's ongoing relevance by connecting her principles to exciting events in their own classrooms. An examination of the Jane Addams Children's Book Award and a fictional essay on Addams's work and ideas round out the volume. Accessible and wide-ranging, Jane Addams in the Classroom offers inspiration for educators while adding to the ongoing reconsideration of Addams's contributions to American thought. (shrink)

En épistémologie des sciences sociales, Jon Elster est connu pour sa défense de l’individualisme méthodologique et sa critique des explications de haut niveau. Cette note critique la plus récente formulation de sa position . D’une part, nous montrons que les problèmes relatifs aux explications au niveau agrégé s’appliquent également aux explications en termes de mécanismes psychologiques, privilégiées par Elster. Si les mécanismes psychologiques contribuent à l’explication en sciences sociales, ce n’est pas parce qu’ils font explicitement référence à des états (...) intentionnels, mais parce qu’ils rendent mieux compte que les autres hypothèses de ce qui fait la différence entre deux faits ou événements. D’autre part, nous soutenons que l’individualisme ne doit pas servir d’idéal régulateur dans la recherche en sciences sociales. Si l’explication des comportements individuels est souvent essentielle pour produire une bonne explication, il existe des situations où elle est susceptible de nuire à la qualité de celle-ci en introduisant des éléments inadéquats.In epistemology of the social sciences, Jon Elster is well known for his defense of methodological individualism and his criticism of high-level explanations. This note criticizes the most recent version of his position . First, I argue that the problems related to explanations at the aggregate level also pertain to explanations in terms of psychological mechanisms, favored by Elster. If psychological mechanisms contribute to explanation in the social sciences, it is not because they explicitly refer to intentional states, but rather because they account better than alternative hypotheses for the difference between two facts or events. Second, I contend that individualism should not be taken as a regulative ideal for research in the social sciences. If accounts of individual behavior are often essential to good explanations, there are situations in which they are likely to be detrimental to them by encouraging the introduction of irrelevant factors. (shrink)

As known from the academic literature on Hinduism, the foreign, Persian word, “Hindu” (meaning “Indian”), was used by the British to name everything indigenously South Asian, which was not Islam, as a religion. If we adopt explication as our research methodology, which consists in the application of the criterion of logical validity to organize various propositions of perspectives we encounter in research in terms of a disagreement, we discover: (a) what the British identified as “Hinduism” was not characterizable by (...) a shared set of beliefs or shared outlook, but a disagreement or debate about basic topics of philosophy with a discourse on tenets of moral philosophy anchoring the debate; and (b), the Western tradition’s historical commitment to language as the vehicle of thought not only leads to the conflation of propositions with beliefs, but to interpreting (explaining by way of belief) on the basis of the Eurocentric tradition rooted exclusively in ancient Greek philosophy. Interpretation on the basis of the Western tradition leads to the Western tradition vindicating itself as the non-traditional, non-religious, rational platform—the secular—for explaining everything—the residua are what get called religions on a global scale. This serves the political function of insulating Western colonialism from indigenous moral and political criticism. Given that Western colonialism is the pivotal event, before which South Asians just had philosophy, and after which they had religion (the explanatory residua of Eurocentric interpretation), we can ask about Hindu religious belief. This only pertains to the period after colonialism, when Hindus adopted a Westcentric frame for understanding their tradition as religious because of colonization. Prior to this, the tradition the British identified as “Hindu” had a wide variety of philosophical approaches to justification, which often criticized propositional attitudes, like belief, as irrational. (shrink)

Reigning orthodoxy in the philosophical study of human rational capacities, such as being able to act intentionally and to reason, is to characterize them in causal psychological terms. That is, to analyze these capacities in terms of mental states and their causal relations. It is against this background that the work of G.E.M. Anscombe has gained renewed interest. The main goal of this chapter is twofold. First, I will explicate Anscombe’s philosophical approach by analyzing her account of intentional action (...) and by relating it to the misperceptions of that account in (the history of) the philosophy of action. Importantly, Anscombe holds that an analysis of intentional action in terms of what it is, e.g., an event with certain specific features, cannot provide non-circular explanations. Instead, following Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and Wittgenstein, Anscombe seeks to explicate intentional action in terms of its form, i.e., the way in which it exists. The second aim of the chapter is to show the import of Anscombe’s approach by applying it to the philosophy of reasoning. After discussing two main problems for the current orthodox view in epistemological debates on reasoning, I will propose an alternative Anscombe-inspired view of reasoning. In this so-called form view of reasoning, reasoning is characterized as a tool to drag out implications, embodied in judgments of the form p as following from q. The upshot of the chapter is that concepts of our rational capacities do not depict certain psychological states or processes, but rather our involvement with rational connections that exist in our lives and practices. (shrink)

This paper introduces and explicates a concept of justification not so far adequately treated in the epistemological literature. Structural justification for believing a proposition, p, is a kind implicit in one’s cognitive structure; it contrasts with (1) doxastic justification---justifiedly believing p; (2) situational justification---being justified in believing p (which is possible without believing it); and (3) propositional justification---the kind attributable to propositions for which suitable evidence is available. Structural justification is within one’s reach, but, unlike situational justification, not in one’s (...) hands: one can construct a justification for p by reflecting on, say, one’s beliefs and memories, but does not already have that justification in an integrated form, as where one already believes premises that obviously entail p. Structural justification is accessible, however, through a justificatory path, and much of this paper is an account of the various kinds of path. The concluding section generalizes the notion of structural justification both to the other psychological attitudes---such as desires, intentions, and values---and to actions. (shrink)

Anchors and ghosts -- Making sense -- The anxiety of evidence -- The wheat and the chaff -- Sedation or seduction?.

The principle of charity (“Charity”), in one form or other, is held by many and for various reasons. After cataloging discernible kinds of Charity, I focus on the most familiar versions as found in Davidson, Dennett, Devitt, Lewis, Putnam, Quine, Stich, and others. To begin with, I argue that such versions of Charity are untenable because beliefs cannot be counted, and even if they could be counted there is reason to believe that true beliefs need not outnumber false beliefs. Next (...) I rebut one of the arguments behind Charity, the intelligibility argument. If indeed beliefs are postulated simply as a way to make some system intelligible (predictable and explicable) then a number of theses ensue. First, it would be perfectly intelligible to ascribe mostly false beliefs to an intentional system, or even entirely false beliefs. Second, lower animals would have beliefs. Third, it would sometimes make sense to ascribe beliefs even to inanimate beings. And fourth, the resulting indeterminacy of belief-ascription would suggest a kind of irrealism about belief which may in turn be expressed by the slogan that rejects the container metaphor of the mind. (shrink)

According to the Cambridge Platonist Henry More, individual spirits--the souls of humans and non-human animals--are extended but cannot be physically divided. His contemporaries and recent commentators have charged that More has never given an explication of the grounds on which the indivisibility of spirits is based. In this article, I suggest that exploring the usage that More makes of the analogy between spirits and light could go some way towards providing such an explication. More compares the relation between (...) spirit and matter to the relation that, according to Aristotelian theories of light, holds between ?intentional species? and matter. I will argue that the purpose of his comparison is to highlight that both intentional species and spirits are existentially independent from matter. The existential independence of intentional species from matter expresses itself in the fact that light is not moved through the motion of the illuminated body. The existential independence of spirits from matter expresses itself in the fact that when a body that is coextensive with a spirit is divided, the spirit is not thereby divided but rather contracts into the remaining living organism. (shrink)

This book explicates Leibnizian analysis as a search for conditions of intelligibility, and reconsiders his use of principles and methods as well as his account of truth in this way. Via careful reading of well-known, lesser known, and previously unedited texts, it gives a more accurate picture of his philosophical intentions, as well as the relevance of his project to contemporary debate. Two case studies are included, one concerning logic and the other arithmetic; they illustrate a theory of intelligibility that (...) takes as its central notion "possibility for thought", a notion which allows Leibniz to escape certain traps of psychologism, the pseudo-ontology of empiricism, and the empty forms of logicism, and suggests new approaches for contemporary philosophy. "In this remarkable study, Grosholz and Yakira offer a fresh interpretive and conceptual angle on Leibniz's metaphysics. [...] this study deserves high marks for its subtlety, novelty, and creative insight into Leibniz's modes of inquiry as well as for its philosophical acumen." Annals of Science. (shrink)

This article is an explication and defense of Kant’s view that ‘imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself’ (Critique of Pure Reason, A120, fn.). Imagination comes into perception at a far more basic level than Strawson allows, and it is required for the constitution of intuitions (= sense experiences) out of sense impressions. It also plays an important part in explaining how it is possible for intuitions to have intentional contents. These functions do not involve the application (...) of contents, and I offer a schematic account of how they arise from preconceptual synthesis. (shrink)