Agency and Self-knowledge (to be modified) TIAN Ping (School of Philosophy and Sociology, Beijing Normal University) We see people’s arm moving all the time. But not all the movements are made by people. Sometimes a person moves his arm to do something (say playing piano), sometimes a person moves his arm inattentively (e.g., when habitually drumming ‘one’s fingers on a table during a boring meeting), sometimes a person's arm moves due to a sudden cramp happening to his arm. Philosophers of action argue that we need to distinguish three kinds of bodily movements to understand action: mere bodily movement, mere activity and autonomous action.’ Autonomous action differs from the other two kinds of movement in its enjoyment of full participation of agent. One important task philosophers of action have to take is to give an intelligible account of agency. They have to reconcile the commonsense conception of free choice and agency with certain philosophical interpretations of the world. A question they have to answer is: How is it possible for an agent to make his arm move if the world (mental as well as physical) is understood from the physicalist point of view? More generally stated, if physical events are caused by physical events. where is the place for an agent in the history of his physical behavior? According to Davidson, actions are bodily movements that admit intentional descriptions. Intentions mediate between attitudes and actions in the causal chain of events. Certain beliefs and desires constitute what Davidson called “the primary reason” for action. When a primary reason is in place, the person in question may have an intention to do the relevant thing, and an action is resulted. (Davidson, 1963, 1971) However, although Davidson's view on action and agency is insightful and informative, many people think that the view is insufficient for an account of agency. In reflection of Davidson's standard model, Velleman tries to put the functional role of agent back into the causal chain of events. On the basis of an understanding of the special structure of human self-awareness and the constitutive aim of action, Velleman provides us with an epistemological account of agency in which an agent's self-knowledge plays a crucial role. I think, Velleman’s model does bring us closer to a satisfying solution to the agency problem. However, “what do we know when we act?” still remains to be a question in an informative sense after we read Velleman. Through a further analysis of self-knowledge in the two senses as provided by Velleman, in the last part of the paper I will argue for a means-end structure of this understanding. 1. Velleman’s critique of Davidson's model We can state the key points of Davidson’s model in the following (Davidson, 1963, 1971): (1) To explain an action is to construct a primary reason (usually a * See Velleman, 2000.belief-desire pair) for the action. (2) A primary reason explains an action because it is the cause of the action. (3) Intention is the mechanism that causally mediating between reasons and action and rationally basing the action on reasons. Therefore, intention is the key to understand agency: either one does A intentionally or does A unintentionally by intentionally doing something else, if one is “intentionally doing something”, what is done is an action. (4) Agency is thus defined as: “a person is the agent of an event if and only if there is a description of what he did that makes true a sentence that says he did it intentionally.” (1980, p. 46) After Davidson proposed the model, people criticized the model from different directions. The critiques are mainly inspired by various counter-examples showing that Davidson’s idea does not provide us with a sufficient account for action or agency. ‘Two serious defects in Davidson's model are pointed by Velleman. First, the active role of agent is missing from Davidson's model. In the model, the causal link goes from reasons (beliefS and desires) to intentions and to bodily movements and we see one event after another, but no role is played by the person in this causal sequence. “When reasons are described as directly causing an intention, and the intention as directly causing movements, not only has the agent been cut out of the story but so has any psychological item that might play his role.” (1992, p. 463) What Velleman wants is the “mediating function of agem”, i.e, the function of intervening “between reasons and intention, and between intention and bodily movements, in each case guided by the one to produce the other.” (1992, p. 463) Second, the distinction between action and mere activity that is important to understand action is missing from Davidson’s model. The various counter-examples of mere activities meet Davidson's requirement for agency, but they are not real actions. The reason is that Davidson's model “fails to specify the way in which action involves causation by reasons, although it succeeds in specifying the way in which purposeful activity involves causation by desires and beliefs. The standard model is a model of activity but not of action.” (Velleman, 2000, p. 10) According to Velleman, ‘we have to distinguish “being caused by a reason” and “being done for the reason”. The latter is concemed not only with a behavior’s being caused by a reason, but also with the behavior’s being justified to the person, or the person’s rationality’s being engaged. In order for a reason to serve as the basis for a subject's behavior, it must “justify that behavior to the subject... and it must thereby engage some rational disposition of his to do what's justified, to behave in accordance with justifications.” (2000, p. 9) In Davidson’s model, although one’s behavior may be caused by a reason, but Velleman thinks that it may not be caused “in the right way”, ie., it may not be done for the reason. Therefore, beliefs and desires may cause behavior by operating as its motives, but they do not necessarily operate as its reasons (ie., as reasons for which the behavior is performed). . How can a sufficient account of action and agency, an account that picks out all and only actions from bodily movements (distinguishing actions from mere activities as well as from mere bodily movements) and gives an agent an active role to play in the history of his physical behavior, be given?By appealing to self-knowledge, Velleman tries to give us such an account. 2. An epistemological interpretation of agency ‘Velleman thinks that “the distinctive relation that an agent bears to his own actions is an epistemic relation - a particular way of knowing.” (new, p. 3) There are two key points in Velleman’s account: the special structure of human self-awareness and the constitutive aim of action. The latter says that action constitutively aims at knowing what one is doing and the former tells us that when an action is being performed, knowledge of the action and performance of the action are two aspects of one process: we know what we are doing by doing what we conceive ourselves as doing. When self-knowledge is interpreted not only as being capable of naming what one is doing, but also as being able to understand or provide a rationale for what one is doing, we have what we want: doing things for a reason and the reason constitutes justification of action to the agent. (1) The special structure of human self-awareness A presupposition of Velleman’s theory of agency is the special structure of human. self-awareness, He sees human self-awareness as a two-way self-interaction: to know ‘one’s action and perform that action for the action to be known, two aspects of one process. The mirror-looking picture described in the very beginning of his 1989 book Practical Reflection illustrates the point vividly: What do you see when you look at your face in the mirror? The obvious answer is that you see your face looking in the mirror. But this obvious answer fails to acknowledge the fact that a face looking in the mirror is actually doing two things — trying to see itself and presenting itself to be seen, Sometimes these two activities are visibly distinct. When you examine a mole on your chin, for example, you don’t just lower your gaze until it lights on that part of your reflection; you also jut out your chin, until it intercepts your reflected gaze. In this case, there’s no mistaking the fact that the face in the mirror is both seeking itself and showing itself simultaneously. Yet even when your face just stares out at you, flatfooted, it bears the same ‘two aspects: it is both eyeing you, in order to see you, and facing you, in order to be seen, Here we see two aspects of one process of self-awareness. When action is concemed, the “knowledge of action” and the “performance of action” are indispensable aspects of one process of action: one makes another possible. Or in other words, knowledge of action and performance of action are reciprocal: I know my action by performing the action, and I perform my action for the action to be known. (2) Self-knowledge: naming and embeding However, what do we know when we know what we are doing? According to Velleman, there are two kinds of pracfical self-knowledge. When we say “I knowwhat I am doing”, two interpretations of the verb “know” are concemed: one is to know the immediate fact of my particular doing (to be able to name what | am doing), and the other is to know some facts related to my particular doing that constitute the reason for why I am doing it (to understand or explain why I am doing it)? To name what I am doing is to give a prima facie description of my action (for example, “I am pouring the old tea out of my cup”), and to understand what I am doing is to give a series of related descriptions of my action (for example, “I am pouring the old tea out of my cup”, “I am empty my cup”, “I am making a cup of new tea”). The former is concemed with naming of an action, and the latter is concemed with the embedding of descriptions of one single action. Velleman calls the first kind of self-knowledge acta selawarcnes, and the second kind “practical self-understanding”. (Vellemail, 1989, cb.1) Velleman follows Anscombe who treats intentional actions as “the actions that one has a special way of knowing” (new, p. 3) and takes one’s knowledge of his action to be embodied in his intentions to perform the action. When one intends to do something, the content of intention constitutes one’s knowledge of what he is doing. For example, when I intends to pouring out the old tea, the content of my intention, i.e., pouring out the old tea, constitutes my knowledge of my pouring out the old tea. In this sense, expressions of intention express practical knowledge of what one is doing. Therefore, according to Velleman, when I act on an intention (say. pouring out the old tea) I realize my knowledge of the action embodied in the intention: [ act for the action to be known. In other words, my intention embodies my knowledge of what T am doing, but only when I do as I intended I have the knowledge of what I am doing. 3) Constitutive aim of action and reasons for action According to Velleman, the reason why we do as we conceive ourselves as doing to have the knowledge of what we are doing is that to have self-knowledge (to know what we are doing) is the constitutive aim of action (earlier, the desire for self-knowledge). Velleman’s model characterizes action as behavior that is motivated by lower-order desires and beliefs as regulated by a sub-agential constitutive aim of action of knowing what one is doing. The sub-agential aim tums bodily movement into autonomous action “by regulating how it is motivated” (2000, introduction). In his 1989 book, Velleman appeals to our desire for self-knowledge: our desire for knowing and understanding what we are doing. In the*cases of practical self-awareness, the reason why an agent usually knows what he's doing without observation is that “he usually acts in conformity with a prior expectation of acting, and that he usually acts in conformity with a prior expectation because he wants to know what he's doing.” (Velleman 1989, ch. 2) His desire to know what he is doing disposes him to “undertake only those actions” which he is expecting himself to perform. “Doing all and only the things that you've anticipated will therefore have the result that you know what you' re doing. The desire to know what you' re doing therefore moves you to do whatever you' re aware of anticipating and restrains you from doing anything else.” (Velleman 1989, ch. 2) * See Velleman’s water-bumping example (Velleman, new).In the cases of practical self-understanding, “the reason why an agent usually knows of motives for his action even as he begins it is that he rarely begins any action until he knows of motives for it, and that he rarely begins an action without knowing of motives for it because he wants to understand what he's doing. (Velleman 1989, ch. 2) This desire for self-knowledge is an end in itself. In the introduction part of his 2000 book, Velleman makes the point in terms of the sub-agential constitutive aim of action. He thinks that the capacities of practical self-awareness and practical self-understanding are both based on the constitutive aim of action. He makes an analogy of justification of action and justification of belief. The constitutive aim of belief (arriving at truth) determines the norm of correctness of belief, and the latter determines the reasons for belief justification. When action is concemed, Velleman thinks that we should first of all find the constitutive aim of action, and then we will have “a norm of correctness internal to the nature of action”, and this norm will determine what counts as a reason for acting, The constitutive aim of action is the sub-agential aim of knowing what one is doing. This constitutive aim of action would regulate what one does, by guiding one toward things that he already knows about. The constitutive aim of action is to know what one is doing in both senses of “knowledge”, i.e., not only the prima facie knowledge or description of what one is doing, but the understanding or explanation of why one is doing it. Knowledge in the latter sense is concemed with reasons for action or justifications of action. As discussed earlier, to understand why we act is to provide a rationale of it, ie., to embed the to be explained action in a series of embedded intentional descriptions of the action. As Velleman says “acting for a reason is a matter of realizing more integrative practical knowledge, incorporating relevant facts that constitute reasons for acting.” (new, p. 18) Cognitive process of knowing what we are doing aims at providing the integrated and comprehensive conception of what we are doing. The integrated conception of what we are doing coincides with the reasons for doing what we do. As Velleman puts it, what we want here is an integrative practical knowledge, a series of answers to some questions of the form Why am I doing x? Velleman thinks that this integrative practical knowledge is composed of “a series of descriptions each of which incorporates the answer to the question ‘Why? directed at the same action under the previous description in the series.”(new, p. 16) “What are you doing?” “I am pouring the old tea out.” “Why do you pour the tea out?” “I am emptying the cup.” “Why do you empty the cup?” “I am making a cup of new tea.” Here we see that an integrative conception of an action contains embedded descriptions of the action, and the embedded descriptions of action are based on theembedded intentions (Something similar to what Davidson calls the “accordion effect” in his 1971 paper). Velleman points out that the sequence of descriptions “displays a progression toward increasingly ‘high-level’ or ‘comprehensive’ act-descriptions”. (new, p. 17) When practical self-knowledge is concerned, the cognitive goal is not to register bodily-movements (in Davidson’s terms, primitive actions), but to understand what we are doing, i.e., to give comprehensive intentional descriptions of what we are doing, to provide comprehensive and integrated answers to the series of “why” questions, by appealing to “the relevant dispositions and circumstances” as the context of integration. This integrated self-understanding is the rationale for action. (new, p. 17) ‘Velleman thinks that cognitive processes of knowing what we do aim at providing an integrated and comprehensive conception of what we do, and it favors “framing and fulfilling a conception of ourselves as doing that thing, understood in the context of those facts” as reasons. (new, p. 18). Therefore, “to know what we are doing is thus to grasp our bodily movements under concepts that set them in an explanatory context of motives and circumstances.” (2000, introduction) Here we have Velleman’s conclusion on the difference between autonomous action and mere purposeful activity: “purposeful activity is motivated by desire and belief, but it may or may not be regulated by the subject's grasp of what he is doing. Autonomous action is activity regulated by that reflective understanding, which constitutes the agent's rationale, or reason ~ the reason for which the action is performed, and whose role as its basis is what makes it an action rather than a mere activity. "(2000, introduction) 3. What do we know when we act? We are agents of our actions because we are first of all practical self-knowers. Compared with Davidson’s model, I think, Velleman’s account does bring us closer to an understanding of agency. Instead of simply treating attitudes (beliefs, desires, intentions, etc.) as reasons for and causes of action (as Davidson does), Velleman emphasizes the distinction between causation by reasons and causation by beliefs and desires. In his model, we see attitudes and actions are related in a way that not only allows these attitudes play their causal role in the production of behavior, but also makes the attitudes together with other dispositional and circumstantial factors reasons for action. They are reasons for action because they constitute an agent's practical self-knowledge (self-understanding) of his action and the action is performed by the agent to realize this practical self-understanding. Agency gained a legitimate place in the history of our physical behaviors. However, after reading Velleman, we can still ask: “what do we know when we act?” Velleman talked about an agent’s knowledge of his intentional actions and says that “this knowledge is ‘without observation’ in the sense that it is not occasioned by evidence, but it can still rest on evidence that doesn’t occasion it.” (see Velleman 1989, cch. 2) There seems to be a tension between being occasioned without observation and resting on evidence. What should we say if the unobservationally occasionedself-knowledge is proved to be false by evidence? The self-knowledge in the form of “I know that I am doing x” differs from the self-knowledge in the form of “I know that I am feeling pain” (or “I know that I believe it’s raining outside”) in that “I am feeling pain” (or “I believe it’s raining outside”) reports an internal phenomenon and the truthfulness of my knowledge is irrelevant to external situations, whereas “I am doing x” reports an action which often bears.certain relations with extemal conditions and the belief of which can be falsified by external evidences. Maybe what is important to an account of agency is the occasioning of self-knowledge, but not its verification. Yes and no. I say yes because I think it is the ‘occasioning that is really important and really matters. I say no because “occasioning knowledge of what” is still a problem that needs further clarification. Let me give an example: I am pouring the liquid out of my cup, mistakenly believing it was the old tea left over yesterday and intending to have a cup of new tea. My colleague asks: “What are you doing?” “I am pouring the old tea.” “Why do you pour the old tea?” “I am emptying the cup.” “Why do you empty the cup?” “I am making a cup of new tea.” Then my colleague asks with an unusual voice: “Do you really know what you are doing?!” Upon his explanation, I know that the liquid in my cup is not the old tea left over yesterday, but the newly made Dragon Well tea, a precious green tea just brought back from Hangzhou by my colleague. I also know that what I really did is that I poured the precious new tea. The question is: what do I know when I pour the new tea out of my cup with the intention of pouring the old tea? When the first kind of self-knowledge (knowledge concemed with action naming) is concemed, knowledge here cannot be knowledge of my pouring the old tea, because in fact what is poured is the precious new tea and knowledge is usually considered as justified true belief. Knowledge here cannot be knowledge of my bodily movement (primitive action, if we use Davidson's words) either, because the content of self-knowledge required by Velleman’s model is based on a rationale, it has to be intentionally described and fit into the picture of action justification. In fact, we usually do not know how our body moves (except in particular situations such as learning a skill) when we act. For example, when I intend to flip the button, I do not know that my hand is going to move a few inches higher toward a certain direction, what I know is that I am going to flip the button. This is to say that when action is concemed, self-knowledge takes the form of intentional descriptions. What is crucial to action is what one does, instead of how one’s body moves. The problem is not only that we do not know what we are doing then, but also that it’s impossible for us to know what we are doing then if our relevant beliefs are not true. It seems that in the example, although I may have an internal justification for my action, I cannot correctly name my action, since naming an action is often relational, or in other words, actions are often extemally described. It seems that in this case, when I am pouring ihe liquid out of my cup, I know some important things about what I am doing and I do not know other important things about what I am doing. I know that I am doing something in conformity with my attitudes, I might even be able to provide a rationale for why I am doing it, but I cannot correctly name what I am doing. As Davidson says, “although the criterion of agency is, in thesemantic sense, intentional, the expression of agency is itself purely’ extensional.” (1980, p. 47) Davidson (1971) actually thinks that the problem is irrelevant to the problem of agency. In Davidson’s coffee/tea example, one intentionally spills tea but in fact spills coffee. His spilling the contents of his cup is intentional; this act can be redescribed as his spilling the coffee. “Of course, thus redescribed the action is no longer intentional; but this fact is apparently irrelevant to the question of agency.” (1980, p. 46) When talking about mistakes, Davidson says “These are things that strictly speaking cannot be done intentionally. ...To make a mistake of one of the mentioned kinds is to fail to do what one intends, and one cannot ... intend to fail. These mistakes are not intentional, then; nevertheless, they are actions. To see this we need only notice that making a mistake must in each case be doing something else intentionally.” (1980, P. 45) Our problem is not a problem for Davidson, because he takes intention (or intentional descriptions) to be crucial to agency: either one does A intentionally or does A unintentionally by intentionally doing something else, if one is intentionally doing something, what is done is an action. However, the problem cannot be irrelevant if we take self-knowledge to be the key to understand agency. Knowledge is intensional and action descriptions are extensional. On the one hand, we may provide descriptions of our knowledge of an action along the line of embedded intentions as an integrated conception of the action; on the other hand, we may provide descriptions of our action in accordance with external conditions: pouring the tea, pouring the green tea, pouring the tea made by my brother, if the tea in the cup is in fact green tea and made by my brother. When our action is based on a false belief, how can we know what we do? What do we know? Concretely speaking, what name can I correctly give to my action when I am pouring the new tea in my cup believing that it is the old tea? I cannot correctly name my action as pouring the new tea, because I intend to pour the old tea. I cannot correctly name my action as pouring the old tea, because it is in fact the new tea. It seems that no knowledge of the first kind can be gained in this case. However a special feature in action naming we need to notice is that when direct description of an action cannot be correctly given (for example, due to a false belief), at some point in the hierarchy of the embedded intentional descriptions of the action (the rationale), ‘a correct name can be given. For example, although I cannot correctively name my action as “pouring the old tea”, along the line of the embedded descriptions, when I reach “I am emptying the cup” or “I am making a cup of new tea” I do give my action a correct name. This further indicates that on the line of embedded descriptions, the higher a description is, its comectness is more certain, and the lower descriptions’ possibility of being falsified shows that they are substitutable in the sense that whatever it is in the cup (the old tea, coffee, coke, etc.), by pouring it out, I empty the cup and make a cup of new tea. The reason is that what are described by lower level descriptions are means to achieve a specific goal which is described by the highest description. The point I want to make is that the two kinds of knowledge discussed by Velleman are both understanding and the descriptions constitute this understanding can be described as being in a means-end relation, and our actions are realizations ofthe means-end relations. Therefore, when we act we understand what we are doing and this understanding has a means-end structure. It is goal-directedness that lays behind our understanding of actions. References: 1 ‘Velleman, J. David, What Happens When Someone Acts? Mind, Vol. 101, July 1992. . Velleman, J. David, Practical Reflection, Princeton University Press, 1989. . Velleman, J. David, The Possibility of Practical Reason, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. }. Velleman, J. David, Introduction to the New Edition of Practical Reflection, forthcoming. }. Donald Davidson, Actions, Reasons, and Causes (1963), in Essays on Actions and Events, New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. . Donald Davidson, Agency (1971), in Essays on Actions and Events, New ‘York: Oxford University Press, 1980. "=