The illusionist and the folk: On the role of conscious planning in intentionality judgments

Illusionism is a prominent hypothesis about action control, according to which acts that we consider voluntary are nevertheless caused by unconscious brain events, and thus our subjective experience of consciously willing them is ultimately illusory. Illusionism can be understood as either an ontological thesis or a phenomenological claim, but both versions are vulnerable to a line of attack based on the role of long-term planning (distal intentions) in action control. According to this objection, the evidence upon which illusionism rests is confined to short-term (proximal) intentions, so it is not sufficient to justify broader conclusions on the causal inefficacy of conscious will. In this essay we reconstruct the logic of this objection against illusionism, clarify why surveying folk intuitions on conscious distal intentions is essential to the debate, and present a study in which the role of conscious planning in intentionality judgment is clearly revealed. We also present other relevant findings, such as a gender effect on intentionality attributions, a moral influence on responsibility judgments, and confirmation of mechanistic incompatibilism.     

Enthymemes: From Reconstruction to Understanding

Traditionally, an enthymeme is an incomplete argument, made so by the absence of one or more of its constituent statements. An enthymeme resolution strategy is a set of procedures for finding those missing elements, thus reconstructing the enthymemes and restoring its meaning. It is widely held that a condition on the adequacy of such procedures is that statements restored to an enthymeme produce an argument that is good in some given respect in relation to which the enthymeme itself is bad. In previous work, we emphasized the role of parsimony in enthymeme resolution strategies and concomitantly downplayed the role of “charity”. In the present paper, we take the analysis of enthymemes a step further. We will propose that if the pragmatic features that attend the phenomenon of enthymematic communication are duly heeded, the very idea of reconstructing enthymemes loses much of its rationale, and their interpretation comes to be conceived in a new light.     

The role of beliefs in goal dynamics: prolegomena to a constructive theory of intentions

In this article we strive to provide a detailed and principled analysis of the role of beliefs in goal processing—that is, the cognitive transition that leads from a mere desire to a proper intention. The resulting model of belief-based goal processing has also relevant consequences for the analysis of intentions, and constitutes the necessary core of a constructive theory of intentions, i.e. a framework that not only analyzes what an intention is, but also explains how it becomes what it is. We discuss similarities and differences between our approach and other standard accounts of intention, in particular Bratman’s planning theory. The aim here is to question and refine the conceptual foundations of many theories of intentional action: as a consequence, although our analysis is not formal in itself, it is ultimately meant to have deep consequences for formal models of intentional agency.     

Nothing Persuades Like Success: Reflections on Partially and Over-Successful Persuasion. A Reply to Debowska-Kozlowska

In this brief commentary of Kamila Debowska-Kozlowska’s insightful analysis of persuasive outcomes (Processing topics from the Beneficial Cognitive Model in partially and over-successful persuasion dialogues. Argumentation, 2014), I articulate some suggestions for future development of her ideas. My main claim is that, while instances of partially and over-successful persuasion are indeed worthy of further theoretical inquiry, the topical analysis proposed by Debowska-Kozlowska may benefit from integration with other approaches.     

Delaying gratification for food and tokens in capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): when quantity is salient, symbolic stimuli do not improve performance

Capuchin monkeys have been tested for the capacity to delay gratification for accumulating rewards in recent studies and have exhibited variable results. Meanwhile, chimpanzees have consistently excelled at this task. However, neither species have ever been tested at accumulating symbolic tokens instead of food items, even though previous reports indicate that tokens sometimes facilitate performance in other self-control tasks. Thus, in the present study, we tested capuchin monkeys and chimpanzees for their capacity to delay gratification in a delay maintenance task, in which an experimenter presented items, one at a time, to within reach of an animal for as long as the animal refrained from taking them. In Experiment 1, we assessed how long capuchin monkeys could accumulate items in the delay maintenance task when items were food rewards or tokens exchangeable for food rewards. Monkeys accumulated more food rewards than they did tokens. In Experiment 2, we tested capuchin monkeys and chimpanzees in a similar accumulation test. Whereas capuchins again accumulated more food than tokens, all chimpanzees but one showed no difference in performance in the two conditions. These findings provide additional evidence that chimpanzees exhibit greater self-control capacity in this task than do capuchin monkeys and indicate that symbolic stimuli fail to facilitate delay maintenance when they do not abstract away from the quantitative dimension of the task. This is consistent with previous findings on the effects of symbols on self-control and illuminates what makes accumulation a particularly challenging task.     

Enthymematic parsimony

Enthymemes are traditionally defined as arguments in which some elements are left unstated. It is an empirical fact that enthymemes are both enormously frequent and appropriately understood in everyday argumentation. Why is it so? We outline an answer that dispenses with the so called “principle of charity”, which is the standard notion underlying most works on enthymemes. In contrast, we suggest that a different force drives enthymematic argumentation—namely, parsimony, i.e. the tendency to optimize resource consumption, in light of the agent’s goals. On this view, the frequent use of enthymemes does not indicate sub-optimal performance of arguers, requiring appeals to charity for their redemption. On the contrary, it is seen as a highly adaptive argumentation strategy, given the need of everyday reasoners to optimize their cognitive resources. Considerations of parsimony also affect enthymeme reconstruction, i.e. the process by which the interpreter makes sense of the speaker’s enthymemes. Far from being driven by any pro-social cooperative instinct, interpretative efforts are aimed at extracting valuable information at reasonable costs from available sources. Thus, there is a tension between parsimony and charity, insofar as the former is a non-social constraint for self-regulation of one’s behaviour, whereas the latter implies a pro-social attitude. We will argue that some versions of charity are untenable for enthymeme interpretation, while others are compatible with the view defended here, but still require parsimony to expose the ultimate reasons upon which a presumption of fair treatment in enthymeme reconstruction is founded.     

The ecological rationality of delay tolerance: insights from capuchin monkeys

Both human and non-human animals often face decisions between options available at different times, and the capacity of delaying gratification has usually been considered one of the features distinguishing humans from other animals. However, this characteristic can widely vary across individuals, species, and types of task and it is still unclear whether it is accounted for by phylogenetic relatedness, feeding ecology, social structure, or metabolic rate. To disentangle these hypotheses, we evaluated temporal preferences in capuchin monkeys, South-American primates that, despite splitting off from human lineage approximately 35 million years ago, show striking behavioural analogies with the great apes. Then, we compared capuchins’ performance with that of the other primate species tested so far with the same procedure. Overall, capuchins showed a delay tolerance significantly higher than closely related species, such as marmosets and tamarins, and comparable to that shown by great apes. Capuchins’ tool use abilities might explain their comparatively high preference for delayed options in inter-temporal choices. Moreover, as in humans, capuchin females showed a greater delay tolerance than males, possibly because of their less opportunistic foraging style. Thus, our results shed light on the evolutionary origins of self-control supporting explanations of delay tolerance in terms of feeding ecology.