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UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Embodied Rational UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Embodied Rational Agency A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy by Yannig Ashoka Luthra 2013 Abstract of the Dissertation Embodied Rational Agency by Yannig Ashoka Luthra Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy University of California, Los Angeles, 2013 Professor Tyler Burge, Chair My dissertation aims to make progress in understanding what it is to be an embodied rational agent. I argue that human agency consists not just in our rational capacities for thought and understanding, but also in non-rational capacities, like our physical ability to put one foot in front of the other and walk. In trying to understand the nature of embodied rationality, my dissertation takes steps toward developing the idea that our activity as free, rational beings consists not just in cognition, but also in bodily action. I suggest that our success as practical reasoners depends constitutively on our physical abilities. Practical reason's primary function is to guide action, even though acting is not a part of one's practical reasoning. Practical reason differs in this respect from theoretical reason, since theoretical reason functions to guide belief, and forming a belief is a part of one's reasoning. In guiding action, practical reason \reaches past itself" in a way that theoretical reason does not. Since acting is not a part of one's reasoning, practical reason can only succeed in fulfilling its primary function as part of a larger action system. This larger action system crucially includes the physical abilities that we rely on to execute most of our actions. Thus, our success as practical reasoners depends not just on our capacities for practical thought and understanding, but also on the larger action system that those capacities function as a part of, including our physical abilities. ii The dissertation of Yannig Ashoka Luthra is approved. David Blank Pamela Hieronymi Gavin Lawrence Tyler Burge, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2013 iii Dedicated with love and gratitude to Christine, my mother. iv Contents 1. Introduction 2 2. Nonrational aspects of agency 20 Two rationalist views about agency 24 Criticizing rationalism about agential control 27 Criticizing rationalism about action 37 3. Interpersonal skill and ethical success 43 Interpersonal skill and technical aspects of ethical success 47 Non-rational aspects of interpersonal interaction 55 Ethical success and non-rational aspects of interpersonal skill 60 4. Conclusions of practical reasoning 75 Conclusions of practical reasoning are not actions 77 Conclusions of practical reasoning are intentions 90 5. Reason's guidance of action 110 Causation 115 Function 120 The management problem 129 Reasons, reasoning, and guidance 135 6. Practical warrant 145 Epistemic warrant 147 Practical justification 151 v Perception, sensation, and practical entitlement 157 Reliability 167 Post-intention action guiding capacities 173 7. Entitlement for relying on physical abilities 180 An objection to Anscombe's view about knowledge of action 187 Perceptual entitlement 193 Physical abilities and agency 200 Physical abilities and practical reason 210 Bibliography 221 vi Acknowledgments I want to thank my dissertation chair Tyler Burge, and my other wonderful teachers, Barbara Herman, Pamela Hieronymi, AJ Julius, Sean Kelsey, and Gavin Lawrence. I am also indebted to my fellow students, especially Denis Buehler, Sonny Elizondo, and Ingrid Steinberg. I owe my general philosophical education, and much of the material in this dissertation, to my teachers and fellow students. I wrote this dissertation during a splendid time of life. I owe its blessings to my wife Renee, and my daughter Michele-Christine, as well as to my sister Lakshmi, my father Dev, and my friend Justi. Most of all, I am grateful to my mother Christine, to whom I dedicate this dissertation. She was the kind of person I hope to be. vii Vita Education B.A. in Philosophy, Wesleyan University Winter 2002 Publications \Aristotle on Choosing Virtuous Action for its Own Sake" Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Forthcoming Presentations \Comments on Perin: Rational support without temporally extended reasoning" Aristotle on Deliberation, UC Riverside May 2013 \Aristotle on Choosing Virtuous Action for its Own Sake" NUSTEP, Northwestern University May 2013 \Perception and Reason" Perception, Essex University May 2012 \Morality, Reason, and Interpersonal Skill" What Makes Us Moral, VU University, Amsterdam June 2011 \A Puzzle about Production and Self Realization" Marx and Aristotle, Institute of Education, University of London June 2011 \Reason and Skillful Coping" Phenomenology, UWE, West Anglia October 2010 viii If you are all body Why do you have this soul? If you are all soul Why are you covered with this shape? Mevl^anaCel^add^ınRumi D^ıvˆan-i-Keb^ır,Meter 3, Verse 2202 1 Chapter 1 Introduction This dissertation is about the way that embodied rational agency depends on non-rational capacities. It is especially concerned with the role of physical abilities in rational agency, like the physical ability to put one foot in front of the other and walk. We are embodied rational agents in that we engage in physical actions on the basis of practical reasoning. But in what way do our physical abilities figure in our agency? Many object to the image of practical reason steering the body like a captain steers a ship. Our bodies and our physical abilities seem to be constitutively involved in our agency, and not to be mere equipment wielded by practical reasoners. Some attempts to understand human agency as constitutively embodied downplay the role of reason in human agency, especially those in the phenomenological tradition of Hei- degger and Merleau Ponty. That tradition emphasizes the role of non-rational capacities in guiding human action. It contains valuable insights about the role of non-rational capacities in our agency. But these insights are obscured by a tendency to conceive of reason in a narrow way. Work in this tradition tends to think of all rational capacities as capacities for legalistic reasoning. It tends to assume that exercises of reason are algorithmic applications of rigid general rules, undertaken and acted upon with a disinterested attitude toward the situation. 2 A plausible conception of reason would eschew such a legalistic conception. Rational capac- ities are, roughly, capacities for thought and understanding, and capacities to be moved by the practical significance of considerations recognized in thought and understanding|like capacities for volition or intention. Thinking and understanding need not consist in disinter- ested, algorithmic applications of rigid general rules. Because of its overly narrow conception of reason, this tradition tends to overreach by assigning too marginal a role in our agency to rational capacities. Our ability to act on the basis of reasons is a core feature of our kind of agency. Phenomenology-based views tend to lose sight of this important fact. This dissertation tries to make progress in understanding the role of non-rational capac- ities in our agency from a perspective that accords a central role to reason. The overarching motivation for this dissertation is to make progress in understanding the way that our rational agency|our ability to act on the basis of reasons|extends beyond our rational capacities themselves. It aims to shed light on the way that practical reason functions in concert with non-rational capacities, as different aspects of a unified overall action system. This is a large topic, and open-ended. There are many possible ways of approaching the topic that promise to advance understanding. I focus in this dissertation on four main ideas that bear on the constitutive role of non- rational capacities in rational agency. First, our capacities for agential control, through which we determine how we act extend beyond our rational capacities for practical reasoning and volition. We control our actions, including our intentional actions, partly through the exercise of non-rational action-guiding capacities, like capacities for motor control. Second, intentional actions, including physical actions, are guided by practical reasoning in much the same way intentions are, even though performing an intentional action is not part of the agent's practical reasoning. Practical reason can guide intention on its own, without the exercise of any capacities outside of one's capacity for practical reasoning. However, in guiding action, practical reason \reaches past itself" in a way that its guidance of intention 3 does not. Since action is not contained in one's practical reasoning, practical reason can only guide intention as part of a larger action system. This larger action system crucially includes the physical abilities that we rely on to execute most of our actions. Practical reason's guidance of action requires the exercises of the action-executing abilities in roughly the same way that its guidance of intention requires the exercise of one's capacity to form intentions. In this way, our success as practical reasoners depends not just on our capacities for practical thought and understanding, but also on the larger action system that those capacities function as a part of, including our physical abilities. The third main idea of the dissertation tries to get at the relation between practical reason and non-rational aspects of agency by looking at the role of non-rational capacities in warranting our actions and intentions. Whether our intentions and action are warranted depends both on exercises of our capacities for practical reasoning, and also on the exercise of non-rational capacities like perception, sensation, and motor control. Warrant for our actions and intentions also depends on the general reliability of our action systems as a whole, including non-rational capacities as well as practical reason. The fourth main idea is that we have a default entitlement for relying on our agency as a whole, including both practical reason, and the physical abilities involved in carrying out physical actions.
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