Year: 2016
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Since a large portion of our behaviour is automatic, what kind of agency and control do we humans have, and what are its limits? I address the question both from a historical perspective (through Aristotle’s philosophy) and a contemporary approach (engaging with recent empirical research). I begin with Aristotle’s action theory, which has remarkable resonances with current issues. He claims our goals are determined by non-rational habituation, so the question arises how we can control our life’s ends if they cannot be set rationally. I argue that for Aristotle we control our goals insofar as we carefully shape our habits. Care for habits belongs, not just to the individual (who cannot care for her habituation’s first stages), but primarily to the political community. So individual autonomy depends on social care practices; and reason can establish goals not directly, but by carefully shaping habits. I go on to argue that empirical evidence justifies a broadly similar account. Intellectualists hold that all actions must be produced through reflection (i.e. a top-down coordination by reference to a goal); anti-intellectualists argue that some actions can be produced without reflection. Anti-intellectualists receive preliminary empirical support from evidence that there is a kind of normativity proper to automatic (i.e. reflection-independent) processes, which reveals the existence of automatic control. Is automatic control sufficient for the production of intentional actions? Anti-intellectualists have often pointed to skilful bodily action to argue that it is, but I contend that even skilled action requires top-down, reflective control, confirming recent intellectualist proposals. So anti-intellectualism cannot find support in skilled-action phenomena; but it may find more promising evidence in decision-making studies. Framing effects in decision-making reveal that we control intention-formation processes automatically through background control: intuitive sense- making processes that are nonetheless susceptible to cognitive biases largely incorrigible by reflection. However, smart environmental design is able to protect intuitive control over decision-making. This supports a thesis called indirect intellectualism: like Aristotle, we should conceive of individual control over action as significantly dependent on reflectively shaping our practical environment.
Source: TSpace (University of Toronto)
Author: Juan Pablo Bermudez-Rey
Language: English
Topic: Free Will and Agency
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2601479363