Rationality in action pdf

PDF KB. Skip to main content. Books Journals Reference Works Topics. Buy The Book. ISBN: pp. January Cognitive Anthropology Culture. Philosophy of Mind. Psychology I: Foundations of Cognition. The proposal about collective intention runs as follows: Persons X and Y collectively intend to perform action A for short, to do A if and only if they are jointly committed to intend as a body to do A.

Before focusing on the key notion of joint commitment, I say something about the relevant general notion of commitment. This discussion draws on much previous work, some of which is cited in later notes.

Therefore, in any given discussion, it stands in need of some degree of explanation. To amplify the point, I first refer to some statements by economist Robert Frank. Be that as it may, I am concerned with commitments of a particular kind.

One who has not eaten for several days need not have a commitment of this kind not to eat. He may be hungry and thus have an incentive to eat. He may, however, be committed to never eating again. I shall not attempt a general account of this kind of commitment but will discuss a number of cases that I take to involve it and note some of their distinctive marks. I take the personal decision of an individual human being to entrain a commitment.

For instance, Helen decides to wear her yellow skirt today. She is thereby committed to wearing it today. To say this much is to make it clear that a commitment, in the sense in question, does not necessarily involve more than one person. It also makes it clear that an action to which one is committed need not be one that, in and of itself, one is morally required to perform.

In fact this label suggests two things, both of which are important features of the situation in which one has made a personal decision. In short, the commitment is of the will, by the will. Norton, , 6. The binding nature of personal decisions has two salient aspects, both of which merit discussion. First, in an intuitive sense, by virtue of having made it, the one who makes the decision has sufficient reason to act in accordance with it.

As I am using the phrase, if one has sufficient reason to perform Act A, this is what reason in a broad, intuitive sense requires one to do—all else being equal. One may be said to be bound to do what one has decided to do, then, in the following sense: All else being equal, reason requires one to do it. I do not mean to imply that by deciding to wear her yellow skirt today, Helen thereby makes her wearing that skirt more desirable in and of itself, or in its consequences.

Rather, there is something about the simple fact that she has so decided that makes it the case that, all else being equal, reason requires her to wear a yellow skirt. This point may be supported by consideration of how Helen might react if she failed to wear a yellow skirt without having changed her mind about doing so. The second salient aspect of the way a decision binds is this. It binds one, in the above sense, with a specifiable degree of persistence.

While a decision may be thought of as an act of will, an intention appears rather to be a state of will.

I have argued elsewhere that personal intentions bind those whose intentions they are as decisions do but not with the same degree of persistence. One can decide 7. I want, in any case, to emphasize the deliberateness of the repudiation here. It will then cease to bind. It may cease to bind, however, without any such repudiation.

It can simply go out of existence or be replaced by a contrary intention. I return to this distinction later. One might wonder whether to think of an intention as in any sense com- mitting its possessor to a given course of action. Insofar as an intention binds in the same sense a decision does, there is some plausibility in allowing—as I shall do here—that one with an intention is subject to a commitment of the same general type. The personal decision or intention of an individual human being is such that he can rescind it on his own and he is the only one who can rescind it.

I shall say that it therefore creates a personal commitment: it is created by a single human being who alone has the capacity personally to rescind it.

Joint Commitment I now turn to joint commitment. I take the concept of a joint commitment to be a fundamental everyday concept, in that it is a central element in many other such concepts. In addition, and relatedly, I believe that we need to appeal to joint commitment in order fully to understand the nature of obliga- tions and rights. Some central points, however, must be sketched.

A joint commitment, as I understand it, is the collective analogue of a per- sonal commitment of the will. Thus the joint commitment of Anne and Ben, say, is the commitment of Anne and Ben.

It is in an important sense simple or singular. In the case of collective intention, on my account of it, the parties are jointly committed to intend as a body to perform some action. I understand this roughly as follows: the commitment is to emulate as far as is possible a single body perhaps better, person that intends to perform that action.

Each party, then, has reason to do what he can to emulate, in conjunction with the others, a single body of the relevant kind. Evidently, discussion among the parties may be called for in order that individual efforts are effective. In order to create a given joint commitment of the basic kind, each party must make clear to the others that he is ready to be jointly committed in the rel- evant way.

Thus each must express a certain condition of his will. I have argued elsewhere that this interchange is best parsed somewhat as follows. Each party expresses to the other his or her readiness to be jointly committed to endorse as a body the decision that they meet at six. These expressions are common knowledge between the parties.

I say more about agreements in due course. Each lights a cigarette and they talk till a while after the end of their smoke. This happens again and again. By this time, it would seem, it is com- mon knowledge between the parties that each has expressed to the other her readiness jointly to commit with the other to uphold the practice of their meeting daily outside the factory for a smoke and a chat.

At no point did the parties agree to start or engage in this practice. Yet their interchange suggests enough has passed between them jointly to commit them to uphold it. A joint commitment is a commitment of two or more wills. It is true that mutual expressions in conditions of common knowledge are among the nec- It has been defined in different ways by different authors, and I use it here in order simply to gesture in the relevant direction.

As far as the creation of a joint commitment is concerned, one might say infor- mally that the expressions in question must be entirely out in the open as far as the participants are concerned.

For some further discussion, see Gilbert, Social Facts, ff. I take it that a joint commitment can only be rescinded with the concurrence of all the parties, just as it requires their concurrence for its formation.

In what way or ways do joint commitments bind? First, a standing joint commitment binds the wills of the individual parties in the following way: Each has sufficient reason to act in accordance with the commitment. Thus the commitment has at least the binding force of a personal intention or deci- sion for each of the parties.

What of the persistence of this binding? Is it the case that it persists until the joint commitment in question has been either satisfied or rescinded, as in the case of a decision? This is true of some joint commitments. Those created by an agreement are in this category. Agreements are, indeed, the closest cousins to decisions in the realm of joint commitment.

Other joint commit- ments are open to deliberate repudiation but do not appear to require it in order that they cease to give anyone reason to conform to them, for they may go out of existence in much the way that they came in, by means that do not rise to the status of an agreement.

The joint commitment of the factory workers Pam and Polly is of this kind. Just as it came into existence by a subtle, gradual process, it may cease to exist in such a way.

Both of these are cases in which what we perceive gives us —without deliberation— reasons for action. Even assuming that in these cases we do not deliberate, the question as to what makes them rational remains. This does violence to the way we normally speak about things. Imagine someone who looks out the window and sees that it is raining, and therefore without deliberation brings her umbrella out.

Imagine that she was wrong, that is, that it was not really raining. Searle, it seems to me, is forced to call her behavior irrational, but I do not think that many people would join him in this. If Searle were correct, many which? It would have been irra- tional for me to initially sit in seat E instead of in seat F , as my plane ticket had it. In order to emphasize the unintelligibility of the second form of recognitional rationality let me now return to the problem I left pending at the beginning.

I wondered whether Searle could reply to my thesis that there can be rational actions in the absence of any gap by suggesting that seemingly causally sufficient inten- tional states such as perceiving strange pronunciations of my name in an incoming phone call are not really causally sufficient. I wondered whether it could be argued that, strictly speaking, there is no necessity in those cases; we might be following a prudential principle, but we would still be acting within a gap.

For Searle admits, we now know, that there are cases in which certain intentional states impose themselves upon us without any deliberation. It seems as if Searle is admitting that some actions do occur, after all, outside of any gap. Think of a non-temporally extended action for which the agent had not formed a prior intention and which arose out of a case or non-deliberative recognitional rationality. Searle expressly admits that such an action is possible.

The lack of temporal extension eliminates 3. The lack of a prior intention eliminates 1 and 2 , but as we have seen, one could collapse 1 and 2 into the gap 4 Deliberation — Intention-in-action But even 4 is eliminated once Searle admits that there are cases in which delib- eration is absent.

Yet it is possible to suggest that even this action occurs within a gap, though, once again, a gap that Searle does not mention. The gap would be: 5 Non-deliberative acquisition of intentional state — intention-in-action. Searle should speak about these gaps. Although it is possible to suggest that gaps 5 or 4 exist, Searle does not discuss them, and does not present arguments in favor of, or against, their existence.

If Searle admits that, for example, seeing a truck bearing down on me with- out any deliberation whatsoever causes me to form the belief that I am about to be hurt, what argument does he have to suggest that having formed this belief does not cause me again without deliberation to run away?

That I believe such and such is, after all, a fact. And in this scenario, why, then, should beliefs be excluded from the class of facts that intentions-in-action should presumably answer to? Yet, his recognitional rationality gambit entails that sometimes we recognize and it would be irrational not to do so cer- tain facts and their motivational force without any deliberation.

Then, the clas- sical theorist can defend herself by stating that things like the goals of human life, etc. Just as seeing the truck bearing down on me causes me to realize I am in danger, seeing my fellow human beings causes me to realize that life is precious, or that all men are born equal, etc.

I think it would. But it is important to remember why Sear- le introduced this notion to begin with. He wished to link rationality to facts, and not to have rationality just linked to perception of the facts.

If you reflect on your con- scious experiences, it seems to me you find a radical difference between the expe- riences of perception and the experiences of voluntary action.

In the case of per- ception, if I look at this cup, for example, it is not up to me whether or not I have this visual experience. But that contrasts with voluntary action. In those cases it seems to me that I find the gap of the kind that I did not find in perception. I am not saying there is no voluntaristic element at all in perception, but that it is not at all like the experience of raising my arm. The gap, then, as I am describing it, is that feature of our experiences by which we sense alternative courses of action open to us, and we sense that the antecedent psychological causes of our action are not by themselves sufficient to determine the action.

There is a simple way to prove the existence of the gap, at least as a psycho- logical phenomenon. The proof is to observe the contrast between normal, con- scious, voluntary actions and the sorts of bodily movements exhibited in experi- ments done by Wilder Penfield in Montreal.

Penfield, you will recall, was a neu- rosurgeon. We have causally sufficient conditions for the bodily movement. In the Penfield cases there is no gap. In normal life we feel a gap in our behavior between the causes of our actions in the forms of beliefs, desires, etc. Sometimes it happens, if you are in the grip of a rage, where you lose your temper, or are otherwise completely out of control, you do not the experience the gap.

But now, how many gaps are there? How should we divide up the terri- tory? How many gaps should we count? For the purpose of discussing practical reason, that is, making decisions and carrying them out, I found it useful to dis- tinguish three different gaps. There is one where you are trying to make up your mind about what you are going to do.

Then there is the gap between having made up your mind and initiating the action, and then there is the gap between the initiation of the action and the carrying of it out to its completion. But there is only one underlying phenomenon of the gap, and that is the phe- nomenon of voluntary action. For purposes of analyzing practical reason, I find it useful to divide it up into these three segments, but the gap is a continuous fea- ture of our voluntary actions — it exists wherever we sense alternative courses of action open to us, and we do not sense the antecedent causes as causally suffi- cient to produce the action.

The phenomenon of the gap gives rise to interesting puzzles, and I believe that Zaibert may have been misled by some of these. If you can have rational beliefs and even irrational beliefs on the basis of perception, what kind of gap do you have in such cases?

On my view, whenever you have the possibility of rationali- ty or irrationality, you must have the gap. So, for example, if the man sees the bus bearing down on him, and refuses to believe that there is a bus right there, that, I take it, is a manifestation of the gap.

And so on with other cases of irrationality. In the case of the alcoholic friend that I described, he was obviously drunk almost all of the time. In my case, rationality requires a belief, but the acquisition of the belief requires rationality, so it looks like an infinite regress threatens. This is why I introduced the notion of recognitional rationality. Sometimes a rational agent may simply rationally acquire a belief without reasoning from other beliefs.

Sometimes rationality may require that one recognize the facts without first deliberating from other beliefs about the facts. That is how the regress is avoided.

That is rightly considered the problem of the freedom of the will. But there is a diffi- cult further question once we grant the psychological reality of the gap, and that is, how can it be neurobiologically real? And that is a non-trivial question. The role of the gap in the theory of rationality is that you can only have the possibility of rationality where you have the possibility of irrationality. And both of these require the gap.

The capacity for rationality must be able to make a dif- ference. That is what led me to say that the concept of freedom and rationality are coextensive. The concept of freedom is a different concept from the concept of rationality, but the two cover the same domain because the possibility of rational behavior only exists where there is the possibility of irrational behavior, and both rational and irrational behavior exist in the gap.

Leo Zaibert: If realizing that the truck is bearing down on me would be the recognitionally, i. And if so, would not moving away be a case of a rational action in the absence of any of the gaps you mention in the book? John Searle: The reason that moving away is the rational thing to do is that one has acquired the belief that one is in danger.

The movement is not a form of recognition but is rather based on a recognitionally rational belief. Furthermore, there are different sorts of cases. In one case there is just a reflex action - you just jump back as a matter of reflex.

And that is not a manifestation of the gap. But in the other case where you see a truck in the distance and you realize it would be better to wait until the truck passes before attempting to cross the street, then there would be a gap, and I think there is no question but that we have a differ- ence between these two cases. One has a gap, the other one does not. I want to answer the point you made about the telemarketers. There are dif- ferent ways of describing these cases. You have such a habitual reaction to the telephone that it is a reflex for you to hang up.

But that would be a question for neurobiology: Is there a reflex operation by which you to slam the phone down?

But that is not the way I heard the example. The way I hear it is, you have a general policy that you are not going to talk to telemarketers, so as soon as you have the cues that it is a telemarketer calling, you just hang up. But other than this differ- ence, both your policy and mine involve gaps. I am not forced to hang up, and neither are you.

I do not have an overwhelming compulsive urge to hang up, it is just that I have a general policy which I follow in these cases. So the way I hear your example and mine is, they both involve gaps. Searle himself makes it clear in the new book that he wants to build on the theory of institu- tions as stated in detail in his earlier book The Construction of Social Reality.

First, the all-important difference between the structure of human action and of other types of action is that human action normally takes place within a complex institution- al framework. The structures, both linguistic and nonlinguistic, are complex. But they are not mysterious and I have described them in detail elsewhere. Because CSR provides fuller expo- sition I shall refer to it rather than to the manuscript of the new book.

I My first point concerns the relationship between the intentionalistic exposition presented in Chapters of the CSR and the non-intentionalistic exposition focusing on the Background7 presented in Chapter 6.

However, Searle does not return later in the book to the question what exactly it is of the intentionalistic apparatus that survives the invasion of the Background. The problem seems to be left for the reader as an exercise - but let me tell you that, in my experience, it is no easy exercise. The problem is quite closely relevant to the rationality stuff since the invasion of the Background seems to threaten what Searle calls the deontic status of insti- tutional facts, which in turn is what should make it possible for us to create com- mitments and desire-independent reasons for action.

With help of institutions under intentionalistic description, there can be created reasons for action that are independent of what one is otherwise pre- or extra-institutionally inclined to do; e. He still is not buying food and the bills are not money to him. Why not? Because he cannot represent to himself the relevant deontic phenomena. He might be able to think »If I give him this he will give me that food.

Such deontic phenomena, Searle says, are not reducible to anything more primi- tive and simple like dispositions, fears and desires, etc. The static or synchronic task is to describe what is going on in an institutional system determined by a certain configuration of acceptance unit types,11 9 See also another explicit statement at CSR I introduce the concept in order to have a neutral descriptive tool. And, what is worse, if it is true that in the transition cases we can manage without some components of the intentionalistic apparatus, it may seem that we perhaps do not need them so inevitably in the normal cases either.

What I have in mind is the role of constitutive rules in specifically genetic con- texts. First, there is a serious technical problem with this passage, for it stands in an open conflict with the definition of a constitutive rule. But surely, according to the definition of constitutive rule, it should have been impossible to impose the status function in question without the corre- sponding constitutive rule already in power.

Second, I believe that besides the technical problem there may be a substan- tial one as well. Sure, one can explain away the technical problem by saying that the quotation above is just a slip of the pen. But I think Searle is speaking about real phenomena in the quotation even if, perhaps, in a somewhat clumsy way. Thus, it might not be the best policy simply to throw the quotation away or to decide to confine oneself only to the static problem in order to save the doctrine.

But, if we take the quotation at face value, there arise some disturbing questions. If it was possible to impose status functions without corresponding constitutive rules in that particular case, could we not manage without them also in other cases? What exactly would we lose if we leave constitutive rules out of the theo- ry? And if we keep them in, what sort of difference they are supposed to make? Internationales Wittgenstein Symposium in Kirchberg, August I have benefited very much from the excellent discussion at both places especially in Bielefeld.

My main thanks, both for thoughtful comments and for much needed encouragement, go to John Searle. Searle, J. His first point is that there appears to be a contradiction in my account. On the one hand I seem to be saying that we do not have to think con- sciously about the imposition of status functions. But at the same time I did say that institutional facts only exist insofar as they are represented as existing. Now to Moural that looks like it might be a straight contradiction: In order for an institutional fact to exist, you have to represent it as existing, but then later on I seem to say, you do not have to represent it.

Under what descriptions do you have to represent the deontic facts? If he thinks that the whole thing is a religious ceremony and that it has nothing to do with winning or losing, then he does not understand the phe- nomenon in question. And if no one is ever able to think or describe the phe- nomena under appropriate descriptions it cannot exist. So you have to be able to say something - you have to have some linguistic representation of the deontic structure of the institutional facts.

The point that I am making now is, that the institutional facts need not be explicitly represented under the deontic structures according to which they actually function. Thus, the king may be able to function better if people believe that he rules by divine right, and not by the imposition of collective status function.

Institutional facts need to be represented under some appro- priate description or other in order to exist, but they need not be represented under the description according to which they are institutional facts.

Sup- pose there is a tribe, and the tribe comes to acknowledge a certain person as their leader. They look up to this person, take orders from him or her, respect his or her decisions, etc. They just acknowledge that this person has a certain status, and with that status a function. In this case we are counting this person as our leader.

But now suppose they codify this practice in the following form. Now they are on the way to having a constitutive rule. If they generalize the practice, then they might say that anybody who satisfies a certain condition, such as being the first- born male in the Hapsburg family, or elected by a majority of the Electoral Col- lege in the United States, counts as their leader, then they have a full-blown con- stitutive rule.

So the answer I am giving to this question is that you have to have informal imposition of a status functions on an ad hoc basis, otherwise it would be impos- sible for institutions to evolve into their full-blown forms.

But in order to have full-scale institutional facts, these practices have to become regularized as consti- tutive rules.

And I think Josef Moural puts this point well when he suggests that we should think of my answer in terms of the difference between the genetic account and the ontological account. Josef Moural: I think I accept the answers as far as they go, but I am not sure that all the problems raised have been dealt with.

Especially the problem I raised first: while I agree that it is important to distinguish between impositions under different descriptions and I think this is an important clarification of the original theory , it is still the case that all impositions under this or that description belong to the intentionalistic story which was opposed in my first question to the non-intentionalistic story featuring the Background.

And I think in order to answer it we are going to have to talk about the Background in my sense of that term. I see the Background as giving us a biologically economical form for coping with the world. Because we have acquired Background capacities, we do not have to constantly think in the form of explicit mathematical formulae.

I see this as a model for our operation within institutions as well. You just learn how to cope with people, money, language, property, and so on.

You learn the appropriate behavior.