Abstract
This chapter is an interpretation of Kotarbiński’s ideas on automatic actions, that is, the ones which are taken to be performed without thinking. The phenomenon of automaticity is interpreted in the praxiological context of the economization of actions. To show how Kotarbiński’s intuitions about automaticity are empirically anchored, the interpretation is supplemented by a survey of selected cognitive-psychological research on habits and skilled performance. The chapter also investigates the relation between automaticity and the problem of know-how in Kotarbiński’s theorizing and, lastly, shows the most important difficulties posed by automatic actions in the context of causalism and intentionality in the philosophy of action.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
The remarks on automaticity made by Jason Stanley in his Know How seem to be an exception (Stanley 2011: 133–134).
- 2.
Translation altered significantly (Wojtasiewicz uses here, inter alia, habit instead of exercise).
- 3.
In Wojtasiewicz’s translation ‘the interference by the agent’.
- 4.
In the relevant passage, Kotarbiński explicitly enlisted three ways of automation, but it occurs, on closer examination, that his earlier characteristics of skills can be used to determine a relatively separate rubric. I explain this issue in what follows.
- 5.
Automatic imitation has been studied in cognitive psychology under various headings: ‘motor mimicry’, ‘imitative compatibility’, ‘movement interference’ and the like (Heyes 2011). Since it usually implies broadly intersubjective relations or shared agency, it is absent in my overview of the empirical research on automation (section “Context: Automatic Actions in Contemporary Empirical Accounts”) and it is again introduced in the next chapter (section “The Necessary and Sufficient Conditions of Shared Agency (Kotarbiński’s Proposal in the Light of Contemporary Accounts)”).
- 6.
Translation significantly modified (in Wojtasiewicz’s version the examples in brackets have been ruthlessly omitted).
- 7.
I shall try to remove this contradiction in the next section.
- 8.
In the psychological literature on automation, we can find some exceptions which show that the explicit investigation of the problem of ‘automatic errors’ is not reserved for Kotarbiński’s praxiology (see e.g. Brownstein and Madva 2012: 424–425). It would be also good to note that Kotarbiński’s approach is different (in this and other respects) from the early work on automation in management science (see e.g. Simon’s popular work Simon 1965).
- 9.
This point is extremely interesting in the context of the problem of the intentionality of automatic actions. I shall turn back to this issue at the end of this chapter.
- 10.
The quote in my translation from the original Polish edition (Kotarbiński 1963).
- 11.
See especially Dewey’s views on the ‘conservatism’ of habits and the way it may be overcome (Dewey 1922).
- 12.
Translation slightly altered.
- 13.
I am aware that to understand anachronism in this way may seem awkward. The example is meant to highlight the role of timely reactions which are important for skilled performance. This metaphorical sense of anachronicity has some support from etymology. Anachronism comes from Greek α’νά (backwards, against) and χρoνίζω (to spend time, to last).
- 14.
Namysł in Polish. It means also: consideration or deliberation.
- 15.
This claim would pose more problems in the case of typical motoric skills, as typing in a PIN number, in which intentionality is exhausted in motor memory.
- 16.
See for example arguments for radical anti-intellectualism proposed by Stephen Hetherington (2006).
- 17.
If the idea of pluralism of agency is strong enough as a contemporary perspective, it sheds also some critical light on those accounts in the debate on know-how which are obsessed with the need for theoretical unity. But I do not feel in a position to defend it by no means.
- 18.
There are various models of skill acquisition, inter alia, the five-stage model (from noviceship to mastery) proposed by Dreyfus brothers (Dreyfus and Dreyfus 1980). Although this model has been criticized, it is still interesting and compelling from the perspective of praxiological evaluations.
- 19.
Formulated originally by Miller (1956).
- 20.
We may go in these remarks on the function of chunking further. Behind each activity which becomes a skill there must be some underlying propensity that enables this pragmatic mental-economy-dictated filtering. As I have already stipulated, this propensity is based on psychological flexibility—similar to the one which enables plastic planning.
- 21.
According to Wendy Wood’s and Dennis Rünger’s three-pronged model (Wood and Rünger 2016), habits and goals interact through habit formation: initially motivate agents to repeat actions in daily life, affect performance: are often present in mind as goals (when necessary), and prompt inferences about further goals. These make them psychologically somewhat similar to future-directed intentions. This similarity—as it will be confirmed in next paragraphs—is a fascinating issue, but it seems that it has never been studied (neither in action theory nor in psychology).
- 22.
Despite what the authors claim, this experiment can also be interpreted as a case of nudging. According to the theory (Thaler and Sunstein 2008), nudging affects ‘the architecture of choice’ by mere alterations in the environment of an agent, rather than by changes in the psychology of an agent (see Di Nucci 2014: 21). To be methodologically precise, I would risk the claim that this experiment is a mixed case of nudging and priming. It primes the psychology of choice by the use of nudging in arranging the environment of an agent (music can be understood as part of the environment). I make this remark to avoid possible misunderstandings, but this issue is not very important for the concern of this chapter.
- 23.
It is perhaps worth to note that addictions pose other cognitive-psychological and action-theoretical problems, therefore—they are usually studied under a separate heading.
- 24.
Naturally, there are other psychological causes of habit slips as stress or drug use. Since they often cause errors in other types of action (e.g. planned one), I shall not go further into this issue.
- 25.
This section on habits is much indebted to the excellent paper Psychology of habit by Wood and Rünger (2016). Their paper contains many other important issues as well as empirical examples which cannot be discussed here.
- 26.
This implies ‘a gradual approach’ which is, according to Moors and De Houwer (2006: 321), different from ‘a decompositional approach’ initiated by Bargh. However these two approaches may be mechanically separated, I do not see sufficient reasons to differentiate them in terms of a method: one cannot propose a feasible and thoroughgoing ‘decomposition’ of a given type of automatic behaviour without specifying different degrees of what is decomposed. Besides, let me notice that the talk of the degrees of properties of automatic action remains in accordance with the Kotarbińskian approach to the idea of properties of actions (e.g. the degree of efficiency (section “The Kotarbińskian Praxiology”) or rationality (section “Kotarbiński’s Conception of Efficiency: A Critical Analysis”)).
- 27.
Bargh says: ‘Intentionality has to do with whether one is in control over the instigation or “start up” of processes’ (Bargh 1994: 16). In the next chapter, we shall have some exemplification of this understanding of intentionality in the context of copying behaviour. On the other hand, there are accounts of automaticity in which the concept of intentionality does not imply The Simple View. See Moors and De Houwer (2006: 303–305).
- 28.
In other words, I am sceptical about Railton’s strong claim that in performing skilled automatic activities agents respond to reasons. (Also, I am sceptical about the assumption—coming from Davidson—that ex-post rationalizations of actions amount to responding to reasons while acting). Answers to the Anscombean question are possible as ex-post rationalizations; therefore, they do not require this capacity. But this does not mean that Railton is entirely wrong concerning the possibility of an answer to Anscombean questions in the case of automatic skilled actions, as Brownstein (2013) boldly claims. From the fact that an action is largely unreflective it does not follow that it is not sensible. Automatic performances usually belong to wider intentional frameworks in which they make sense for an agent as actions. She knows what role her actions play within these frameworks and is capable of explaining what and why she is doing. So, ‘the absence of self-reflective thought or conscious self-awareness’ during skilled performance (Brownstein) does not count as an inhibitor of responding to the Anscombean question post factum. Otherwise an agent would not understand her actions. Of course, in unusual situations, football, volleyball, basketball players and many other skilled agents may perform intuitively, and in such cases they literally ‘do not know what they are doing’, but these cases seem to be relatively infrequent in comparison to their standard skilful performance. Brownstein thinks exactly the opposite. But the empirical examples he gives to support his view do not seem to be strong enough.
- 29.
To simplify the issue, I do not distinguish here awareness from consciousness.
- 30.
In one of the footnotes in the first chapter (n. 45), I have recalled the work of Uithol et al. (2014) who try to unveil the limits of the concept of intention for neuroscientific research.
- 31.
My students rightly noticed that by introducing motor intentions into the ‘intentional cascade’, as a supplementation of D-intentions and P-intentions, Pacherie has made intentions appear literally everywhere in human practice. This is, of course, not far from absurdity. And the fact that the account of immediate intentions Pacherie later developed with Haggard (Pacherie and Haggard 2010) has been proposed without the aid of the construct of motor intentions but within the framework of Benjamin Libet’s famous experiment is meaningful enough.
- 32.
The discussion of Davidson’s theory will also supplement the investigation of the issue of reasons for action from Chap. 4.
- 33.
I say ‘roughly’ because Kotarbiński’s proposal is far too imprecise to claim something bolder. I have simply assumed that such automatic actions as, for example, wine selection primed by music in a supermarket can reasonably be described as caused by optional impulses. Surely, their ‘optionality’ is affected by external factors but this does not necessarily undermine intentionality and goal consciousness.
- 34.
Similar line of argument can be found in Di Nucci (2014: 52–54).
- 35.
Di Nucci follows this path and offers a non-causalist, Frankfurt-inspired account of action. His view is based on the claim that an agent A’s φ-ing s intentional if φ-ing is under A’s guidance (see Di Nucci 2014: 64). Interestingly, Pacherie also refers to Frankfurt, but to support her causalism (!). In fact, the only thing she can support by the use of Frankfurt is the claim that motor intentions guide action in terms of motor control (Pacherie 2008: 190), but not the claim that they cause actions.
References
Kotarbiński, T. (1963). Problematyka ogólnej teorii walki. Warszawa: Akademia Sztabu Generalnego im K. Świerczewskiego [P1: 198–207].
Kotarbiński, T. (1964). Practical error. Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, Copenhagen 1, 65–71 [Błąd praktyczny. Studia Filozoficzne, 2(1963): 17–30; P1: 244–257].
Kotarbiński, T. (1965). Praxiology: An introduction to the sciences of efficient action (trans: Wojtasiewicz, O.). Oxford: Pergamon Press/Warszawa: PWN [Traktat o dobrej robocie, Ossolineum, Wrocław 1955].
Bargh, J. A. (1994). The four horsemen of automaticity: Awareness, intention, efficiency, and control in social cognition. In R. S. Wyer Jr. & T. K. Srull (Eds.), Handbook of social cognition (2nd ed., pp. 1–40). Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc.
Bargh, J. A., & Chartrand, T. L. (1999). Unbearable automaticity of being. American Psychologist, 54(7), 462–479.
Baumeister, R. F. (1984). Choking under pressure: Self-consciousness and paradoxical effects of incentives on skillful performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46(3), 610–620.
Beilock, S. L., & Carr, T. H. (2001). On the fragility of skilled performance: What governs choking under pressure? Journal of Experimental Psychology, 130(4), 701–725.
Bratman, M. E. (1987). Intention, plans, and practical reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Brownstein, M. (2013). Rationalizing flow: Agency in skilled unreflective action. Philosophical Studies, 168(2), 545–568.
Brownstein, M., & Madva, A. (2012). The normativity of automaticity. Mind and Language, 27(4), 410–434.
Chan, D. K. (1995). Non-intentional actions. American Philosophical Quarterly, 32(2), 139–151.
Davidson, D. (1963). Actions, reasons, and causes. The Journal of Philosophy, 60, 685–700 [reprinted in Davidson 1990, pp. 3–19].
Davidson, D. (1978). Intending. In Y. Yovel (Ed.), Philosophy of history and action. Dordrecht: Reidel [reprinted in Davidson 1990, pp. 83–102].
Dewey, J. (1922). Human nature and conduct. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
Dreyfus, S. E., & Dreyfus, H. L. (1980). A five-stage model of the mental activities involved in directed skill acquisition. Washington, DC: Storming Media. http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA084551. Retrieved June 10, 2015.
Fantl, J. (2014). Knowledge how. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2014 Edition), E. N. Zalta (Ed.), forthcoming, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2014/entries/knowledge-how/
Gollwitzer, P. M., & Bargh, J. A. (2005). Automaticity in goal pursuit. In A. Elliot & C. Dweck (Eds.), Handbook of competence and motivation (pp. 624–646). New York: Guilford Press.
Hetherington, S. (2006). How to know (that knowledge-that is knowledge-how). In S. Hetherington (Ed.), Epistemology futures (pp. 71–94). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heyes, C. (2011). Automatic imitation. Psychological Bulletin, 137(3), 463–483.
Malle, B. F. (2010). Intentional action in folk psychology. In T. O’Connor & C. Sandis (Eds.), A companion to the philosophy of action (pp. 357–365). Oxford: Blackwell.
Miller, G. A. (1956). The magic number seven plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63, 81–97.
Moors, A., & De Houwer, J. (2006). Automaticity: A theoretical and conceptual analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(2), 297–326.
Newell, A., & Rosenbloom, P. S. (1981). Mechanisms of skill acquisition and the law of practice. In J. R. Anderson (Ed.), Cognitive skills and their acquisition (pp. 1–55). Hillsdale: Erlbaum.
North, A. C., Hargreaves, D. J., & McKendrick, J. (1999). The influence of in-store music on wine selections. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84(2), 271–276.
Orbell, S., & Verplanken, B. (2010). The automatic component of habit in health behavior: abit as cue-contingent automaticity. Health Psychology, 29(4), 374–383.
Pacherie, E. (2005). Perceiving intentions. In J. Sàágua (Ed.), A Explicação da Interpretação Humana (pp. 401–414). Lisbon: Edições Colibri.
Pacherie, E. (2008). The phenomenology of action: A conceptual framework. Cognition, 107(1), 179–217.
Putnam, H. (1987). Many faces of realism (The Paul Carus lectures). LaSalle: Open Court.
Roth, A. S. (2003). Practical intersubjectivity. In F. F. Schmitt (Ed.), Socializing metaphysics. The nature of social reality (pp. 65–91). Lanham: Rowmand & Littlefield.
Shapiro, S. (2014). Massively shared agency. In M. Vargas & G. Yaffe (Eds.), Rational and social agency. The philosophy of Michael Bratman (pp. 258–289). New York: Oxford University Press.
Sharp, R. H. (1973). The psychology of skill acquisition. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 7(3/4), 395–398.
Shiffrin, R. M., & Schneider, W. (1977). Controlled and automatic human information processing: II. Perceptual learning, automatic attending, and a general theory. Psychological Review, 84, 127–190.
Simon, H. A. (1965). The shape of automation (for men and management). New York: Harper & Row.
Stanley, J. (2011). Know how. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thaler, R. H., & Sunstein, C. R. (2008). Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Uithol, S., Burnston, D. C., & Haselager, P. (2014). Why we may not find intentions in the brain. Neuropsychologia, 56, 129–139.
Wine, J. (1971). Test anxiety and direction of attention. Psychological Bulletin, 76, 92–104.
Wood, W. (2012). On ruts and getting out of them. Science, 336(6084), 980–981.
Wood, W., & Rünger, D. (2016). Psychology of habit. Annual Review of Psychology, 67, 289–314.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Makowski, P.T. (2017). Automaticity and the Economization of Actions. In: Tadeusz Kotarbiński’s Action Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40051-8_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40051-8_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-40050-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-40051-8
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)