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Action and Agency

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Handbook of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science

Abstract

In this chapter, we will be asking how the notions of intentional action and agency are related and discuss different ways of thinking about agents’ experiences of agency. I will focus on agents’ experience of agency as they engage in and execute their intentional actions.1 A number of distinctions important to our theories about and experimenting with intentional agency will be presented, and arguments in favour of viewing the experience of agency as having a complex phenomenology will be given. Let us begin by asking how we should conceive of intentional action. It is no easy task to define what an intentional action is. A commonsensical conception would be to say that an intentional action is an action an agent is performing because she has some reason to do so. An intentional action would then, as Anscombe said, be the kind of behaviour to which the “Why-question” in a certain sense has application (Anscombe 2000: 11), namely, in the sense that requires a reason for acting as an answer.

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Notes

  1. 1.

     I think it is fair to say that the classical phenomenologists to a certain degree have neglected to investigate the phenomenological structures of agents’ experience of acting (their current acting). They seem to have been more interested in describing the phenomenology of deliberation and decision-making - that is, describing what leads up to the agent’s acting. Thus, Pfänder (1963) investigated the motivational structures of decision-making; Schütz (1960, ch. 1, and 1951) investigated different types of motives for acting and explanatory practices; Sartre (1943) was interested in bodily experience as a source of agency and described our experience of freedom; and Ricoeur (1950) described the intentionality of practical thinking as a form of world-directedness and investigated ways in which practical thinking (deliberation, planning, willing) is constraint by abilities.

  2. 2.

     For a discussion and distinction of the intentional aspects of one’s behaviour and the motor aspects, or between intentional action and movement, see (Anscombe 2000, §30; Taylor 1964, ch. 1-3; Hornsby 1997, ch. 7, 2005).

  3. 3.

    See, for example, (Davidson 1971; Frankfurt 1978; Searle 1983, ch. 3; Taylor 1985b; Smith 1988; Ginet 1990, ch. 1-2; Brewer 1993; Hornsby 1997, ch. 8; Gallagher 2000a; Mossel 2005; Hohwy 2007; Bayne 2007; Pacherie 2007).

  4. 4.

    See, for example, (Libet 1985; Neisser 1993; Jeannerod 1999; Jeannerod and Pacherie 2004; Wegner and Wheatley 1999; Wegner 2003; Frith et al. 2000; Frith 2005; Marcel 2003; Tsakiris and Haggard 2005; Haggard 2005).

  5. 5.

     For a similar conception of agency, see Velleman (1992) and Taylor (1985a).

  6. 6.

    For an emphasis on the active aspect of addictive behaviour, see Ainslie (2001) and Elster (2000, ch. 5).

  7. 7.

    For a similar conclusion, see Mele (2003, ch. 10).

  8. 8.

     See Della Sala et al. (1994), Marchetti and Della Sala (1998). In the latter article they write: “The patients are aware of the bizarre and potentially hazardous behaviour of their hand but cannot inhibit it. They often refer to the feeling that one of their hands behaves as if it has a will of its own, but never deny that this capricious hand is part of their own body” (p. 196). And later: “(The patients) are always well aware of their odd behaviour and consciously try to overrule the unwanted action by appeasing the wayward hand” (p. 202). For a different and conflicting account, see Riddoch et al. (2000, esp. p. 607).

  9. 9.

     For a similar distinction between higher-order agency and first-order agency, see Gallagher (2004) and Gallagher and Zahavi (2007), ch. 8, where the distinction is made primarily in a discussion of schizophrenic experiences of delusion of control.

  10. 10.

     For a similar conception of reasons for action, see Dretske (2006a, sect. 4, and 2006b), and Anscombe (2000), sect. 47. For a recent discussion of different notions of reasons for action and their relation, see Hornsby (2008) and Steward (2009).

  11. 11.

    A minority of philosophers insist that awareness of reasons is not required for intentional action. Often they will argue that acting for a reason entails a high level of conceptual and reflective abilities. For one formulation of this position, see Wakefield and Dreyfus (1991) and Dreyfus (2006). I disagree. I operate with a less demanding notion of reason for acting.

  12. 12.

    For the classic discussion, see Davidson (1963, 1973).

  13. 13.

    Notice that this argument could only hope to establish that sense of agency is independent of experience of movement (physiologically speaking, the patient’s complete motor system is activated). For further discussions of this type of argument from total failure, see Grünbaum (2008).

  14. 14.

     See Wolpert et al. (2001) and Wolpert et al. (2003).

  15. 15.

     Although the quoted papers by Gallagher seem consistent with a primitivist conception of the sense of agency it is unclear to what degree they are actually committed to this conception. Gallagher more generally holds an embodied view of action, and in later work he endorses a more complex conception of agency (Gallagher 2005; Gallagher and Zahavi 2007, ch. 8).

  16. 16.

     It’s important that the experience is supposed to be reportable and timeable, because this makes possible the search for co-occurring brain processes accessible through imaging studies. This invitation to cognitive sciences has been accepted by a number of psychologist and neuroscientists; just to mention some, Chaminade and Decety (2002), Farrer and Frith (2002), Tsakiris and Haggard (2005).

  17. 17.

     Recently, various authors have proposed different versions of a complex theory of the sense of agency, (Horgan et al. 2003; Proust 2000, 2003; Pacherie 2007; Bayne 2007; Grünbaum 2008).

  18. 18.

     For a related discussion of “blindsight-grasping” and agency, see Campbell (2003).

  19. 19.

    This conception of agency as object-involving is familiar from Merleau-Ponty. He sees object-oriented action as a kind of object-dependent reference (see especially 1945, p. 161) and describes how perceived objects of action control aspects of our intentional behaviour (see ibid, p. 154).

  20. 20.

     In his lectures on ethics from 1925, Husserl presented a similar description of the experience of willing (as involving continuous sensory fulfilment), see Husserl (1988) and Melle (1992). Notice that this complex conception of agency remains consistent with Wolpert’s model of motor control. See in particular Frith et al. (2000). In contrast to Gallagher’s use of the model (in his 2000a), it could now be stressed that the sense of agency necessary for the applicability of Anscombe’s why-question would involve not only a pre-motor comparator but also comparisons between expected sensory consequences and perceptual feedback. See also Hohwy and Frith (2004).

  21. 21.

     For a different but related critique of the classical “sandwich” model of perception-practical reasoning-action, see Hurley (1998).

  22. 22.

    For a similar conception, see Merleau-Ponty’s idea of an intentional arch (Merleau-Ponty 1945, part 1, 3, esp. pp. 155ff.).

  23. 23.

     This has often enough been emphasized by psychologists working in the ecological and ideo-motor traditions, for example, Gibson (1977, 1979), Turvey (1977, 1992), Neisser (1985, 1993), Prinz (1992, 1997), Hommel et al. (2001).

  24. 24.

    For a discussion of the issues of veridicality of the experience of agency, see Bayne and Levy (2006).

  25. 25.

    For the conception of qualia as non-representational phenomenal qualities, see Shoemaker (1981), Block (1990), Chalmers (1996).

  26. 26.

     One prominent example of such an error-theory is Wegner (2002, 2005). For a critical philosophical discussion, see Bayne (2006).

  27. 27.

     This is argued by Hornsby (2004).

  28. 28.

    I wish to thank Shaun Gallagher, Jakob Hohwy, Manos Tsakiris, and Dan Zahavi for valuable comments on earlier drafts. The research for this paper was funded by the Danish Research Council, FKK, and the European Science Foundation, CNCC, BASIC.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Media, Cognition and Communication & Danish National Research Foundation: Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Thor Grünbaum

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  1. Thor Grünbaum
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  1. FB Philosophie und Philologie, Universität Mainz, Jakob Welder-Weg 18, Mainz, 55128, Germany

    Daniel Schmicking

  2. Dept of Philosophy & Cognitive Sciences, University of Central Florida, Colbourn Hall 411, Orlando, 32816-1352, U.S.A.

    Shaun Gallagher

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Grünbaum, T. (2010). Action and Agency. In: Schmicking, D., Gallagher, S. (eds) Handbook of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2646-0_19

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