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The Intention/Volition Debate1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Frederick Adams and
Alfred R. Mele
Frederick Adams
Affiliation:
Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI, 48859, USA
Alfred R. Mele
Affiliation:
Davidson College, Davidson, NC, 28036-1719, USA
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Extract

People intend to do things, try to do things, and do things. Do they also will to do things? More precisely, if people will to do things and their willing bears upon what they do, is willing, or volition, something distinct from intending and trying? This question is central to the intention/volition debate, a debate about the ingredients of the best theory of the nature and explanation of human action. A variety of competing conceptions of volition, intention, and trying have been advanced in the literature; it would be impossible to examine each thoroughly in a single paper. We can show, however, that the major functional roles ascribed to volition are nicely filled by a triad composed of intention, trying, and information feedback. Sections I and II below develop an account of the connection between intention and trying. Section III examines leading arguments for the existence of volitions and decomposes volitions into members of the triad just identified.

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Type
Original Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , September 1992, pp. 323 - 337
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1922

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References

1 We would like to thank Robert Audi, Bruce Aune, Larry Davis, John Hell, Hugh McCann, Douglas Odegard, two anonymous referees, and an anonymous editor of this journal for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. We also thank symposiasts of the fourteenth International Wittgenstein Symposium, where an earlier version of this paper was presented.

2 O'Shaughnessy, B. 'Trying (as the Mental "Pineal Gland"),' The Journal of Philosophy 70 (1973), 365CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 See the description of Landry's patient quoted in James's The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1981), 1101-3. Also compare Searle, J. Intentionality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1983), 89CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Minds, Brains, and Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1984), 64. Searle takes examples such as this to supply evidence that there are two components to action, the mental component (or intention) and the bodily component (bodily movement), and that they can be pried apart.

4 See Armstrong, D. 'Acting and Trying,' in The Nature of Mind (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1980), 71Google Scholar; McCann, H. 'Trying, Paralysis, and Volition,' The Review of Metaphysics 28 (1975) 425-7Google Scholar; and McGinn, C. The Character of Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1982), 86-7Google Scholar.

5 Benny's intention today to raise his arm at noon tomorrow can only deviantly cause his trying to raise it now.

6 On the sustaining and guiding roles of intentions, see Mele, A. 'Intention, Belief, and Intentional Action,' American Philosophical Quarterly 26 (1989) 19-30Google Scholar; Adams, F. & Mele, A. 'The Role of Intention in Intentional Action,' Canadian Journal of Philosophy 19 (1989) 511-32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Mele, A. Springs of Action (New York: Oxford University Press 1992), chs. 8-11Google Scholar.

7 Cf. Brand, M. Intending and Acting (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1984), 20Google Scholar.

8 Some readers might worry that neurobiology and philosophy of action, like oil and water, don't mix. We have addressed that worry independently elsewhere. See Adams, F. 'Causal Contents,' in McLaughlin, B. ed., Dretske and His Critics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell l991)Google Scholar and A. Mele, Springs of Action, chs. 2 and 11.7.

9 Things would be different if Dave formed the intention to rise partly as a means of causing the mind-reader to have a certain thought. But that is another case. In ours, Dave is unaware that his mind is being read.

10 See Danto, A. 'Freedom and Forebearance,' in Lehrer, K. ed., Freedom and Determinism (New York: Random House 1966), 59-60Google Scholar.

11 Cf. Hornsby, J. Actions (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1980)Google Scholar; and 'Arm Raising and Arm Rising,' Philosophy 55 (1980) 73-84.

12 Cf. McCann, H. 'Rationality and the Range of Intention,' Midwest Studies in Philosophy 10 (1985) 191-211CrossRefGoogle Scholar, n. 20; and Adams, F. 'Intention and Intentional Action: The Simple View,' Mind and lAnguage 1 (1986) 281-301CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 288. On goals involved in trying, see Mele, A. 'He Wants to Try,' Analysis 50 (1990), 251-3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 We shall not address cases in which an agent who does not realize that he has succeeded in A-ing continues trying to A even after he has hit his mark, since such cases pose no complications for our account of trying.

14 References include (1) Davis, L. Theory of Action (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall 1979), 16Google Scholar; Odegard, D. 'Volition and Action,' American Philosophical Quarterly 25 (1988) 141-51Google Scholar, at 142f.; Ripley, C. 'A Theory of Volition,' American Philosophical Quarterly 11 (1974) 141-7Google Scholar, at 144; (2) McCann, H. 'Volition and Basic Action,' The Philosophical Review 83 (1974) 451-73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 471; Odegard, 143; (3) Odegard, 143; (4) Ripley, 14; (5) C. Ginet, On Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1990), ch. 2; McCann, 'Volition and Basic Action,' 467; O'Shaughnessy, B. The Will (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1980), 241-51Google Scholar; (6) Aune, B. 'Prichard, Action, and Volition,' Philosophical Studies 25 (1974) 97-116CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 104.

15 Cf. McCann, 'Volition and Basic Action.'

16 Ginet (39-42) addresses the problem and attempts to resolve it by requiring that, in cases of voluntary bodily 'exertion,' a volition 'causes the exertion ... via a standing mechanism that is sufficiently match-ensuring' (40). If the requirement is successful, it can be formulated, alternatively, in terms of proximal intentions. a voluntary exertion could occur in the way just described quite spontaneously, without being preceded or accompanied by any distinct state of desiring or intending even to try (or to will inefficaciously) to exert, and it would still be an action, a purely spontaneously one. (9)

17 The objections to be developed were briefly sketched in A. Mele's review of On Action (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, forthcoming).

18 For Ginet, kinesthetic sensation is not involved in the 'volitional part of the experience' of acting (28).

19 Sellars, W. ‘Thought and Action,’ in Lehrer, K. ed., Freedom and Determinism (New York: Random House 1966)Google Scholar