Limits to doubt

Supported by Ian Hacking’s concept of “intervention,” and Charles Taylor’s concept of “intentionality,” this article argues that doubting is acting, and that doubting is therefore subject to the same demands of responsibility as any other action. The argument is developed by using medical practice as a test-case. The central suggestion is that the demand of acting responsibly limits doubt in medicine. The article focuses on two such limitations to doubt. Firstly, the article argues that it is irresponsible to doubt that our actions can harm other people. Secondly, the article argues that it is irresponsible not to strive for coherence between our utterances of doubt and our other actions. Incoherence here can cause “cultural impoverishment.” In a larger context this article also argues that medicine can enrich our epistemology, because medical knowledge displays important traits of knowledge that are downplayed in traditional epistemology derived from mathematics and physics. In particular, medicine makes it possible to get the relation between ethics and epistemology into sharper focus. The endpoint in medical epistemology is “responsible action,” and not certainty in and of itself.     

Guided by Intention: Preschoolers' Imitation Reflects Inferences of Causation

Object use is a ubiquitous characteristic of the human species, and learning how objects function is a fundamental part of development. In this article the authors examine the role that intentionality plays in children's understanding of causal relationships during observational learning of object use. Children observed demonstrations in which causally irrelevant and causally relevant actions were performed to achieve a desired goal. The intentionality of these actions was manipulated using verbal markers. Irrelevant actions were performed either intentionally (“There!”) or accidentally (“Whoops! I didn't mean to do that!”). Three-, 4-, and 5-year-olds, but not 2-year-olds, were less likely to imitate causally irrelevant actions performed accidentally than when they were performed intentionally. This suggests that older children used intentionality to guide causal inference and perceived intentional actions as causally effective and accidental actions as causally ineffective. Findings are discussed from an evolutionary perspective in relation to the cultural transmission of tool-use knowledge.     

The intentionality bias and schizotypy

The “intentionality bias” refers to our automatic tendency to judge other people's actions to be intentional. In this experiment we extended research on this effect in two key ways. First, we developed a novel nonlinguistic task for assessing the intentionality bias. This task used video stimuli of ambiguous movements. Second, we investigated the relationship between the strength of this bias and schizotypy (schizophrenia-like symptoms in healthy individuals). Our results showed that the intentionality bias was replicated for the video stimuli and also that this bias is stronger in those individuals scoring higher on the schizotypy rating scales. Overall these findings lend further support for the existence of the intentionality bias. We also discuss the possible relevance of these findings for our understanding of certain symptoms of schizophrenic illness.     

主动控制感的测量及认知神经机制

主动控制感指预计动作和实际感觉反馈匹配会产生一种控制自己动作、作用于环境的主观体验, 是人类心理活动的基本特征之一。本文系统介绍主动控制感的测量方式, 尤其是主动动作的时间压缩效应这一内隐手段; 并从主观意识、动作的发生方式和动作结果特征三个方面探讨主动控制感的影响因素。基于动作的比较器模型, 解释主动控制感的产生原因; 并提供了主动控制感的认知神经脑机制的证据, 强调额叶和顶叶在主动控制感中的作用。未来研究应该更加注重外显与内隐测量的一致性, 特殊群体以及主动控制感的脑网络研究。     

Enough skill to kill: Intentionality judgments and the moral valence of action

Extant models of moral judgment assume that an action’s intentionality precedes assignments of blame. Knobe (2003b) challenged this fundamental order and proposed instead that the badness or blameworthiness of an action directs (and thus unduly biases) people’s intentionality judgments. His and other researchers’ studies suggested that blameworthy actions are considered intentional even when the agent lacks skill (e.g., killing somebody with a lucky shot) whereas equivalent neutral actions are not (e.g., luckily hitting a bull’s-eye). The present five studies offer an alternative account of these provocative findings. We suggest that people see the morally significant action examined in previous studies (killing) as accomplished by a basic action (pressing the trigger) for which an unskilled agent still has sufficient skill. Studies 1 through 3 show that when this basic action is performed unskillfully or is absent, people are far less likely to view the killing as intentional, demonstrating that intentionality judgments, even about immoral actions, are guided by skill information. Studies 4 and 5 further show that a neutral action such as hitting the bull’s-eye is more difficult than killing and that difficult actions are less often judged intentional. When difficulty is held constant, people’s intentionality judgments are fully responsive to skill information regardless of moral valence. The present studies thus speak against the hypothesis of a moral evaluation bias in intentionality judgments and instead document people’s sensitivity to subtle features of human action.     

On the transformative character of collective intentionality and the uniqueness of the human

Current debates on collective intentionality focus on the cognitive capacities, attitudes, and mental states that enable individuals to take part in joint actions. It is typically assumed that collective intentionality is a capacity which is added to other, pre-existing, capacities of an individual and is exercised in cooperative activities like carrying a table or painting a house together. We call this the additive account because it portrays collective intentionality as a capacity that an individual possesses in addition to her capacity for individual intentionality. We offer an alternative view according to which the primary entity to which collective intentionality has to be ascribed is not the human individual, but a “form of life.” As a feature of a form of life, collective intentionality is something more than the specific capacity exercised by an individual when she cooperates with others. Collective intentionality transforms all the capacities of the bearers of this specific form of life. We thus call our proposal the transformative account of collective intentionality.     

Effortful control, explicit processing, and the regulation of human evolved predispositions

This article analyzes the effortful control of automatic processing related to social and emotional behavior, including control over evolved modules designed to solve problems of survival and reproduction that were recurrent over evolutionary time. The inputs to effortful control mechanisms include a wide range of nonrecurrent information--information resulting not from evolutionary regularities but from explicit appraisals of costs and benefits. Effortful control mechanisms are associated with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the ventral anterior cingulated cortex. These mechanisms are largely separate from mechanisms of cognitive control (termed executive function) and working memory, and they enable effortful control of behavior in the service of long range goals. Individual differences in effortful control are associated with measures of conscientiousness in the Five Factor Model of personality. Research in the areas of aggression, ethnocentrism, sexuality, reward seeking, and emotion regulation is reviewed indicating effortful control of automatic, implicit processing based on explicit appraisals of the context. Evidence is reviewed indicating that evolutionary pressure for cooperation may be a critical adaptive function accounting for the evolution of explicit processing.     

Introduction: The Role of Process Metaphysics in Our World of Science

This article applies the analytic rigor of philosophy to the vexed topic of business strategy, and uses the objective, public evidence of business strategy as an existence proof for the possibility of free will and purpose in the private realm of subjective intentionality. The first part distinguishes three types of intentionality in philosophy—purposive intentionality, referential intentionality, and the problematic intentionality of a godlike, miraculous “inner intender.” After rejecting this third type of intentionality, and noting that its rejection saves the first two types of intentionality from guilt by association, the second part draws parallels with three types of strategy in business: purposive, referential, and godlike. The first defines the goals and objectives of a company; the second picks out and targets consumers in market driven strategy; and the third, with the help of philosophical reflections, demands a rethinking of the function of leadership without reliance on a single, godlike leader. In the third part of this article, the existence proof from the public world of business is used to shed light on the possibility of intentionality in the private world of subjective intentionality. Finally, the article draws conclusions for its three audiences: for the philosophers, with credit to Nietzsche who saw it all, a greater clarity about intentionality and free will; for business people, greater clarity about the importance of purposiveness and strategic intent; and for business philosophers, a demonstration showing how—through strategy and intentionality—we can both create value and give meaning to the lives of our employees, ourselves, and our customers.     

Sensorimotor intentionality: The origins of intentionality in prospective agent action

Efficient prospective motor control, evident in human activity from birth, reveals an adaptive intentionality of a primary, pre-reflective, and pre-conceptual nature that we identify here as sensorimotor intentionality. We identify a structural continuity between the emergence of this earliest form of prospective movement and the structure of mental states as intentional or content-directed in more advanced forms. We base our proposal on motor control studies, from foetal observations through infancy. These studies reveal movements are guided by anticipations of future effects, even from before birth. This implies that these movements, even if they are simple and discrete, are the actions of an intentional agent. We develop this notion to present a theory of the developing organisation of a core feature of cognition as embodied agent action, from early single actions with proximal prospectivity to the complex serial ordering of actions into projects to reach distal goals. We claim the prospective structural continuity from early and simple actions to later complex projects of serially-ordered actions confirms the existence of an ontogenetically primary form of content–directedness that is a driver for learning and development. Its implications for understanding autism are discussed.     

Classical Intentionality

In the first part, the paper describes in detail the classical conception of intentionality which was expounded in its most sophisticated form by Edmund Husserl. This conception is today largely eclipsed in the philosophy of mind by the functionalist and by the representationalist account of intentionality, the former adopted by Daniel Dennett and David Chalmers, the latter by John Searle and Fred Dretske. The very considerable differences between the classical and the modern conceptions are pointed out, and it is argued that the classical conception is more satisfactory than the two modern ones, not only regarding phenomenal adequacy, but also on the grounds of epistemological considerations. In the second part, the paper argues that classical intentionality is not naturalizable, that is, physicalizable. Since classical intentionality exists (in the experiences that display it), the non-naturalizability of classical intentionality implies psychophysical dualism.     

Harming is more intentional than helping because it is more probable: the underlying influence of probability on the Knobe effect

Knobe [2003. Intentional action and side effects in ordinary language. Analysis, 63, 190–194] demonstrated that people’s intentionality judgments in side effects depend on the outcome of the side-effect, indicating that people’s judgments of intentionality of action depend on not only the intention of the actor but also on the result of the action. However, on the basis of findings in judgment and decision making, the current study proposes another hypothesis to Knobe’s (2003) results: the participants’ intentionality judgments are related to not only the outcomes themselves but also the probabilities of outcomes predicted from the action. To test this hypothesis, the present study employed an identical experimental procedure to Knobe (2003), except that it required not only intentionality but also probability judgments for outcomes that resulted from the actions of a company president. The results replicated the findings of Knobe (2003) and showed a relationship between probability and intentionality judgment.     

Why do we do what we do? The Attention–Readiness–Motivation framework

According to many theories of motivation, the principal driver of human behavior is the affectively driven valuation of actions. Actions are valued by maximizing the difference between stimulus value (the benefits and costs inherent in the stimulus outcome that is the expected result of a given action) and action costs (the effort required to perform that action). However, such accounts have difficulty explaining why individuals act inconsistently in what appear to be comparable situations and often act in ways that seem inconsistent with relevant action values. In particular, we highlight several seemingly anomalous default effects which cannot be explained via traditional valuation‐based factors. In this article, we present the Attention–Readiness–Motivation framework, according to which such behavioral anomalies occur because stimulus value and action costs are respectively influenced by endogenous attention and action readiness—cognitive variables that are typically not considered as a part of the valuation calculus.     

A model for production, perception, and acquisition of actions in face-to-face communication

The concept of action as basic motor control unit for goal-directed movement behavior has been used primarily for private or non-communicative actions like walking, reaching, or grasping. In this paper, literature is reviewed indicating that this concept can also be used in all domains of face-to-face communication like speech, co-verbal facial expression, and co-verbal gesturing. Three domain-specific types of actions, i.e. speech actions, facial actions, and hand-arm actions, are defined in this paper and a model is proposed that elucidates the underlying biological mechanisms of action production, action perception, and action acquisition in all domains of face-to-face communication. This model can be used as theoretical framework for empirical analysis or simulation with embodied conversational agents, and thus for advanced human–computer interaction technologies.     

The persistent impact of incidental experience

As we perform daily activities—driving to work, unlocking the office door, or grabbing a coffee cup—our actions seem automatic and preprogrammed. Nonetheless, routine, well-practiced behavior is continually modulated by incidental experience: In repetitive experimental tasks, recent (~4) trials reliably influence performance and action choice. Psychological theories downplay the significance of sequential effects, explaining them as rapidly decaying perturbations of behavior, with no long-term consequences. We challenged this traditional perspective in two experiments designed to probe the impact of more distant experience, finding evidence for effects spanning up to a thousand intermediate trials. We present a normative theory in which these persistent effects reflect optimal adaptation to a dynamic environment exhibiting varying rates of change. The theory predicts a heavy-tailed decaying influence of past experience, consistent with our data, and suggests that individual incidental experiences are catalogued in a temporally extended memory utilized in order to optimize subsequent behavior.     

Three-and-a-half folk concepts of intentional action

Fiery Cushman and Alfred Mele recently proposed a ‘two-and-a-half rules’ theory of folk intentionality. They suggested that laypersons attribute intentionality employing: one rule based on desire, one based on belief, and another principle based on moral judgment, which may either reflect a folk concept (and so count as a third rule) or a bias (and so not count as a rule proper) and which they provisionally count as ‘half a rule’. In this article, I discuss some cases in which an agent is judged as having neither belief nor desire to bring about an action, and yet laypersons find the agent’s action to be intentional. Many lay responses apparently follow a rule, but many other seem biased. The contribution of this study is two-fold: by addressing actions performed without desire or belief, it expands Mele and Cushman’s account; it also helps discriminate between a two-rules and a three-rules theory. As a conclusion, I argue in favor of a three-and-a-half concepts theory.     

Predicting premeditation: future behavior is seen as more intentional than past behavior

People's intuitions about the underlying causes of past and future actions might not be the same. In 3 studies, we demonstrate that people judge the same behavior as more intentional when it will be performed in the future than when it has been performed in the past. We found this temporal asymmetry in perceptions of both the strength of an individual's intention and the overall prevalence of intentional behavior in a population. Because of its heightened intentionality, people thought the same transgression deserved more severe punishment when it would occur in the future than when it did occur in the past. The difference in judgments of both intentionality and punishment was partly explained by the stronger emotional reactions that were elicited in response to future actions than in response to past actions. We consider the implications of this temporal asymmetry for legal decision making and theories of attribution more generally.