Motor Intentions and Non-Observational Knowledge of Action

Abstract

According to the standard story given by reductive versions of the Causal Theory of Action, an action is an intrinsically mindless bodily movement that is appropriately caused by an intention. Those who embrace this story typically take this intention to have a coarse‐grained content, specifying the action only down to the level of the agent's habits and skills. Markos Valaris (2015) argues that, because of this, the standard story cannot make sense of the deep reach of our non‐observational knowledge of action. He concludes that we therefore have to jettison its conception of actions as mindless bodily movements animated from the outside by intentions. Here we defend the standard story. We can make sense of the reach of non‐observational knowledge of action once we reject the following two assumptions: (i) that an intended habitual or skilled action is a so‐called basic action—that is, an action that doesn't involve any finer‐grained intentions—and (ii) that an agent, in acting, is merely executing one intention rather than a whole hierarchy of more or less fine‐grained intentions. We argue that (i) and (ii) are false.

Implicit biases in visually guided action

“…For example, an intention with the coarse-grained content I shall now grab a knife is a top-level intention in an agglomeration of intentions hierarchically ordered from more determinable to more determinate (e.g., I shall now grab a knife, I shall now grab a carving knife, I shall now grab a carving knife with my right hand, etc.) (Rizzolatti et al 1988;Jeannerod 2006;Blomberg and Brozzo 2017;Brozzo 2017). Intentions at the lowest possible level are also sometimes referred to as 'motor intentions', a term first coined by Merleau-Ponty (1945).…”

“…For instance, my intention to carve the turkey explains why I grabbed the carving knife rather than the bread knife. V. Implicit intentions are suitable for serving as premises or conclusions in practical reasoning (Bratman 1987;Blomberg and Brozzo 2017). For instance, I may reason as follows: I want to carve the turkey, and I want to do it now.…”

“…Below the level of conscious awareness, this top-level intention is expanded into more finegrained intentions specifying more details of my intended action. But even intentions at the lowest possible level available to consciousness, i.e., motor intentions, are not as fine-grained as the motor representations that determine the finest details of the movements constituting the action (Haggard 2005;Pacherie 2011Pacherie , 2018Butterfill and Sinigaglia 2014;Blomberg and Brozzo 2017). They are merely semi-executive; they represent the intended action without providing all of the specifications needed for the execution of the action.…”

From Simple to Composite Agency: On Kirk Ludwig’s From Individual to Plural Agency

“…Not every activity that is skilled or habitual constitutes a primitive action, since even skilled and habitual activity can involve practical reasoning and control by intentions. Hence, some primitive actions will be "sub-habitual"(Blomberg and Brozzo 2017).…”