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Automaticity and Control in Human Action

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Automaticity and Control in Human Action Automaticity and Control in Human Action by Juan Pablo Bermúdez-Rey A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy Department of Philosophy University of Toronto © Copyright by Juan Pablo Bermúdez-Rey 2016 Automaticity and Control in Human Action Juan Pablo Bermúdez-Rey Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy Department of Philosophy University of Toronto 2016 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. ii 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. iii Tis work is dedicated to the memory of Daniel Ramírez. La pérdida de su vida abrió un vacío que nunca se llenará. Este trabajo no podría reemplazar las ideas que perdimos cuando lo perdimos a él. Sin embargo, en las horas más oscuras su recuerdo me ha dado fuerzas para no rendirme y seguir andando el camino que por fortuna llegamos a compartir. iv Acknowledgements As the path that leads to this work’s completion comes to an end, I am filled with a sense of overwhelming gratitude. I thank the University of Toronto’s Philosophy Department and its Collaborative Program in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, for a transformative learning experience whose benefits will continue to bear fruit for the rest of my life. I also thank the admirable human settlement that is the city of Toronto for the many life lessons it has afforded me. This project benefited enormously from the generosity of people who read, discussed, and commented on it, without whom the final version would lack so much richness and depth. Mark Kingwell, this work’s supervisor, was remarkable in his steadfast commitment to the project and his confidence that, despite all the dead-ends and sudden transformations along the way, everything would make sense in the end. I am enormously thankful for his relentless philosophical engagement with my ideas. I thank Brad Inwood, Evan Thompson, and Wil Cunningham, committee members, for their openness to currents of thought alien to their respective fields of expertise (a sine qua non condition for this project’s completion), and for their keen critical eyes and their constant academic support throughout the project’s reincarnations. Brad deserves an especial acknowledgement for having convinced me that the broader scope I wanted to find for my work would be enriched by my background in ancient Greek philosophy. In this—as in most things—he was right! I will attempt to continue this bridge-building endeavour in the future. Alejandro Rosas was a sort of surrogate supervisor during my time in Bogotá, reading and commenting on drafts of most of the work. I have learned immensely from our conversations and his straightforward approach to philosophy. Our discussions of philosophical psychology provided invaluable help in understanding the literature’s intricacies. I hope that our collaborations extend well into the future. Adelaida Barrera read most of the text (even its most arid parts, for which she is commendable), helping me clarify and enrich crucial aspects of the argument. For this, and so much more, I will remain grateful. Receiving Jennifer Nagel’s comments on an early version of Chapter 3 had a Socratic significance for me: thanks to them, I realized that I did not know many things I thought I knew. This was very difficult to come to terms with at the time, but the experience proved invaluable for correcting serious mistakes and reaching a better understanding of things that would have otherwise escaped me. I thank her enormously for that, and for her constant support as the Department’s Graduate Coordinator. Luisa Monsalve and I shared many moments of Ph.D. exhaustion, but both made it through the dissertation, which makes me happy. I thank her for her kindness and trust during my work at the Universidad Externado. v Santiago Arango-Muñoz, Klaus Corcilius, Laura Gómez-Espíndola, and Javier Guillot offered rich and detailed comments on parts of the dissertation. Ricardo Salles and other colleagues from UNAM’s Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas and the Universidad del Valle’s Philosophy Department gave valuable comments on the first Chapter. Many of my fellow graduate students at U of T’s Philosophy Department gave extensive feedback in two Grad Forum sessions that were the first times many of these ideas (fragile and immature as they then were) saw the light of academic discussion. Gerard Baron, Hernando Bermúdez, Alessandro Bonello, Paul Jarvey, Natalie Mathieson, Natalie Sánchez, and Cameron Woloshyn, a group of my (mostly non- philosophy) philosophical friends in Toronto, gave me great insights into what became the first Chapter. I feel a large part of my growth in recent years was due to the experiences I had the privilege of sharing with them and my other Toronto friends, Hasko von Kriegstein, Dave Suarez, Mike Blezy, and Marine Gobert. I hope these friendships last indefinitely. Arturo Durán, Juan Pablo Galvis, Andrés Gualdrón, Javier Guillot, Jorge Patiño, Jairo Pérez, Bibiana Rojas, Alejandro Villate are friends who make the meaning of the word ‘home’ palpable every time we get together. I am thankful to all of the people mentioned above for making my life richer and more meaningful. In this section authors usually thank their partners for having put up with their bad mood, absent-mindedness, and lack of time while in the writing process. This is not my case, because both I and Adelaida were both going through all that while writing our theses simultaneously. The extreme levels of tension and exhaustion that took over our house during the crucial times can be imagined! I want to thank her for having been a constant source of love and hope, an illuminating companion, and also an example of how good writing is done. She knows I admire her writing, as well as many other aspects of her incredible self. I should also thank Eli and Manchis for having come to brighten up our home at precisely the right time. Finally, I thank my in-laws Fernando Barrera and Berta Daza for their caring support throughout the good and not so good parts of these years; my siblings, Hernando and María Carolina Bermúdez-Rey, for being sources of inspiration and growth throughout my life; and my parents Hernando Bermúdez-Gómez and Constanza Rey-Pinzón, for enabling me to carefully shape my own character, by giving me the right tools at the right times, and always supporting the paths I’ve chosen for my life. Now that this is done, I hope we can all hang out more often! A final thanks to all the anonymous people who have worked to make life in Colombia better throughout these decades, to the point that many have sacrificed their own lives and dreams. I hope I can now add my efforts to theirs in the construction of an increasingly just and inclusive society. vi Table of contents Introduction xii Chapter 1: Habit and reason in Aristotle’s theory of agency 1 §1.1 Principles of animal agency 3 1.1.1. Aristotle’s vocabulary of action 3 1.1.2. Te principles of animal agency 4 §1.2. Principles of human agency: intellectualism and its limits 9 1.2.1. Intellectualist interpretations of human agency 9 1.2.2. Te limitation of intellectualism: goal-setting 13 Goal setting is out of reason’s reach 13 (A) Tere is no reasoning of starting points 13 (B) Deliberation is not about the goals 14 (C) Habituation determines the goals 15 Replying to some intellectualist objections 18 (D) Specification as constitution 20 (E) Wish, the rational desire 23 (F) Practical noūs 29 Te role of reason in action production: is that it? 31 1.2.3.
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