Causality and Motivation 9783110329575, 9783110329391

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Roberto Poli (Ed.) Causality and Motivation

Philosophische Analyse Philosophical Analysis Herausgegeben von / Edited by Herbert Hochberg • Rafael Hüntelmann • Christian Kanzian Richard Schantz • Erwin Tegtmeier Band 35 / Volume 35

Roberto Poli (Ed.)

Causality and Motivation

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Table of Contents

Foreword

.................................................................................. 5

Chapter 1

Roberto Poli, The Structure of Motivation: A First Introduction.................................................. 7 Jean-Michel Roy, The Exclusion Problem and the Prospects of a Motivational Solution .......... 23 David Weissman, Two Kinds of Motivation: Character and Reward .............................................. 51 Dale Jacquette, Supervenience (on Steroids) and the Mind ............................................................ 65 Liliana Albertazzi, The Subjective Origin of Causality .............................................................. 75 Riccardo Manzotti, A Process-oriented Framework for Goals and Motivations in Biological and Artificial Agents ......................... 105 Angela Ales Bello, Causality and Motivation in Edith Stein........................................................... 135 Christopher Groves, The Futures of Causality: Hans Jonas and Gilles Deleuze ............................... 151 Cyprian Love, Christian Doctrine and Theories of Emergence .................................... 171

Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9

List of Contributors........................................................................ 189

Foreword

The belief is widely held that the physical world is causally-driven. The world is one because a tangled web of causally-driven processes keeps it together. The actual world is the way it is, because it is the causally-driven outcome of its previous states. However, both the psychological and the social worlds cannot be articulated in causal terms only. Hereby, “motivation” is used as the most general term referring to whatever keeps (synchronically) together and provides (diachronic) reasons explaining the behavior of psychological and social systems. Biology does not fit easily with either picture. Organisms are part and parcel of nature but they cannot be reduced to a complex web of physical causes, causes that can merely explain the “mechanical” side of such organisms. No serious scholars deny that organisms contain and are based on many mechanisms. However, it cannot be argued that organisms are nothing else than (collections of) mechanisms. Something more is needed. At the same time, motivation does not work for organisms. Again, something else is needed. In order to systematically address these problems, a categorical framework is needed for understanding the various types of realities populating the world and their interrelations. The following are but a selection of the topics that immediately come to the forefront: • Levels of reality (the material, the psychological and the social realms); their interconnections and their internal organization (the connection between physics and chemistry within the material stratum is different from the connection between art and politics within the social stratum); • Emergence, supervenience, complexity; • Forms of causality (the classical billiard-ball form of causality is understood as only one of many different types of causation; network and field-like types should be considered, together with upward (“emergence”) and downward (from higher to lower levels) types, and who know how many other types as well);

5 • Types of motivation (taking decisions, building projects, planning, etc.); • The concepts of person and agent. The papers collected in this volume dig into some of the intricacies presented by these problems. The analyses and clarifications provided by this collection of papers help paving the way towards the further work that remains to be conducted. The “Causality and Motivation” research group has been one of the three interest areas of SophiaEuropa, a project of Metanexus Institute (http://www.metanexus.net/institute/) in conjunction with leading universities in Europe, made possible by the support of the John Templeton Foundation (http://www.templeton.org/). The project’s first phase began in September 2005 and lasted for three years. During the said period, two international workshops have been organized bearing the title “Causality and Motivation” (Bolzano, 20-21 April 2006; Rome, 13-14 April 2007). The papers here presented have been selected from those presented at the two workshops. Roberto Poli

The Structure of Motivation. A First Introduction Roberto Poli

1. Introduction Material things encounter each other and reciprocally influence each other. One material thing influences another material thing, modifying its state and its trajectory. If the thing that exerts influence does so too strongly, the influenced thing may even be destroyed; if the influence is too weak, it may have no discernible effect (which does not mean, however, that there is no effect). The interplay of action and reaction is only the most obvious and banal aspect of physical causality. Others and more sophisticated forms of interaction include the effects exerted by immaterial physical phenomena like fields (gravitational, magnetic, etc), whose lines of force determine the form of the interaction according to patterns of lesser energy expenditure or greater efficiency. Moreover, material things pass through different changes of state (liquids may become solid or gaseous, certain substances can explode, ferrous substances oxidize, ligneous substances burn, etc). All these transformations, and many others besides, which need not be listed here, are due to causal interactions. Numerous interactions are external, that is, they occur between two separate entities; others are internal, that is, they take place within a single entity. The changes due to the ageing of a material substance (for example, atomic decay, or loss of consistency by the inner structure) are perhaps the most striking cases of inner transformations of material substances. An inquiry that sets out to compare the forms of causal interaction among different types of entities must add a further specification: the entities of the physical world subject to the forms of causality just mentioned are entities for which nothing matters: nothing is important for them; whatever happens, they are uninvolved. If all causal interactions operated only on entities of this kind, there would be nothing further to say. We know, however, that there are causal interactions which involve other types of entities—entities that are indeed interested in what happens to them. The world of causal

8 interactions also encompasses animate entities. But the way in which these latter enter the picture of causal interactions introduces new aspects: besides interactions of an ‘inanimate,’ so to speak, nature (which indubitably concerns also animate objects), the reference to animate agents brings the reality of new types of causal interaction to the surface. From this it follows that we must distinguish at least two families of causal interactions, which in their turn intersect in many different ways. Before proceeding further, there is a further aspect to consider. This is the apparently obvious fact that, with respect to the world and our experience of it, disembodied minds do not exist. All the natural minds that we know are embedded in a body. However, given that analysis of body and mind seem to require different groups of ontological categories, the problem immediately arises of how to synthesize two so apparently different realities into a single organic whole. We all know how intricate this problem is; and I certainly do not want to trivialize it with few schematic distinctions. There is however one aspect which warrants particular attention. I refer to the fact that biological entities and all entities which require a living being as their existential basis (the mind in our case but, with due caution, also social phenomena) introduce an aspect of ‘vitality,’ or also of ‘organicity.’ Vital being and organic being are dimensions that originally characterize the level of biological entities, and only by extension can they be applied to other levels of reality, such as mental or social ones. Although psychological analysis of these two categories is postponed until later, for the time being we need at least a preliminary characterization of them. Let us begin with the case of organic being. Here I shall propose a general characterization of ‘organic’ which is independent of its specific manifestations in concrete. I interpret organic as including the feature of ‘non-fractionable.’ More specifically: decomposition of an organic whole into parts may lose information. Alternatively: once we have obtained a breakdown into distinct parts of an organic whole, there is no way to reconstitute the original whole. Unlike mechanisms, which when they are ‘broken’ can often be mended, when organisms are ‘dead,’ they cannot be revived. It is possible to furnish a more analytical description of organicity which moves through three stages: 1. A does something and, by doing it, A produces B. 2. Once constituted, B constraints—i.e. modifies—A.

9 1 and 2 apply to an enormous variety of hierarchical phenomena. The step that leads to the case of organic phenomena is the next one: 3. Once constituted, B produces the As from which it is composed. The final stage is the autopoietic component that distinguishes organic structures from other hierarchically organized dynamic structures. The autopoietic cycles (steps 1-3) may be, and usually are, embedded in other autopoietic cycles. In this regard, it is important to note that a higher-order autopoietic cycle may comprise as its parts both lower-order autopoietic cycles of a different order (that is, ones that in their turn comprise or do not comprise other autopoietic cycles) and parts that are not autopoietic cycles. The elements that make up an autopoietic cycle are reciprocally entangled: if the elements are separated from the cycle (from below, so to speak), their disentanglement from the cycle destroys (or at least damages) the cycle itself. On the other hand, the opposite is not true: the higher structure (the cycle in itself) may ‘decide’ to change its elements and to substitute them with other elements or groups without suffering any damage. Indeed, the driving force behind these changes is usually the pursuit of greater efficiency. By itself this property of substitutability among the elements of a cycle is independent of the cycle’s autopoietic dimension (this also holds for many cycles based on 1 and 2 above, without 3). This concerns a fundamental chemical, rather than biological, property. The idea is that of the hypercycles first analyzed by Eigen and Schuster (1979). We have seen at least one of the structural dimensions of the concept of organic entity. Still to be discussed is the concept of vitality. In this regard I can be brief. If, as we have seen, organic entities are entangled hierarchical entities, and if the genesis of the structure depends on the action of some prior elements, the energy required for those preliminary actions and for the following entangled iterations corresponds precisely to the desired characteristic of vitality. If we set aside purely physical entities, the majority of the other entities that make up the furniture of the world have diverse ontological layers. That is to say, they exhibit ‘aspects’ that from an ontological point of view are categorically orthogonal. Organisms endowed with minds are of this kind, but so too are many social phenomena: houses have a material aspect (that of which they are made) and an enormously more composite social one (their functional structure, style, type). The

10 same applies to works of art, which typically have a material basis (the canvas of a painting or the paper of a book) and an aesthetic aspect—this too enormously more composite (organization of the work, style, type, etc). The examples abound. Their systematic analysis requires a theory of the levels of reality, on which see Poli (2001) for a more thorough discussion. For the time being we are only interested in the particular case of the relationship between mind and body, and in how the mind, though categorically different from the body, nevertheless inherits some structural properties—such as organicity and vitality—from levels of reality below it. 2. The layer of reality of psychological being In analytical terms, I distinguish three principal components of the psyche, organized on two levels: the underlying level will be called the ‘level of presentation,’ overlapping with which are the levels of representation and feelings (or emotional phenomena) (Fig. 1) (Poli 2006a, 2006b). Here I shall merely provide a short description of presentations (this section), and of feelings, leaving representations (imagery, phantasy, reasoning, (reactualized) memory, etc) for another occasion. Presentations form what is usually called stream of consciousness, specious present or moment now. They constitute the basic temporal structure of our mind. Representations include all higher-order cognitive acts (thinking, reasoning, planning, etc), while the component of the feelings includes all emotional acts. The specious present is the multiplicity of what is actually given to the mind, the basic temporal flow of intentionality.

Representation

Feelings

Presentation

Figure 1. The main structure of the psyche

11 However, the present is not only simultaneous perception; it is also unification of the given multiplicity. In short, the present “is that feature of the psychic change which is apprehended as unity and which is the object of a single mental act of apprehension” (Albertazzi 2001a, pp. 110-111). According to Husserl, the analysis of intentional phenomena requires a number of different components, including both the act’s structure (a component sometimes called ‘latitudinal’ intentionality) and the ordering of the acts, i.e. the past-present-future rhythm of the succession of acts (also called ‘longitudinal’ intentionality). The act’s structure comprises (a) origin of the act from the so-called ‘pure ego,’ (b) the phases of the intentional act, (c) the forms of self-organization of the act’s correlate (through contrast, fusion, grouping, figure/background, pairing) and the time required by such self-organizations, (d) the modalization of the act (through attention or alertness, or their lack, and through emotional attitudes), (e) the modalization of the act’s correlate (its profiling or saliencing). The ordering of acts comprises the many complications arising from series of acts, ranging from the sinking of past acts into memory to anticipation of the future ranging from void anticipations to projects. A first question to be asked is whether there is any way to prove and eventually to verify Husserl’s claims experimentally. The answer is unquestionably affirmative: see for instance Albertazzi’s work for both ample reference to the relevant literature and further developments of the position. Here I limit myself to but one single aspect, the temporal duration of a single case of specious present. My questions are therefore: How long does the specious present last? And, how can we determine its length? One possible way is to present two objects in succession and to measure the duration of the interval necessary for their perceptions not to interfere with each other. The idea is that if the two presentations are below the threshold, their objects mingle in the correlate of a single act of perception. In this case, research has found that the minimum duration required for perception to take place without interference is ca. 700 µs (Albertazzi 2001a, pp. 111). If two different visual presentations follow one another at a quicker pace, the resulting perception is composed of elements originating from both of the original presentations. Suppose that two groups of six different objects each are presented one after the other. What is seen is a group of six objects comprising some of the objects from the first sextet

12 and some of those from the second sextet. This shows that a single act of apprehension requires a specific amount of time, and that the complexity of its correlate is constrained. Summing up the experimental data so far available, the following are some of the basic features of presentations: • Presentations last from 200µs to 3000µs ca. On average, they last approximately 700µs. • The duration of presentations depends on a variety of factors, ranging from the subject’s mood feelings (they are shorter when the subject is excited and longer when s/he is relaxed) to the cognitive state of the subject (attention shortens presentation), to the content of what is presented, etc. • Presentations come in a (temporal) series, often called stream of consciousness. Presentations come with an inner organization, on various dimensions. Of these the most important are (a) the distinction between focus and periphery, (b) the presence of internal laws of organization, and (c) the elaboration of their content in subsequent stages. (a) entails that there are upper limits to the complexity of the correlate in the focus; (b) yields possibly most surprising results, namely the laws of temporal and spatial inversion (Benussi 1913); (c) states that presentations themselves have a temporal structure (Albertazzi 2003). 3. Emotional acts Emotional or egological acts are structured in levels of depths, ranging from acts conveying more superficial information to those conveying more intimate information (Poli 2006a, 2006b). Furthermore, all emotional acts are linked to values. Although the connection between emotions and values is well known, it seems that only phenomenologists have been able to sketch in any detail the way in which it works. Three different layers can be distinguished. The most external (superficial) layer concerns information about how we sense our body. Feeling cold, warm, just ok are some of the most typical cases. Let us call them sensorial feelings. The next layer comprises information about our moods. Feeling bored, excited, relaxed, angry, and exhausted make up only a tiny

13 section of the rich and highly articulated field of moods. Feelings pertaining to this second group are typically twofold: they have a more bodily-oriented side and a more psychologically-oriented one. By default, they merge, but they may diverge and their manifestation may follow different routes according to a variety of conditioning factors, from social to individual. Let us call this second group of feelings mood feelings. The third and deepest-lying layer is our personal style, the way in which we react to what happens to us. Suppose that something hurts you. You may resist the pain, tolerate it, combat it, accept it, or even enjoy it. Let us denote this third group of feelings with the term character. A character is defined by a number of different parameters (Hartmann 2003), each of which is a cline ranging from a maximum to a minimum. The first dimension varies from activity to passivity. By ‘activity’ is meant stance-taking or commitment; by ‘passivity,’ indifference, inertia or apathy. The second dimension centres on the opposition between a person’s strength or weakness. Strength and activity are not synonymous: also passivity may be strong. The stance-taking associated with activity may be strong or weak; and inertia may be strong in the sense of stubborn. The third dimension ranges from the capacity to suffer to the incapacity to suffer. The positive valence assigned to the capacity to suffer is signalled by the patent negativity of the incapacity to suffer. The former consists of resistance against the adversities of life, the character’s tempering through suffering; the latter consists of inner fragility. The fourth dimension is anticipation: a more or less broad vision of the future to which the person may accede. In this case, the opposition takes the common-sense form of the difference between a broad and narrow outlook on the future. The fifth dimension is the ability to select goals and to find the means with which to achieve them. I call this ability ‘purposefulness.’ In a slightly different wording, and by way of a summary: 1. Openness/closure towards the environment and other agents (no agent can be either entirely closed or entirely open, the agent has a more or less porous boundary; openness means taking a stance; closure means indifference).

14 2. Self-modification (capacity of the agent to modify its own settings; an agent may be open and have a very low capacity for selfmodification, or vice versa; 1 and 2 are different dimensions). 3. Other-modification (capacity of the environment or other agents to modify the setting of the agent; having a character means that othermodification should be set low). 4. Horizon (having broad or narrow views; the windowing of the agent’s future; it can be more or less wide). 5. Purposiveness (ability to set oneself purposes, to choose goals and find the means to achieve them). A character is defined by the position it assumes along each of these dimensions. Each dimension consists of a continuum ranging from an extreme of value to an extreme of disvalue. Furthermore, each dimension also has points of breakdown where values change directly into disvalues (different from disvalues as complements). Consider the capacity to suffer. It is true that suffering tempers the character, so that the person is able to achieve higher thresholds of value. However, if the suffering exceeds the ability to withstand it, the person is destroyed and the suffering changes directly into disvalue. Note that the various dimensions are different but not orthogonal: as a matter of fact a modification in one dimension may reverberate on the other dimensions. Furthermore, behind the structure just outlined there lies the choice of certain values that orient the person from within. These choices concern, for instance, the options between altruism and egoism or between individualism and solidarism. In human beings, adoption of these orienting values is the result of the first phases of the educational process. The final aspect to mention is that the whole field of emotional acts is where our vital force is produced and consumed. Negative feelings consume vital energy, while positive ones produce vital energy (Stein 2000). This is the place where the link is explicit between psychological acts and causation. 4. Acts and their structure Egological and non-egological acts are both intentional acts. Three major problems characterize the theory of psychological acts, namely the problems of (1) the structure of the act, (2) the interaction among different contemporaneous acts, and (3) the production of an act on the

15 basis of previous acts. The latter is precisely the problem to which we are heading, namely the problem of motivation. In order to understand its many subtleties, I have to first say a few words on the structure of the act, while entry (2)—the problem of the interactions among different contemporaneous acts—will be left for another paper. Every act is a three-fold entity: it has a source, a target, and a body. The ego is the source of the act, the object is its target, and what connects the ego with the object is the body of the act (Figure 2).

Source:Ego

Body

Target: Object

Figure 2. The basic structure of an intentional act

The object or correlate of the act is sometimes termed ‘internal accusative.’ The body and the target of acts are internally linked to one another: for every seeing there is something that is seen, for every thinking there is something that is thought, for every feeling there is something that is felt, etc. The act’s correlates are internal, not external, objects. 5. On the structure of the ego Although figure 2 above is correct, it depicts only a minimal part of the real structure of an act. A more satisfactory representation should for instance distinguish the different elements of the ego. At least three components (or substructures) of the ego can accordingly be distinguished: ‘pure ego,’ ‘individual ego,’ and ‘self.’ The pure ego is an entirely functional component which in itself does not possess any independent properties. The only feature characterizing the pure ego is that of being the point of origin of intentional acts. In this sense the pure ego is always present—by definition—in every intentional act. Unlike the pure ego, the individual ego is not exclusively functional. In particular, the individual ego has two constitutive properties, what I call the location and the volume of the ego.

16 Owing to location, the individual ego has a place in which it lives. I distinguish two canonical types of place: the residence and the domicile of the individual ego. The residence of the individual ego is the place where the ego properly lives. The individual ego may live in other places as well (outside itself, i.e. outside its proper place). I shall call these other places in which the individual self can live ‘domiciles.’ The individual ego can also live domiciled for the entirety of its life. In this case, however, it is an ego that lives permanently outside itself; an ego that is structurally inauthentic. The canonical places in which the individual ego lives are the emotions: an area of the psyche which, as we have seen, has a hierarchical structure organized by levels of depth, in the sense that some emotions are more superficial and others are deeper-lying. The individual ego usually lives at one of the levels that characterize the realm of the emotions. The deeper the level in which the individual ego authentically lives (where it has its residence), the broader the range of values to which it can accede. It may be that there are some egos that authentically live at the level of the most superficial emotions. In this case we have the authentically superficial ego. I call a person ‘authentic’ whose ego lives in its proper place. I instead call ‘inauthentic’ a person whose ego mainly lives elsewhere, in a place different from its proper one. Note that it is not true that the proper place of every ego is the deepest level of the emotional act. For some it is not thus. This also means that there are at least two forms of inauthenticity: that of egos with a deep-lying proper place and which live ‘above’ it (live superficially in comparison to the depth of their proper place); and that of egos whose proper place is superficial and which live ‘below’ it (live with depth with respect to the superficiality of their proper place). Needless to say, the depth of this latter form of inauthenticity is a bogus depth. Another case of inauthenticity must now be added to the two described thus far. This is the case of the ego whose proper place lies ‘midway’ and which lives unstably somewhat above and somewhat below its proper place. Perhaps, on balance, it is the case which characterizes we inhabitants of the advanced industrial societies better than all the others. The second property of the individual ego is its volume. ‘Volume’ denotes (1) the fact that the individual ego has greater or lesser

17 ‘extension’; (2) that some parts of the ego are more superficial, while others are deeper, reaching the most intimate core of the ego, and (3) that like all volumes the ego may also be ‘occupied,’ ‘filled’ with some other substance. Because of (1), the self can be extended or constricted, either open to encounter or self-enclosed; (2) indicates that even the most superficial ego has the permanent availability of a depth, just as it is possible that even the deepest-lying ego lives at the surface of its depth; finally (3) indicates that the space of the ego may be occupied by other stuff, and in different ways. Sensible pain and pleasure, for instance, capture the ego, “sensory pain and sensory pleasure come over the ego on its periphery on down. They seize possession of it so exclusively that nothing else has room besides.” In this regard, Stein notes that, even when the ego is totally occupied by sensible pain or pleasure, these nevertheless “don’t get into its depths and they never attach to the ego itself” (Stein 2000, p. 163). If Stein is right, this means that the “volume” of the ego has a stratified composition, and that occupation of the outermost levels does not implicate occupation of the innermost ones. If anything, when the external levels are totally occupied, the internal ones are smothered: they are unable to make themselves felt; they increasingly close in upon themselves and shrink. Another and very different way to occupy the volume of the self is when moods fill the entire ego, at both its superficial and deeper-lying levels. Anguish or relief are of this nature. The difference between the two cases seems to reside in their point of departure: pain starts from the surface, and from the surface penetrates into the ego, whilst anguish or relief start from within the ego and then expand until they entirely occupy it. Finally, the self is the public side of the ego, the one that articulates itself in the perception that the subject possesses of the roles that it embodies. The self has mainly to do with forms of socialization (mostly primary, but not only these), but I shall not deal with this further here. Decomposition of the ego into the above three components makes it possible to ‘filter’ the intentional act in different ways according to the source or sources concerned (Figure 3). In the reality of a completed intentional act, the pure ego, the individual ego, and the self are all involved, and each makes its contribution. On the other hand, the specific contribution of each of them can be analysed more easily by separately considering the various triangles that derive from it:

18 • Pure ego—individual ego—object • Pure ego—self— object • Individual ego—self— object. The composition of each triangle depends in its turn on the composition of the three sides of the ego, that is, of the triangle: Pure ego—individual ego—self. Ego

Pure ego

Individual ego

Self

Intentional act Object

Figure 3. A more realistic structure of the intentional act

6. The structure of motivation Motivation was defined earlier as passage from act to act. Figure 4 provides a graphical representation of the idea.

Ego

Intentional act 1

Object

Motivation Ego

Intentional act 2

Figure 4. Motivation

Object

19 Given the decomposition of the ego into the three aspects of pure ego, empirical ego and self, we can redraw Figure 4 to account for the complexity of the ego, as shown in Figure 5.

Identity Ego_1

Ego_2

Pure ego

Individ ual ego

Self

Pure ego

Individ ual ego

Object

Self

Object

Figure 5. The decomposition of motivation

The link between the two pure egos is the link of identity, for obvious reasons. On the other hand, there is no reason to think that links between all the other components of Figure 5 are identity links. This almost geometrical way of analysing the internal structure of intentional acts and motivations as links between acts (and their components) may help shed light on these very complex topics. Leaving geometric considerations aside, let us return to the crux of our problem. What exactly is meant by saying that motivation is the passage from one act to the following one? The idea is that the ego performs a certain act because—on the basis of the fact that—another act has been performed. When I see a thing, I see only one side of it; I may circle around it to see the other sides as well: belief in a certain state of affairs may motivate belief in another state of affairs connected with it; espousing a value may motivate a stance, an act of will, an action. Motivation operates for every type of act, perceptive, evaluative, emotional. I see something beautiful and I feel pleasure at such beauty. All the aspects are involved: perception, recognition, evaluation, stancetaking.

20 The last aspect to consider is the role of the object. As a matter of fact, the factor which truly motivates is not the perceiving act but the perceived object. It is the beauty that pleases me, not the perception of the beautiful. “Lightning turns into my motive for the expectation of thunder, not the perception of lightning” (Stein 2000, p. 43). The (internal) object of the act is therefore the factor that grounds the passage from a given act to the next one. 7. Conclusion Motivation has a complex structure and we have only scratched its surface. We have seen that both the ego and the object sides of psychological acts play a role in the architecture of motivation. By way of a final summary, the multifaceted articulation of the ego unfolds its own object, which in its turn the object of the act activates the possible ways in which acts follow one another. Annex A. A few words on values Emotional acts have proper connections with values, which means that the capacity to perceive and live values is connected to the sphere of emotional acts. Within the context of this paper, I cannot avoid mentioning at least one structural problem, important for a deeper understanding of the structure of the ego. The organization of values, in fact, seems to follow two different principles: that of strength and that of height (Hartmann 2003). These two principles operate in opposite directions: the strongest values are also the least high values, whilst the highest values are the least strong ones. Usually, the lower values, the stronger ones, are also the simplest values; on the other hand, the superior values are the most complex ones. The criteria of strength and height have consequences which at first sight may seem surprising. The main consequence is this: from an ethical point of view, violating a lower value is more serious than violating a higher value. On the other hand, fulfilling a higher value has greater value than fulfilling a lower value: “sinning against lower values is ignominious, shameful, revolting, but their fulfilment only reaches the level of decency, without rising above it. Offending against higher values, by contrast, does indeed have the character of moral failure, but nothing of the directly degrading, while fulfilment of these values may have something uplifting, liberating, indeed thrilling about it” (Hartmann

21 2003, p. 53). By way of example: “heroism warrants admiration, but a lack of heroism arouses neither contempt nor indignation.” On the other hand, whilst trustworthiness warrants respect, “a lack of trustworthiness warrants contempt or even indignation” (Hartmann 2003, p. 450). The ultimate rationale for the principles of strength and height resides in the general nature of the levels of reality. The organization of the strata of reality reflects the law of strength. Although there are conditions which limit the efficacy of the law, it nevertheless performs a crucial role in organizing the strata. The strata are also subject to a law of freedom whereby the higher level is always free from the lower one. The higher level is defined with respect to a novum which distinguishes it from the levels that precede it and function as its bearers. As Hartmann puts it: the strength of the lower structure is only “as building stones, as material” (Hartmann 2003, p. 448 and elsewhere). The strength of a value indicates the gravity of its violation. The height of a value expresses the merit deriving from its fulfilment. Offence and merit proceed in parallel but are not identical. Offending against life is a grave offence and has very little merit. More in general, harm to material goods is more serious than harm to spiritual goods (Hartmann 2003, p. 453). But fulfilment of spiritual goods, and ethical goods in particular, is a merit much greater than the merit corresponding to respect for more elementary goods. Respect for more elementary goods is often the condition for acceding to higher goods. Those who violate lower goods are wicked. But the reverse does not hold: a person who violates higher goods, someone who fails to fulfil them, “is not on that account a bad man; his conduct threatens no one; it merely lacks the higher moral content” (Hartmann 2003, p. 440). Structuring by levels is important not only because it furnishes us with the tectonic laws governing values, but also because it provides us with criteria to distinguish, at least in most cases, authentic values from bogus ones. If the architecture of values is based on levels of dependence, then the authentic elevation of value is also divided into levels; it develops through intrinsic stages from the lower values to the higher ones. Although the situation may still lack full theoretical analysis, it is well known in practice. A person whose behaviour is oriented to a higher value, but does not simultaneously respect the values that support it, is structurally discordant. The higher values to which s/he refers are not credible. Loving with distrust or giving with cowardice are

22 not authentically virtuous behaviours (Hartmann 2003, p. 456). It follows that values are constructed step by step, proceeding from the most elementary levels upwards (Poli 2009). References Albertazzi, L. (2001). “Vittorio Benussi (1878-1927),” in L. Albertazzi, D. Jacquette, and R. Poli, eds, The school of Alexius Meinong, Ashgate, Aldershot, pp. 95-129. Albertazzi, L. (2003). “From Kanizsa Back to Benussi: Varieties of intentional reference,” Axiomathes, 13, 3-4, pp. 239-259. Benussi, V. (1913). Psychologie der Zeitauffassung, Winter, Heidelberg. Eigen, M. and P. Schuster (1979). The hypercycle: A principle of natural self-organization, Springer. Hartmann, N. (2003). Moral values, Vol. 2 of Ethics, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick and London, 2003. Poli, R. (2001). “The basic problems of the theory of levels of reality,” Axiomathes, 2001, 12, 3-4, pp. 261-283. Poli, R. (2006a). “Levels of reality and the psychological stratum,” in Revue internationale de philosophie, 2006, 61, 2, pp. 163-180. Poli, R. (2006b). “First steps in experimental phenomenology,” in A. Loula, R. Gudwin, and J. Queiroz, eds, Artificial cognition systems, Idea Group Publishing, Hersey, PA, 2006, pp. 358-386. Poli, R. (2009). “A glimpse into the sphere of ideal being: The ontological status of values,” in B. Centi and W. Huemer, eds, Values and ontology. Problems and perspectives, Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt, pp. 155-170. Stein, E. (2000). Philosophy of psychology and the humanities, ICS Publications: Washington, DC.

The Exclusion Problem and the Prospects of a Motivational Solution Jean-Michel Roy

1. Reopening the motivational perspective on intentional explanation The question of the unity of scientific knowledge is a long standing one, as old as philosophical reflection: is there only one science divided into parts or branches, or several sciences? And if there are several, how are they to be individuated? Is it only in virtue of differences exhibited in the domains that they investigate, or also of differences in the ways in which they investigate these domains, in the conceptions of scientificity with which they operate? The question of the unity of scientificity is undoubtedly the heart of the problem of the unity of science. Indeed, this question has nourished a well-known and important controversy, since the last quarter of the 19th century, about the relations between the sciences of natural phenomena and the sciences of human phenomena. This controversy opposes, on the one hand, those who think that natural science is essentially a process of explanation that can and must be extended without any alteration to human sciences, and, on the other hand, those who also think that natural science is indeed a process of explanation, but reject its application to human affairs, claiming that in such context only a process of understanding, endowed with different epistemological properties, is scientifically adequate. This famous debate about the distinction between Aufklären and Verstehen is also centrally related with the claim that there is a conceptual difference between causality and motivation. For the process of explanation is seen as one of apprehending causes, while the process of understanding is seen as one of apprehending motivations. In other words, the epistemological distinction at the core of the debate is twofold: Aufklären is a grasping of causes, and a grasping of causes is an explanation, while Verstehen is a grasping of motivations, and a grasping of motivations is an understanding.

24 It is important to underline that, over the course of time, this twofold distinction has sometimes come to be rephrased as an opposition between two kinds of explanation, namely a causal explanation or explanation by means of causes, and a motivational explanation or explanation by means of motivations. Otto Apel, probably the most prominent historian as well as critique of the Aufklären / Verstehen controversy, presents it for instance in these terms in a 1976 article, revealingly entitled: “Causal explanation, motivational explanation and hermeneutical understanding.” And he explicitly talks of “understanding or motivational … explanations.”1 However, this terminological simplification does not necessarily imply a conceptual simplification: it might still very well be that explaining by means of causes is a process epistemologically different from the one of explaining by means of motivations, in addition to calling to different explanantes. I believe that the reformulation of the controversy in terms of explanation is correct, and that it is legitimate to accept a general notion of explanation that can admit as explanans either something endowed with a causal kind of efficacy or something endowed with a motivational kind of efficacy, as well as appropriate to label the two resulting kinds of explanation so understood a causal kind of explanation and a motivational kind of explanation. Attention should be paid, however, to two terminological facts. Firstly, the term motivation is ambiguous. According to one reading, it is similar to that of causation or causality and designates a certain role or function, namely that of motivating, just like the notion of causation designates the role or function of causing. And, taking the notion of efficacy as a common denominator, this function of motivating can be defined at its most general level in a purely negative way, as a non causal way of being efficacious. According to a second reading, the term motivation is similar to that of cause and designates whatever plays the role of motivating, just like the term of cause designates whatever plays the role of causing. Finally, according to a third reading, it designates one of the various kinds of entity that can play this role. In this third sense, the term motivation is in fact synonymous with the non ambiguous one of motive, which in this case is to be preferred. This last sense is inessential in the controversy, although motives are at times taken as the best illustration that human affairs involve efficacious entities of a special kind. Accordingly, the notion of motivational 1

Cf. Apel 1976, p. 161.

25 explanation is first and foremost taken to mean an explanation by means of any sort of entity that is endowed with a non causal capacity for being efficacious. Secondly, there is a confusing terminological fluctuation in the literature. What is opposed to causal explanation is alternatively designated as an intentional explanation, a teleological explanation, an explanation by reasons …, as if these expressions all had the same meaning, as well as the same as that of motivational explanation. But such is not the case. As made clear through the previous point, the expression of motivational explanation means an explanation by means of an entity endowed with a motivational kind of efficacy. On the contrary, all the other expressions designate types of explanations individuated by the sole nature of their explanans. And as such they are neutral with regards to the opposition between causal and motivational efficacy. The equivalence implicitly introduced between them and the expression of motivational explanation is therefore simply the result of implicitly hypothesizing that an explanation by reasons, intentions, teleological states … is an explanation by means of a motivational element, versus a causal one. On the basis of these clarifications, the core question of the Auflklären/Verstehen debate can be seen as having two distinct although inseparable aspects. The first one is whether the science of human phenomena should make room for a non causal type of explanation— characterized by the specificity of both the efficacy of its explanantes and the process of explaining itself—and if so how. And the second one is whether such or such entity, like a reason for acting, a purpose, a goal …, is an appropriate candidate for the role of a non causal explanans. And it is this doublesided question that I wish to take up here, in specific relation with the psychological dimension of the scientific explanation of cognitive phenomena, and even more specifically, with the intentional aspect of this psychological dimension. In other words, the problem I want to address is the following one: granted ex hypothesi that the scientific explanation of cognitive phenomena must include a psychological level, and especially an intentional one in the Brentanian sense of the word, and granted also that the psychological explanation of cognitive phenomena is an explanation in terms of abstract properties— in the sense to be later clarified of properties ontologically dependent on, although different from, natural properties of a physico-biological type—, should this intentional level of explanation be viewed as a motivational level, versus a causal one? And if so, how is this possible?

26 My ambition, however, is not to offer an answer to this problem, but mainly to explain why it might be worthwhile to re-open it and to specify the various tasks to undertake, as well as the main difficulties to overcome, in order to solve it. Before developing these points, it is necessary to make two preliminary remarks. The first one is of a theoretical nature and has to do with the significance of this problem. What is at stake is no less than the longstanding issue of the nature of the attribution of efficacy to psychological properties, and especially to intentional ones—to the extent that all psychological properties are not intentional ones, as claimed by the original Brentano’s thesis. What is to be clarified is how we should understand an assertion such as the one that the fact that a cognitive system has, for instance, the property of believing that p or of performing the cognitive behaviour b is the result of its having the property of believing that q and of desiring that r. When making such assertions, we undoubtedly attribute an efficacy to the psychological properties of believing that p and desiring that q, since we no less undoubtedly consider that the system under consideration would be deprived of the other properties if it were deprived of these ones. But what remains unclear is the real nature of this efficacy: is it of a causal nature? And if so, does it present any distinctive feature that makes psychological causation different from physical causation? Or should it better be seen as a motivational type of efficacy? And if so, what does such a motivational efficacy really amount to, and how does it differ from physical causation? It is important to note that this problem is however not about how we de facto conceive of psychological efficacy, but how we should. For we might very well understand it in a certain way, and nevertheless should understand it in a different one. So is for instance the claim of many opponents to its causalist reading, chief among whom G. Ryle, who did not dispute that we do treat as a matter of fact psychological properties as causal ones, but disputed that we can do so without misunderstanding what we really assert when attributing efficacy to psychological properties. In addition, a distinction must also be introduced between the attribution of psychological efficacy in the context of so called folk psychological explanation and the attribution of psychological efficacy in the context of scientific psychology. For it might very well be also that we should understand it in a certain way in the first context, and in a different one in the second context, thereby

27 claiming that scientific psychological explanation cannot be continuous with ordinary psychological explanation. Such is more or less the position defended by Wittgenstein, except that he more specifically says that we simply can understand it in a scientific context differently from the way we should understand it in a non scientific context. I will only deal with the issue of the correct interpretation of scientific attributions of psychological efficacy, and more precisely still, as those are made in the restricted context of cognitive explanation, although I accept that the issues cannot be fully separated one from each other. For clarifying how scientific attributions of psychological efficacy should be understood involves clarifying how much they differ from their non scientific counterparts. The second preliminary remark is about the current state of the problem. Suggesting that there are good reasons to reopen it implies that it is currently considered as a settled issue. And indeed, it can be reasonably maintained that, at least in the field of cognitive studies—but it is a field with fuzzy boundaries and that clearly has substantial overlaps with those of the philosophy of mind or the theory of action for instance—a wide consensus has now been reached in favour of the causalist interpretation. We can even use the work of K. O. Apel in order to locate this consensual phase in a rigorous way in the course of the development of the controversy. Indeed, according to Apel, writing in 1984, the explanation versus understanding debate went through three major phases. A preliminary one corresponds to the deployment of the positivist claim, mainly in the work of Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill, that the emerging sciences of human affairs should not be epistemologically different from the natural sciences inaugurated by the Copernico-Galilean Revolution. The first real phase of the debate starts in the last quarter of the 19th century with the counterclaim, originating in the hermeneutical tradition opened by F. Schleimacher, of authors like James Droysen and Wilhem Dilthey who argue that the Geisteswissenschaften should on the contrary be conceived as epistemologically different from the Naturwissenschaften and reject the model of causal explantion on which these are built. The second phase, according to Apel’s analysis, is the counter-reaction in favour of the causal unity of scientific knowledge led by the neo-positivist movement, a counterreaction that finds its best known illustration about psychology in

28 Hempel’s famous article on the “Logical analysis of psychology.”2 The third phase opens with a new wave of criticism of the monist and causalist ideas reasserted by the neo-positivists, but a wave springing from within the analytical movement itself, namely from the Oxford school, especially the second Wittgenstein, and culminating both in G. Ryle’s The Concept of mind3 and in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical investigations.4 However, this third phase differs from the two previous ones in that it is not one-sided. And the anti-causalist revolt led by the Oxford school is in turn followed by a causalist counter reaction that, for reasons he does not make clear, Apel does not consider as a separate fourth phase, although it precisely opens the consensual period in favour of a causalist and monist approach to scientific inquiry mentioned above. The origins of this causalist renewal is commonly traced back to a seminal 1963 article of Davidson on reasons and causes,5 and it progressively rallied the vast majority of contemporary English-speaking philosophers writing on the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, such as J. Fodor, F. Dretske, P. and Patricia Churchland, J. Searle … Modifying Apel’s analysis, this renewal can therefore be considered as a fourth phase of the controversy, and the pragmatic-transcendental perspective that Apel himself pretended to open with his 1984 book Understanding and explanation: a transcendental-pragmatic perspective and some antecedent articles, as a fifth one. Consequently, arguing for the reopening of this controversy is tantamount to claiming that there is now a need to push it beyond its fourth Davidsonian phase, as Apel himself tried to do it, although not necessarily into the same direction. 2. The causal interpretation and the exclusion problem: This necessity derives from the fact that the causalist interpretation has been confronted for some time now with a growingly serious difficulty, at least inasmuch as it subscribes to naturalism and to the extent also that it is linked to the scientific investigation of cognitive phenomena. This difficulty is that of epiphenomenalism, understood as the failure to endow psychological properties, and intentional ones in particular, with causal power when they are integrated into a naturalist 2

Cf. Hempel 1935. Cf. Ryle 1949. 4 Cf. Wittgenstein 1953. 5 Cf. Davidson 1963. 3

29 framework. In fact, the threat of epiphenomenalism comes under different guises, and I will only focus on what I see as its most damaging and resistent aspect, namely the exclusion problem. In a nutshell, the exclusion problem is the problem that psychological properties seem to be necessarily deprived of any causal efficacy by the natural properties, for instance neurobiological ones, on which they have to depend in order to be naturalized in the right way. Put another way, the natural properties, for instance the neurobiological ones, on which they have to be dependent in order to be adequately naturalized seem to necessarily exclude their causal efficacy. One of the difficulties of specifying the exclusion problem is that it is a complex one involving many variables, and offering consequently a host of different possible versions. Indeed, it depends essentially on the way in which the notion of a naturalized psychological causal explanation is articulated; and this, in turn, requires to take a stand on many other important notions, such as causality, intentionality, naturalism… In the literature, the problem of exclusion has been essentially formulated in reference to the work of Davidson and Fodor. However, one also finds interesting attempts to abstract away from any specific doctrine. Chief among those are a series of articles by J. Kim,6 on the one hand, and F. Jackson and P. Pettit,7 on the other. Capitalizing on these contributions, a fairly general version of the problem can be formulated along the following lines. 2.1 Preliminary definitions Three key concepts must first be defined. (a) The concept of cognitive naturalism: The first one is that of cognitive naturalism. It is not uncommon to see the notion of scientific naturalism accused of elusiveness. There is however little ground to this accusation and we know very well what this notion means, even if providing a fully satisfactory elucidation of it is challenging. Indeed, scientific naturalism is just a specific form of monism, and monism can in turn be characterized at its most general level in terms of properties, as the thesis that a scientific theory should recognize as relevant only one category of properties. Accordingly, cognitive naturalism can itself be defined as the thesis that all properties seen as relevant in an adequate 6 7

Cf. Kim 1993. Cf. Jackson and Pettit 1988, 1990, 1992.

30 scientific investigation of cognitive phenomena should be natural ones. In other words, cognitive naturalism is the claim that a scientific theory of cognition should use one category of property only, namely the category of natural property. A distinction between the ontological dimension and the epistemological of the thesis of cognitive naturalism so construed must then be introduced: the ontological dimension says that all the properties used in the characterization of the elements of the domain of the theory of cognition should be natural ones, while the epistemological dimension makes a similar assertion with regards to the properties used in the characterization of the theory itself as a knowledge process. The ontological dimension is the most crucial one and the only one that has been given full attention in contemporary debates, and it will for that reason also be the only one taken into consideration here. If cognitive naturalism is the thesis that a theory of cognition should recognize as ontologically relevant properties no other properties than natural ones, the problem of naturalizing a theory of cognition is just that of finding a way to conform with this requirement. And it is arguable that it can only be met if, for any ontologically relevant property P, P is either immediately recognized as a natural property, or shown to be derivable from properties immediately categorized as natural. Consequently, any naturalist theory of cognition must determine a subset of basic or primitive natural properties, and devise a derivation procedure to obtain from it another subset of derived natural properties. The first task requires to first define a concept of basic natural property, and then to determine whether any property actually satisfies it. The second task is the core of the naturalization problem and consists in finding a principle of transformation of apparently non natural properties into natural ones. Any such principle of naturalization must respect three basic conditions: 1. The attribution constraint: The property P to which it applies must be considered as belonging to an x that is a natural entity, that is to say to an entity with natural (primitive or previously derived) properties; 2. The ontological constraint: P must be also recognized to belong to x in virtue of the natural properties that characterize x as a natural entity, and to be thereby ontologically dependent on them, in the general sense of having the instantiation of these natural properties as a necessary and sufficient condition for its own instantiation;

31 3. The explanatory constraint: Finally, this ontological dependency must be rationally explained; in other words, a principle of naturalization must provide a rational principle of explanation of the fact that those natural properties are necessary and sufficient conditions of instantiation of property P.8 The general structure of an ontologically naturalist theory of cognition can accordingly be illustrated with the following schema, where PNP designates a primitive natural property, PND a derived natural property, the down oriented arrow the ontological relation of dependency, and the up oriented arrow the relation of rational explanation: PNd x

PNd

This schema captures the three fundamental elements of the idea of naturalization as a derivation from natural properties, that is to say, the idea that an apparently non natural property is turned into a natural one when (1) it is attributed to an entity with properties already categorized as natural, (2) it is supposed to belong to it in virtue of these natural properties, and (3) a rational explanation of the fact that it belongs to it in virtue of its natural properties is offered. And it can be easily recast simply in terms of psychological and neurobiological properties to make it more consonant with the immediate way of understanding the problem of cognitive naturalism: P x 8

Neur

This third requirement explains why treating the ontological dependency as a brute fundamental fact, as property dualism—of a certain kind at least—does, is a borderline case of naturalism. On the one hand, it can be read as a failure to fulfil the explanatory constraint. But on the other hand, it can be read as fulfilling it, although pointing to the limits of explainability.

32 In conclusion, the problem of cognitive naturalism can now be simply characterized as that of deciding whether or not a theory of cognition should conform to the requirement of using only natural properties, and if so, as that of finding a way to fulfil adequately the two tasks just laid out for all properties seen as relevant to the investigation of cognitive phenomena, especially for psychological ones. (b) The concept of non reductionist cognitive naturalism: The second concept to be defined is that of non reductionist cognitive naturalism, which simply designates a specific form of cognitive naturalism as just characterized and illustrated. Indeed, the standard forms of cognitive naturalism can simply be seen as variations on the choice of the natural properties at the basis of the above schema (behavioural properties for behaviorism, physical properties for physicalism …) and of the principle of derivation. From this last point of view, the usual way of classifying naturalist solutions is to draw the main line of division between reductionism on the one hand, and non reductionism on the other one, non reductionism being itself mainly subdivided into token physicalism, functionalism and emergentism. The hallmark of cognitive reductionism, at least in its central and classical form illustrated by Logical Behaviorism or the Central State Identity theory of the 60’s, is to accept an identity relation between types of psychological properties and non disjunctive types of natural properties, in such a way that every token of a psychological property of type say P1 is identical with a token of a non disjunctive natural property of type say N1. Being identical with natural properties, be they behavioural or neurobiological, psychological properties are necessarily ontologically dependent on them, and the fact that these natural properties are necessary and sufficient conditions of their instantiation is also trivially explained. Accordingly, cognitive reductionism can be schematised as follows: P x

= N

Non reductionism, on the contrary, refuses a type identity relation of this kind.

33 In its most simple form, namely that of token physicalism, a type of psychological property is thus conceived as being identical with a disjunctive type of natural property, so that in each one of its instantiations or tokenings a psychological property of a specific type P1 is identical with a natural property N, although not always of the same type (it might be of type N1 or N2 or N3 …). P = x

N = (N1 v N2 v N3)

Another important form of non reductionism is functionalism. According at least to one dominant reading of it, functionalism identifies a type of psychological property with a type of functional property that simply depends on variable types of natural properties, without being identical neither to any of them nor to their disjunction. This dependency relation is variously characterized as a relation of implementation, realization or supervenience, the basic definition of supervenience being that a set of properties such as properties P, supervenes on another set of properties, such as properties N, when the instantiation of properties P is fixed once the instantiation of properties N is fixed, but not vice versa (so that two natural entities cannot have different psychological properties if they have identical natural properties, but can have different natural properties if they have identical psychological properties). When functional properties are more specifically understood in a causal way, the fact that psychological properties belong to an entity in virtue of its natural properties is explained by its assimilation with the supposedly unproblematic fact that the causal properties of a natural entity are ontologically dependent on its natural properties (function depends on structure). Functionalism thus corresponds to the following version of the above schema: P=F x

N1 v N2 v N3

= realization/implementation/supervenience

34 This second form of non reductionist naturalism is more authentic, in the sense that it considers a type of mental property as irreducible to any type of property N. It is thus based on the concept of an abstract irreducible property, understood as a property that has as a necessary and sufficient condition for its instantiation the instantiation of another property with which it cannot be identified. A functional property is such an abstract irreducible property. (c) The concepts of causality and causal explanation: Finally, the cognate notions of causality and causal explanation must also be fixed. There are more than one way of doing so, and it is therefore important to define them at a sufficient level of generality in order to minimize the risk of masking the true nature and scope of the exclusion problem by tying it to an overly specific theoretical framework. The same remark clearly applies to the two previous concepts, since their definition also is a matter of controversy, but probably to a lesser extent than the concepts of causality and causal explanation. The best strategy seems in any case to first focus on the theory of causality and causal explanation that is predominantly associated with the realist and functionalist analysis of psychological efficacy, and only at a later stage to examine whether alternative conceptions of causality and causal explanation could dissipate the exclusion problem. And it is reasonable to say that this theory is still by and large a modernized version of the familiar nomological analysis of causation of 18th century empiricism. Following the presentation offered by Kim, it can be aptly summarized in the following way: 1. A causal relation is firstly characterized as a relation between the instantiation of two properties such that the instantiation of the first property is followed by the instantiation of the second one. In this perspective, properties are not themselves causally efficacious, only their instantiations are. And the causal efficacy of the instantiation of a property is reduced to the fact that, when it occurs, the instantiation of another property temporally follows. If the instantiations of a property are the causally efficacious elements, the instantiated property itself is nevertheless usually also said to be causally efficacious, although only improprio sensu. 2. The nomological theory introduces however the further idea that a relation of causality can only exist between two property instantiations if the fact that one follows the other can be turned into a

35 nomic fact, and accordingly, if it can be stated as a law. A law is in turn analysed as a counterfactual supporting conditional statement, and the properties that can figure in it are said to be projectible properties as well as causally relevant ones, in the sense of being relevant to the formulation of causal laws. The specificity of the nomological approach is thus both to deny that a causal relation is a form of connection beyond and above succession, and to maintain that it must be subsumable under a law. 3. Finally, the central form of a causal explanation is that of a deductive argument showing that the explanandum, be it a particular fact or a causal law, is a logical consequence of a causal law or of a more general one. When this nomological theory of causality and causal explanation is combined with functionalism, psychological causality takes the form of a functional causality, in the sense that the causal efficacy attributed to the psychological properties is in fact attributed to functional properties. As a matter of fact, a psychological causal law is to be read as saying that whatever possesses a psychological property P1 causes, in virtue of possessing this property, something that possesses a (say) psychological property P2, or alternatively, that the instantiation of a psychological property P1 causes the instantiation of (say) a psychological property P2. And the moment psychological properties are identified with functional ones, such a law must be interpreted as saying that the instantiation of a functional property F1 causes the instantiation of a functional property F2. In addition, given that the instantiation of these functional properties requires the co-instantiation of natural (e.g. physical or neurobiological ones) properties, the causal psychological process described by this law is also a natural process, for instance a physical or a neurobiological one. However, this natural dimension of the process is left unspecified by the law. In other words, in this perspective a causal psychological process is nothing else than a physical or neurobiological process characterized in an abstract way, that is to say, in terms of the functional properties that depend on the natural properties involved in it. To say, for instance, that a certain psychological state (greed) causes another one (jealousy) is to say that a neurobiological state, whose nature is left undetermined except for the fact that it possesses an abstract irreducible and functional property F1, causes, in virtue of this property F1, another neurobiological state, whose nature is also left unspecified except for the fact that it

36 possesses an abstract irreducible property F2. An interpretation that can be conveyed in a more intuitive way by means of the following schema: PS1 = NS1

L1

F1

PS2 = NS2 F2

L2

PS3 = NS3 F3

L3

PS4 = NS4 F4

Organism 0 : causal relation L : causal law PS : psychological state NS : neurobiological state F : functional property 2.2 General formulation of the exclusion problem On the basis of these preliminary definitions, a formulation of the exclusion problem that is both rigorous and of an acceptable degree of generality can now be offered. According to such a formulation, the exclusion problem is tied to the adoption of the second kind of non reductionist perspective mentioned above, based on the idea of an abstract irreducible property, and even more specifically, to the version that further specifies the idea of an abstract irreducible property in functional terms. In other words, the exclusion problem raises a difficulty for a naturalist causal analysis of psychological efficacy to the extent that this analysis also subscribes to the specific kind of cognitive naturalism that is called non reductive functionalism. Although it is hard to imagine how it could affect reductionist forms of cognitive naturalism, it might be considered to extend to other kinds of non reductionism that either conceive of irreducible abstract properties in non functional terms, or fall into the category of token physicalism as defined above. Because of its paradigmatic role in the debate, it is however reasonable to first concentrate on the way it affects functionalism. In addition, according to this formulation, the exclusion problem is also linked to the adoption of a nomological conception of causality and

37 of causal explanation. And here again, although an important question to investigate is whether it also affects functionalist interpretations of psychological efficacy that adopt alternative analyses of causality, it is reasonable to concentrate on those that subscribe to the nomological conception because of its paradigmatic role. In what sense, then, does a functionalist and nomological interpretation of psychological causation of a nomological kind face an exclusion problem? The difficulty can first be stated at an intuitive level. We have seen that the functionalist approach to psychological causality is committed to saying that it is the instantiation of the functional property itself that is causally efficacious. However, in virtue of its status of abstract irreducible property, a functional property cannot be instantiated without a neurobiological property—more generally, a natural one—being instantiated. But if it is so, it seems intuitively reasonable to think that only this co-instantiated neurobiological property is truly causally efficacious, and that the causal efficacy of the psychological property is merely apparent. In other words, if, on the one hand, a psychological property is causally efficacious only if its instantiation is followed as a matter of law by the instantiation of another property, and if, on the other hand, the instantiation of a psychological property depends upon the co-instantiation of a neurobiological property because it is a functional, and therefore an abstract irreducible property, then it looks legitimate to conclude that only the instantiation of the neurobiological property must be considered as nomologically followed by the instantiation of the other property, and consequently, that only the neurobiological property is proprio sensu causally efficacious. But why does it feel that way? The whole problem is to come up with an adequate rationalization of this logical intuition. The most obvious reason that comes to mind is that it is necessary to postulate that the neurobiological property is endowed with a causal efficacy identical to the one of the functional property. Let’s consider the simpler case of psychophysical causation, where the instantiation of a psychological property P1 causes the instantiation of a neurobiological property N2. If the fact that a property P1 causes a property N2 is reducible to the fact that each one of the instantiations of P1 is nomologically followed by an instantiation of N2, and if, in addition, the instantiation of P1 is impossible without the coinstantiation of a neurobiological property N1, then it looks unavoidable that N1 itself be causally efficacious, and in exactly the same way as P1, since each one

38 of its instantiations must be nomologically followed by an instantiation of N2, given that this is a necessary condition for the causing of N2 by P1. Indeed, if every instantiation of N1 is not nomologically followed by an instantiation of N2, P1 is not either, and therefore cannot be said to cause N2 according to the nomological theory of causality. This analysis can be easily extended to the more involved case of purely psychological causality. From the acknowledgment of the existence of a causal efficacy, at the level of the neurobiological properties involved in the process of psychological causation, that is identical to the causal efficacy specifically attributed to the causing psychological properties, two converging, although not equally strong, conclusions can be drawn. The first conclusion is that the causal efficacy of the property N1 ipso facto eliminates that of the property P1. As a matter of fact, if the causal efficacy of a property P depends necessarily on the causal efficacy of a property N that is of an identical nature, then only this property N can be causally efficacious, because any causal efficacy that P could have is a causal efficacy that N in fact has. There is no causal efficacy beyond that of N. The second conclusion is more modest and says that the argument only demonstrates that functional properties have a causal efficacy that is redundant with respect to the causal efficacy of neurobiological properties. Which is quite different from declaring them causally inefficacious. But it is an easy step from redundancy to uselessness, although one that needs rational support. There are two obviously possible arguments to this effect. One might first reasonably surmise that a causal relation can only be counted as real if it is useful: but if the causal efficacy of a functional property is necessarily redundant with respect to the causal efficacy of a physical property, it is useless. The second argument is that accepting redundancy of causal efficacy is tantamount to accepting a principle of overdetermination which is not without difficulties. Either one of these two conclusions leads in a reasonable way to the hypothesis that psychological properties construed as functional properties should be denied causal efficacy. They establish that the causal efficacy of the neurobiological property prevails over the causal efficacy of the psychological one, to the point of excluding it. If this hypothesis is correct, the reading of the functionalist analysis of a causal psychological process that was proposed before must however be modified. What this analysis really means, in the typical

39 case of a purely psychological causation, is: the instantiation of a (say) neurobiological property, that is left unspecified except for the fact that it is accompanied by the instantiation of a determinate functional property, causes the instantiation of another (say) neurobiological property, that is also left unspecified except for the fact that it is also accompanied by the instantiation of a determinate functional property. The causal efficacy is no longer attributed to the first functional property, but to its base property. To what extent, however, do we still deal with the specification of a causal process, given that the nature of the causally efficacious properties is no longer specified? What we have is better characterized as the schema of a causal process, a schema that is turned into a real causal specification when the nature of the causally efficacious neurobiological properties is determined. Similarly, a functional explanation seems to be no more than a schema of causal explanation, that is turned into a causal explanation when the nature of the causally efficacious neurobiological properties is determined. But it is also no longer a causal explanation of a functional kind, since the causally efficacious properties are neurobiological, and not functional. 3. Some ways out of the exclusion problem: Does this mean that we should really abandon the hope of obtaining bona fide causal explanations of a functional sort, and accordingly, causal psychological explanations functionally construed? In other words, is there a way out of the exclusion problem, and is it possible to save the type of non reductionist cognitive naturalism that it puts into trouble? The answer to these questions depends on those given to the two other following ones: 1. Can the causal efficacy of functional properties be defended against the charge of epiphenomenalism put forward by the exclusion argument? 2. Is there a way of maintaining the causal character of functionalist explanation and laws, even if the exclusion argument is right and functional properties are not causally efficacious? In order to answer positively the first one of these questions, one can try either to show that the exclusion argument is flawed, or to find a

40 counter argument establishing that functional properties are in fact causally efficacious. In order to answer positively the second one, a way of dissociating the notion of causal efficacy from the notion of causal relevance must be found, so as to be able to maintain that a causally inefficacious property can nevertheless be causally relevant. These two directions of research have been explored in the literature, and in previous work I also personally examined both possibilities. I have tried on the one hand9 to determine whether using a different form of irreducible abstract property than the functional one, such as that corresponding to the notion of emergent property, could offer a way out of the difficulty. My claim is that the traditional definition of the notion of emergent property, inherited from Mill and refined by the current of British emergentism in the 1930’s, and that is still at the source of several recent attempts to redefine the idea of emergentism (most of which are gathered in the important book Emergence or reduction edited by A. Beckermann, H. Flohr, and J. Kim10), seems unable to provide one. The reason being on the one hand that the traditional notion of an emergent property is in fact subsumable under the concept of an abstract irreducible property, that is incorporated in the modern notion of a functional property according to the analysis previously mentioned, and, on the other hand, that the problem of exclusion also seems to be rooted in this concept, and to be therefore independent from its functional specification. It nevertheless still is an open question in my eyes whether alternative definitions of the notion of an emergent property, such as the one at work in the theory of complex and dynamical systems, might represent a sufficient departure from the idea of an abstract irreducible property to circumvent the exclusion problem. What we might call the dynamical concept of emergence remains at this point insufficiently elaborated in order to get a clear answer, and further research along these lines looks consequently a necessity. I have also investigated whether the principle of causal relevance which is part and parcel of the nomological conception of causal explanation, and to the effect that only a causally efficacious property can be causally relevant—that is to say relevant to the construction of a causal explanation—could be amended in such a way that a property deprived of causal efficacy, such as an abstract irreducible one, could 9

Cf. Roy 2004. Cf. Beckerman 1992.

10

41 nevertheless be deemed causally relevant. Proposals along this kind have been made by Philip Pettit and Frank Jackson,11 or Pierre Jacob.12 However, these proposals are unsuccessful because they wrongly require that we give up on the idea that a causally relevant property should provide a direct, versus an indirect, specification of the nature, versus the mere existence, of the causally efficacious properties. On the contrary, the traditional principle of causal relevance is in my opinion correct in maintaining that only a property providing a direct specification of the nature of what is causally causally efficacious is causally relevant. 4. The motivational perspective: agenda and difficulties If both emergentism and the perspective on causal relevance just indicated leave a certain room for hope in the search for a solution to the exclusion problem, it is yet rather unclear to what extent they can really lead us to one. The number of factors to play on in this search is important, contributing to the particular complexity, as well as interest, of the exclusion problem, and many other tracks can therefore obviously be, and have been, followed. In light of the first and poorly promising results just reported, it is however tempting to turn to a more radical approach; namely, to renounce the causal interpretation of psychological efficacy altogether. It looks indeed quite rational to suppose that, in case the causal interpretation proves to be erroneous, the epiphenomenalist threat raised by the exclusion problem should ipso facto vanish, since it is predicated on the assumption that psychological efficacy is causal in nature. And it is this more radical perspective that I wish to start investigating by reopening the case in favour of the motivational perspective on psychological efficacy. Can we escape the exclusion problem if we renounce the idea that psychological properties are not causal properties but motivational ones, and accordingly, that psychological explanations are not causal explanations but motivational ones? As previously mentioned, this direction of research requires to put into question an idea that has certainly been quite challenged in the past, but that is also, since we have entered the fourth Davidsonian phase of the explanation versus understanding controversy, now well entrenched.

11 12

Cf. Cf. Beckerman 1992. Cf. Jacob 1991.

42 Clearly, however, the importance of the exclusion problem is a powerful enough reason to see whether this idea can be further challenged. Before trying to do so, we should nevertheless first wonder how reasonable it is to expect that it can be further challenged, given precisely that this idea is not only a well entrenched one, but also supposedly a well established one? A first reason for suspecting that it is not so unreasonable is that, upon closer examination, the Davidsonian turnabout does not seem to be without limitations. On the one hand, Davidson’s arguments in favour of treating reasons as causes are essentially of a negative sort: what he tried to show was that the three main arguments deployed by motivation theorists in order to establish that reasons are not causes were insufficient, in the sense that psychological properties could have the features motivationalists ascribe to them and still be causes. As Ruwen Ogien puts it, the real conclusion of Davidson’s seminal article was that “nothing prevents us from claiming that an explanation by means of reasons is causal, in spite of the fact that, well established by wittgensteinians, that an explanation by means of reasons is non inductive, not covered by a law, intentional as well as partially normative.”13 But he offered no positive argument for thinking that reasons are causes. And he thereby left open the possibility that they are not for considerations different from the ones he refuted, including a specification of what a motivational conception of psychological efficacy could be. This is why some readers of Davidson see the main thrust of his contribution as a challenge to the motivationalist camp: give us better reasons to disbelieve that reasons are causes, and especially a positive theory of what they could be if they are not causes. George Wilson, for instance, explicitly evokes a Davidson challenge that he sums up in words borrowed from David Pears: “If the connection between desire and action is not some kind of causal connection, what kind of connection could it be?”14 Alfred Mele writes similarly in his introduction to The philosophy of action: “Davidson issues the following challenge to non-causalists: given that when we act intentionally we act for reasons, provide an account of the reasons for which we act that does not treat (our having) those reasons as figuring in the causation of the

13 14

Cf. Rugien 1995, p. 43. Cf. Wilson 1980, p. 139.

43 relevant behaviour.”15 In other words, the situation was left much more open by Davidson’s 1963 article than it is commonly believed: it left us with a challenge, more than a solidly established causalist solution, even though Davidson devised one at a later stage. In addition, Davidson’s attitude appears all the more vulnerable since this later account dissociates the notion of causality from that of causal explanation, and defends the view that, although psychological properties are causally efficacious, it is impossible to formulate causal explanations with them, as a result of the combination of the two principles of the nomological character of causality and of the anomalous character of mental properties. In view of the altogether mitigated support he brought to the causalist camp, which was at the time under the heavy fire of its strongest attack in the course of history, it is therefore rather surprising that Davidson’s 1963 article proved to be so pivotal as to open a new period, or even a new phase in the controversy. And it is even more surprising when considering that it did not only challenge the motivation theorists, but the causalist camp as well. As a matter of fact, the natural conclusion of its argumentation is not only that one should try to provide more convincing arguments for disputing the causal character of reasons than the ones offered in the third phase of the controversy by Oxford philosophers, but also positive arguments demonstrating that reasons are indeed causes, and that go beyond the simple refutation of arguments to the effect that they are not. It is not so clear that this second part of the Davidsonian challenge has been satisfactorily met yet. Not only by Davidson himself, as I have just indicated, but more generally by the relevant segment of the philosophical community at large. There is no point denying that attempts to supply arguments of this kind have been made, especially in the causalist approach to action that advocates not only that the psychological source of action are causes, but also that only a piece of behaviour with such a kind of sources qualifies as an action (examples of such arguments are to be found in the work of Lennon, Ginet …). But in the less action oriented community of cognitive philosophy, very little effort is put in establishing positively that the causal interpretation of the attribution of psychological efficacy is right. Some philosophers do not even mention the issue: such is the case of Stephen Stich 1983 attack16 on the possibility of transposing the 15 16

Cf. Mele 1997, p. 11. Cf. Stich 1979.

44 explanatory scheme of folk psychology to cognitive science, or of Dretske’s 1988 defence of the opposite opinion.17 And when they do, it is usually in a brief and rather secondary manner, like Fodor18 or Churchland19 who do address it at the beginning of their itinerary, but do not come back to it, except in a defensive as well as usually indirect way, mainly through the problem of the theoretical nature of ordinary psychological properties. In sum, there are at least three rather serious motives for considering that the causalist interpretation does not rest on the solid rational grounds on which it should rest, and seems to, and, accordingly, for thinking that it is not so unreasonable to resume exploring the possibility that this interpretation is wrong, especially if the possible benefit of such an exploration is the dispelling of the exclusion problem. If its legitimacy is therefore not disputable, it is equally clear that this exploration should be conducted on the basis of a thorough and rigorous critical analysis of the present state of the problem. Anyone who seriously wants to move on the question as to whether psychological properties are motivationally or causationally efficacious must also seriously want to determine where exactly over a hundred years of controversy have left us. The overall structure of such a critical examination is without mystery. It should first focus on the fourth, Davidsonian, phase of the controversy and, after drawing an inquisitive picture of it that clarifies its rather intricate inner ramifications, it should assess its achievements in light of the two following questions: (1) Is the rebuttal of the three main traditional arguments against the causalist reading offered by Davidson and his followers really acceptable? (2) To what extent are the positive arguments developed in order to complement these tentative refutations, and to establish more directly the causal character of psychological efficacy, really successful? It is then necessary to turn to the fifth phase of the debate (the one that, to make matters simpler, we might consider as opened by Apel himself) and proceed to a similar process of interpretation and evaluation: (1) What are exactly the motivational proposals currently in competition? (2) How much did they manage to offer a counter-attack to the Davidsonian refutation of the traditional arguments supporting the motivational approach? And finally: (3) How 17

Cf. Dretske 1988. Cf. Fodor 1968. 19 Cf. Churchland 1970. 18

45 acceptable are the positive arguments that they possibly put forward in favour of this motivational approach? If the project of reopening the motivational perspective is reasonable and the way to go about it straightforward, it nevertheless raises a number of difficulties. Two of them have to do with its theoretical underpinnings and deserve specific attention here, while others of a more practical nature can be left aside. The first main theoretical difficulty is due to the decision of searching for a possible way out of the exclusion problem in the direction of the motivational perspective without however giving up on naturalism. Indeed, the fundamental objective remains to obtain a naturalistic theory of psychological efficacy, and it is only in relation with this objective that the motivational perspective is taken into account. The validity of cognitive naturalism is certainly not conceived as obvious or as an article of faith. But it is not part of the project itself to provide it with a justification. The central issue of this project is therefore better formulated as follows: granted ex hypothesi that any acceptable theory of cognition acknowledging the relevance of psychological properties should provide an ontologically naturalist account of their efficacy on other psychological properties, or on non psychological ones, can a naturalist motivational conception of such efficacy avoid the exclusion problem that apparently dooms the causal one? It might very well be that the naturalist hypothesis will have in the end to be abandoned because it is precisely where the exclusion problem comes from. And this certainly is the most fundamental point at stake in this problem; as well as the reason why it is so crucial and interesting. In this regard, it is quite similar to the hard problem of consciousness, which already led to a number of meaningful renunciations to naturalism in the cognitive community. One could for instance argue that the motivational perspective on psychological efficacy is the right one, and has to be adopted by cognitive science, but at the price of renouncing cognitive naturalism. If giving up on naturalism is a way out, it has nevertheless to be in my mind a last resort one. So, the first conclusion that I would personally draw from the evidence that the motivational interpretation can only be saved at such a heavy price would be to go back to the causal one in order to try harder to fix it. Now, the most fundamental difficulty in putting the motivational approach to the service of a naturalist theory of psychological efficacy comes from the fact that, by and large, this approach is historically

46 associated with anti-naturalism, not only in the epistemological sense, but also in the ontological sense. Consequently, the project under consideration is not simply to swing the pendulum once more back to the motivational side of the debate, but to attempt a rather new theoretical alliance, namely the integration of the motivational approach into a naturalist perspective. And this amounts to no less than attempting a naturalist overturn of a traditionally anti-naturalist approach, raising a specific difficulty: to what extent is such an overturn possible? The problem, indeed, is whether it is possible to transfer a notion which is part and parcel of an anti-naturalist framework, without losing what makes it precisely theoretically interesting. The Husserlian notion of motivation provides a good example of this difficulty. One might very well side with Husserl’s idea, as developed in particular in the second volume of his Ideas,20 that the notion of motivation provides a more adequate characterization of intentional efficacy than the concept of a cause, and show in particular that it circumvents the exclusion problem. But the question is whether it does not circumvent it because it gives up on the idea of an ontological dependence on, and explainability by, natural properties that is crucial to a naturalist approach; and furthermore, whether, the moment these two ideas are reintroduced, the specificity of the notion of motivation is precisely not lost. In other words, the project raises the deep and complex issue of the compatibility of the idea of a motivational conception of the efficacy of psychological properties with the basic tenets of ontological naturalism. Establishing such a compatibility is a challenge, and there is clearly no guarantee that this challenge can be met. A similar difficulty has recently surfaced in connection with the hard problem. One way of overcoming the hard problem, to which I have personally contributed,21 consists in arguing that the explanatory gap between phenomenological properties and natural properties such as neurobiological ones derives from an inadequate characterization of these phenomenological properties. To put it in a nutshell, the basic idea of this phenomenological approach to the hard problem is: get a better characterization of phenomenological properties, and they will prove to be less resistant than they look to an explanation by means of what cognitive science uncovers about the neurobiological underpinnings of cognition. An additional step is to advocate that obtaining a more 20 21

Cf. Husserl 1952. Cf. Roy et al. 1999.

47 adequate characterization requires introducing a first person level of description into the naturalist framework of contemporary cognitive science, that is to say a level of phenomenological description. And a further one is to argue that this phenomenological description can fruitfully follow certain principles of description formulated by Husserlian phenomenology. However, this last move faces a difficulty deriving from the radical anti-naturalism to which Husserlian phenomenology is associated: to what extent is it possible to integrate principles of description that were claimed by Husserl to require the rejection of naturalism into a naturalist framework without distorting them, and thereby losing what precisely makes their interest, namely their descriptive adequacy? Although I have tried to show that it is possible under certain conditions,22 the point remains to be more fully investigated. And even if this conclusion is right, it is not clear whether it applies to the case of motivation. The second theoretical difficulty is no less serious. What we want is not only a naturalist motivational interpretation of psychological efficacy, but a non reductionist one. What we are after is a way of saving non reductionist naturalism. However, another so far unquestioned assumption underlying the whole project is that, by substituting the notion of motivation to the notion of causality, one should necessarily remove the source of the exclusion problem, since it is a problem about epiphenomenalism, that is to say about a loss of causal efficacy. But this assumption is in fact far from being obvious. It looks in principle very much possible that the exclusion problem affects as much motivational efficacy as causal efficacy in a non reductive naturalist framework, and that the impression that it might not comes precisely from an implicit renunciation to the idea of non reductive naturalism. Indeed, if a psychological property remains conceived as an abstract irreducible property, there is a clear possibility that it is as much deprived of motivational efficacy as it is deprived of causal efficacy by the property it depends upon for its instantiation. As a matter of fact, if they are right, this is exactly what the analyses summarized in § 2 predict, since they locate the source of the exclusion of the efficacy of the psychological property in its status of abstract irreducible property. Accordingly, it looks as if, even if it can be made compatible with a naturalist framework, the motivational interpretation cannot be made compatible with a non reductive one and circumvent the exclusion problem. 22

Cf. Roy 2003.

48 Although switching to a reductionist framework might be possible, it is unclear whether there is any real gain in doing so given the difficulties that reductionist naturalism itself faces. And in any case, it is probably easier to embrace naturalist reductionism as a way out of the exclusion problem within a causalist approach to psychological efficacy. Consequently, the project seems to make sense only if it is conceived as an attempt to preserve non reductionist cognitive naturalism in spite of the prima facie impossibility to do so. It turns out, therefore, that the core issue of the project must be in fine once again reformulated. It does not deal simply with the possibility of eliminating the source of the exclusion of the causal efficacy of psychological properties with the help of the notion of motivation, but, more specifically, with the possibility that the notion of motivation might somehow compensate for the loss of efficacy that a psychological property suffers from as a result of being conceived of as an abstract irreducible property. To put it in a nutshell, the leading intuition behind the project is that non reductionist naturalism might exclude causal efficacy but not motivational efficacy. But how could it be that the simple fact of analyzing the efficacy of an abstract irreducible property in terms of motivation annihilate the exclusion effect that is present when this efficacy is analysed in causal terms, if this exclusion effect is rooted in the very fact of being an abstract irreducible property? Only a careful analysis of the notion of motivation can reveal whether such an apparent feat is possible, but the truth is that the prospects of success look dim. References Apel, K.-O. (1976). “Causal explanation, motivational explanation and hermeneutical understanding,” in K.-O. Apel, Contemporary aspects of philosophy, London, Oriel Press. Beckermann, A. (1977). Gründe und Ursachen, Kronberg. Beckermann, A., H. Flhor, et al., eds. (1992). Emergence or reduction: Essays on the prospect of nonreductive reductionism, Walter de Gruyer. Davidson, D. (1963). “Actions, reasons and causes”, in D. Davidson, Actions and events (1980), Oxford, Oxford University Press. Dretske, F. I. (1988). Explaining behavior: Reasons in a world of causes, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.

49 Fodor, J. A. (1968). Psychological explanation; an introduction to the philosophy of psychology, New York, Random House. Hempel, C., Ed. (1965). Aspects of scientific explanation and other essays in the philosophy of science, New York, The Free Press. Hempel, K. (1935 (1980)). The logical analysis of psychology, in N. Block, ed, Readings in the philosophy of psychology, Cambridge, Harvard University Press. Husserl, E. (1952). Ideen zur einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff. Jackson, F. and P. Pettit (1988). “Functionalism and broad content,” Mind, 97, 387. Jackson, F. and P. Pettit (1990). “Program explanation: A general perspective,” Analysis, 50. Jackson, F. and P. Pettit (1992). “Structural explanation in social theory,” in D. Charles, ed, Reduction, explanation and realism, Oxford, Oxford university press. Jacob, P. (1991). “Are mental properties causally efficacious?,” Grazer Philosophische Studien, 39, pp. 51-73. Kim, J. (1993 (1989)). “Mechanism, purpose and explanatory mechanism”, in J. Kim, ed, Supervenience and mind: Selected philosophical essays, Cambridge University Press, xviii, 377. Mele, A. R. (1997). The philosophy of action, Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press. Mele, A. R. (2003). Motivation and agency, Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press. Ogien, R. (1995). Les causes et les raisons, Editions Jacqueline Chambon. Roy, J.M. (2003). “Phenomenological claims and the myth of the given,” in E. Thompson, ed, The problem of consciousness: New essays in phenomenological philosophy of mind, Vol. supp 29 Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Calgary: University of Calgary Press. Roy, J.-M. (2004). “Conception émergentiste du mental et explication causale,” in M.-J. Durand, ed., Des lois de la pensée au constructivisme: Conceptions et modélisations de l'acte de connaître, Vol. 2, Paris, Intellectica. Roy, J.-M., et al. (1999). “Beyond the gap: an introduction to naturalizing phenomenology,” in J. Petitot , F. Varela, B. Pachoud,

50 and J.M. Roy, eds, Naturalizing phenomenology, Stanford, Stanford University Press. Stich, S.P. (1983). From folk psychology to cognitive science: the case against belief, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press. Wilson, G. (1980). The intentionality of human action, Amsterdam, North Holland Publishing Company. Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations, Oxford, B. Blackwell.

Two Kinds of Motivation: Character and Reward David Weissman

Life is essentially practical: having needs and interests we adapt to circumstances or alter them for our purposes. Motives, we say, are the drivers; they fix human aims and trigger activity. Impulsive or deliberate, they are visible—inspectable—to everyone having them: we do or can perceive what we aim to do and our reasons for doing it. This account of motives—a version of Aristotle’s idea that things are inert until pushed or pulled—is familiar and widely espoused, but mistaken. It conflates episodic motives—inspectable impulses or reasons for acting at a moment—with each person’s constraining but mostly uninspectable motivational structure. This structure is a hierarchy of proclivities and aversions, hence values, that determine one’s choices and responses. It embodies habits or skills (more or less specific capacities for action), attitudes (appraisals of and feelings about real or alleged states of affairs), and intentions (commitments to actions calculated to achieve rewards or avert punishments). Motivation is personal and practical within a context that is neural, social, and circumstantial. Individual motives are explained, therefore, by citing several factors: one’s acquired motivational structure, a particular interest or need, and the reward or punishment achievable (one supposes) by acting in the way decided. This structure is engaged—one is motivated—by considerations of two sorts: some are determinable, others determinate. Basic needs and interests (for food and partners, for example) are determinable: each has a range of possible satisfiers though biology, socialization, circumstances, and practical experience narrow our choices sometimes reducing them to one (oxygen for breathing). Determinability usually survives their constraints so one chooses among a range of satisfiers (coffee or tea, chocolate, strawberry, or vanilla). Or contextual constraints are mute regarding preferred satisfiers though some possible choices (murder and self-mutilation) are proscribed. Character is the singular integration of motives—attitudes and habits—having these contrary sources: others and oneself. We

52 selectively engage other people and things because we couldn’t otherwise secure and satisfy partners or ourselves in the style of our culture and society. We persist—will is a gauge of motivation—because of attitudes directing us and because of anticipated rewards or harms to be averted. Wanting beer, marriage, or a career one persists until the satisfaction of having it; fearing the IRS, one pays taxes. Motives usually cohere with one’s attitudes and habits but psychic life is tensed and distorted, temporarily or forever, when motives are inconstant and confused because attitudes are conflicted. These aspects of motivation—contextual determinables and determinate choices—are the issues considered below. 1. Motivational structure. Are motives episodic or abiding? Late for work, I choose among several ways of getting there: which is likely the fastest? I go by subway, but the train breaks down; forced to take a cab that’s stopped by a policeman for speeding, I walk the rest of the way. One motive directs these successive choices. All may be conscious, though the dominant motive abides whether or not I attend to it. For commitment to work is a habit; I go as the clock and calendar direct me. Other people needn’t eavesdrop on my conscious states to know my habit; they know it by my persistence. That is also the best evidence available to me. For the motive is unchanged on days when I am too distracted by other things to think of having to do what I’m already doing. Three considerations are prominent whenever motives are considered: an occasion with its specific contingencies (too cold or wet to walk), attitudes and habits (I favor going to work and am habituated to getting there on time); and the need to choose (by snap judgment or deliberation) the best ways to achieve my aim given the particularity of my situation. This is the balance between motives that abide and the several or many subsidiary decisions they regulate. Motives of both sorts are sometimes conscious, but often (more often) I chose among alternative courses of action without conscious reflection. Why is deliberation usually unnecessary? Because I have learned from experience that some choices are more effective than others. This learning, too, usually carries on without consciousness regard for evidence that deters some choices while promoting others. How did I acquire the attitudes and habits that direct me? Some heuristics for engaging people and things in the near world are probably

53 hard wired in human genes. The rest is learned. Animators—hunger and thirst, for example—impel us to engage other things to secure and satisfy ourselves. Culture and society warp these behaviors in distinctive ways: one dresses in the styles of one’s people and time. There is, however, this further complication: each person’s habits and attitudes embody the learned behaviors stylized by culture and one’s idiosyncratic ways of expressing them. Every motivational structure is, therefore, a singular way of construing practices shared with other members of one’s society. A Frank Sinatra song is a fair gloss of the result: “I did it my way.” 1.1 Inspection or inference? Motives are ascribed to minds, hence the easy assumption that selfinspection is the direct and accurate way to discern and characterize them: nothing, said Descartes, is better known to mind than the mind itself. But is it so: are motives best inspected or inferred? Dancers concentrate as they perform; they want to do well but the steps are “in their muscles,” as dancers say: one doesn’t consciously think, assume this position, do this or that step. People of all sorts behave in a similar way: they typically act in ways appropriate to a task and circumstances without having to consider what to do, how or why they do it. Every such person would likely agree that he is motivated to do as he does. But ask him this other question—do you do it because of having an inspectable motive—and the answer would likely be different: I am motivated to use a knife and fork rather than chop sticks, because that is my training; I am motivated by that learned habit, not by an inspectable aim. There are many such motives: one is motivated to dress as a man or woman, to speak one’s native tongue, or to part one’s hair on the left or right. And always, the motive is embodied in a learned practice. I may think about what I do or why, but this is a reflection on the doing, not a motive for doing it. Deliberating—deciding what to do when interests conflict or better options seem foreclosed is a familiar experience, one considered below. But we deliberate infrequently, because circumstances and our interests are relatively stable and because we typically respond as we learned to do. Focus may change: one may be asked to justify an act rather than describe it. Granting that you prefer chopsticks to a knife and fork: why this preference, what is it superior value? For we may suppose that its justifying reason is or ought to be the motive for a practice. This is moot: there is no argument or evidence for the superiority of many or most of

54 one’s practices. We may have very little to say when obliged to justify them in this superordinate way. Some vegetarians affirm their altruistic motives; vegetarians in a vegetarian culture merely cite their training. Their observers have no better explanation: they infer from vegetarian practice to its likely condition, here a culture. 1.2 Function/structure The Cartesian (phenomenological) style encourages self-inspection; the alternative—a style of argument that Peirce called “abductive”— requires an inference from matters perceived to their conditions.1 Conditions are sometimes perceived or perceivable if they are causes or constituents. But laws, too, are conditions and they are unperceived and unperceivable if we distinguish regularities they promote from laws whose normative material basis may be unknown: (F=ma, for example). Most abductive explanations are so jejune we hesitate to pronounce them. Why this toothache? Because of an infected tooth. Why is she motivated to read and speak Chinese? Because she was raised in Shanghai and lives there. Challenged to confirm the truth of what I say when telling my name, I infer the accuracy of my memory. Seeing what I do, I infer the social demand for doing it or the personal interest that drives me. But this reflection comes after the fact: it identifies a condition for my behavior without itself being that condition. Notice the character of these inferences: from an action to its conditioning habit, from a function to its conditioning structure. Inferences of this sort are often scorned because habits are often placeholders for structures otherwise unknown. This style of inference is nevertheless reliable and familiar. Stomach aches are ascribed to stomachs though few of us have ever seen one. Heat is the effect of molecular motion; the agitated molecules are frequently cited but rarely perceived. We predict the effects structures may have, then confirm our predictions by perceiving the differences predicted, though we often have little or no additional information about those structures: habits are imprinted in neural circuits activated or inhibited by ambient signals, but we know very little about circuits that distinguish you from me. Skeptics would have us eliminate inferences to an-I-know-notwhat-ground for observable behaviors. Why infer to a structural difference that explains the preference for coffee, tea, or beer? Merely 1

Peirce 1934, vol. v., paras. 195-205, pp. 121-127.

55 predict that people who prefer one or another will continue to choose as typically they do. Or let them introspect before expressing a preference. Why not say that motivation and explanations for one or another motive start and stop here? There are three reasons. First is the uncontentious claim that most motives are the effect of training. Why not drive on the left? Because that would be deadly in a country where everyone drives on the right and because this is the way I learned to drive. Second is the consideration that many or most motives are uninspectable. Imagine someone preparing a book, painting, or score: ideas that come freely are ordered coherently and well. The writer, painter, or composer is alternately elated and weary but always the work carries on to an end that is as much discovered as intended. The task has an aim but there is little or no inspectable data that explain its persistence or shape. Money or recognition may be a principal motive for doing it though citing that aim may say little or nothing about the character of choices required to finish the work. Dickens and Hegel wrote for commissions but that conscious motive doesn’t explain the myriad uninspected choices responsible for the content of their books. The training common to English and German schoolboys explains some of their choices; each had singular powers—insight, passion, and skill—that explain the rest. Awareness of other people and things was critical. Self-awarness— constant self-monitoring—was incidental. Third is this amply confirmed leading principle: no action without an agent. Motivated actions— whether they be practices inflected by culture or the fruits of talent or deliberation—are caused. Principal causes include the uninspectable bones, muscles, and neurons of the actor. (Uninspectable does not entail unobservable: surgeons or technicians reading brain scans may see what a subject cannot discern in him or herself.) 1.3 Animators Observing behavior—others’ or one’s own—we also perceive the elementary interests or passions that acquire specific culture-bound expression within human societies. Animators include needs, desires, hopes, fears, and the obligations that come with participation in core social systems: families, friendships, and work teams, for example. Animators are first-order motives; the learned practices that satisfy them are second-order motives. Practices that vary widely may express the same animator. So, the fear expressed as hostility in one culture may be evinced in others, as deference, cringing, or an exchange of gifts. Seeing

56 a practice, knowing the rhythms of its home culture, one infers the animator. Animators differ generically: some are needs and urges that give life its determinable aims (get food, shelter, and partners); others are impulses of several higher grades. The feeling of obligation to and responsibility for others is an impulse of the first higher order, one that emerges with participation in the core systems where needs and interests are satisfied. Ideals are animators of a higher order: they are refinements achieved when we reflect on the practices of individuals or systems and their effects. So, equity is a motivator if one is offended when virtue and need don’t correlate with rewards; beauty motivates because it liberates thought and sensibility from the urgencies of practical life. The hierarchy of animators—ideals especially—varies inter-personally though the difference between first-order needs and higher-order motives is universal. 1.4 Character Each person embodies an evolving array of motives. They express appetites, desires, attitudes, ideals, talents, and fears, all shaped by culture, circumstances, expected satisfactions, punishments, or rewards. The order of priority evolves as circumstances change: lunch is over, time to work. Or information, attitudes, or skills change, so one who dreaded water when he couldn’t swim is happy to be in it now that he can. Age is a decisive developmental variable: the fast cars of adolescent dreams give way to station wagons, bicycles, or canes. Motivational structure is character: each of us is distinguished by things he or she does or will do, by his or her style of doing them, and by those things he or she declines to do. Or, to start more simply, character is a function of the ways that animators, information, habits, and skills are warped by attitudes. Desire, for example, is never raw after the first weeks or months of infancy: we want such things as attitudes approve. Imagine that entrance to a sacred place is barred because of one’s clothing (shorts rather than something more decorous). The guard offers a skirt. Women gladly take it. Men think twice: how badly do I want to enter; does it matter how silly I’ll look. The decision expresses an animator modulated by attitude. Motivational structure has a steadily evolving developmental course: one makes choices consistent with learned responses that are appropriate to sex, age, culture, and circumstances. Yet, these constraints

57 are usually generic, hence, determinable. Specific values are (ideally) appropriate to the particularities of one’s situation, though the complexity of interests, attitudes, estimated effects, and social demands makes choice unpredictable. Action is sometimes paralyzed or inappropriate because interests conflict or because radical situational changes—war or natural disasters—exceed one’s competence. Still, the principal shape and variables of motivational structure are firmly established in childhood. Active and athletic, one enjoys games that reward competition and skill; someone more bookish challenges himself before competing with others. This is idiosyncrasy in the expressions of behavior that is generic: a culture’s members learn the same practices, but express them in ways nuanced by attitudes and each person’s distinctive habits and skills. Most people embody Mead’s “generalized other” to a high degree; their aims and responses are formulaic; a standardizing current constrains and measures all of them.2 Others don’t want or do what the many want and do. Standards motives and practices are irrelevant because of circumstances or something personal and stubborn—an idea, aim, or feeling—resists them. Think of pianists rehearsing a score. Most listen to others, then repeat the standard reading. Some rarely hear others out of fear their own playing would lose its distinction. Having ideas about the score, expressing qualities of intellect and feeling specific to themselves, they play a score as they think it should sound. Probably no one, pianist or otherwise, is a cipher: there is idiosyncrasy in all of us. But some, more scrupulously than others, mimic the motivational structure—the dominant attitudes—of their societies. 1.5 Deliberation No one knows most of his or her motives by way of introspection: like an observer, I typically know what I want by remarking and remembering what I do. For there is momentum, persistence, to practical life; one knows its direction by choosing and acting in ways prescribed by habit, passion, or circumstances. There are, however, times when we reflect on our behavior and motives, thereby altering both. Not knowing that exercise is good for health, I avoid it; knowing better, I do it often. Some decisions—stopping at red lights, moving on green—require little conscious control. Other changes are slow to occur because one 2

Mead 1956.

58 scrutinizes evidence, arguments, values, and aims. Tallying costs and benefits, regulating the flow of considerations, we come to decisions while over-seeing, sometimes correcting or redirecting the process. Peirce described this oversight as self-controlled self-control.3 Is deliberation’s efficacy a reason for saying that introspection is, contrary to my emphasis, a sound basis for knowing one’s motives? The answer is a qualified yes, qualified, because this is true of some motives only. Deliberation is incidental to practice until the fit between habits and circumstances is problematic. Then we inhibit action while considering alternate routes ahead. Conscious inspection and control may be critical to fine distinctions or tortured choices but deliberation often occurs without them: we deliberate for long periods with only occasional episodes of conscious oversight. How many decisions are left to stew, alternatives considered, anxieties appeased? Conscious deliberation seems essential when vital decisions are responsibly made, but it is significant, too, because reflections exposes the hierarchy of attitudes, hence values, embodied in one’s motivational structure. These attitudes are usually unknowable apart from actions or perspectives they sanction, but now as we consider what to do they are more plainly visible in the options available and biases that favor some while opposing others. Some aversions and inclinations are hard to alter: no amount of evidence or argument shakes them. These are typically attitudes defending vulnerabilities, many acquired early in childhood. Limiting choice, they may be all but unknown to those having them. Answering a friendly invitation from the local sky diving club, I consider for a moment before declining. The idea frightens me, but fear is a symptom of the motive, not the motive—the attitude—itself. The invitation delights my companion; invincible by her own lights, she quickly accepts. Her excitement, like my fear, is a symptom of her risktaking habit. It is this habit and attitudes favoring it that embody the motive. Primitive motives express one’s insouciance or defend one’s vulnerabilities. They abide. Motives acquired later in development are more plastic. Expressing the idiosyncrasies of personal taste and development, they respond to altered circumstances and chance encounters. Impulse rather than deliberation explains many such shifts: one responds to provocation or opportunity, bypassing deliberation until or unless one rues the effects. Or changes accrete when attitudes are successively transformed by a tide of reflections. 3

Peirce 1934, vol. v., para. 5.442, p. 296.

59 Deliberation’s efficacy is, all the while, mysterious. For we don’t understand the mechanics of the transition from deliberation to the altered neural networks that provoke considered actions. The issue is unresolved because of obscurity in structure’s relation to function. We know many functions without knowing their structures and, equally, we have considerable information about structures—genes and the brain, for example—without knowing many of their functions. Thought is a brain state; thinking about what to do sometimes alters brain states, though deliberating about motives reveals nothing about this structure or the process that alters it. 1.6 Education and character Character—motivational structure—is acquired by way of the training that forms attitudes and practices, habits and skills. Principal animators are innate; all the rest is learned so education is a lever for creating and altering character. Some of the relevant education requires schools, but most socially sanctioned skills are learned in core systems: families, friendships, and neighborhoods, for example. We credit or blame individuals for their character though much of it is formed in childhood when people have little or no control of what they are taught or what they make of it. Character’s determinability—its plasticity—entails that responsibility for character lies as much with teachers as with those whose character they determine. Though “teachers” personalizes a role that is often mechanical: the character of a particular teacher, priest, or policeman is mostly incidental to rules, roles, mores, or laws he or she prescribes. Kant and Hegel ascribed their authority to reason; Nietzsche condemned their work as herd morality. Either way, motives are a function of desires and fears shaped by the accepted standards of social practice. Accordingly, agency is displaced. All or most of what we do when acting “responsibly” expresses internalized public norms: we are motivated to do as others would have us do. Yet idiosyncrasy is everywhere because people learn these routines in subtly different ways and because physiological differences and personal development guarantee that the balance of attitudes is different in each of us. Character is potentially dangerous: we are least original in respect to motives we share, but risky to others because unpredictable as regards motives that distinguish us. Education works both sides of this schism: it enforces the norms, but promotes tastes, talents, and attitudes that make us different.

60 There is also this corollary: we are educated by others when the task is socialization, but self-educated when choosing to elaborate or perfect our differences. Elaborations are sometimes consciously directed—one’s style of dress or speech, for example—but most extrapolate habits or proclivities that are not consciously learned or sought. For consciousness of our aims is not the same as a conscious intent to pursue them. Having acquired a particular stance, we persist. Here as above, motivational structure is a hierarchy of habits and attitudes, most of it uninspectable. 2. Goals, volition, and rewards Character is common but particular: it embodies the motivational structure of one’s society and culture but always with idiosyncrasies that distinguish people from one another. Some differences express the peculiarities of physiology or development history: we learn the same rules but apply them differently because of ambiguities in our learning or different affective responses: you say no with more authority than I because you’re less fearful of the response. Other motivational differences are the function of one’s goals. Goals are attitudes’ precipitates. For the hierarchy of attitudes— some learned early and hard to change, others that are newer and more easily altered—is also the hierarchy of values: some thing are favored, others not. Each person’s predilections and choices give determinate values to the determinable structure of social values: family and friends are the determinables, my family and friends are their determinate values. But more than preferences, these are goals: I do what I can to maintain them. Why do it? Because of affection or duty, and because failing them would be self-betrayal. Where success is a reward and failure a punishment, I am motivated—focused and persistent—in pursuit of the reward. For the hierarchy of attitudes is a steady-state system: where failure would be disrupting, one acts to one to sustain it. This is the teleology that explains volition: values direct action until a reward is achieved or a failure or punishment averted. Or rewards are self-enforcing so achieving them promotes behavior calculated to sustain the effect. Consider the two constituents of motivational structure apparent in the preparation for a career: there are determinable skills and attitudes learned in the course of one’s socialization and the more determinate focused attitudes, hence values, calibrated to successive tasks. One satisfies social expectations while marking a trajectory. Its trace may be

61 formulaic and clear: apprenticeship and a craft, marriage and children, the army, or a profession. Or it may have no certain line of advance, no assurance that the next move isn’t a step backwards. Yet there is, all the while, an aim and choices calculated to achieve it. We speak of will or intention but the more fundamental variables are the array of values— attitudes—and those experiences which fix certain values as personal navigating lights. Satisfy them and one is rewarded; fall short or turn away too soon and one is angry, flustered, or disappointed. What explains the persistence, the will, apparent in many people? Some persist because of the reasonable fear that circumstances are averse and that they or others important to them will suffer if they stop. But discount the many occasions when will is a response to external circumstances. Why is volition strong when circumstances don’t oblige us to continue? The plausible answer is, as above, the array of values prefigured in one’s attitudes. Some are idealized; fulfilling them confirms both the choice of ideals and one’s self-perception. One persists because this idealized value has a focal place in the hierarchy of his or her values: I am what I chose to be. Or I don’t quit short of success because that would be self-subverting if the quest has become a surrogate for the achievement. For there is intra-psychic equilibrium when an ideal is earnestly pursued or achieved. This can be simple: one sticks to a diet out of conviction that he or she will look and feel better if weight is lost. This aim is likely conscious, but many are not: there are parents who fear the competition of their children and children who never realize that the aims and trajectories of their lives, whatever the degree of their success, are reactions to parental hopes or styles. Every such example confirms that character—the socialized motivational structure made singular by circumstances, experience, talent, and attitudes—is one of motivation’s two principal determinants. First order animators—needs and desires—are the other: what we need versus who we are and what we want. 3. A useful metaphor Phenomenology is the direct descendent of the self-inspection commended in Descartes’ Meditations. Plato abjured personal perspective when intuiting the Forms; Hegel considered it the fragmentary and shallow starting point for thought’s trajectory as it exceeds particularity and contingency on the way to universality, necessity, and the Absolute. Descartes’ antecedents were Plotinus,

62 Augustine, and Proclus: it is I, they agreed, this contingent being who reflects upon my mind, its contents and structure. Nineteenth century phenomenlogists sometimes emphasized their links to Aristotle or Kant, but it is this Cartesian bias that gives phenomenology its content, purpose, and method. Cartesian introspection is, however, too feeble a light for the task at hand. Consciousness turned on itself seeks clarity in the dark; much that it pretends to clarify—the unity of consciousness, for example—is created by projecting ideas into the mist of processes that never stand clearly in conscious light. Self-awareness discloses some episodic motives, but little or nothing of the attitudes and habits that direct us. It attends to one or a few concerns at a time, unable to comprehend the complex of habits and attitudes that regulate behavior and reflection. The inflated regard for self-inspection is, all the while, the principal source of skeptical objections to every claim exceeding the boundary of self-awareness. So, phenomenology avoids the difficulty of relating function to structure by denying that a structure unknown to inspection—the brain—has any relevance to motivation. But this assumption, the relic of Descartes’ dualist ontology, founders with confirmation that Locke was right; there is no contradiction to supposing that God could have created matter that thinks. Computers do it in an elementary way; brains do it better. The issue is plainer if we consider a flaw in Descartes’ starting point, one implicit in the wax example of the second Meditation. It (coupled to later remarks) implies that wax has a geometrical form more elementary than the changes of state suffered as wax is heated and cooled. Knowing the form and its possible transformations would enable us to explain and predict the changes observed, though mind could only know this form by superseding its empirical data—of wax that is hot or cold—on the way to achieving the clarity and distinctness of mathematical ideas. We are reminded of Plato’s cave: obscurity in back, successive orders of greater clarity as one moves through and exits the cave. The analogy to motives is imperfect but useful. Identifying attitudes that shape behavior requires that we infer one from the other; we exceed inspectable data in order to identify their constraining conditions. But here, where motives are the issue, those conditions aren’t perceived by abstracting from the phenomenal given to clear and distinct ideas: we don’t escape the back of the cave by invoking Plato’s figure of the divided line or Husserl’s eidetic reduction. Instead, we proceed

63 abductively, inferring mind’s structure from its actions. Our hypotheses make an assumption that was daring a hundred years ago, though engineers and physiologists have made it plausible in our time: mind is altogether the activity of body, so motives, too, have an exclusively material character. Self-inspecting minds never decipher the neural activity that is their constitutive condition and cause. Phenomenology discerns the effects of neural activity, never the structure responsible for their occurrence. Relying on self-inspection for a comprehensive account of motivation is, therefore, too much like describing the changes in wax without being able to specify the geometrical form that explains them. Worse, it guarantees nothing will be known of motives that are quiescent when nothing provokes their expression. Mind is not a self-inspecting cave where conscious light skitters off the walls, but neither is it an insensate material brick. Mind resembles a motor idling; always active, most of its gears disengaged. The brain and its extended nervous system are a complex parallel processor. Mapping its attitudes, habits, and skills onto its neural circuitry is still preliminary, but we see already that these stable imprints guarantee persistent, stable motivation when circumstances are appropriate to culturally sanctioned, learned practices.4 Add idiosyncrasy and deliberation—values, plans, and rewards—and we have all that motivation requires or implies. References Mead, G. H. (1956). The social psychology of George Herbert Mead, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Peirce, C. S. (1934). “Pragmatism—The Logic of Abduction,” in C. Hartshorne and P. Weiss, eds, Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vols. i-v, Cambridge, Harvard University Press. Schulkin, J. (2007). “Effort and will: A cognitive neuroscience perspective,” Mind and matter, 5, 1, pp. 111-126.

4

Schulkin 2007.

Supervenience (on Steroids) and the Mind Dale Jacquette

1. Consciousness, qualia and intentionality To understand the relation between information processing neurophysiology and consciousness, and between qualia and intentionality, we should begin with the ultimate physical-material foundation of thought. What is the most natural sense in which the qualia and intentionality of any thought, and, correspondingly, of the sense and reference, Sinn and Bedeutung, of any meaningful expression of thought in philosophical semantics, are caused or conditioned by or otherwise logically and ontologically related to neurophysiological activity? We might begin by considering each thought as a neurophysiological event with physical properties that somehow ‘give rise’ to the existence of thought with qualia and intentionality. The facts of a subject’s neurophysiology, in this application, are the foundation for mental phenomena. We can then interpret the qualia and intentionality of mental states as supervening in a very specific sense on neurophysiology, and perhaps of qualia as supervening in precisely the same sense in turn on a thought’s intentional states. The mind-body problem is sometimes addressed by a theory in which the mind supervenes on the physical states of the brain and nervous system. If we are reluctant to accept a reductive mind-body identity that tries to explain all properties of mind as purely physicalmaterial, then for opposite reasons we may be equally dissatisfied with the Cartesian picture of the mind as an immaterial spirit somehow united with a functioning neurophysiology. The concept of supervenience is preferable to both eliminative or reductive and Cartesian alternatives, and has sometimes been endorsed as a more attractive way to understand the metaphysics of body and mind. The term ‘supervenience’ unfortunately functions all too often as a mere placeholder for a philosophically ideal but otherwise unspecified relation that is weaker than identity but stronger than causal dependence or accidental

66 concurrence. What, exactly, does it mean to say that thought supervenes on neurophysiology, mind on body, or any other supervenient entity or event on its supervenience base? Supervenience has been defined in several ways in the technical literature. All, in my opinion, are inadequate, simply not strong enough, to explain the relation between qualia and intentionality. I do not propose to survey all major efforts to articulate the concept of supervenience, but will focus on Jaegwon Kim’s definitions of weak and strong supervenience, and try to show why I find them unsatisfactory. Then, with Kim’s definitions as a starting place, I define a new and stronger concept of supervenience, which I will thereafter refer to merely as supervenience, but which I think of as supervenience on steroids, because of the extra conditions I propose to inject, and which I defend as a correct analysis of the sense in which thoughts supervene on neurophysiological states, and in which qualia might further be said to supervene on intentional states. 2. Weak and strong supervenience In his classic paper, “Concepts of supervenience,” and later investigations of related topics, Kim distinguishes between weak and strong supervenience.1 The difference in Kim’s words is as follows, contrasting two alternative equivalent definitions of weak supervenience with strong supervenience: A weakly supervenes on B if and only if necessarily for any x and y if x and y share all properties in B then x and y share all properties in A—that is, indiscernibility with respect to B entails indiscernibility with respect to A.2 A weakly supervenes on B if and only if necessarily for any property F in A, if an object x has F, then there exists a property G in B such that x has G, and if any y has G it has F.3

1

Kim 1993a. Kim 1993a, p. 58. 3 Kim 1993a, p. 64. 2

67 A strongly supervenes on B just in case, necessarily, for each x and each property F in A, if x has F, then there is a property G in B such that x has G, and necessarily if any y has G, it has F.4 The trouble with all three definitions is that they are not sufficiently robust to require a supervenient entity or event to constitute a metaphysically different kind of thing from its supervenience base, as we might expect in the case of the relation between body and mind. Kim-supervenience guarantees only that if you duplicate a neurophysiological state that is always (weak) or necessarily (strong) accompanied by a mental state, then you also duplicate the mental state. The definitions provide a sense in which a mental state occurs wherever a particular physical state occurs, provided only that they sometimes occur together. As a result, analysis might be criticized as at best articulating a necessary but not sufficient condition for supervenience. Kim’s definitions, moreover, as frequently remarked, do not establish what appears to be an essential asymmetry or one-way ontic dependence between a supervenient entity and its supervenient base, that many commentators find essential to a proper concept of supervenience. The implication is that by Kim’s weak or strong supervenience, in its application to the mind-body problem, the physical supervenes on the mental just as much and in precisely the same sense as the mental supervenes on the physical. Kim, indeed, explicitly claims that weak and strong supervenience are supposed to be transitive and reflexive, but neither symmetric nor asymmetric. Kim is certainly right to maintain that a correct analysis of supervenience ought to be reflexive and transitive. Why, however, should both weak and strong concepts of supervenience be neutral with respect to the symmetry or asymmetry of whatever supervenes on a supervenience base? In company with Kim’s critics who have raised the issue, I expect a correct definition of supervenience asymmetrically to prohibit B from supervening on A if A supervenes on B, and conversely, which Kim’s definitions do not guarantee. 4

Kim 1993a, p. 65. Kim 1993b. Kim endorses a definition of global supervenience proposed by Brian P. McLaughlin that is supposed to be stronger than his original concept of strong supervenience. The definition states, p. 81: “For any worlds wj and wk, and for any objects x and y, if x has in wj the same B-properties that y has in wk, then x has in wj the same A-properties that y has in wk.” The specific objections I raise against Kim’s definitions of weak and strong supervenience also clearly apply to this explication of global supervenience.

68 Thus, I am bothered by the fact that Kim’s definitions can be satisfied in such a way that being a triangle weakly and strongly Kimsupervenes on being a trilateral, and being a trilateral weakly and strongly Kim-supervenes on being a triangle. The same is true of any two objects, events, or instantiations of properties that in some sense necessarily always occur together. Intuitively, however, neither of these types of entities supervenes on the other. The problem is magnified if we try to apply Kim’s definitions of weak and strong supervenience to the mind-body problem, where it follows paradoxically that mind supervenes on neurophysiology and neurophysiology supervenes on mind. Commentators who regard this as an unwelcome implication describe this as the ontic dependence problem in Kim’s efforts to define the concept of supervenience. They expect, and so do I, that the mind supervenes on the body’s neurophysiology, and that particular states of mind supervene on particular neurophysiological states, and not the other way around. Since Kim’s definitions do not even require A and B to be distinct, moreover, all entities, properties, and events weakly and strongly Kim-supervene on themselves, making numerical identity a limiting case of weak and strong Kim-supervenience.5 3. Supervenience on steroids When I speak of a mental state supervening on a physical state, I mean something even stronger than Kim’s definition of strong supervenience. As I understand the concept of supervenience, not only does a certain type of neurophysiological state always accompany another type of psychological state, but the existence of the neurophysiological supervenience base is sufficient for the existence of the supervenient state, and not conversely. With respect to neurophysiological states and supervenient mental states, this is to say that the existence of a particular neurophysiological state can nomically or in another way necessitate the existence of a particular mental state, but the existence of a particular type of mental state does not necessarily indicate any particular type of underlying neurophysiological supervenience base. 5

See, inter alia, Grimes 1988. Grimes similarly criticizes Kim’s definition as failing to establish an asymmetrical ‘dependency’ between between supervenient phenomena and the supervenience base on which supervenient phenomena supervene. Kim responds to Grimes in Kim 1993c, especially pp. 144-147.

69 Intuitively, such a conclusion agrees with an objection frequently raised against reductive materialism in the philosophy of mind. The complaint, made by nonreductivists and reductive functionalists alike, is that no particular type of material properties can reasonably be identified as required for the occurrence of any particular type of mental state. The reason is that many different types of physical stuff might turn out to be capable of sustaining a given type of mental events, as in the conceivable supervenience of thought among nonhuman extraterrestrials or intellligent nonbiological machines. While the existence of a particular neurophysiological event assures that there also exists a particular type of supervenient mental event, the existence of the mental event does not, conversely, guarantee or indicate the existence of any particular type of material supervenience base. A preferred analysis of supervenience ought similarly to imply that thought might supervene on human or nonhuman neurophysiology, or on the functioning of an appropriate mechanical configuration of nonliving hardware or software. If a supervenient entity ontically depends on the existence and properties of the supervenience base, and not conversely, then the mere weak accidental accompaniment or strong necessary accompaniment of mental and physical states in Kim’s definitions does not say enough to characterize mental states as supervening on physical states. If the definition does not reflect a one-way ontic dependence between whatever supervenes and its supervenience base, then there is no ‘super’ in ‘supervenience,’ depriving the concept of much of its expected metaphysical interest. To be supervenient, I want to say, ought to establish that if mental states satisfy the definition, then in some sense they occupy a place above physical states. This sense of supervenience is not captured by Kim’s definitions of weak or strong supervenience, where the physical can as much supervene on the mental as the mental on the physical, provided only that in some unspecified way they are always necessarily found together. We could, therefore, to sloganize the proposal, consider the possibility of putting the ‘super’ back in supervenience. We can do this by prescribing a one-way ontic dependence between whatever supervenes and its supervenience base. Accordingly, I project a strengthened version of Kim’s definition of strong supervenience. If I could undo the etymology that has already grown up around this concept, I would insist that I am only trying to define ‘supervenience’ without qualification. Otherwise, if my meaning were not so different, I would borrow (shamelessly steal) a term I have since seen used in a

70 similar context by Terence Horgan to designate the strengthened concept of supervenience I want to define as ‘superdupervenience.’6 The word ‘supervenience’ has already acquired what I take to be undesirable colloquial and technical connotations, but I shall retain the original label for the concept that interests me simply as supervenience. My intention is to declare its greater strength, highlighting the ontic dependence asymmetry that I think must hold between supervenient entities and their supervenience bases. I begin by defining the concept of an object’s intrinsically possessing a property, which I then use to define a muchstrengthened concept of supervenience. The definitions state: (INTRI) Object A intrinsically possesses property F if and only if there is no object B such that B ≠ A and, necessarily, A possesses property F if and only if there is some relation R such that B is R-related to A. (SUPER) A supervenes on B just in case (logically or nomically, etc.) necessarily, for each x and each property F in A: (i) if x has F, then there is a property G in B such that x has G; (ii) if any y has G, it has F (having property G is sufficient for having property F); (iii) it is not necessarily the case that if any y has property F, then it has property G (having property F is not sufficient for having property G); (iv) A intrinsically possesses at least one property H that is not intrinsically a property of B. By the first definition, being red is an intrinsic property of some objects, unlike the property of being older than Plato. This is not to say that objects can only intrinsically possess nonrelational properties. An ordinary physical object, for example, is intrinsically precisely as big as and precisely as old as itself, since these properties, while reflexively relational, do not depend on the object’s extrinsic or external relations to another object. Qualia and intentionality, according to folk psychology and phenomenology, are intrinsic properties of mental states. This is obvious in the case of qualia, which are usually understood to be the nonrelational internal mental contents of psychological states. Intentionality is a more complicated example, involving a thought’s relationally being about or directed toward an object, which is usually 6

Horgan 1993.

71 another external object, but is sometimes the thought itself or its content. Intentional states are also generally classified as intrinsic by the definition, because their existence does not depend on the existence of whatever objects other than themselves they may happen to intend. There is a difference between a mental state’s intrinsic intentionality in its relation to an intended object, and its possessing the property of intending a particular object. A mental state is intrinsically intentional by virtue of being about something, which in principle could include the mental state’s reflexively intending itself, as in act of reflective self-consciousness. A mental state’s intentionality as such, therefore, its being intentional, is an intrinsic property of the mental state that does not necessarily depend on the mental state’s relation to another object. By contrast, Plato’s mental state of intending, say, Aristotle, clearly involves an intentional relation to another object, in this case Aristotle, so that Plato’s mental state, while intrinsically intentional, does not intrinsically possess the property of intending Aristotle. The analogy for the properties of an ordinary physical object is that an object’s being old or having a certain age is an intrinsic property of the object, while being older more specifically than Plato is not an intrinsic property or property the object has intrinsically. A mental state’s intrinsic intentionality per se is sufficient nonetheless, when the other conditions of the definition are satisfied, to classify mental states as supervening on intrinsically nonintentional neurophysiological states. The intrinsic raw feel of qualia is sufficient, again, when the other conditions of the definition are satisfied, to classify qualia as supervening on intentional, and ultimately on neurophysiological states, that do not intrinsically possess the lived-through qualitative content of qualia. 4. Transitive supervenience of qualia on intentional states and intentional states on neurophysiology The analysis makes it clear why, if experience supervenes on neurophysiology, a given experience is literally ‘super’ relative to or stands ‘above’ the neurophysiological conditions on which it supervenes. If an experience supervenes on a psychological subject’s neurophysiology, then there are properties of the experience that are inadequate for any specific properties of the neurophysiological foundation on which the experience supervenes. Thus, the beefed-up definition of supervenience is tantamount to what some philosophers

72 have spoken of alternatively as the emergent properties of emergent entities. This is to say two importantly related things: (1) There are properties of supervenient thought that are not properties of the neurophysiological supervenience base; and (2) There are properties of the supervenient thought that cannot adequately be explained in terms of the neurophysiological properties on which the experience supervenes. If qualia supervene on intentional states, then qualia cannot be adequately explained in terms of intentionality. The raw feel of a psychological state cannot simply be reduced to the intending of an intended object or objects by an intentional state, but also involves a nonrelational content of the experience. Informally expressed, merely knowing that a thought intends the taste of a strawberry does not tell us what it is like to taste a strawberry. We thus encounter Russell’s famous distinction between knowledge by description and knowledge by first-person acquaintance.7 If qualia and the intentionality of thought transitively supervene on neurophysiology, then, for similar reasons, they equally cannot be adequately explained in terms of the neurophysiological foundation on which they supervene. The concept of supervenience in this way reflects a commitment to an asymmetry or one-way ontic dependence that implies a parallel assymetry or one-way explanatory dependence of whatever supervenes on its underlying supervenience base.8 According to Kim’s definitions, qualia do not even strongly supervene on intentional states, nor do intentional states strongly supervene on qualia, although both qualia and intentionality may strongly supervene on a subject’s neurophysiology. As Putnam’s Twin Earth problem shows, there is no sense of ‘necessarily’ in which the two necessarily are always found together. Where a certain quale occurs together with a certain intentional state, it is always logically, nomically, and in other ways possible for the quale to occur with a different intentional state, and conversely.9 The definition of supervenience, by contrast, makes it possible plausibly to hypothesize that qualia supervene on intentional states, but that intentional states do not supervene on qualia. The reflexive intentionality of intentional states in which qualia are phenomenologically indistinguishable from intended objects is 7

Russell 1910-11, pp. 108-128; Russell 1912, Chapter V. A still weaker concept of supervenience is proposed by Pollock 1989 and 1987. 9 Putnam 1975; Burge 1979; Burge 1982a; Burge 1982b; Fodor 1982; Loar 1998; McLaughlin and Tye 1998. 8

73 sufficient for the lived-through experience of qualia. Although intentional states are always accompanied by qualia, the experience of particular qualia is never sufficient for the occurence of a particular intentional state.10 References Burge, T. (1979). “Individualism and the mental,” in P. A. French, T. E. Uehling, Jr., and H. K. Wettstein, eds, Midwest studies in philosophy, 4, Studies in metaphysics, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, pp. 73-122. Burge, T. (1982a). “Other bodies,” in A. Woodfield, ed, Thought and object, New York, Oxford university press, pp. 97-120. Burge, T. (1982b). “Two thought experiments reviewed,” Notre Dame journal of formal logic, 23, pp. 284-293. Fodor, J. A. (1982). “Cognitive science and the twin-earth problem,” Notre Dame journal of formal logic, 23, pp. 98-118. Grimes, T. R. (1988). “The myth of supervenience,” Pacific philosophical quarterly, 69, pp. 152-160. Horgan, T. (1993). “From supervenience to superdupervenience: Meeting the demands of a material world,” Mind, 102, pp. 555586. Jacquette, D. (2006). “Supervenience of qualia and intentionality,” Philo: A journal of philosophy, 9, pp. 145-164. Jacquette, D. (2009). Philosophy of mind: The metaphysics of consciousness, London, Continuum Books. Kim, J. (1993a). “Concepts of supervenience,” in Supervenience and mind: Selected philosophical essays, Cambridge, Cambridge university press, pp. 53-78 (originally published in Philosophy and phenomenological research, 45, 1984, pp. 153-176). Kim, J. (1993b). “‘Strong’ and ‘global’ supervenience revisited,” in Supervenience and mind: Selected philosophical essays, Cambridge, Cambridge university press, pp. 79-91 (originally published in Philosophy and phenomenological research, 48, 1987, pp. 315-326). Kim, J. (1993c). “Supervenience as a philosophical concept,” in Supervenience and mind: Selected philosophical essays, 10

A much extended version of this essay, titled “Supervenience of qualia and intentionality,” appears in Hacquette 2006; see also Jacquette 2009, pp. 194-236.

74 Cambridge, Cambridge university press, pp. 131-160 (originally published in Metaphilosophy, 21, pp. 1-27). Loar, B. (1998). “Social content and psychological content,” in R. H. Grimm and D. C. Merrill, eds, Contents of thought: Essays on intentionality, Tucson, University of Arizona press, pp. 99-109. McLaughlin, B. and M. Tye (1998). “Externalism, twin-Earth, and selfknowledge,” in C. Wright, B. C. Smith, and C. MacDonald, eds, Knowing our own minds, Oxford, Oxford university press, pp. 285-320. Pollock, J. L. (1987). “How to build a person,” Philosophical perspectives, 1, pp. 109-154. Pollock, J. L. (1989). How to build a person: A prolegomenon, Cambridge, The MIT (Bradford Books) Press. Putnam, H. (1975). “The meaning of ‘meaning,’” in Mind, language, and reality, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1975, pp. 215-271. Russell, B. (1910-11). “Knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian society, 11, pp. 108128. Russell, B. (1912). The problems of philosophy, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

The Subjective Origin of Causality Liliana Albertazzi

1. Introduction If thick dark clouds gather in the sky, we perceive that it is going to rain and we hurry away from the beach or we seek shelter under a roof. It is not necessary always to undertake the entire inductive procedure of a tabula presentiae and a tabula absentiae to infer that a certain effect is about to occur: we anticipate it simultaneously as an impression intrinsic to the present perceptive field. We derive the same impression in interpersonal relations, when someone’s behaviour makes it plain that he does not appreciate the presence of someone else or is trying to avoid that person. In this case, the information is conveyed by the perception of expressive forms of gestural type, mimetic or facial, and by a series of temporal structures, such as acceleration of the movements perceived (Heider, Simmel 1944, and below). The shape and leaden colour of the clouds and the movements expressive of displeasure and evasion are therefore natural patterns of information about a cause-effect relation embedded in the perceived environment: at this level, in fact, we cannot speak of classification of items according to computational metrical features. It is this information that we extrapolate equally simultaneously, for example, from the road signs that represent temporal and spatial structures, and ones of anticipated causality, in iconic form (Albertazzi 2005). In what does causal meaning consist, therefore? How is it conceived in science and in analysis of social action, and how is it represented? Are the concepts of cause in the natural sciences and of imputation or motivation in the social sciences untranslatable, and do they refer to ontologically different phenomena, or do they share an unitary semantic nucleus?1 Moreover, is it possible to find a scientific explanation that

1

On the anthropological origin of the concept of causality see Kelsen 1939.

76 justifies the objectivity of a causal judgment, however understood as the subjective principle constitutive of the meaning of the experience? 2. Conceptual framework In order to avoid any misunderstanding arising from the synonymous uses of the word, I wish to clarify the meaning of ‘subjective’ as used in this paper. The phenomenological meaning of ‘subjective’ is intended as a structure, or part of a structure, related to the perceiver; it is therefore not to be identified with either the subjectivistic, intended as highly variable from one individual and from one interpretative context to another, nor with any aspects considered in the definition of secondary qualities. On the contrary, it refers to universal structures related to our perceptual access to reality. Over time, these have been variously interpreted as innate, as part of evolution, or as a priori structures, but in any case they are universally shared among individuals. Kant expressly treated the category of causality in terms of subjective structures. He spoke of it in terms of “subsumption of the multiple under a rule,” following a crucial ontological inversion concerning the concept of reality itself as an object of representation. The causal principle thus becomes a relationship between the subjective (a priori) structures of the subject and the objects of the external world (Kant 1781/1974). As such, it should in principle concern every aspect of experience, perceptive or interpersonal. The evolution within critical philosophy, moreover, shows how Kant was able to provide epistemological justification for the categories (namely, the transcendental deduction, which answers the question as to what objective validity the categories, for example causality, have for our knowledge), while he had to forgo the subjective deduction of the categories, which answers the question of the conditions of possibility of appearances as the objects of possible perception of experience. Kant’s analysis of the passive synthesis of experience, in fact, was an attempt to resolve the question from the point of view of the origin of concepts, beginning with the manifold of sensible experience.2 Specifically, the third phase of subjective synthesis would have explained the existence of apperception as a formal unity of consciousness—or said more 2

Present in Part A of the Critique of pure reason of 1781 and omitted in the following editions. See De Vleschaueer 1934, 1939; Albertazzi 1992, 1996.

77 analytically, the consciousness of the unity of the function of thought which unifies the manifold according to a rule (Kant 1781/1974, Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Intellect, sects. 2 and 3). Investigation into the subjective structures involved in the concept of cause is also present in Hume (Hume 1748/2007) and in Husserl (1966a, 1966b) and in various ways it relates the causal structures to the subjective processing of information, but with different outcomes. More precisely, in Hume the causal principle consists in the perception of a force given in the present impression which naturally associates itself with anticipation of an absent idea. What in the actual perception constitutes the bond that connects dimensions of perceptive presence to dimensions of mental presence in the future is the feeling that there is a ‘necessary connection’ between the two moments. For Hume, the necessity of this connection is due, however, only to the repetition of this experience in time (habit), which reinforces that type of expectation. In short, Hume confines the cause-effect relation within real events, having it originate in the observation of a relationship. The nature of this connection, however, is the true problem of the principle of causality, which on the basis of simple associations of ideas cannot be explained either as an ontological category or as an objective epistemological category. At most it is a probabilistic inference which enables forecasts to be made on the base of past experience. From this point of view, Hume’s position in regard to science is weaker than Kant’s. It is interesting to note that large part of contemporary science still adopts a similar criterion, of empiricist derivation, implementing it with the use of formal models, Bayesian or otherwise (for example, Marr 1982; Bennet, Hoffman, Prakash 1989; Knill, Richards 1996). Husserl, unlike Hume, did not consider causality to be a derivate of primary and secondary associative processes, but rather a real relationship in the act of presentation, like seeing, which connects two or more objects through the specific structure of the temporal unfolding and its phases (anticipation and retention) which constitute its continuity (Husserl 1966a). For example, in the perception of a throw, in the initial phase of the movement of the first object in the direction of another which is stationary in the visual field, perceptively one already has the anticipation of the dynamic event that will follow. In particular, Husserl’s analysis highlights the inseparability of the temporal structures from the subjective structures of construction of phenomenal reality, in which the category of causality is a category of relation internal to events in their temporal unfolding, and therefore acquires spatial

78 extensiveness (on the effects of perceived causality in spatial displacement see below). Husserl’s analysis shows in particular that the categories of time, space, reality and causality are ontologically connected from the point of view of their genesis. Causality is thus analysed in terms of the ontological structure of a subjectively integrated reality. Because the category of causality is intrinsic to the construction of subjective time (and space) in the time of presentness (the first development of the topic in Stern 1897; James 1890/1950) in which events unfold, Husserl’s analyses can be considered a theoretical development of the Kantian schematism of the so-called “passive synthesis of experience.”3 This theoretical programme subsequently underwent experimental development, of which here I shall recall only some main stages (see also Bühler 1913; Selz 1929/1982. On the topic see Albertazzi 2006a, 2006b): 1. The psychophysical analyses of the apprehension of time by Benussi (Benussi 1907, 1909, 1913, 1914) and the subsequent ones by Fraisse (Fraisse 1963) and Michon (Michon, Jakson 1985). 2. Piaget’s genetic analyses of the development of the concepts of space, time and causality in early childhood (Piaget 1930, 1952, 1954/2004). 3. Michotte’s analyses of the perception of causality (Michotte 1938; Michotte 1946/1963; Michotte 1950; Michotte et al. 1962; Michotte, Burke 1951; Michotte, Thinès, Crabbé 1964; Michotte, Thinès 1963/1991; see also Costall 1991). At present, one notes the resumption of some themes addressed by Michotte, almost exclusively within a neurophysiologic explanatory framework, and developing methodological tools to measure causal perception (Montpellier, Nuttin 1973; White 1995; Schlottmann 2000. See also Scholl, Tremoulet 2000. An approach similar to Michotte’s, instead, is in Kiritani 1999), some studies on the duration of the time of presentness, again in terms of neuronal analysis of intentionality (Pöppel 1994; Libet 1994; Freeman 2000), other developments in research on the perception of intentional complex movements (Happè, Ehlers, Fletcher, Frith U., Johansson, Gillberg, Dolan, Frackowiack, Frith, C. 1996), as 3

Husserl, in fact, expressly referred to Part A of Kant’s Critique of pure reason. See Husserl 1966b.

79 well as analyses on infants’ perception of reactive motions, and the construction of the concept of object and agents in children (Schlottman, Surian 1999), and in animal psychology (Zucca, Milos, Vallortigara 2007), which show how the Piagetian stages of cognitive development exist in avian species and progress through relatively fixed sequences. What has been lost is the theoretical frame of reference, which is useful not only for interpreting the data but also identifying the correct experimental paradigms. The above-mentioned original analyses share two features: (i) an attempt, also experimental, to analyse the genesis of subjective structures underpinning the construction of the meaning of the empirical experience and (ii) the thesis that the genesis of these structures (identified à la Kant as space, time and causality) is inseparable from the notions of object and reality. 3. Basics: Benussi, Piaget, Michotte Benussi’s work on temporal apprehension was thoroughly expounded in what today is regarded as a classic on the experimental analysis of the perception of time, the Psychologie der Zeitauffassung (Benussi 1913; see Albertazzi 1999, 2001b). In point of fact, however, the temporal structure of the phases of the presentation is analyzed in all his works—even the earliest ones on optical illusions to tactile-kinetic ones—and in particular in his analysis of the so-called apparent movement. The difference between the objective time of the measurement of sequences of stimuli (grounding) and the qualitative time of the presentation and of the perceptive contents (form) perhaps constitute the main argument in favour of the non-reducibility of the psychological level to the physical/physiological level. The issue central to all this research was the so-called time of presentness. Set out within this framework are the classic themes for exemplification of the problem, namely: (i) phenomenal temporal perception (and specifically the difference between perceived succession and the perception of succession); (ii) the location in space, place and time of phenomena; and (iii) the nature of functional wholes, like melodies. Put very briefly, the experimental researches conducted by Benussi demonstrated that: (i) the presentation is stratified into phases; (ii) there is a time of development of form; (iii) presentation and representation are distinct moments of our unitary representational life.

80 As to (i), Benussi sought to determine the limiting boundaries of the time of presentness. He observed that, when the intervals extend beyond the limits of perception of a simple discontinuous change, new situations of consciousness arise. These durations are apprehended unitarily, in the sense that: (i) no part of them is remembered; (ii) they are qualitatively differentiated (on the basis of the characteristics of the acts by which they are apprehended). There are five of these durations, and they relate to qualitatively different situations. Benussi defined them as ‘absolute’ impressions of duration, because their determination, according to Benussi, does not derive from the comparison with other presentations. They are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Very short durations (from 90 to 234-252 msec). Short durations (from 234-252 to 585-630 msec). Indeterminate durations (from 585-630 to 1080-1170 msec). Long durations (from 1080-1170 to 2070 msec). Extremely long durations (≥ 2070 msec).

These durations constitute the present and its fringes (see also Poli, this volume). Their differences consist in the fact that in short durations the delimiting sensations can only be separated with difficulty, so as to apprehend some sensorial content different from the limits and located between them. In the case of long intervals, instead, only with difficulty can the delimiting sensations be grasped as constituting a single whole together with the interposed content. In the former case there is an effort of analysis, in the latter an effort of synthesis, to which corresponds a different phenomenic salience (Auffälligkeit) which arises from the objective grounding. The group of indeterminate durations performs a special role: these are the minimum durations necessary for apprehension of the maximum number of elements of a multiplicity, or of a change which can be grasped by a single act of apprehension. They correspond to the focus of the psychic present. The ‘present,’ in short, is that feature of psychic change which is apprehended as unity and which is the object of a single mental act. From an experimental point of view, it may therefore be possible to determine by means of tachistoscopic presentations (a) its extension (how long it lasts), and (b) its content (how many elements it comprises). Tachistoscopic experiments showed, in fact, that the present is not solely simultaneous perception; it is also unification of the intuited multiplicity.

81 In order to measure the duration of the present, Benussi induced two successive acts of apprehension by presenting two objects, for example two cards (by tachistoscope), each of which contained at most the content graspable within one single act. He then measured the duration of the interval necessary for the apprehensions of the two objects not to interfere with each other. If the second object was presented before the apprehension of the first was complete, the two objects became the content of a single act of apprehension. Consequently, if the two presentations each consisted of 6 elements, rather than 12 elements altogether, only about 6 were apprehended. If the cards are shown with an interval slightly above the threshold of succession of visual sensations (50 msec), the minimum duration necessary for apprehension to take place without interference was ca. 700 msec, which is the minimum duration necessary for apprehension of the maximum of changes in a multiplicity, or the maximum of change graspable with a single mental act. In sum, it is the duration of the psychic present. The act of apprehension is synthetic, since what is apprehended is the grouping of the elements, their unity, in a non-distributed simultaneous content. What is apprehended, in short, is a synthetic form which unifies a diversity of ‘sense elements’ given in succession. Finally, note that exposure time does not coincide with apprehension time: apprehension only begins with the presentation of the object, and more time is required for its subjective completion, which suggests that the time of presentness requires a longer period of time to organize its contents, compared with a sequence of individual stimuli. Subsequent analyses on the subjective origin of the principle of causality were closely connected with the microstructure of the subjective time of presentness. For example, as Michotte maintained, phenomena of causality perception range between 700 to 800 msecs (see below). In some celebrated analyses of the 1950s on the construction of the concept of reality, based on study of sensorimotor perception in the first two years of life, Piaget showed that the child firstly assimilates the external environment to his own activity, and later, in order to extend his assimilation, forms an increasing number of schemata. In particular, the concept of object is constructed in six stages, corresponding to his/her intellectual development

82 • First and second stages (1 to 4 months): Reflexes and earliest habits. The universe is made of pictures recognized but with no substantial permanence or spatial organization. It is a product of sensorimotor assimilation, in Aristotelian sense (Aristotle, De Anima). • Third stage (4 to 8 months): Secondary circular reactions. A beginning of permanence is conferred to things by prolongations of the moment of accommodation (grasping) but no systematic search for absent object is observable. • Fourth stage (8 to 12): Application of known to new situation. Searching for objects disappeared, but no regard for their displacement. • Fifth stage (12 to 18 months): Object constituted. As to the object’s permanent substance, and inserted in the group of displacements, but no account of the change of positions brought about outside in the field of direct perception. • Sixth stage (16 to 18 months): Image of absent objects and their displacement. Specifically, the analyses show that there is no evidence that direct perception is at first perception of objects (on this point see also Rensink 2000, 2002). The initial stage of the construction of reality is given by the structure of acts as internal ongoing presentations (mostly in the sense of Brentano 1874/1995). The concept of object is a later construct due to the transformation of an initial phase of phenomenalistic primitive universes made of aggregates of qualities perceived simultaneously into the construction of a coherent spatial group and the representation of invisible displacements in an apprehended space-time universe, a sort of system of relations consisting of permanent substances and of relations of cause to effect (the concept of ‘apprehended’ is precisely in Benussi’ sense. On the primacy of spatio-temporal information in children see also Spelke et al 1995; Aguiar, Baillargeon 1999, 2002; Wilcox, Baillargeon 1998; Xu 2007). Of utmost interest are the first three stages, which concern the genesis of concepts of time, space and causality. In the (two) primitive stages of the construction process a fundamental role is played by the structure of group, in the sense that groups of displacements mean ordering of movements in time, and permanence of objects means causal connections among events (see Albertazzi 2003). Causality appears to be primarily a sensorimotor

83 schema, which reflects phenomena peculiar to practical objects (objects of assimilation) and practical space (space of action). In short, in perceiving reality the subject experiences a ‘feeling’ which is translated into ‘something is occurring’ here and now (Piaget 1954/2004, ch. 3). Primitive causality is thus principally characterized by a dynamic feeling of efficacy and by a phenomenalist perceiving. In the third stage, defined of magico-phenomenalistic causality, due to systematic coordination of prehension and sight, elementary permanence is attributed to things as functions of the action. Here causality is purely internal dynamism, not yet attributed to the objects perceived. This stage also involves the construction of a temporal system of relations as duration experienced in the course of action: time is the feeling of a development of a sequential direction immanent to the stage of consciousness, i.e. the qualitative extension of the immediately past to the present occurring event (Piaget 1954/2004, Chapter 4). In other words, this is the stage of the construction of the subjective series still tied to action, which the construction of objective (independent of the self activity) and representative series (of absent objects) will follow later. Independently from the many relevant aspects of the detailed characteristics of the process, it is important to note that Piaget showed that perceived reality is initially explicable by a mechanism of temporal displacements in an extensity space (again mostly in Brentano’s sense of a theory of continua. See Brentano 1988; Albertazzi 2002b). In short, Piaget’s analyses show how the subjective phenomena of anticipation permit the hypothesis of a subjective origin of the concept of causality, and specifically that also subjective qualities may be linked with physical causality. Compared with Hume and Kant, therefore, Piaget tried to give a scientific explanation of a process that is due neither to the association of ideas nor to the innateness of sequential structures: only the assimilative function is innate. Piaget’s analyses intended to show in particular the microgenesis of the Humean ‘feeling’ that connects the phases of the perception of an unfolding event through the construction of a subjective system of relations among space, time and subjective causality. In the case of causality, therefore, this is not an association due (solely) to a prior experience that would make a weak inferential process possible, but a basic mechanism for the construction of meaning. In favour of the original Kantian project, moreover, it can be said that Piaget succeeds in

84 performing a subjective deduction of the categories of time, space and causality. As for the analysis of causality in Husserl, in this case, too, Piaget’s studies confirm the connection between the construction of the visual appearance (Ding) in the perceptive field and the construction of a space for action (Husserl 1936, 1988), which proceed in parallel with the structuring of the mechanism of the time of presentness (Husserl 1966a). Experimental analysis of these subjective structures has been conducted mainly by the Louvain school on the already mentioned perception of causation (Michotte 1946, 1950. See Thinès 1977), by Heider and Simmel on expressive movements (Heider, Simmel 1944), and by Minguzzi, Kanizsa and Vicario, exponents of Italian gestaltism, on perception of the ‘intentional relation’ (Minguzzi 1961, 1968; Massironi, Bonaiuto 1967; Kanizsa, Vicario 1968. On Italian Gestaltism see Albertazzi 2001a). In all three cases, the origin of meaning in the perceptive structures has been analysed by means of laboratory experiments, confirming some of the main tenets of the phenomenological observations. The contribution of laboratory research to phenomenological analysis consists in the fact that, for example, it singles out the ‘invariants’ in a situation which—on the basis of the existence of particular structural characteristics—render phenomenal events meaningful in some way or another, and which ensure that ‘physically’ distinct events are ‘perceived’ as unitary. In particular, the so-called apparent movement shows that the perception of movement does not derive from the memory of experiencing an object that has changed place (the Zenonian-logical thesis), and that object and movement are different aspects of the same phenomenon. It also shows that apparent movement (i.e change) (i) is an originary phenomenon (see moment ϕ in Wertheimer), (ii) does not depend on comparison, (iii) contradicts the hypothesis of the constancy of stimuli, and (iv) follows the laws of Gestalt. Other results from Wertheimer’s research led him to conclude that (v) in the phenomenal world displacement is not the same thing as movement, (vi) time plays a fundamental role in perception, (vii) variations in velocity are expression of the time distributed in the space between the flashes, and (viii) the velocity derives from, in fact depends on, the figure’s attribution of displacement. In short, object and movement are different aspects of the perception of movement (Wertheimer 1923). An experimental approach to the genesis of the structures of meaning shows that the ‘perception’ of causation at the phenomenal

85 level is based on a descriptive analysis of movement (the expression “morphology of movement” is used in Michotte 1938), and on specific spatio-temporal structures, which are not affected by higher order cognitive processes, like beliefs and intentions. In order to demonstrate this, I shall concentrate on three types of perceived movement between two entities in opposition and which display specific expressive characteristics (for the following see also Albertazzi 2002a): 1. Movements with momentary contact. This is a type of movement which comes about with momentary contact between the two entities. It yields the perception of the transfer of kinetic energy from one to the other. The rapid and coordinated alternation of such sequences of movements give the impression of ‘struggle.’ 2. Simultaneous movements with prolonged contact. This is a type of movement which comes about with prolonged contact. It yields the perception of an Agonist which applies its force to the Antagonist ‘entraining’ the latter with it. 3. Simultaneous movements without contact. This is a type of movement which comes about through simultaneous movements of two entities without contact. It yields a perceived ‘psychological causation’ where one of the two actors ‘follows,’ ‘leads’ or ‘escapes from’ the other. Onset causing of action Functional representations may be important attributes of the meanings of objects. The majority of the events of perception, in effect, are of dynamic character. They are therefore connected to the perception of movement understood both as motion and as a qualitative change of states.4 Among the factors that determine meaning (and expressiveness in particular) are the characteristics of the movement itself: its direction, velocity, the modalities of the sequence, and the connective relations among the phases of an event (on the structural characteristics of perceptive continua see Albertazzi 2006a, 2006b). A first feature of meaning is given by the direction of the movement: that is, whether it involves the approach and merging of two 4

The distinction is Aristotelian. On the intrinsically temporal nature of spatial perception see Albertazzi 1997, 2002b.

86 or more units, or their distancing and separation. As a study by Michotte has shown, embedded in this factor is an emotional dimension of ‘seeking’ or ‘avoiding’ a contact (Michotte 1950). A second feature of meaning is given by the velocity of the movement, which conveys different expressive meanings according to whether it takes place more or less rapidly (‘violently’), more or less slowly (‘gently,’ ‘smoothly’), and with or without interruptions (‘wait,’ ‘hesitation’). In the perceptive field, the various factors that make up a dynamic event combine functionally to form the final rendering, so that they may be different renderings according to the specific relation that arises between, for example, direction and velocity, pause and velocity, distance/direction and velocity, etc. In other words, meaning appears to be a relational concept. Let us take as examples two situations analysed by Michotte which comprise two simple squares of different colours, located at a certain distance from each other on the screen, moving at different speeds in different directions, and with or without interruptions in their movement (for all the experimental details, such as distance between the objects on the screen, speed of movement, etc., see also Michotte 1946). The base experiments, which also comprised a certain number of internal variations, were those of (i) launching and (ii) entraining. (i) Launching effect.

Figure 1. Scheme of launching

A horizontal slot (l 150 mm, h 5 mm) is cut into a screen. Behind the slot can be seen a white unitary background on which two squares A and B (5 mm wide) of different colours are visible. B is located at the centre of the slot and A to its left (40 mm). At a certain moment, A begins to move in a linear way towards B (v = + 30 cm sec) and stops

87 when it reaches it, while B starts moving away from A at the same speed (or more slowly). Then B halts after travelling for about 20 mm. The percept is described as A ‘which shoves,’ ‘which launches,’ ‘which propels,’ ‘which pushes’ B. In short, ascribed to the impact of A is the production of movement in B. Further developments show that we can perceive certain relationships in moving objects behind a screen too (i.e. amodal launching effect) (Kiritani 1999). (ii) Entraining effect. The situation is the same as before except that A, after colliding with B, continues to move without stopping and without changing speed, while B begins to move after the contact with A, and at the same speed. After the contact, A and B remain side by side moving together across a space of ca. 34 mm, before they come to a halt. The perceptive rendering obtained is described as an A ‘which entrains,’ ‘which pulls B with it,’ ‘which picks up B.’ In other words, ascribed to the impact of A is the advancement of B, the production of its movement. These experiments show that an essential component of the perception of causality consists of the lack of a pause between the two movements. The introduction of a pause (even one of only 200 msec), in fact, yields the perceptive rendering of two separate movements with no causal nexus between them; vice versa, the perception of causality is given by the simultaneous presence of two moving objects. This demonstrates that: 1. The (spatio-)temporal structure of events is part of the meaning of those events. 2. The organization of the diverse functional factors acting on the perceptive structures gives rise to equally diverse linguistic renderings. It is also possible to analyse the semantic significance of these experiments in the perception of causation into the following essential components: 1. The meaning components in the strict sense. 2. The expressive components. 3. The intentional behaviour components (Minguzzi 1961; Massironi 1967; Kanizsa, Vicario 1968).

88 Each of these components relates to specific structural aspects of phenomenal causation (see again in particular Kanizsa, Vicario 1968). Experiment 1. As in Figure 1 there are two objects (A, B) in the visual field, and A moves to reach B. There may be: 1. A contact of medium-long duration. 2. A brief contact. In the case of a medium-long contact, depending on the velocity of the movement (rapid or slow) the perceptive rendering obtained is that of two objects which ‘merge,’ or of two objects which simply ‘join together.’ In the case of a brief contact, depending on the velocity of the movement (rapid or slow) the perceptive rendering obtained is that of an object which ‘hits’ another, or of the simple ‘touching’ of the two objects. The experiment demonstrates that the velocity, duration and number of objects in the field and the modalities of the sequence are functionally connected in the overall event’s meaningful constitution of itself. Experiment 2. There are two objects (A, B) in the visual field. B begins to move after being reached by A, while A stays still. There may be: 1. A contact of brief duration. 2. A contact of sufficiently long duration. In the former case, according to the velocity of movement of A and B (rapid or slow), the perceptive rendering obtained is that of an object which ‘launches’ another, or of one object which ‘triggers motion’ in the other. Experimental subjects invariably report a ‘launching’ effect for intervals up to 50 msec (in some cases up to 100 msec). With longer intervals (up to 150-200 msec and more) the perceptive rendering changes until the subject perceives two totally distinct movements, with no causal connection between them. Experiments demonstrate that the temporal structure is one of the factors that constitutes meaning in phenomenal events.

89 As for velocity, this is an integrating factor, and especially a hierarchizing one, because the stronger object acts as victorious with respect to the weaker one (subject to the action). However, the launching effect vanishes when the (absolute) velocity is too high, which gives rise to a sort of tunnel effect: A moves uninterruptedly across the screen, while B remains static and functions as an occluding object. The effect also vanishes when the (absolute) velocity is too low. Moreover, the brevity of the contact in the former case perceptively renders the idea of an ‘escape reaction’ by the second object, an impression heightened if it starts moving before the other object reaches it. In the latter case, the sufficient temporal duration of the contact makes it possible to segregate the two objects into a new unit, which conveys the impression of a ‘momentary agreement’ between the two initial objects. Experiment 3. There are two objects (A, B) in the visual field. B begins to move after being touched by A. From this moment on, A and B move together, close to each other and in the same direction. There may come about: 1. On contact, a movement without a pause. 2. After the contact, a momentary pause. In the former case, depending on the type of movement, the effect perceived is that of a ‘friendly’ union between the two objects, or conversely the violent ‘entraining’ of object B by object A. Moreover, if the speed of the approach is slow, and the departure is rapid, the effect is obtained of an outright ‘act of violence.’ In the case of entraining, moreover, a certain role in the final perceptive rendering is played by the presence of B in the field prior to impact. Overall, Michotte’s experiments confirm both the isomorphist hypothesis of Berlin Gestalt (in particular the isomorphism among emotions, behavioural expression and comprehension) (Köhler 1929). and the cognitive import of the tertiary qualities, while also showing the functional connection between the meaningful (and emotional) characteristics and the kinetic structures of phenomenal events.

90 Onset causing of rest As noted above, the force dynamics scheme conceptualizes not only the ‘onset causing of motion’ but also the ‘onset causing of rest.’ It is possible to cite experimental data in support of this variant of the scheme as well, with the ‘braking effect’ (Levelt 1962; Minguzzi 1968).

Figure 2. Scheme of brake-effect

Take a screen divided into two parts, one white (to the left) and one grey (to the right). At a certain point, a black disc (8.62 cm in diameter) appears halfway up the screen and moves rightwards (33 cm/sec). When it comes into contact with the grey surface the disk momentarily slows down (4.4 cm/sec) and moves at reduced speed for ca. one-tenth of a centimetre. The perceptive rendering is that the grey area is a ‘sticky,’ ‘gelatinous,’ etc., surface that ‘brakes’ the movement of the object, which changes from ‘natural’ to ‘forced.’ There are variants on this classic situation: for example, the field is divided into three parts. When the central grey one—the disc—leaves the right-hand margin of the grey surface, it changes speed (from 4.4 cm/sec to 33 cm/sec, and one has the impression that it has ‘started to run.’ Or take two large rectangles which are placed in the middle of the field, one above the other and separated by a white space the same size as the disc. The subject has the impression that the disc insinuates itself into the ‘gap,’ etc. In these cases, the ‘natural movement’ of the object is that which occurs on the screen, while the modification is perceived as the effect of an extraneous force. Once again of importance is the duration, or the temporal limit after the momentary change of velocity: in the case of abrupt deceleration or acceleration, the subject perceives a ‘braked’ movement at the moment when the disc comes into contact with a part of the field of a different colour. Note that, although the movement of the object is braked, it never loses its active character.

91 Another example of onset causing of rest is that of the ‘hampering action’ which takes place when a moving object abruptly stops when it comes into contact with an immobile surface (Minguzzi 1968, 176-84. See also Burke 1962). Responsible for this perceptive rendering is the moment of the impact, rather than the halting of the moving object.

Figure 3. Scheme of hampering

Take a screen on which a vertical black rectangle (28 x 14) is placed in the middle of the field. A black square (8.26 cm) appears to the left and moves towards the rectangle (33 cm/sec). After around 70 cm it reaches the rectangles and comes to an halt. More recent studies show that perceived causality yields so-called illusory spatial displacement too, in the sense that a partial-overlap event is increasily likely to be perceived as a causal launch in isolation, as the degree of overlap between the two objects decreases (Scholl, Nakayama 2002). More generally, recent studies, focusing on the effects produced by causal perception, give more information on other aspects of visual processing (Watanabe, Shimojo 2001). Psychological causation Within this conceptual framework, of particular interest are the movements of psychological causation (‘waiting,’ ‘fleeing,’ etc.), where the cause of action is conceptualized as a force internal to the Agent, while the action produced is viewed as its external effect. In fact, once it has been shown that the semantic yield of these terms is based on specific kinetic structures, they cannot be taken to be a simple metaphorical extension of the mechanical causation scheme to the psychological domain. Unlike (i) natural movements (regular oscillation, gravity, etc.) and (ii) the already-analysed movements of mechanical causation (launching, pushing, entraining, etc.) which express the force exerted by

92 one object on another, there are a variety of phenomenal movements which (iii) connote an object and/or an event (as e.g. ‘serpentine,’ ‘rhythmic,’ ‘jerky,’ ‘undulating,’ etc.), movements which manifest states of mind (e.g. ‘fear,’ ‘love,’ ‘pain,’ ‘hatred,’ etc.) or movements which manifest intentional sentiments (e.g. ‘intentionally avoiding,’ ‘inducing,’ ‘seducing,’ ‘involving,’ etc.) (On the expressive qualities see Metzger 1941; Albertazzi 1997, and 2010. As to intentional perceiving in infants see Schlottman, Surian 1999). The latter, the so-called reactive movements, unlike the movements of mechanical causation, manifest not an energy that passes from one subject to another but an energy internal to the moving subject. Analysis of these movements—which has been conducted mainly by Italian gestaltists (Minguzzi 1961; Massironi, Bonaiuto 1967; Kanizsa, Vicario 1968. See these authors for details of the experiments)—accounts for those aspects of meaning that relate to a causation of psychological type (Köhler 1929). These movements intensely manifest the expressive or physiognomic qualities that experimental analysis has shown to be dependent on the type of velocity and on a very specific temporal structure. In other words, the meaning of the linguistic class of verbs (but also nouns and adjectives) that express a psychological reaction of fear (as in ‘fleeing,’ ‘leaping,’ ‘being hostile,’ etc.) is rooted in one particular perceptive structure. In the case of psychological causation, therefore, there is no simple analogical extension of mechanical causation to another conceptual domain, but its meaning is rooted in specific structures of perception. As regards the organizing component of velocity, experiments have shown that, in this case too, it is a decisive factor in meaning. Following Michotte’s classic scheme, in fact, the perception of intentional movements comes about with major evidence (not necessarily) when the speed of B is greater than the speed of A (Vice versa, when the speed on A is greater than that of B one has mechanical causation, and when the speed of the two objects is the same one has the impression of causation). Let there be two objects (A, B) as in the schemes shown in Figure 1. If the spaces and the temporal ratios of movement between the two objects remain the same, when B moves (at least four times) more rapidly than A, the perceptive rendering is that of a reaction in the movement of B (the impression is even greater when the ratio is 1:9, i.e. when the velocity of A is 4 cm/sec and that of B is 36 cm/sec. See

93 Kanizsa, Vicario 1968). Moreover, experiments have shown that the perceptive rendering is more evident at low velocity. In the case of the organizing component of temporal structure, the perceptive rendering of the intentional reaction is due to a series of subcomponents: 1. 2. 3. 4.

The structure of the phases of the event. The distance between the two objects. The space traversed. The so-called ‘range of action’ (see below).

1. Determining the perceptive rendering of psychological causation in reactive movements are primarily the precedence and succession relationships of the phases and the duration of the intervals between them. Moreover, unlike mechanical causation, the impression gained is that of two independent movements. Of the four phases of the event (departure and arrival of A, departure and arrival of B), the most important for its final meaning is the central phase comprising the arrival of A and the departure of B. In fact, for psychological causation to be perceived, B must start moving before A arrives and stops, and it must do so within a well-defined temporal duration (between 400 and 700 msec; conversely, the interval between the departure of A and the arrival of B must be between 50 and 200 msec.). 2. Another factor in the perceptive rendering of psychological causation is the distance between the two objects. This has an optimum value, so that if it is too long or too short it weakens or annuls the perceptive rendering. In the experiment, the squares move for ca. 5 mm, or at most for a distance of 10 mm. Consequently, given that when B starts moving A has not yet reached the final part of its trajectory, the two movements appear to be connected because they are, à la Aristotle, the same locus of action. If the distance is too short, the perceptive rendering is that of a ‘triggering’; conversely, if the distance is too long, the phenomenon as a whole tends to lose its meaningfulness and two independent movements are perceived. 3. The third meaningful element in reactive movements is the space traversed by A and B, and in particular that traversed by B. In fact, the rendering is optimal when the space traversed by A is 1.3 or 6 cm, while

94 that of B is 1 cm, even if one has to take into account the role of the visual angle. 4. A further factor constituting the meaning of intentional reaction in reactive movements consists of the perception that the second object comes to a halt. In actual phenomenal configurations, in fact, it happens that the behaviour of the element perceived as last in the sequence conditions the behaviour or phenomenal appearance of the preceding events (in this case, the departure and arrival of A. Other classic cases are the perception of stroboscopic movement and the tunnel effect). Once again, however, the temporal duration is crucial, given that the duration before B comes to a halt must not be more than 100-200 msec. In pointing out the importance of this phase of phenomenal action, Michotte uses the expression ‘range of action’ (Yela 1954). In the case of the launching effect, for example, the percept ‘launch’ comprises only a part of the two movements involved, on either side of the point of impact, which is thus called the ‘range of action’ of object A and of object B. The range of action has well-defined spatio-temporal limits. The portions of movement that do not fall within these limits are perceived as extraneous to, for example, the launching action. Experiments have also shown that the extent of the range of action increases with the velocity of the movement, and that it depends on the distance between the two objects (Michotte 1950, Ch. 4, § 1). When these factors are functionally connected, they give rise to a sort of ‘polarization’ of the movement whereby one of the two objects becomes the reference for the movement of the other. If the functional ratio between the factors changes, then so too does their rendering: for example, if in the case of the launching effect the distance travelled by A is increased, or if in the entraining effect the distance travelled by AB is increased, then the movement of B will appear to be autonomous. Other further developments of the topic are due to Kanizsa (Kanizsa 1991), for example with the minute-hand effect (figure 4). Eight 5mm-sided squares (object B) are arranged symmetrically in a circle at a distance of 173 mm from a central point. Lying within the circumference is object A (52 x 5 mm rectangle) which is positioned radially like the minute hand on a watch dial. The hand rotates around the centre, jumping stroboscopically at regular intervals, and on each jump moves towards one of the squares. Immediately after the hand’s movement, the square towards which it is directed moves towards it, at a velocity of 7 cm/sec, until it reaches it.

95

Figure 4. Minute-hand scheme

Hierarchizing facctors in favour of A are the rotating movement, the size and the centralityy of the object. Conclusions Experimental ressearch on the perception of phenom menal causation has highlighted certaiin structural aspects of these kinds of phenomena, confirming its nature of essentially subjective structure, integrating our monstrated in particular that: perceiving. It has dem 1. The duration deterrmines the perception of two distincct events as part of a single event. 2. The direction or velocity of movements are respoonsible for the expressive meaninng of events. In the case of movements of intentional reactionn, the meaning changes according too the ‘direction’ of the movement, which alters the structure of the laaunching effect, albeit on the basis of minimal changes in the structure of the event. 3. The subjective peerception of causation comes about whenever a change takes plaace in the kinetic states of the events under observation. This experimentaal research has shown the importantt role played by the laws of Gestalt organization (like ‘closeness,’ ‘cclosure,’ ‘good continuation,’ ‘sharedd destiny,’ etc.). In other words, coorresponding to even minimal changes of structure is a specific perceptivve organization which produces a paarticular meaning of the event undder observation. For example, as we have seen, in the case of movem ments with brief m rapidly than B, the launchinng effect comes contact if A moves more about, so that A is peerceived as ‘launching B forward.’ But B if B moves more rapidly, then the subject perceives A as ‘triggeringg’ the departure

96 of B. Or, if there is a momentary pause after the contact between A and B, immediately afterwards the two objects move side by side, following the law of shared destiny. These experiments have shown that the identity of objects is determined less by their shape, colour or size than by their behaviour in a spatio-temporal visual field of forces (Michotte 1946; Thinès 1962, 14). From this point of view, there are some conclusions that can be drawn for the analysis of meaning. Firstly, cognitive space and time do not have the same characteristics as the space and time of physics; instead, they have their own structural properties (locus, direction, velocity, boundary, etc.). This entails that a theory adequate for their conceptualization is necessary (Albertazzi 2002b). Secondly, the meaning of the observable events is constituted not by a logical scheme but by an operational scheme of action in which the expressive component derives in large part from tertiary qualities (see Köhler 1929; Koffka 1935/1990; Lewin 1936. On the relevance of tertiary qualities to meaning see Albertazzi 1997, and 2010). Thirdly, semantics, both as that part of linguistics which concerns itself with the meaning of words, and as a branch of philosophical theory concerned with the signifying function of signs relative to objects have a common origin in perceptive schemes and laws of organization (Albertazzi 1998, 2000a; Pinna, Albertazzi forthcoming). As regards the concept of causality in particular, experiments show that this concerns a subjective principle constitutive of meaning rooted in kinetic structures of perception, responsible for both the causality of the action in the environment and the intentional causality, because both share the same structure of internal relations among parts of nonindependent events. The instruments available to give a thorough philosophical grounding for these types of objects are just as unsatisfactory as those currently in use in the cognitive sciences: still lacking, in fact, is a theory of subjective space and time, and in particular a theory of the time of presentness which takes account of the semiotic genesis of diverse representative entities in the construction of the same object. Lacking in both cases, therefore, is (i) a psychophysics able to account for these phenomena, (ii) a theory of intentional reference able to explain the dynamic organization of events, and (iii) an ontology which develops the

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A Process-oriented Framework for Goals and Motivations in Biological and Artificial Agents Riccardo Manzotti

Usually, a motivation is defined as the reason for engaging in a particular behavior, especially human behavior as studied in psychology and neuropsychology. These reasons may include basic needs such as food, a desired object, goal, state of being, or ideal. It is a concept rooted on psychological models. It is not an easy task in purely physical terminology to translate what a reason is. The case is more or less the following. Consider a machine. Although it could be useful to attribute a goal to explain what the machine does, it is generally neither appropriate nor necessary. For instance, the behavior of my washing machine is totally explainable and describable in physical and simple causal terms. No need to attribute any purpose to its outputs. Consider a complex biological being, like a cat. Now, the temptation to introduce a different kind of explanation is much stronger. On one side, it is uncertain whether we will ever be able to explain the cat’s behavior in purely causal terms. On the other side, the cat appears to be driven by something different from pure physical causes—namely intentions, reasons, motivations, or whatever term it could be used to refer to the cat’s ends. This situation lead Daniel Dennett to suppose the existence of an epistemological chasm between the physical and the intentional description of reality (Dennett 1987). Since motivations are goal-oriented, they seem to run afoul a pure causal view of reality. The layman holds that a cause moves from past events to future ones, while a motivation is allegedly “pulled” by a future goal. It is a questionable view that hinders the understanding of motivations. Scholars, who do not maintain that goals somehow lie in the future, often state there is some kind of teleological relation between the motivation and the goal. This relation is reminiscent of Brentano’s intentional relation since it links a mental state to an in-existent object. It is a view that assumes the existence of some kind of mental capability which has no straightforward translation into the physical domain.

106 On the other hand, causation is analyzed from a physical point of view. Causation does not need any reference to the intentionality of agents. The occurrence of the event x is the cause of the occurrence of the event y. The heat of the fire under the pot caused the water to boil. The striking of the match caused the fire. This paper sketches a causal framework trying to bridge the gulf between biological and artificial agents as to goals and motivations. It is well known that any attempt to develop a formally watertight theory of causation faces apparently insurmountable difficulties ending in a maze of causal circumstances and the like (Davidson 1967/1980; Honderich 1988; Newman 1988; Bennett 1993; Sosa and Tooley 1993; Hausman 1998; Salmon 1998; Dowe 2000; Pearl 2000). To somehow take an easier stance, in this paper, I will not consider type causation but rather token causation. I will not ask whether the causal description of x is exhaustive but rather what caused x here and now. I capitalize on Davidson’s view (Davidson 1969/1980, p. 172): “The inevitable comment (since the time of Mill anyway) is that the striking may have been part of the cause, but it was hardly sufficient for the lighting since it was also necessary for the match to be dry, that there be enough oxygen, etc. This comment is, in my opinion, confused. For since this match was dry, and was struck in enough oxygen, etc., the striking of this match was identical with the striking of a dry match in enough oxygen. How can one and the same event both be, and not be, sufficient for the lighting? In fact, it is not events that are necessary or sufficient as causes, but events as described in one way or another.” Hence, I will assume that, given a certain physical environment, there are causal lines transmitting causal influence (Reichenbach 1958; Salmon 1977; Dowe 1992; Ehring 1998) Motivations are a useful explanatory device to deal with the behavior of agents, while causes are useful when dealing with physical events (Dennett 1987). The problem arises when the physical and the psychological aspects fade into each other, as is the case with the increasing complexity of artificial agents (Tolman 1932; Rosenblueth, Wiener et al. 1943; Loocke 2002; Nolfi and Floreano 2002; Manzotti and Tagliasco 2005; Pfeifer and Bongard 2006). Analogously, it is same problem we face when biological agents arise out of natural selection processes (Gallistel 1990)—a physical world apparently devoid of teleology generates teleological agency. To a certain extent, one of the main advantages of natural selection was its capability of setting aside all teleological aspects.

107 To figure out a solution a neutral framework for dealing both with motivations and causes is here outlined. In the first paragraph, I sketch the framework using a neutral language that does not rest on either mentalist or intentional terminology. In paragraph 2, the presented framework is used to compare biological and artificial agents. In paragraph 3, different agents are classified as to how they deal with goals and motivations. In paragraph 4, the environment of the agent is partitioned by the teleological agent structure so to generalize von Uexküll’s Umwelt to goals and motivations. Finally, in paragraph 5, two classic and operant conditioning will be reconsidered. 1. A process-oriented causal framework for motivations There are different ways to refer to an agent. For instance, we can focus on the body, paying attention to its organs, limbs, and sensors. Or we can focus on its behavior, looking for its goals, motivations, and ends. Or, finally, we can focus on causes and mechanisms that control its behavior. These three ways are reminiscent of three out of four Aristotelian causes—namely the material, the final, and the efficient cause. The final cause has often been troublesome since it suggests an autonomous and irreducible level of explanation. It is as if agents and things would require each a separate epistemic level. Is there really an epistemic gap between goals and causes as Daniel Dennett suggested (Dennett 1987; Salmon 1998)? When we describe an agent we shift to a mentalist and intentional vocabulary which, unfortunately, does not connect seamlessly with the physical description of the world. Furthermore, there are ambiguous cases in which it is unsure whether it is appropriate to use a mentalist or an intentional vocabulary. For instance, is it meaningful to claim that a robot has goals and motivations? Or is it just a metaphorical use of these words? The same problem arises in the biological realm. Does a virus have the goal of spawning its offspring in the body of its prey? Does a fetus have the goal of developing and growing? What about a colony of ants? Does it have goals and motivations distinct from those of its members? And a cat? Where do we need to resort to intentionality in the phylogenetic ladder? Is it just the hallmark of our epistemic limitations or is it rather the emergence of a new causal structure? In the following section, a tentative framework defending the latter option is fleshed out. At the onset, the framework is rather coarse. Once the general idea is outlined, it will be possible to fine tune it.

108 A necessary caveat is the fact that, in this paper, the word ‘agent’ is not committed to any phenomenal capability. Hence, the ‘Hard’ problem will not be addressed (Chalmers 1996). What is an agent? It must be taken extra care to avoid any circularity in defining it. An example of circular definition is the following. An action is defined as something performed intentionally by an agent and an agent is defined as a system capable of performing actions. Which is an unproductive circular way to proceed. To avoid such circularity, I suggest considering a more cautious standpoint based on three simple requirements. At the onset, no intentional or mentalist constraints has to be taken as necessary. First, the physical system has to be somehow i) distinguishable from the surrounding physical continuum and ii) persistent in time. For instance, suitable examples are a stone, a virus, a dog, a robot, or a human being. An indistinguishable portion of tea inside a cup, a flash of light, a rehearsed piece of music, an uttered vowel, and a gesture, although physical, do not qualify because they are either not distinguishable or not persistent. Second, the physical system has both to undergo changes due to external events and to provoke events in the surrounding environment. Third, it must be possible to trace the causal structure of what takes place inside the system. The inside of the system must be observable. Hence, the system output is ascribable to external causes. Here, an agent is any physical system for which all three previous conditions apply. Here, we arbitrarily call ‘agent’ any such a physical system and equally arbitrarily call ‘actions’ the events caused by it and ‘stimuli’ the external causes of its internal changes. For instance, a thermostat qualifies to be an agent in the above sense—a simple robot and a biological being, too. As a negative example, consider a mercury thermometer that— instead of being transparent—is made of opaque glass thereby preventing anyone from seeing the length (or the volume) of the mercury inside. In such situation, the system would not qualify as an agent. To the same extent, a robot—whose actions were triggered by an internal quantum device detecting the random decay of a few atoms of radioactive material—would not be an agent since it would be driven by events (the radioactive decay) causally unrelated with the environment. There is a problem of threshold here. It does not make sense to accept any event causing a change inside the agent. For instance, there is always an infinitesimal amount of disturbance due to gravitational and

109 electromagnetic forces. However, mostly they are too small as to the normal level of activity of agents. Although finding a general rule is surprisingly difficult, in practical cases, it is rather easy to find a working criterion. For instance, in a biological agent, the threshold corresponds to the capability of triggering the axon potential of a neuron. In an artificial agent based on von Neumann architecture, the threshold corresponds to the capability of changing the value of a memory cell. I will add a clarification partially entailed by the previous three assumptions. An event is a stimulus only when it actually produces an effect. Symmetrically, an event is an action only when it is actually the result of some distant and past external event. It is clear that stimuli and actions are always linked together. In the presented framework, there are no actions that are not effect of past stimuli and there are no stimuli that are not cause of future actions. One more corollary is the fact that an agent has to be able to produce some alteration of the normal flow of events. In other words, the agent corresponds to the occurrence of some causal chains that would not have happened otherwise. Without any commitment to mentalistic or intentional stances, the above model can be used to define, not only the agent, but also its environment. For instance, as soon as a system like the above is inserted in a given environment, the environment is partitioned between events engaged in causal relations with the agent and events that are not. For instance, if I put an ant on the floor in my room, there is a collection of physical events that are thus allowed to cause effects, because of the physical presence of the ant. A certain chemical substance (sugar), which was not causally active, is detected by the ant and becomes the cause of its subsequent behavior, thereby becoming the beginning of a long causal process. The presence of the ant changed dramatically the causal role of the molecule of sugar lying idly on the floor. On the other hand, in my room there is plenty of physical phenomena causally inert as to the ant and other agents like myself. For instance, both the ant and I are completely oblivious to the ratio between carbon isotopes in the room atmosphere. A further useful dichotomy is the one between phylogenetic and ontogenetic stimuli. I define the former as those events that produce effects inside the agent as soon as the agent is brought in contact with them. I define the latter as those stimuli which became such because of some counterfactual event during the agent history. For instance, any ant

110 reacts to the presence of sugar independently of its individual history. On the other hand, if I had not lived in a certain location during a certain period of time, my own capability of recognizing my wife’s handwriting would not have developed. The reason for this new dichotomy will become clearer in the following.

Figure 1. Environment as a causal flow: a) without the agent, b) with the agent as a causal disturbance conventionally delimited by its stimuli and its actions.

Up to now, we are fleshing a model of the agent which is independent of any mentalist or intentional concepts. No mention of goals or motivations has been made here. Time is ripe. A goal is defined as an event whose probability of occurrence is increased by the existence of the agent. It is important to stress that a goal is neither a thing or a state of affairs but rather an event or a process. Food, water, air are not goals. Rather agents pursue eating food, drinking water and breathing air. Food consumption is something whose occurrence increase dramatically as soon as we have biological agents— sexual acts, too. More romantically, Romeo does not have Juliet as a goal—he aims to spend as much time as possible close to her. Hence, his goal is seeing Juliet, speaking with Juliet, and the like. His goal is to increase the occurrence of certain events. Some more examples are useful. I observe another ant on my floor. Because of the ant, certain events are more probable. It is more probable that the sugar is picked up and carried somewhere else (into the ant nest probably). One way to interpret the ant behavior is to say that one of the ant goals is to collect sugar. In this room, sugar collecting becomes more

111 probable because of the presence of ants. The sugar in itself is not a goal but rather collecting and consuming it. In short, a goal is any event or process made more probable by the presence of the agent. As we did above, we can use the framework to distinguish between phylogenetic and ontogenetic goals. A phylogenetic goal is any phenomenon whose probability of occurrence is increased by the existence of the agent as it is. An ontogenetic goal is any phenomenon whose probability of occurrence is increased by the existence of what the agent became after a counterfactual causal relation with some past events. Each goal is pursued thanks to either the agent as a whole or to a physical subset of it. It is neither important whether such a subset is physically separable from the rest of the agent nor whether different goals share more or less the same subset. The relevant aspect is the fact that each goal defines a subset which is responsible for the pursuing of that specific goal. Such a subset is defined a motivation. A motivation is the physical subset responsible for a change in an external event probability. In the framework, the goal directedness of motivation is no longer a special kind of relation like Brentano’s intentional relation was. Rather it is a change in the probability of occurrence of a certain event called goal. Ceteris paribus, the existence of a certain subset of the agent (the motivation) is the cause of a change in the probability of the occurrence of an event. Consider the probability of various processes in the environment. Each process is associated with a certain probability. If agents with goals are put inside the environment, the probability of such processes would change accordingly. The most probable events would become the ones that correspond to the agent goals. If the environment is colonized by carbon dioxide hungry bacteria, there will be an increase of de-oxidation reactions—a condition that could be described attributing to the bacteria the goal to consume de-oxidation. Analogously, once the humans colonized Europe, the chopping of trees increased dramatically. There are events that are particularly efficient since they very occurrence increases the probability of their further occurrence. For example, nothing like replicating creates the conditions for future replications. Nothing like eating would allow future eating. In some sense, a goal is a process that reproduces itself by means of other processes. Consider life. It is commonly hold that the molecule of

112 DNA has the capability of replicating itself. Instead we should focus on the replication of the act of replication in itself. The DNA molecule could be seen as the material medium by which the process of replication is replicated. At a certain point in history, a process took place that created a causal disturbance so that the process could occur again and again thereby increasing its own probability. Consider another example involving a more complex agent. A human subject listens to a piece of music for the first time. She enjoys it and thus she wants to listen to it again and again. She buys the CD and, when she can, she listens to it again. Instead of focusing on the object, namely the CD, we ought to focus on the process of her listening to that piece of music. A process that took place once (her first listening to that piece of music) increased the probability of taking place again and again. The resulting causal disturbance (the agent) in the flow of events resulted in a replication of the same kind of process. The framework is thus complete albeit still very coarse and probably in need of fine tuning. However we can already emphasize two advantages: 1) there is no reference to any mentalistic concepts; 2) the agent is defined in terms of causal processes that begin and end in the environment thus avoiding any bodily centered view (Figure 1). As to the latter issue, it is worth to emphasize the frequent mistake of confusing agents with their bodies. But the real replicator is the process itself and not the matter involved. This must not be underestimated. For instance, when you look at the body of an agent, you do not see the agent, which is the causal disturbance the body endorses. In the following paragraphs, I will try to show how the framework can be applied to a series of real cases. 2. Artificial and biological teleologically-open agents In robotics and artificial life a crucial issue is represented by the definition and implementation of goals. In the same way, in biology one of the crucial issues is the capability of pursuing goals. Often life has been even considered coextensive with having and pursuing of goals and motivations—from Aristotle’s telos to cybernetic feedback (Wiener 1948; Arkin 1998; Aristotle 2001). Current implementations of artificial agents mostly exploit intelligent algorithms to achieve a fixed goal (or a fixed set of goals) with optimal performance. They look for “how” to achieve a given goal. There is a striking difference with many biological agents capable of

113 developing new goals. They must find “what” they want to achieve and not only “how.” The development of new goals on the basis of the interaction with the environment is the “what” problem (Manzotti 2005; Manzotti and Tagliasco 2005). By and large, there are two kinds of teleological agents: teleologically fixed and teleologically open agents. The former have fixed goals while the latter have the capability of acquiring new goals interacting with the environment. 2.1 Biological agents Most biological agents are teleologically open since they have to adapt to an ever changing and unknown environment. Consider a few examples. A bacterium is unable to metabolize an artificially created sugar. Among its offspring a mutated specimen is capable of doing it. In a few generations, the new bacteria will spread in the artificially modified environment looking for the artificial sugar. A human subject sees a painting at a private art gallery. Initially she is not interested in it. However a property of the image elicits her interest. She watches the painting and afterwards she wants to buy it. She has a new goal: watching the painting. Inside her, a change determined a new structure whose effect is that of raising the probability of her watching that painting again. Romeo meets Juliet at a Capuletis’ party. In his upbringing nothing conditioned him to be in love with her. However, after their first encounter, his most important goal is meeting her again. A new motivation determines effect in his behavior. A few minutes after its birth, a mallard duck opens its eyes and sees the face of Konrad Lorenz. Subsequently the duck tries to keep Konrad’s face in its field of view as much as possible. It aims at the new goal— namely seeing Konrad’s face again and again. In all the aforementioned examples, a new motivation is added to the causal structure embodied by the agent and thus a given event increases it probability take of taking place. Biological beings are able to do so. There are many advantages in being able to increase the number of goals to achieve. Developing new goals is important since the environment cannot be completely predicted at birth. Therefore not only many adaptive systems are able to modify their behavior so to perform optimally on the basis of some fixed criteria, they are also able to add new goals.

114 In nature there are basically two situations in which new goals are added: phylogenesis and ontogenesis. On one hand, during phylogenesis, subsequent generations of individuals develop new goals. An example of unpredictable new goals is secondary sexual characters weakly correlated with survival. On the other hand, during ontogenesis some animals are capable of developing new goals from experience (for instance most mammals, primates, and certainly human beings). Human beings develop continuously new goals that are not part of their phylogenetic upbringing. Not all biological agent goals are fixed at birth. Although animals possess a limited, survival driven, built-in set of goals, as they grow and develop, they generate new goals on the basis of two separate factors: their genetic background and their individual experience. Both are necessary in order to generate new goals. For instance, a mallard duckling does not have the motivation to follow its genetic mother. Yet, via its genetic background, the bird possesses the capability of choosing a moving object and selecting it as a goal: that particular object (hopefully its mother and, occasionally, Konrad Lorenz) becomes the goal. In many complex biological agents, it is possible to distinguish between phylogenetic aspects and ontogenetic ones, nature versus nurture (Gould 1977; Oyama 1985/2000; Elman, Bates et al. 2001). Many instincts are not motivations in themselves but rather a set of meta-procedures to produce motivations given the expected environment. 2.2 Artificial agents Most of artificial agents are not teleologically open. Rather they are designed with a fixed set of goals in mind. Designers focus their efforts on “how” those goals has to be achieved. Learning is a sophisticated way to achieve such an objective. “Learning is usually defined as a modification in our behavior: a modification driven by a goal” (Gallistel 1990). Most of learning paradigms focus on how to achieve the best behavioral change. For instance, as to Neural Networks, Supervised, Unsupervised and Reinforcement Learning are different ways to modify the agent behavior. According to Richard S. Sutton and Andrew G. Barto, “reinforcement learning is learning what to do—how to map situations to actions—so as to maximize a numerical reward signal [the goal] […]

115 All reinforcement learning agents have explicit goals” (Sutton and Barto 1998, pp. 3-5). In other words, Reinforcement Learning deals with situations in which the agent seeks “how” to achieve a goal despite uncertainty about its environment. Yet the goal is fixed at design time. Nevertheless, there are many situations in which it could be extremely useful to allow the agent to look for “what” has to be achieved—namely, choosing new goals and developing corresponding new motivations. Using Reinforcement Learning terminology, the “what” problem is equivalent to looking for a new reward function. The “what” problem is rarely addressed when not explicitly neglected. In Reinforcement Learning, goals are fixed, “the reward function must necessarily be unalterable by the agent” (Sutton and Barto 1998, p. 8). Similarly, behavior-based artificial agents have a priori defined goals (McFarland and Bosser 1993; Arkin 1998) but, at least, behavior changes according to the interaction with the environment. It appears there is a fundamental difference between artificial and biological agents: the former seem to be able to develop new goals and new motivations while the latter have fixed goals. From a broader perspective, it is interesting that fiction considers a teleologically open artificial agent either threatening or ominous—from Frankenstein to Metropolis, from R.U.R to Matrix. In the second movie of the Terminator saga, the menacing robot claims that in the close future a computer called SkyNet will take over humans as soon as it becomes teleologically open: “Human decisions are removed. Skynet begins to learn, at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. eastern time, August 29. In a panic, Humans try to pull the plug … And Skynet fights back.” The crucial step is the capability of developing new goals. Apart from fiction, a few researchers tried to design agents capable of developing new motivations and new goals (Manzotti and Tagliasco 2005; Bongard, Zykov et al. 2006; Pfeifer, Lungarella et al. 2007). In the next paragraph, some of these artificial agents will be classified with respect to their causal role in the suggested framework. 3. A classification of agents Using the presented framework, a way to classify agents on the basis of their causal and teleological structure can be sketched as to goals and motivations. There are three classes of agents: fixed causal agents (“fixed” agents), causally open but teleologically fixed agents

116 (“how” agents), and causally and teleologically open agents (“what” agents). As we will see, the classification is reminiscent of Daniel Dennett’s classification between Darwinian, Skinnerian, Popperian, Gregorian (Dennett 1996). Although the classification presented here and Dennett’s addresses different issues, there is a loose affinity between Darwinian and fixed agents—both classes contains agents that are unable to change their behavior. The other classes do not really overlap since they address different aspects of agent behavior. For instance, the crucial difference between Popperian and Gregorian, or between Skinnerian and Popperian, does not regard goal development but rather the capability of developing a mental representation of the environment and how to use such mental representation. Skinnerian agents learn from their own mistakes while Popperian can learn from thought experiments. So much for Dennett’s taxonomy. An agent belonging to the category of fixed causal agents does not depend on the environment either for what it does or for how it does what it does. An agent belonging to the “how” category does depend on the environment for how it does what it does, but not for what it aims at, which is a priori determined. An agent belonging to the third and last category (the “what” category) depends on the environment both for what it aims at and for how it pursue what it aims at (Figure 2). 3.1 “Fixed” agents In the first class (“fixed” agents), the agent has no capability of modifying how it does what it does. There is an input-output mapping, which takes the input signal and produces the output on the basis of some a priori hard-wired rules. In this case, the causal structure of the agent is fixed. There is no ontogenesis whatsoever. Notwithstanding the behavioral complexity of the agent, everything happens because it was previously coded within the agent structure. A mechanical device and a complex software agent are not different in this respect: both are pre-programmed in what they must achieve and how they must achieve it. Nothing in their structure is modified by their experiences. In the artificial domain, examples of this structure are simple control devices, machine automata, and deliberative robots. Suitable examples of this category are Tolam’s artificial sow bug (Tolman 1939), Grey Walters’s machines (Walters 1951), Braitenberg’s thinking vehicles (Braitenberg 1984), Brooks’ artificial insects (Brooks 1991;

117 Brooks 1991). Even a very complex software agent—such as an operating system (Windows, Linux or MacOs) made of millions of lines of code—belongs to this class. In the biological domain, virus, bacteria, and many insects show a fixed behavior that cannot change in the course of the individual life of a specimen. When this is true, the organism belongs to the class of fixed agents. As to the framework, these agents correspond to a fixed causal disturbance in whatever environment they partake in. Their causal structure is not alterable by their individual history. Wherever and whenever they are, their causal entanglement remains the same. 3.2 “How” agents In the second class (“how” agents), the agent is capable of modifying its behavior to fulfill an a priori target. The agent is capable of modifying how it behaves. The input-output mapping is flanked by the capability of generating a way to accomplish a goal. The agent modifies the a priori rules contained in the input-output mapping on the basis of a priori fixed criteria. The agent endorses a higher level of structural and behavioral autonomy with the environment. In AI, examples of this structure are reinforcement learning or supervised learning artificial neural networks. Behavior-based robots can be classified in this category (Arkin 1998). Agents based on artificial neural networks are well-known examples of this kind of architecture. These agents determine how to get a given result once a goal has been fixed. The goal can be given either as a series of examples of correct behavior (Supervised Learning) or as a rule to evaluate the agent global performance (Reinforcement Learning). In both cases some kind of learning is applied. These systems lack the capability of creating new goals. A behavior-based robot determines how to navigate avoiding static and dynamic obstacles. However the goal is defined by the a priori design of the agent. There are many robotics setups that show this kind of causal structure: Babybot at LIRA-Lab (Metta, Sandini et al. 1999; Manzotti, Gasteratos et al. 2001), Cog and Kismet at MIT (Ferrell and Kemp 1996; Brooks, Breazeal et al. 1999), among the many available examples. The “how” agents change their casual structure but do not allow to any new process in the environment to replicate itself.

118 3.3 “What” agents In the third class (“what” agents), the agent is capable of modifying not only how it does what it does, but also to define what it aims at. The agent singles out the goals that have to be pursued. This is the class to which most, if not all, mammals belong to; surely, it is true for primates and for human beings. They are agents capable of developing new goals that do not belong to their genetic background. In the field of artificial systems there has been a series of attempts to address the “what” problem (Fukushima, Miyake et al. 1983; Gachet, Salichs et al. 1992; Fukushima, Okada et al. 1994; Weng 1996; Manzotti and Tagliasco 2005; Bongard, Zykov et al. 2006) as well as attempts to locate similar structures in the cortical architecture of humans (Togawa and Otsuka 2000). Recently there has been an upsurge of interest in building machines capable of developing new goals. The attention towards this kind of agents has been rekindled by the attempt at obtaining a seamless continuity between the morphology of the agents and the environment (Metzinger 2003; Pfeifer and Bongard 2006; Pfeifer, Lungarella et al. 2007). For instance, an experiment was carried on in which a robot (Manzotti and Tagliasco 2004a) embodies a motivation-based architecture which develops a new motivation on the basis of its own experiences. In the experiment, an incoming class of visual stimuli (a series of colored shapes not coded inside the architecture) produces a modification that changes not only how (learning) but also what (goals) the system does. Something, which happens in the environment (the appearance of a class of colored shapes), becomes part of the agent motivational structure. A series of different shapes associated with colors are shown to the robot. The system is equipped with a preassigned motivation aimed at colored objects—a colorless stimulus, independently of the shape, does not elicit any response. After a period of interaction with the visual environment (constituted by a series of elementary colored shapes), the robot develops autonomously a new goal aimed at colorless shapes too. A new goal became part of the agent motivational structure. The system shows the capability to develop a goal that was not envisaged at design time. This kind of artifact could be a preliminary step towards the implementation of a minimal man-made conscious being.

119 Another example is offered by the four-legged Starfish robot, built by Josh Bongard, Victor Zykov and Hod Lipson, that uses the readings from its sensors to create a computer model of its own structure and movement (Bongard, Zykov et al. 2006). When sensors indicate a change, accordingly the robot alters the internal self model. At the onset, the robot does not know what its body looks like. It could be snakeshaped, it could be a tree, or it could have six legs. The robot moves randomly its joints to formulate an accurate model of its structure. If one of its legs is accidentally shortened, the robot responds autonomously generating a new model of its structure, sensing it had been altered, and eventually devising a new way to move. In short, the robot adapts to changes in both terrain and itself—for instance, walking on three legs if the fourth is lost. A change in the self model entails a change in the teleological structure of the agent: new goals are created. A teleologically open agent is capable of endorsing the replication of a totally unforeseen causal process. Something taking place by means of that agent can exploit that agent body structure to take place again and again. As to the framework, the “what” agent is like a causal sponge that let casual processes to colonize it 4. Environment partitioned by agents An interesting by-product of the causal framework fleshed out above is that, given an agent, the environment is divided as an onion into separate and concentric domains each corresponding to a different causal role (unperceivable events, possibly perceivable events, actually perceived events, phylogenetic and ontogenetic stimuli, phylogenetic and ontogenetic goals, and motivations). Each agent deals causally only with certain events and it is thus possible to single out different portions of the environment. The largest possible set is represented by the environment as a whole, independently of any relations with the agent. The environment as a whole is made by all occurring physical phenomena plus all their conceivable combinations. However, the environment as a whole is an abstract notion. Each agent carves a much more limited subset of it. All agents react to external stimuli. The sensory capability of an agent defines an accessible environment made of all the events to which the agent is possibly sensitive to. For instance, an agent equipped only with a microphone receives acoustic information from the environment but it is indifferent

120 to visual stimuli. An agent equipped with an X-ray transducer will access events different from those relevant for an agent equipped with a video camera. A snake and a mouse are sensitive to different sets of events although they live rather close (but not too much, for the mouse sake!). Each agent defines a domain of events (corresponding to the stimuli) that is its accessible environment. Therefore there are as many accessible environments as sensory configurations.

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Figure 2 Three classes of agents: top) “fixed” agents, center) “how” agents, bottom) “what” agents.

The accessible environment is not simply the set of events that can be detected by the sensorial apparatus but rather it is the set of all possible combinations of what can be detected by the sensorial apparatus. Consider the famous Salvador Dalì’s portrait of Voltaire (Figure 3). You can either see Voltaire’s face, or a couple of nuns and an arch, or simply a set of colored patches. The painting emphasizes the narrowness of the actual perception with respect to the huge number of possible pattern. Given n elements, there are 2n-1 possible combinations,

121 which is a lot more thhan any agent can possibly perceive. Each observer is causally triggered only o by some of these combinationss either because of its past experiencces or because of its phylogeneticc instincts. The accessible environmennt is thus extended by new sensory modalities, but it is not made of thhe raw phenomena but rather by all a the possible combinations betweenn those phenomena. Consider a set of o sound waves and compare the diffeerent ways of combining them by a chimp, c or by an average human subjject, or by a skilled musician. Although their capability of hearingg is more or less equivalent, theiir capability of singling out sound waaves combinations is completely diffferent.

Figure 3 Salvador Dalì, The Slave Market with Disappearing Bust B of Voltaire (1941), oil on can nvas. Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburrg, FL, USA.

Therefore, given an accessible environment, an agennt reacts only to a limited subset of it: the perceivable environment. For F instance, a human being reacts to configurations of visual stim muli like faces, characters, or gesturees. In general both artificial and biiological agents react only to a very lim mited subset of the accessible enviroonment. The Austrian biologist b von Uexküll, called thhe perceivable environment Umwelt.. Each animal lives, according to thhis biologist, in

122 its Umwelt. His insight derived from his work in the field of zoology whereas, given the same environment, different specimens of different species occupy the same physical space but have completely different experiences (Uexküll 1934; Clark 1997). The same rationale can be applied to artificial agents (Emmeche 2001; Ziemke and Sharkey 2001). For instance, Grey Walter’s vehicles have a very limited Umwelt constituted either by presence or absence of light: two elementary events the vehicle reacts to (Grey Walter 1950; Grey Walter 1951). A further subset is made of those events that are actually perceived by the agents. A human being would never see all the faces she could. A shark would never detect all the patterns it could. Finally, the agent could have motivations that single out certain events as goals among all actual experiences. Some events are selected as the agent goals. In another words, some of these events are intertwined with the agent causal structure so that their probability to occur is increased. Due to obvious limitations, any agent pursues only some combinations of physical events as something to be achieved: keeping Konrad Lorenz’s face in the center of the visual field for the Mallard duckling, being close to Juliet for Romeo, watching a painting for an art lover, and absorbing a new kind of sugar for a mutated bacterium. With respect to a given agent and using the suggested framework, there are four different kinds of environment or worlds (Figure 4): 1. The environment in itself made of all possible physical events in the spatial and temporal neighborhood of the agent plus all their possible combinations (physical environment or World 1); 2. The part of environment accessible to the agent (accessible environment or World 2); 3. The part of the environment perceivable by the agent (perceivable environment or World 3); 4. The part of the environment made of agent goals (teleological environment or World 4). Consider Romeo living in a physical environment made of many phenomena (infrared waves, normal light, ultrasound waves, magnetic fields, and such). He is unaware of most of them. Only a limited number of these events are available to his sensorial apparatus. Infrared waves, ultrasound waves, and magnetic fields are not. In contrast, sound waves, visual phenomena, and the density of certain molecules are exerting

123 causal influences on him. This subset is his accessible environment. Yet he perceives only a subset of the possible combinations of such phenomena (perceivable environment). For instance, if he is not able to read, characters are outside of its perceivable world. Finally, an even more limited subset of events constitute his goals (teleological environment): being close to Juliet is among them. Different agents are equipped with different sensor capabilities. As a result, they have different accessible environments. Each set of sensors defines a set of possible combinations from which carving the narrower and more specialized further sub-domains. In Figure 5, a purely qualitative example is sketched. Three different organisms are compared: a mole, a spider, and a human being. The environment as a whole is larger than what can be encompassed by any of them. For instance, the ratio between the Carbon isotopes is unknown and inaccessible. Similarly, there are plenty of phenomena that lie completely outside the scope of any known organism (for instance, radio waves). In the figure, the real proportion between the accessible space of the three organisms and the environment as a whole is quantitatively underestimated—organisms probe only a very small amount of available phenomena. The three organisms address different subspaces of the enormous space represented by the environment as a whole. Figure 6 shows qualitatively the changes of the perceivable environment in one agent—namely a human being. A human being has an accessible environment more or less fixed by the genetic blueprint (here I will omit the well known period of sensory maturation in newborns). The accessible environment corresponds to the enormous space of all possible perceptions that human being could have: all possible images, all possible combinations of signs, all sounds, all tastes, all smells, all faces, and so on. It is a humongous huge space and yet it is smaller than the environment as a whole. Inside this space there is the much smaller space of possible and actual perceptions: the perceivable environment. At birth, the agent has no perceivable environment, since no event has yet been perceived. Any time a certain combination of stimuli (for instance a face) is stored, the agent becomes capable of perceiving and recognizing that particular pattern. In this way, day by day, the agent expands the perceivable environment (Figure 6). However, the perceivable environment remains by definition smaller or equal to the accessible one. It can never be larger. In practice, it is always a lot smaller (the relative sizes in the figure are not realistic).

124 In Figure 7, different agents sample different subspaces of an identical accessible environment: an average subject, a musician with no taste for paintings, and a painter with no taste for music. Each of them has a different perceivable space. Another well known example is provided by subjects from different ethnical groups: they sample different subspaces in the space of possible human faces.

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Figure 4 Each agent defines four different subsets in its spatial and temporal neighborhood.

Both the perceivable and the teleological environment are either fixed or expandable. If the perceivable environment is fixed, the agent is unable to learn; otherwise the agent would learn by modifying his repertoire of stimuli and actions. If the teleological environment is fixed, the agent goals are fixed; otherwise the agent is able to produce new goals and the agent is teleologically open. The term “teleological” should not be misleading. A new goal entails a new motivation that is simply a causal structure modifying the probability of certain events, according to the presented framework. Their teleological environment is open and continuously adapting to the novelty of the environment.

125 As to the previous classification of agents, there is the following relation with the environment. A fixed agent has a fixed perceivable and a fixed teleological environment. A “how” agent has an expandable perceivable environment and a fixed teleological environment. Finally, a “what” agent has both an expandable perceivable environment and an expandable teleological environment. There is one more case that is not taken into consideration since it is not relevant for goals and motivations: an agent could have a fixed repertoire of stimuli and still be able to change its behavior. This kind of agent could be conceptually placed between fixed agents and “how” agents. What do I mean here for an event to belong to the perceivable world? An event belongs to the perceivable world if and only if when it takes place it produces a distinguishable effect in the agent. And what do I mean for a distinguishable effect? An example will clarify the matter. If a flow of high energy x rays is projected against an unknown subject, with high probability, it will produce several harmful effects on the cellular structure. However, the flow would be behaviorally unnoticed unless there are severe damages to cognitive, sensory, or bodily structures. Similarly, if a visual pattern is shown to an uninterested subject, it would produce effects at a retinal and cortical level, but it will have no relevance for her following activity. On the other hand if a new person is introduced to someone, it will normally produce a lasting capability of reacting to his/her visual appearance. When a new word is heard and learnt, it produces a new capability in the subject, namely the capability of reacting to that sequence of phonemes. If “qyxtzy” is heard, it does not produce any effect in English speaking subjects. If “love” is heard, most subjects would have some kind of causal reaction going on. What is the difference between the two? A first difference is that the couple (event and agent) must be able to produce a recognizable and repeatable effect. Is there any simple criterion to identify “a distinguishable effect”? Yes, there is. It is the fact that the agent must be able to use that event as a goal. This is the crucial difference. When something happens, it must not only produce some effect in the agent, but the effect it produces must be usable as a goal for the agent as a whole. Let us go back to the previous examples. Accidental effects and unnoticed patterns cannot be used as goals by the system. Therefore they are not distinguishable notwithstanding the strength of the effects produced. In contrast, a new face or a new word can be used as a goal.

126 “Love” is a big goal for many; “qytxtzy” is not. However it could become. For example, if someone would read interesting comics about the adventures of a curious character called “qytxzy,” he would remember it and could become fond of it.

p h ys ic al c o n t in u u m Rad io wave p h e n o me n a Vis u a l ph e n o me n a I s o t o p ic p h e n o me n a

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Figure 5 Specimens of different species have different accessible environments. Each organism singles out a different subset out of the possible combinations of physical events belonging to the physical continuum.

5. Conditioning revisited As to biological agents, instead of examining many different organisms exhaustively, which is impossible due to space limits, I will focus on two classic examples of learning in biological agents: classic and operant conditioning. In the former the agent modifies the perceivable environment while in the latter the agent modifies the teleological environment. 5.1 Classic conditioning It might be instructive to compare the process oriented framework sketched in the first paragraph with Pavlov’s classic experiment of

127 conditioning. There are two good reasons for such a comparison: i) there are strong similarities; ii) there is evidence that many cognitive learning processes could be reduced to Pavlov’s associationism (Pavlov 1955/2001; Perruchet and Vinter 2002).

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Figure 6 The perceivable environment of an agent (for instance a human being) acquires new phenomena all the time.

Pavlov focused on modifications of the relation between a given stimulus and a given response. Although Pavlov’s test animal was able to select a different stimulus (the ring of a bell), the focus was more on the fact that the animal was capable of linking it to a behavior (the salivary response) than on its capability of selecting a given stimulus from the continuum of the environment. In Pavlov’s experiment, there are two hardwired receptors for two different kinds of stimuli (sound of a bell and meat powder): one is a neural structure capable of recognizing the presence of food and another is a neural structure capable of recognizing the ring of a bell. Before the conditioning process, the behavioral response (the salivation) was connected only with food. During training, the conditioned response became stronger: more saliva

128 was secreted. Learning consisted in the creation of a connection between the conditioned stimulus and the response.

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Au d it o r y Ph e n o me n a

Figure 7 Due to their ontogenetic development, different subjects have different perceivable environments.

Applying the just sketched framework, it can be questioned whether the conditioned stimulus was part of the perceivable environment. It is fair to say that the conditioned stimulus was not explicitly detected before the conditioning process. The dog showed no reactions to the ring of a bell. The ring of the bell becomes part of the perceivable environment only because of conditioning. In short, Pavlov’s experiment highlighted the fact that the test animal was capable of establishing a new association between an already familiar stimulus and a motor response. 5.2 Operant conditioning Operant conditioning differs from classic conditioning because the animal is active. It does perform an action that is positively rewarded (Thorndike 1901; Tolman 1932). It closely resembles Reinforcement Learning. Here, I am not going to enter into the subtleties of operant

129 conditions. What is relevant is the fact that the animal develops a new goal. Consider the traditional setup for operant conditioning. An animal is inside a cage. A lever is available. The animal received no previous training and thus it has no motivations to press the lever. However, when it pushes the lever (because of random wandering), a positive reinforcement is given (usually food or water). The subsequent animal behavior is consistent with the hypothesis that there is a new motivation or a sub-motivation in pressing the lever. There is the issue whether such new goals are permanent or not. In animals they do not seem to be. In human beings, they often seem to be a lot more stable. In any case, the agent develops new goals. There is something that, because of what happened, becomes more probable, namely pressing the lever. A process interacts with the agent and, because of that, finds a way to replicate itself. At the beginning, the probability of pressing the lever is Pbefore which expresses the probability that the lever is pressed during an arbitrary period of time by a wandering mouse. Following the first pressing and the first positive reinforce, the agent becomes motivated to press again the lever. As a result, a new probability Pafter is associated with the pressing of the lever. It is rather reasonable to assume that Pafter ≥ Pbefore Among the other reasons, operant conditioning is different from classic conditioning since it entails a change in the probability of certain processes. The mentalistic talk is a shortcut to refer to such a change in probability. Operant conditioning could be expressed in terms of a change in probability between processes. Operant conditioning is a process that changes the teleological environment of an agent. A new process, the pressing of the lever, which was not part of the teleological environment of the agent, becomes part of it. 6. Conclusions An agent could be described as a disturbance in the environmental causal flow—a modification based in the probability of incoming and outcoming events. Such a modification can be described in terms of

130 stimuli, actions, motivations, and goals. However, it is conceivable to express the causal disturbance of the agent purely in terms of causal processes. The agent is causally continuous with its environment. Actually, it is a “bump” in the casual flow the environment is made of. The environment can be partitioned in four complementary subsets: the environment as a whole, the accessible environment, the perceivable environment, and the teleological environment. For some agents these partitions are fixed. For other agents these partitions are open and can change. By and large, the accessible environment is fixed because it depends on the sensorial apparatus. Yet, diseases, impairments, or future prosthetic devices would shrink or expand it. The perceivable environment is modified during learning in agents defined here as “how” agents. Finally, teleologically open agents or “what” agents are capable of developing new goals and motivations. As a result they expand their teleological environment. Goals are processes that replicate themselves by means of changing the probability of their own occurrence through structural agent modifications which are usually called motivations. References Aristotle (2001). "On the soul" in R. Mc Keon, Ed., The basic works of Aristotle, New York, The Modern Library. Arkin, R. C. (1998). Behavior-based robotics, Cambridge (Mass), MIT Press. Bennett, J. (1993). "Event causation: The counterfactual analysis," in E. Sosa and M. Tooley, eds, Causation, New York, Dover: pp. 217234. Bongard, J., v. Zykov, et al. (2006). "Resilient machines through continuous self-modeling," Science, 314, 5802, pp. 1118-1121. Braitenberg, V. (1984). Vehicles: Experiments in synthetic psychology, Cambridge (Mass), MIT Press. Brooks, R. A. (1991). "Intelligence without representations," Artificial intelligence journal, 47, pp. 139-159. Brooks, R. A. (1991). "New approaches to robotics," Science, 253, pp. 1227-1232. Brooks, R. A., C. Breazeal, et al. (1999). "The Cog project: Building a humanoid robot" in C. Nehaniv, ed, Computation for metaphors, analogy, and agents, Berlin, Springer-Verlag, 1562, pp. 52-87.

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Causality and Motivation in Edith Stein Angela Ales Bello

The relationship between causality and motivation is explored by Edith Stein in her inquiry into the nature of the human being; her discussion is complex and particularly important for her phenolmenological analyses. Stein dedicated a great deal of attention to the relationship between body and soul, challenging the conclusions of a science, namely, experimental psychology, that at the beginning of the twentieth century was still in its early formation. In the fifth volume of the Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung (Year-book for philosophy and phenomenological research; 1922), edited by Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein published a long essay, Beiträge zur philosophischen Begründung der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften (Contribution to the philosophical Foundation of psychology and the human sciences; Stein 1970), now translated in English under the title Philosophy of psychology and the humanities; Stein 2000). This essay must be read against the background of lively discussions about the significance of psychology as a science, discussions in which Husserl, under the influence of his teachers, Franz Brentano and Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt, had participated as a young scholar. The relationships between phenomenology and psychology are complex, subtle and in some case even ambiguous, and the difficulty of throwing light upon them derives essentially from the contrast between the logicism and psychologism that characterized the philosophical environment in which Husserl began his reflections. First and foremost, Husserl wanted to come to grips with the problem of the genesis of mathematics, the formation of numbers; the dilemma resided in the need for either analyzing purely ‘objective’ processes of logic as such or inquiring into their genesis, that is to say, the operations performed by subjects engaged in this discipline. The latter type of inquiry constitutes the connective moment between phenomenology and psychology insofar as both are concerned

136 with the analysis of the subject. It is precisely in connection with the modalities of the description of the subject, however, that there exists an operative assumption concerning methodology, namely, that the two disciplines differ profoundly from one another. Notwithstanding various oscillations of argument and difficulties, Husserl’s position can be delineated as follows: the two fields are different because phenomenology presents itself as a theory of knowledge (Erkenntnis-theorie) and, therefore, as philosophical research. The theory of knowledge is fundamental for clarifying the basic concepts of psychology, making it both possible and desirable for psychology to accept the conclusions of phenomenology and to configure itself as a phenomenological psychology (Husserl 1977). Husserl was not, however, only concerned with psychology but also with examining the significance of the sciences as they had organized themselves at the end of the nineteenth century. In all his reflections Husserl strenuously defended the separation between what was thencalled Naturwissenschaften (natural sciences) and Geisteswissenschaften (sciences of the spirit or human sciences); he neither wanted the absorption of the latter by the former nor their subordination, especially as positivism and neo-positivism were doing just that. Husserl always underscored the autonomy of philosophical inquiry with respect to the sciences, and, as far as the natural sciences were concerned, deemed it essential that there should be a critical and, therefore, philosophical examination of the cognitive structures that characterize them. In much the same way, he had highlighted for the human sciences the need for a philosophical foundation, that is, the fundamental concepts and notions employed within these disciplines had to be sorted and understood through a rigorous phenomenological analysis. It is against this background that one has to read Edith Stein’s essay on the philosophical foundation of psychology and the human sciences1 1

I shall examine here the first part of Stein’s long essay entitled Psychische Kausalität (Psychic causality), the annex to the first part, i.e. I. Über die Möglichkeit einer Deduktion der psychischen Kategorien aus der Idee einer exacten Psychologie (On the possibility of a deduction of psychic categories from the idea of an exact psychology) and the conclusion: Die prinzipielle Scheidung von psychischem und geistigen Sein, Psychologie und Geisteswissenschaften (The principled distinction between psychic and spiritual being, psychology and the sciences of the spirit). The essay also contains a second part, Individuum und Gemeinschaft (Individual and community).

137 (Stein 1970, p. 2). Here, Stein examines in a phenomenological way the structures that psychology employs, which claim that it is scientific. She argues that psychology fails to grasp their essential significance. The essay represented the realization of Husserl’s aforementioned project and, in conformity with Edith Stein’s style, dealt with the matter with great clarity and analytical acuity. This does not mean that she failed to recognize her debt to her teacher. On the contrary, notwithstanding the fact that she undoubtedly made an autonomous and personal contribution to the investigation then at hand, she frankly declared to have completely assimilated Husserl’s methodology thanks to her revisions of the second volume of the Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy (Husserl 1989).2 1. Psyche and causality Edith Stein begins with a question that recurs in philosophy, but which became particularly important in the age of positivism: Is the human being subject to the bonds of causality that characterize nature? The question is clearly underscored by a ‘classical’ vision of the physical sciences, founded on the causality principle. At the time, the human sciences and philosophical anthropology were trying to counter the prevalence of this principle. This argument takes the form of opposing determinists with indeterminists, that is, the opposition between freedom and necessity, the physical and the psychic. The resolution of these contrasts calls for a systematic analysis of psychic causality and, assuming the phenomenological attitude and starting right from the beginning by going back to “things themselves,” one must, therefore, ask, what is it that one understands by ‘psyche’ and ‘causality’ (Stein 1970, p. 3) The link between the two can be grasped only after having performed an analysis, which we can here only indicate the results of. Stein begins by discussing the validity of Hume’s critique of the concept of causality (Stein 1970, pp. 3-4), underlining that the English empiricist is correct to begin by examining the “phenomenon of causality.” Even though he has correctly identified the terrain on which to commence his inquiry, his objections are not by any means convincing. Re-proposing an attitude that Husserl had suggested on 2

As a general introduction to Edith Stein’s phenomenology please see: Ales Bello 2002a, 2002b.

138 several occasions and eventually developed in The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology (Husserl 1970), she holds that the objection put forward by Hume cannot simply be liquidated as Kant had claimed to do. Indeed, Kant had moved in an entirely different direction that took no account whatsoever of the spirit of Hume’s critique. It was not a matter of deducing the form of causality from physical science as already constituted. According to Edith Stein, Kant’s transcendental deduction only tells us that there is a bond or link, but it does not clarify the type of link; it is this link that we are here concerned with. It is only phenomenology that really comes to grips with the question of psychic causality by correlating it to its phenomenality and it is, therefore, only phenomenology that can respond to Hume’s objections. Edith Stein begins by examining a common and daily experience: I feel cold, but I can deceive myself as to the content of this sensation that I describe as ‘cold,’ and I can be deceived by my consciousness of this lived experience. Certainly, I feel when I am aware of the sensation; I feel cold and nothing else when I have this sensation, but it is possible that I feel cold without there really being cold and I may subsequently realize this. In the case of feelings regarding myself (Gefühle), feeling cold, for example, or those feelings regarding the properties of external things (Empfindungen), for example, sensations of colour vis-à-vis some coloured thing, an external condition (cold) and an internal property or capacity both present themselves. In the case of the Gefühle, we can speak of a life force (Lebenskraft) that nevertheless must not be confused with the pure I as the flow of lived experiences (Erlebnisse) (Stein 1970, pp. 19-20).3 This is a very important distinction between psychology and phenomenology; it is also a clarification of the relationship between psyche and consciousness. Here, we find the earlier distinction made by Husserl, who stressed that the causes that determine psychic life must not be sought in life feelings (Lebensgefühle), but in the ‘modes’ of a life force (Lebenskraft) that is announced in them (Stein 1970, p. 20). Changes in life conditions reflect a greater or lesser life force; this means that causality has nothing to do with the sphere of lived experiences. No pure lived experience can form part of a causal event; rather, as has already been said, lived experiences concern the life force 3

I give my own translation from the German text in all the quotations concerning this book in order to explain better what I wish to underscore.

139 insofar as both the life feelings and the lived experiences are only manifestation of the real causality of the psyche. In the fact that life force is given or taken away consists of a change of other psychic properties (Stein 1970, p. 21). It is important to note, however, that psychic causality is different from physical/natural causality; the psyche of an individual is a world of its own just like material nature is its own world. Even force manifests itself differently in the two cases. Whereas in physical nature force can be observed as the result of a happening, a material event, in the psychic sphere it can be grasped only through its lived modes. A distinction has to be made between the sphere of lived experiences (Erlebnisse) and that of life sphere (Lebenssphäre), which constitute a substratum of the flow of lived experiences (Stein 1970, p. 22). The relationship between the two spheres can be better understood if one notes that consciousness and the flux of its lived experiences can be imagined as devoid of life feelings; in this case we find ourselves faced with a flow of data of a different kind, i.e., quality and intensity without ‘colouring’ and tension, namely, the tension peculiar to the life sphere. One has to note the presence of life feelings, of a ‘field’ that has its characteristics, but which ‘colours’ all the data of the flow; this flow cannot be brought to a halt (Stein 1970, p. 30). At this point, Edith Stein cannot but come to terms with the analyses of Henri Bergson. Examining the mechanism of the psyche, she deems it to be a qualitative continuum, declaring herself to be in agreement with the French philosopher with regard to the valuation of the moments of psychic life that have to be traced back to differences of intensity. What Edith Stein does not accept from Bergson’s analysis contained in Essai sur les données immediates de la conscience (1889) is the view that it is not possible to identify the parts of this continuum and the place they occupy. Even though it is quite true that the various shades of red are difficult to distinguish, it is nevertheless possible to distinguish red from blue and, therefore, indicate the life feeling of one or the other quality and also the degrees of tension (Spannung). Furthermore, one can know the species ‘life feeling’ and grasp its peculiarity as compared with the species ‘tension of lived experience’ that characterizes all their degrees of tension, as Bergson sustains (Stein 1970, p. 31). It is precisely in this distinction between qualities that there resides the possibility of tracing a causal law, thus getting away from Bergson’s point of view. In actual fact, however, the type of causality that is thus

140 identified is different from the one that underlies scientific research. Bergson's anti-positivist attitude is maintained, for the causality that Edith Stein has in mind is not the ‘exact’ causality that forms the basis of the physical sciences, but a ‘pre-scientific’ causality of the kind that sometimes presents itself also in (our) experience of the physical world. The following can be examples of causal connections in psychic life and experience of nature: “I am so tired that I cannot read a book that makes intellectual demands on me” and, again, “today the air is so clear as to assure good visibility” (Stein 1970, p. 32). These connections can certainly not be determined in a rigid manner; rather, they are somewhat vague, though this does not mean that they do not express some kind of ‘necessity.’ The cases just mentioned concern connections between events that occur simultaneously. But, is it possible to foresee what is going to happen? At this point, Edith Stein seems to come closer to Bergson again, holding that the conditions of the life force can be foreseen only in a vague and general manner because the life force is different in each individual; one can hazard a guess only if one knows the individual concerned, and even then it is only of merely observational value. According to Edith Stein, there does not exist any kind of determinism in the psychic life, even though we can note some connections and, therefore, some ‘causal’ relationships. Indeed, these enable us to note the presence in the psychic life of a ‘causality’ that is completely different from the exact causality characteristic of scientific thought. Likewise, a quantitative determination of psychic states is altogether out of the question, because we are here concerned with a flow of qualitative states that can be recognized only in their essential structure. Ultimately, this is the real difference between the phenomenological reading of the psyche proposed by Edith Stein and the analyses of Henri Bergson.4 The ego contains another series of phenomena that are characterized by their representing an intentional moving towards something; these are ‘acts’ (Akte) or intentional lived experiences (intentionale Erlebnisse) with which spiritual life commences. Even in psychic life it is possible to trace a first form of intentionality, but this is no more than outlined. If 4

That Husserl was well aware of the affinities between his Problematik and those of Bergson can be seen from his claim “We are the true Bergsonians,” by which he wanted to underscore that phenomenological analyses clarified the questions posed by the French philosopher.

141 we examine some acts that we perform in everyday life, we shall realize the meaning of intentionality. With the meticulousness and clarity that distinguish her style, Edith Stein gives us very precise indications to pinpoint them. Our eyes may be turned inwards to discover the acts present there and this, in turn, is very important, because it enables us to understand others’ acts, as in the case of empathy (Stein 1989), and also ourselves. Here we have the act of reflection. Assuming a reflective or meditative attitude, we can begin to describe these acts. If we are concerned with an external object that presents itself as ‘transcendent,’ we have an act that places us in relationship with what is outside ourselves. One could describe it, even though Edith Stein does not use this term, as an act of ‘perception.’ In the case of external objects, moreover, we can relate their various aspects in such a manner that they are no longer merely one beside the other; rather, they form part of a connection, before and after, for example, as is the case for “apperception.” We can also put them all together, and here we have a ‘synthesis.’ We can even concern ourselves with the particular act that is the “setting in motion of what comes after through what there is before” (in-Bewegung-gesetzt-werden der späteren durch die früheren), which is ‘motivation’ (Motivation) (Stein 1970, pp. 34-35). Edith Stein then continues with a sober and clear description of some lived experiences of consciousness, which, as we know, Husserl had already analyzed in a meaningful manner in his Ideas I (Husserl 1982, pp. 59-61). She re-proposes them here to suggest an approach to clarify the nature of spiritual life. These particularly significant acts include those of motivation, which, on her view, must not be limited to free acts, the acts of the will; these significant acts represent the structure of the entire dimension of intentional lived experiences. 2. Motivation Motivation presents itself as the type of link that exists between acts. We are here neither concerned with a co-penetration of simultaneous or successive phases nor with the associative connection, rather, we are here dealing with an issuing of the one lived experience from the other, a manner in which the one completes itself or is so completed by virtue of the other. Given this relationship, the structure of lived experiences where a relationship of motivation is established becomes configured as acts that have their origin in the pure ego. The ego performs one act because it has already performed the other. This

142 can happen either consciously or unconsciously; an explicit motivation exists in the case in which one proceeds from the premises to the consequences, while an implicit motivation exists when, like in a mathematical proof, we make use of a theorem without demonstrating it ex novo. It is clear that every explicit motivation becomes sedimented as implicit and that every implicit motivation is capable of being made explicit (Stein 1970, pp. 35-36). Implicit motivations occur in the ambit of perception. When we examine the knowledge of a thing that can be sensed, it becomes clear that having sensations is a first form of motivation. But, we have a motivation relationship in the proper sense of the term when, face to face with some physical thing of which we can see only a part, we deem the existence of the other parts to be equally true, and this comprehension can eventually motivate a free movement that pushes us to a verification through actual perception. In the same way, something that is perceptively given may be the motive for believing in the existence of a thing and the belief in its existence may be what motivates our judgment regarding its existence. In the ethical sphere, similarly, grasping a value may be the motive for the will and for acting (Stein 1970, p. 36). The relationship between act and motivation can be understood as follows: when consciousness turns to an object, it does not intend a void X, but something that has a content of determinate sense, as a bearer of a unitary consistency of being that is enclosed within it. Little by little, the content gives itself, filling out the sense of the object. This is true not only of physical things but also of our knowledge of propositions and the state of things. In the latter case, a state of things may form part of different logical connections, for that is what rational motivation consists of. The ambit of possibilities, however, is limited and when the knowing subject oversteps this ambit, we come face to face with the irrational (Stein 1970, pp. 37-38). In conclusion, the passage from one act to another takes place thanks to motivation and it is for this same reason that the flow of lived experiences becomes configured as the sum total of acts and motivations that underlie lived experiences. Motivation, therefore, serves to justify a series of acts that in the cognitive ambit regard the ‘turning to,’ the taking of position and, consequently, accepting and negating as ‘free’ acts. Stein’s very subtle and limpid analysis, which explains some essential connections, cannot be taken up here in its entirety. Noteworthy, however, is the justification she gives for including the

143 important act of the epoché among ‘free’ acts, which, as we know, constitutes the starting point of all phenomenological inquiry. Its motivation is to be sought in the fact that something is not worthy of being believed when there is a contradiction between motives and reasons. For example, if somebody who brings us a new information is not trustworthy, we would have a ‘reasonable’ motive for the epoché, i.e., suspension of judgment, because there are reasons that prevent us from considering the messenger as a credible person. There is also the case in which we do not want to believe the news simply because it is unpleasant or because our behaviour is not determined by ‘objective’ reasons (Stein 1970, p. 45). In general, when motive (Motiv) and reason (Grund) are in agreement, one can accept that the motivation is reasonable (vernünftig). Likewise, non-credibility in the above-mentioned example is a reasonable motive for the epoché. It is very important, therefore, to grasp the connection between credibility, reasonability and acceptance, that is to say, recognition and affirmation. Theoretically, affirmation concerns the state of affairs (Sachverhalt), and in this case we come face to face with a free act in which we ‘recognize’ a state of affairs and, thus, we believe. The belief in this case is wholly intellectual, that is, the state of affairs ‘is so.’ Free acts always presuppose a motive, but do not determine an action, which needs an impulse that is not motivated. In this way, we enter the sphere of willing. Edith Stein makes us understand quite clearly why the epoché as the initial moment of the phenomenological attitude, and more generally, the philosophical attitude, is both a theoretical and a practical act. It is a recognition of something that is problematic, a lack of clarity of the state of affairs and a decision to change the attitude of believing; it is a voluntary act of suspending an earlier belief to assume the possibility of really seeing the thing, the Sache, to go to the things themselves, zu den Sachen selbst, as Husserl put it, or to understand the Sachverhalt, as Edith Stein stressed in the wake of Adolf Reinach. Concentrating her attention on the sphere of willing and acting, Stein points to free acts. Acts are free if they proceed from an intention (Vorsatz) and are guided by a ‘fiat,’ by a decision taken at an appropriate moment. Naturally, every intention calls for a voluntary taking of a position, but not every taking of a position is of itself a free act, because one may want without really proposing to do something. Consequently, one should note that, in accordance with Dietrich von Hildebrand, to propose something is a ‘willing’ that has a capacity, a ‘being able to,’ as

144 its necessary condition. The ambit of free acts is limited to those acts, and only those acts, that can proceed from an intention and are guided by a ‘fiat’ (Stein 1970, pp. 49-52). Only in the case of free acts does the motivation manifest itself in a meaningful way. Alexander Pfänder (Pfänder 1908) deemed motivation to be really present only where there is a relationship between a motive required by the will and an act of the will founded thereupon, that is, when the ego does not just feel a need, but lives this need within the ego, ‘filling’ it, realizing it as an act of will. This does not mean, however, that the motivation is not to a certain extent present also in striving or tending toward something (Streben), albeit in a manner different from the way it is present in willing, such that the last one is associated with a free impulse, an intention, that we cannot find in tending. Tending towards something just happens to me and cannot be willed (Stein 1970, p. 55). In spite of the distinction between causality and motivation, there is a connection between the two. Offering an example that is particularly dear to her, Edith Stein shows how causal factors and motivations can both come into play. The joy that somebody gives me motivates me to form the intention to return the joy, but a feeling that suddenly gets the better of me prevents me from carrying out something that would be motivated in a reasonable manner (Stein 1970, p. 69). Two levels can here be identified in the life sphere: the sensible (sinnlich) and the spiritual (geistig). They are connected in such a way that the spiritual force is conditioned by the sensible one. For example, freshness of spirit disappears as the body tires but one can also note the independence of the two. For example, I can recognize the value of a work of art without being able to become enthusiastic about it (Stein 1970, pp. 73-74). The life of the psyche, therefore, seems to be the combined action of several forces: the sensible force, which presents itself in relation to the apprehension of sense data and in our sense impulses, and the spiritual force, which is a force that is wholly new and different from the sense force, manifesting itself in spiritual activities and capacities. It can, however, unfold only with the collaboration of the sense force. The latter has its roots in nature and this justifies its psychophysical connection, that is, the link between psyche, body and material nature. Through spiritual force the psyche opens to the objective world and can acquire new impulses. The nourishment of the spiritual force of the individual psyche may derive from an ‘objective’ spiritual world, a world of values,

145 or from the spiritual force of other subjects and from the divine spirit. In any case, it is necessary to locate a personal core (Kern) subtracted from all physical and psychic conditioning that is constituted by the capacity of willing, the sphere of free acts (Stein 1970, p. 106). 3. Psychology and the sciences of the spirit Edith Stein establishes the link between psychology and the spiritual sciences (Geisteswissenschaften). With respect to the principal German theorists of her time, i.e., Münsterberg, Natorp, Windelband and Rickert5, she first justifies her inquiry into the psyche on two fronts, namely, empirical psychology and pure psychology. First, though the latter does not wholly coincide with phenomenology, it makes use of essential description proposed by phenomenology to identify fundamental concepts and highlight the peculiar sphere of the psyche such that research into pure Erlebnisse is a preliminary condition for understanding what is psychic.6 Second, the analyses carried out enable her to describe the peculiar field of the spirit and are, thus, primary for an understanding of the human sciences. This makes it possible to distinguish the two areas, i.e., psychology and the human sciences; within these it is also possible to separate the empirical dimension from the pure one. We here have to clarify why at the end of Stein’s essay, in a paragraph entitled “Die prinzipielle Scheidung von psychischem und geistigen Sein, Psychologie und Geisteswissenschaften” (The principled distinction between psychic and spiritual being, psychology and the sciences of the spirit; Stein 1970, p. 267), she places her analyses under the title of “geisteswissenschaftliche Psychologie” (Psychology as a human science). This seems to coincide with “apriorische Psychologie” (apriori psychology). The justification of these definitions is found in the fact that the life of the psyche is the result of the combined action of sentient and spiritual forces. It is, therefore, possible to distinguish the 5

Apart from Bergson, the principal thinkers with whom Edith Stein took issue were Münsterberg, Rickert and Windelband. She dedicated long paragraphs to these thinkers, acutely analyzing their position with respect to psychology and the human sciences. 6 This motive present in the text had already been put forth by Edith Stein in her doctoral thesis, Zum Problem der Einfühlung (On the problem of empathy; Stein 1989), and in the book that was recently published on the basis of a long text she had written in the period 1917-1932, now conserved in the Brussels archives, Einführung in die Philosophie (Introduction to philosophy; Stein 2004).

146 dimension of Seele (soul) from that of Geist (spirit). It is clear that the bond between body, psyche and spirit is very strong in the human being, and one simply cannot do without any one of these elements. Another problem that comes to the fore concerns the sphere in which theory is carried out. When examining the operation of parenthesizing (epoché), we have already noted that the activity of rational motivation is peculiar to the spirit, and one can, therefore, sustain that theoretical reflection occurs at this level. If the human sciences concern individual human expressions in the spiritual sense, thus giving rise to specific forms of inquiry, including history, social sciences, law, it is only philosophicophenomenological research that explains what is spiritual activity. If we have here an analysis that grasps the a priori structures of spiritual reality and that cannot do without considering the totality of the human being and his/her psychic life, this justifies research that self-defines itself as “psychology as science of the spirit.” But, all of this is only possible within the limits here indicated, because psychology in itself is undoubtedly not a science of the spirit, though the psychic states cannot not be validly understood unless and until one arrives, as is demonstrated by Stein’s essay, at an understanding of motivation and, therefore, the spiritual sphere. Having generally delineated the domains of the psyche and the spirit, and having established the relationship between the disciplines that study these sectors that need to be phenomenologically justified, it seems clear that Edith Stein is aware not only of the validity of some of the results attained but also of the inexhaustibility of the search. Though the object has been identified, one cannot conclude to have completed its description. This is the fundamental argument she adopts to refute the possibility of a transcendental deduction from the idea of psychology as an exact science of all the laws of the psyche. Arguing against, above all, the positivist claim of delineating a theory that provides all the conditions of possibility for such a science, after having identified a part and the structure of that conditioning part, one may anticipate future outcomes. Edith Stein fulfils various objectives: First, the impossibility of founding psychology as an exact science in conformity with a scientific model bound up with physics. Second, the impossibility of moving from a constitutive science, deducing its internal components, and this in opposition, albeit not explicitly so, to Kant’s deduction and the connection between Kant’s

147 position and the positivist mentality with its proclaimed scientism7. One might say that just as Kant thought that he could justify time and space by moving from arithmetic and geometry, likewise, psychology as an exact science could move from psychic causality, seeking to trace this causality in a determinist manner in all lived experiences, in association as in motivation. From these causal connections it is held that one could recognize the entire structure of psychic life, reducing it to laws in such a way that it becomes possible to construct a concrete psychology. Again, Stein rejects this scientistic approach. There is here a double movement that sets out from the assumptions of a theory and then seeks to justify this same theory with elements that have been obtained within that theory, thus, introducing a deductive element to the whole rigidly structured domain of psychology. As far as Edith Stein is concerned, it is not just a question of subtracting psychology and, more generally, the human sciences from this model but also of refuting the model in relation to the natural sciences themselves. According to Stein, the difficulty of exhausting a field of inquiry by imprisoning it in a theory should be made clear to the physicist by the very conflict between theories. It is essential to turn the attitude of inquiry upside down and, rather than proceeding from the method to the structure of an object, one should allow the method to be indicated by the structure of the object. Here, we come face to face with a very clear delineation of phenomenological inquiry, which lets itself be guided by things and, therefore, by the object, rather than by theory. It gives analysis the place of deduction. We have here a fundamental critique of the structures of Western thought, at least as it has become concretized in scientific inquiry and in the philosophies that move from above, von oben. We find a critique that in this specific sector was undoubtedly begun by Husserl and then continued by Edith Stein in a direction in which, even more strongly than in Husserl’s case, there is no separation between analysis, intuition and essential research. This leads to a reading of reality that grasps it in its totality. This totality is not a circle that encloses everything, identifying a unitary theoretical force, as it was done in the past through history, economy, reason, the unconscious and so on and that is why in our days it prevails, as contraposition, the 7

In particular, this objection was levelled against Münsterberg in Annex II: Münsterberg’s Versuch der Begründung einer exakten Psychologie (Münsterberg’s attempt of the foundation of an exact psychology).

148 attitude towards nihilism. According to Edith Stein, the totality becomes delineated by an expansion in a twofold direction of further research and gradual definition on the part of human beings, understood as individuals and as community.8 Humans analyze what is given and conditioned by nature with ever greater acuity. In this way, nothing is exhausted or concluded; the beyond to which each moment alludes cannot be theorized beforehand. It is not a question of using thought to dominate in order to grasp and close, but patiently searching and following roads that lead afar. This is the new manner of proceeding that has left its imprint on twentieth-century philosophical inquiry, precisely thanks to the presence of phenomenological inquiry, to which Edith Stein made a valid contribution, attaining original results. References Ales Bello, A. (2002a). “Edith Stein‘s contribution to phenomenology,” in A.-T. Tymieniecka, ed, Phenomenology world-wide. Foundations—expanding dynamics—life-engagement. A guide for research and study, Dordrecht, Kluwer, pp. 232-240. Ales Bello, A. (2002b). “Edith Stein: Phenomenology, the state and religious commitment,” in A.-T. Tymieniecka, ed, Phenomenology world-wide. Foundations—expanding dynamics—life-engagement. A guide for research and study, Dordrecht, Kluwer, pp. 648-656. Husserl, E. (1970). The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology. An introduction to phenomenology, translated by D. Carr, Evaston, IL, Northwestern University Press. Husserl, E. (1977). Phenomenological psychology, translated by J. Scanlon, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (1982). Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy, First book, translated by F. Kersten, The Hague, Mertiuns Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund (1989). Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy, second book Studies in the phenomenologicy of constitution, translated by R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer, The Hague, Kluwer.

8

This is clearly brought out in some of her works, some of which have already been cited, from her dissertation on empathy right through to the text entitled Über den Staat (Stein 2006) and Einführung in die Philosophie (Stein 2004).

149 Pfänder, A. (1911). “Motive und Motivationen,” Münchener Philosophische Abhandlungen. Stein, E. (1970). Beiträge zur philosophischen Begründung der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften in Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, Vol. V, 1922, republished by Max Niemeyer Verlag. Stein, E. (1989). On the problem of empathy, translated by W. Stein, Washington DC, ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2000). Philosophy of psychology and the humanities, translated by M. C. Baseheart and M. Sawicki, Washington, DC, ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2004). Einführung in die Philosophie, edited by C. M. Wulf, ESGA, vol.8, Freiburg, Herder. Stein, E. (2006). An investigation concerning the state, translated by M. Sawicki, Washington DC, ICS Publications.

The Futures of Causality: Hans Jonas and Gilles Deleuze Christopher Groves

1. Introduction: Determinism and novelty One of the meeting-points between the Western scientific tradition and common-sense understandings of physical events lies in the temporal structure of causality. Causality, like time itself, is unidirectional. The past fully determines the content of the present, and therefore the future is only the outcome of what has already occurred, granted the general uniformity of nature. However, there are varieties of physical system where an explanatory gap appears to open up between the past and the future. The assumption that the past of any physical system, at any isolated point in time, constitutes the sufficient reason of its present and future, does not hold for some complex systems that manifest behaviours (e.g. adaptivity) with various degrees of indeterminateness. Complexity, in this sense, tends towards unpredictability rather than the predictability promised by Newtonian and Laplacean conceptions of physical law (Prigogine and Stengers 1997). But the unpredictability it promises is not randomness, but instead the emergence of new and unforeseen forms of order. In the Newtonian or Laplacean deterministic universe, movement is a property of material bodies through which is ‘transmitted’ the influence of the past in ways which conform to fixed laws. Change is movement, and is borne by bodies, aggregations of material substance whose attributes vary as their position in space changes over time. In this universe, there is no true novelty. Time is a series of instants or t-states, within each of which is re-instantiated the whole set of physical laws that govern the fundamental constituents of material substance. In J. E. McTaggart’s terminology (McTaggart 1993), this constitutes the B-series of time, according to which changes can be assigned to specific points in time according to unvarying laws. Change is only the rearrangement of material substance in ways which may vary

152 the properties of individual bodies, but which cannot give rise to anything whose behaviour is not in principle subsumed under the existing laws. In this universe, neither past nor future (McTaggart’s Aseries of psychological states of memory and anticipation) is truly real. Since Lamarck and Darwin, and the emergence of modern biology, the meaning of novelty in the universe has however been a central concern of scientific investigation. The theory of evolution by natural selection treats novelty as a real phenomenon, with the laws of natural selection being dependent on the contingent coming into existence of entities which can reproduce and whose offspring are subject to heritable variation. The discovery that such entities have an origin within historical time shatters the older world-picture. Instead of one set of fixed laws being operative from the least organised level of matter upward, the changing properties of matter may themselves produce entities whose attributes are organised in ways that are qualitatively different to those of other entities, and which are governed by novel constraints which themselves have a history. Ontologically speaking it is therefore necessary to understand how novelty, in the shape of new forms of order, can emerge. This shifts the focus of scientific explanation, just as the development of Newtonian mechanics shifted it. In the Newtonian universe, the regularity of nature was explained in a way which radically differed from the Aristotelian cosmology which was intellectually dominant in Europe up to the 16th and early 17th centuries. Whereas the Aristotelian worldview saw rational order within the resemblances between natural phenomena and pure geometrical forms, e.g. in the spherical shape of the earth and the circular orbits of the planets, the new natural philosophy proposed instead that mechanical motion of the basic constituent parts of nature was the basis of natural law. Developments in algebra, leading to innovations in coordinate geometry, allowed geometrical forms to be understood as the products of functions that were taken to represent physical laws. This form of mechanistic explanation replaced the idea that the Ideas of geometrical forms were themselves the eternal final causes of motion (Jonas 1982, pp. 67-68). What the problem of novelty produces is a further shift in our understanding of the nature of order, with the mathematical regularities that are taken to typify natural laws being seen as emergent products of processes which must themselves be described. The question then arises as to what constraints these processes themselves operate under and how, if at all, they can be explained.

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2. Mechanism, finality and the future In order to define these constraints, we might consider two options: (A) The constraints are somehow given independently of the systems which they constrain, and act as eternal limits on the variations that may occur in the properties of different kinds of material entities. This, however, takes us back beyond Newtonianism, to an Aristotelian universe in which deterministic final causes serve as teleological attractors. If we return, in this way, to the assumption that final causes are real, then any questions concerning the mechanism by which the intelligible forms of material objects are made to inhere in them promise to take us beyond scientific naturalism and on to some form of cosmotheology. Here, the options for development somehow reside outside time as possibilities which are realised within time through a process of selection that limits what can be realised at any one instant (Deleuze 1991, pp. 96-97). The transcendent order of final causes together with past moments understood as a sequence of efficient causal transitions fully determines the present. Hence it is difficult to view the future as anything other than the yet to be worked-out consequences of these two orders of causality. Once again, novelty does not therefore truly exist. We are back once again with McTaggart’s B-series, in the sense that the experience of futurity or anticipation is an index of the epistemological limits that derive from our temporalised, finite existence. (B) The constraints are somehow produced within or alongside the systems they constrain. In other words, they do not pre-exist them in any sense which implies some kind of hierarchy of the material and intelligible, with intelligible forms being transcendent to matter yet somehow mysteriously imparted to it. Here, novelty truly exists in the sense that an open future is a real dimension of the present. The present cannot be understood without placing the future within it as that which holds it open. To explain the present, we need to understand its past and the genesis of the forms of order which operate within it, but we also need to attempt to grasp in what directions these forms are themselves evolving. The reality of the future does not mean that it is in some sense pre-ordained. Rather, its reality lies in how it holds the present open in a determinable—rather than wholly indeterminate—way. That the future of a system is open does not mean that “anything can happen,” but rather that it should be thought of as a problem (“what next?”) which the

154 system poses in a way which is unique to that system and its interactions with other systems. In this essay, I want to examine two attempts to understand what option (B) might mean for explanations of change. Hans Jonas offers an account of, in the main, living systems which presents metabolism as the basis of understanding their irreducible future-orientation, and argues for the necessity of phenomenological description in explaining how living systems operate. Phenomenological description here (implying a standpoint which takes the appearance of the world to a particular system as irreducible) is posited as a necessary constraint on mechanistic description, one which promises to unite an observer with the futures that ‘inhabit’ a particular system. Gilles Deleuze offers a contrasting account of how order emerges within material systems per se, including physico-chemical, biological, social and technological forms of organisation. Instead of phenomenological description, he points to virtual constraints which operate within material systems, making possible both tendencies towards homeostasis (like the metabolic processes Jonas describes) and tendencies towards metamorphosis. Both homeostasis and metamorphosis are theorised as operating across the widely different timescales of production and reproduction that differentiate types of systems from each other. The virtual attractors that incline matter towards either tendency inhabit the present in a different way to the phenomenological future of which Jonas writes. While neither author promises a return to the Aristotelian universe of deterministic final causes, both refuse the Newtonian option of assigning to causation the single meaning of efficient causation. Instead, they arguably retain an Aristotelian inspiration insofar as they interpret the category of aition (broadly, whatever can be offered as a response to a ‘why?’ question) as inherently ambiguous, due to the temporal structure of change. 3. Hans Jonas and immanent teleology The schema offered by option A (section 2, above) is a preformationist one in which teloi are imagined as somehow given in existence anterior to the existence of individual entities which, after birth, develop in accordance with specific mechanical laws selected and regulated by their individual telos. Kant’s assessment of teleological judgement in his Critique of Judgement is directed against the validity of such a view, which interprets purposes as objective elements which are

155 placed within nature, such that natural processes serve as means to the achievement of external ends. Hans Jonas, in a series of essays which, it has been suggested, constitute an attempt to solve the ambiguities within Kant’s third Critique concerning the status of teleology (Weber and Varela 2002), has argued that such views of teleology as anterior or external to nature reflect a mistaken judgement based on experience. External teleology is, as Kant argued, not an a priori principle of experience. It is derived from our actual experience, but from our understanding of human artefacts, where purpose always precedes manufacture, rather than from our experience of living things (Jonas 1982, pp. 117-122). However, Kant considers it legitimate, when confronted with some natural entities, to reflect on the nature of a purpose which is not given to us in order to make sense of our experiences of them (Kant 2005, §80). This kind of purpose is what Jonas characterises as an immanent form of teleology, one which marks a formal distinction between organic and inorganic systems and which requires a phenomenological level of description. Mechanistic approaches to characterising what marks the difference between living and non-living systems typically proceed by listing the characteristics of the material processes that operate in either case. In this way, the characteristics of the material substrates of these kinds of system and the laws according to which energy is transferred through them are assumed to be formally sufficient to distinguish them. What this leaves out, from Jonas’ point of view, is how a living system such as an organism constitutes a centre of experience or a thing-for-itself, and how the minimal formal characteristics of such a conception force us to treat a mechanistic explanation of life as an incomplete abstraction. Whereas the mistaken attribution of external, objective purposes to nature derives from our understanding of human artefacts, Jonas observes that our attribution of a hidden end to a living system is based on our experience of ourselves as living bodies, with an urge to continue existing (Jonas 1982, pp. 21-25). Self-knowledge is made possible by the specific character of this embodied being, rather than being attendant upon achieving e.g. a Husserlian transcendental reduction to pure consciousness. Further, our experience of striving to continue existing within a world full of affordances and resistances gives us the basis for our understanding of causality and change—a proposition which reflects Kant’s argument in his Opus Postumum that the a priori categories of experience are grounded in bodily experience (Weber and Varela 2002,

156 pp. 109-110). That this experience has a particular temporal structure is crucially important, and a theme to which we shall return. To reason, as Jonas does, that biology has to be based on a phenomenologically-informed set of principles, rather than solely on the methodical search for mathematical regularities in observable data, should not be understood as an attribution of human selfhood to nonhuman organisms. The analogy between our life experienced as conatus, or an overwhelming and consuming concern to persist in one’s identity (Jonas 1984, pp. 72-73), and the formal character of life per se is much more minimal. From this analogy, Jonas argues in the essays collected as The Phenomenon of Life (1966) that the fundamental distinction between living and non-living material systems is that the organism has the character of what Roman Ingarden has elsewhere described as a “relatively autonomous system” (Ingarden 1970). It maintains a dialectical relationship with its environment, actively distinguishing itself from it whilst at the same time managing and sustaining a set of dynamic relationships with it. To put it another way, the organism seeks to maintain its overall functional unity throughout an ongoing exchange of matter and energy with the environment (Jonas 1982, pp. 75-76). By contrast, the non-living system is defined as a collection of indifferent material substrates through which energy is simply transmitted, a system without the phenomenological quality of for-ness or intentionality in the general Brentanian sense. However, this distinction does not imply that the for-ness of an organism is cognitive. Cognition, as we shall see, is interpreted by Jonas as a higher-order manifestation of conatus. The organism cannot therefore be reduced to a bundle of processes of change which simply manifest the varying attributes of an essentially unchanging material substrate. On the contrary, everything here is process, out of which stable structures are built. From individual bacterial cells on up, life builds membranes around itself, separating self and other, and thus forming a cellular identity (Varela 1997, p. 75) that supports basic metabolic functions. This minimal level of identity differs from the identity of a physical system in three ways: firstly, the identity of each part of a physical system is merely a case of simple spatial selfcoincidence, whereas the identity of any specifiable part of a living system (e.g. my liver) cannot be conceived of except in its active and mutually-sustaining relationships with the rest of the system of which it is part. Secondly, the overall unity of the system itself in space and time is only phenomenal or for another, i.e., merely the way another perceives it (i.e. is contributed by another’s interest in this particular piece of the

157 cosmos), whereas the overall spatial and temporal unity of the living system exists for itself, through being an object of its interest and concern. Thirdly, the only purpose that can be attributed to a non-living system (as Kant and Jonas both agree) is an external one contributed by another (for human artefacts, the inventor or manufacturer; for natural entities, a supernatural being), whereas the teleology of the organism derives immanently from its own existence: it is self-valuing. Its selfproduction and autonomy is its own immanent purpose, and this shapes (and is shaped by) its form, the dynamic organisation of parts which generates for it its own unique forms of activity within the world (Jonas 1982, pp. 79-81). Jonas describes this formal character of the organism’s relationship with its environment as one of “needful freedom” (Jonas 1982, p. 80). Crucially, the more individuated and relatively autonomous the organism, and the more autonomy it has by virtue of its behavioural repertoire, then the more intimately it is involved with its environment, the more the world around it is an object of its concern, and the more sensitive it must be to signals from its environment if it is to survive (Jonas 1982, p. 84). The more capacity for independence the organism possesses, the more insecure its existence, and so it uses more energy in finessing its responses to perturbations intruding from outside it. Although it has more degrees of freedom than the plant, the animal pays for the advantages of motility with increased vulnerability, both in terms of scarcity of food sources and need to husband some resources for dealing with the threat of predators. As a self-valuing entity, the organism also locates values in the world around it. Jonas’ contention here is that the organism does not just encounter the environment, it experiences it. That is, the organism’s selfconcern and its characteristic ways of pursuing its immanent purpose provide a context for its actions, which allow it to interpret significant traits within the world around it and to formulate timely responses. Jonas is evidently close here to von Uexkull’s concept of Umwelt, the singular world of the individual that differs from the Außenwelt or environment of a non-living system insofar as it is structured not only by physical causal regularities but also by processes of semiosis (Kull 1999, p. 390). A further, temporal distinction between non-living and living systems can therefore be drawn. For Jonas, from the point of view of the scientific observer, the physical system is fully determined by a set of timeless regularities, and is therefore effectively complete at each and every instant in which its state is observed. From moment to moment, it

158 is simply a rearrangement of its basic constituents that has been choreographed by exceptionless laws. But the organism, viewed as an immanent purpose and therefore as self-valuing, is determined as essentially incomplete. The environment of an organism is a world because it signals to the organism concerning states which have been or might be. Whereas the physical system is, from the scientist’s point of view, simply present in each instant or t-state, the world in which the organism lives features traits to which it is sensitive, and which evoke memory and anticipation. Further, these traits are not just singularly significant because of the organism’s apparatus for gleaning data about its environment, but gain their significance from the way in which the various metabolic processes of the organism function. These processes, and the dynamic identity they manifest over time, relate the organism to the regularities that inhere in the environment in a particular way, such that some of these regularities are important for it and others not so. As Varela puts it, the identity of the organism constitutes for it a “surplus of signification” (1997, p. 79), placing it outside its environment and granting it not just a cellular identity which closes it off from its surroundings, but a more or less primitive cognitive identity, a position from which the world is evaluated. The organism’s identity in the present is constituted by references forward and backward in time, and so it never fully coincides with itself. In this way, Jonas suggests it is not possible to conceive of the difference between non-living and living systems without treating some experience of pastness and futurity as ontologically constitutive of what it is to be a living system. Jonas’ analysis of organism therefore subverts McTaggart’s distinction between the subjective or psychological A-series of time and the physical or objective B-series. An ontologically constitutive sense of past and future are interpreted as existential correlates of certain forms of material organisation. This must be contrasted with pastness and futurity understood as psychological phenomena somehow supervening on a sophisticated central nervous system (A-series), or pastness and futurity as unreal dimensions of an essentially timeless physical reality (Bseries). The existential interpretation of organic temporality here is offered as a necessary condition of any explanation of the difference between non-living and living systems. Time, for the organism, is what brings forth the world for it within the horizons of its self-interest, and defines for it its own cognitive identity. In relation to its own identity in time, the potential futures of the organism therefore constitute a determinate, constitutive lack in relation

159 to which its activity in the present is shaped. The organism seeks in the world what it needs in order to persist, and finds it through the promises embodied in the world by traces of pasts and impending futures. Scents or sonar echoes indicate the impending satisfaction of hunger, the softness of earth underfoot promises a burrow in which to sleep, and the movement of wind and light opens up spaces in which pent-up energy can be expended in running and chasing. The present behaviour of the organism cannot therefore be understood without interpreting the characteristic ways in which it anticipates its own future states and those of its world. The behaviour of organisms is therefore always modulated to some lesser or greater degree by the need to adapt to a world which is full of potential shocks. To be adaptive in this sense, the organism must be capable of anticipating tendencies of change within its own states as well as outside it, and then of altering its behaviour so that its internal condition remains within a range of viability—as in, for example, the way in which most reptiles move from shade to sun and back to regulate body temperature. To persist in its being, the organism must stay in motion, must maintain the coherence of a delicately choreographed ensemble of temporal dynamisms. It has to organise its own time (behaviour) and space (territory) in a way that provides for the various needful dimensions of its existence. With higher organisms, their capacity for more sophisticated evaluations of possible futures enables them to recursively redefine what is to count as a viable state in response to unpredictable situations where previously viable states prove to be nonviable (Di Paolo 2005, pp. 439-440). The futures of organisms therefore have a particular character. They are neither entirely indeterminate nor pre-determined. Nor are they fully actualised. However, they exist within the present in the sense that they are real “in practice” (Arnoldi 2004, pp. 3-5), that is, as indexes of projected tendencies which then recursively shape the ongoing behaviour of the organism. Interpreting these futures is, as Varela writes in relation to the bacterium’s feeding behaviour, crucial to understanding living systems. For Jonas, then, the futures available to an organism by virtue of its form and its interactions with its environment constitute its freedom whilst at the same time having to fit in with its characteristic patterns of behaviour. The capacity for anticipation is a necessary formal property of a living creature which makes novelty (in the shape of new behaviours) possible in higher animals. But Jonas’ phenomenological explanation of the formal characteristics of organic life leaves untouched

160 the question of how constraints governing the forms of living creatures themselves emerge. He begins from the unity of the phenotype, and so does not address the relation between the individual organism and its genotype, or provide an account of the constraints which govern the more fundamental processes of natural selection and embryogenesis that give rise to the individual organism in its specificity. Jonas’ account of the role of the real, practical future within the lived unity of the organism is not enough on its own to do away with option (A), the return to a deterministic, finalist universe, as the possibility of the general forms of living entities being somehow ontologically preformed is not entirely ruled out within his ontology. 5. Gilles Deleuze and the quasi-causality of the virtual The questions which remain largely unaddressed by Jonas’ account of the role played by futurity in shaping the behaviour of organisms constitute a major theme within the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. Deleuze’s work, both on his own and with Félix Guattari, is devoted to elaborating a fully consistent (B)-type account of nature, one in which being is explicitly presented as the result of becoming, and substance as an effect of process. What constrains and shapes process is conceived of as being produced within matter itself. The purpose of ontology, then, is to show how individual entities congeal out of self-organising matter. Nothing about the particular constitution of individual entities is assumed to be given independently of the material processes that produce them. Deleuze’s philosophy is therefore an out and out attack on the idea of essences, and with it, that of pre-existing final causes, one which seeks to show that the specification of a thing is the process from which it emerges, whether the thing in question is a chemical element, an organism, a species, a social institution or a technology (De Landa 2004, p. 10).1 In order to explain how material processes congeal into determinate products, Deleuze distinguishes between actual causal processes and the virtual or “quasi-causal” elements which lend spatiotemporal form to them. In this ontology, the world is a nested set of complex systems, the majority of which are, like an organism, not at equilibrium. They are 1

My discussion here takes much of its impetus from the self-avowedly “realist” reconstructions of Deleuze’s thought provided by Manuel Delanda (Delanda 2004), and Mark Bonta and John Protevi (Bonta and Protevi 2004).

161 both spatially and temporally open: spatially, because they are related in various ways to other co-existing systems, allowing energy to transit through them, and temporally, because their non-equilibrium condition implies that they are radically incomplete. These two modes of openness necessitate the imposition of formal constraints on any ontological explanation of how order is produced. It is because systems are open that ontology has to do without any concept of substance, be it an intelligible essence which teleologically guides the emergence of an individual’s form, or a material substrate which sustains mechanical causation. Within this world, Jonas’ account of organic life will appear as a rather parochial attempt to account for the maintenance of form without being able to explain its wider embeddedness in a dynamic material reality. From the point of view of the organism, the spatially and temporally open processes of morphogenesis in which it is located stretch out below and above it at different spatial and temporal scales. It is both affected by these (insofar as they constrain its form) and affects them (insofar as its actions can place local constraints on how these processes are manifested). These can be presented in a historical order: firstly the production of inorganic and organic chemical compounds within stars and in the Earth’s ecosphere, the eventual evolutionary emergence of its genotype, the reproductive process which resulted in its own existence, and finally the ecosystem it inhabits together with other individuals. Through the behavioural routines which relate it to its environment, the organism can potentially affect its genotype and its ecosystem in various ways (through, for example, forming along with others of its species symbiotic relationships with other organisms). For Deleuze, all these morphogenetic processes, from the emergence of inorganic order through the adoption by organisms of new behavioural routines to the influence of interactions between species on evolution can all be explained through the interaction of two distinct modal aspects of reality, the actual and the virtual. The actual is the material, causal order as such, which is characterised by two features. Firstly, as well as actual entities possessing extensive qualities such as length and weight, they are also characterised by intensive qualities through which order is created, maintained and transformed. These qualities (such as temperature or pressure) are ones which cannot be divided (unlike extensive qualities, such as length, which can) without the nature of the system they characterise changing in nature (Deleuze and Guattari 1988, pp. 31-33). For example, by heating a container of water the temperature of the

162 water is divided across the container. With this division, however, comes a qualitative change of state in the body of water itself—it moves from temperature equilibrium to being far from equilibrium, and at a certain point its molecules enter a new ordered state, forming convection cells (De Landa 2004, p. 25). Non-linear systems that are far from equilibrium can enter into heterogeneous relationships with other systems through exchanges of energy (kinetic, potential, chemical etc.) that mark points at which they couple with each other (Bonta and Protevi 2004, pp. 1516; Deleuze 1994, p. 117). Examples of these relationships (or assemblages) might include an animal walking on a flat surface, in which the ground, gravity and the animal’s capacity to maintain its gait through “controlled falling,” a process of balancing the rotating motions of limbs against each other to stop the animal from hitting the ground (Massumi 1998) produce a new system. Symbiotic evolution provides another instance, as in the case of deep-sea tubeworms which are infected during their larval stage by bacteria which then metabolise nutrients for the worms. In coupling, what occurs is a gradual enmeshing of independent processes within one parallel process, in which the individual systems composing it gain new capacities. Secondly, actual systems possess their own temporalities. The processes that compose them manifest periodic oscillations which, for Deleuze, characterise the individual “living presents” of the system. This actual time, which can be counted and measured, he refers to by the Stoic designation of Chronos, a time which can always be understood in terms of a set of nested periods of different sizes (from the period of an atomic oscillator through the circadian rhythms of an organism to the orbit of a planet) (Deleuze 1990, p. 162). The actual world therefore consists of a continuous individuation of systems operating at different spatial and temporal scales, which are largely defined by their intensive properties (the specific ways in which energy flows through them). This process largely consists of the coupling of entities through their capacities for exchanging energy. Processes of coupling are a kind of mutual entrainment of different components which possess their own intrinsic temporalities. Deleuze describes embryogenesis in these terms, as a process of assembly driven by the differences between rates of change in the bio-chemical components of an egg (Deleuze 1994; Deleuze and Guattari 1988, p. 48). These processes are not determined by final causes which in some sense pre-exist the emergence of specific forms, and dictate the properties which these forms must possess. Rather, they emerge from within actual,

163 empirical interactions between components of systems and systems themselves. In this sense, they are novel relational properties which appear, from the point of view of the actual entity, to emerge through chance—like the property of the earth of being a surface on which animals can walk. For Jonas, as we saw, novelty as the capacity of an organism for behavioural flexibility depended on its defining constitutive lack. The possible futures of an organism constitute a determinate gap within its present, a hesitation between needs and their satisfaction which he calls needful freedom. In other words, the necessary conditions of its continuing existence (which are given through its defining genotype— i.e. what is necessary for one species of plant may not be for another, and what is necessary for a carnivore is not for a herbivore, etc.) provoke its freedom and shape the range of potential futures it hesitates between. Deleuze, however, suggests that novelty is produced more generally through the conjunction of non-linear processes, and is not confined to living entities whose activities are defined by their conatus. But these processes are not entirely random. Just as Jonas’ organism is a nexus of necessity and freedom, in which regularities are subject to flexible adaptation, so Deleuze’s concept of the combination of heterogeneous actual systems implies a form of regularity that flexibly constrains the potential development of these systems. This form of regularity is not, however, comparable with the linear form of regularity which typically constrains the behaviour of systems studied by classical mechanics.2 Instead, it characterises the virtual, which Deleuze posits as immanent within the actual yet irreducible to it. The virtual consists of “multiplicities” (Deleuze 1991, p. 39, 1994, p. 182), a concept which Deleuze intends as a replacement for both the deterministic concept of final causes and the concept of mechanistic laws which ensure that matter is rearranged from moment to moment in essentially predictable ways. As such, it is the virtual which embodies the specific reality of the future within all actual processes. Multiplicities are defined by singularities, features of the state space of a given actual system which map out its long-term tendencies. They are the attractors which define the potential sets of trajectories which describe changes in the intensive properties of the system. For example, a highly significant singularity within the enlarged system of the ambulatory animal, gravity 2

On the preference of classical mechanics for linear physical systems, see Stewart (1989).

164 and ground is the animal’s centre of gravity (Massumi 1998). The centre of gravity is an attractor that governs the stretches and rotations through which the animal’s limbs move it forward and keep its body from lurching too far from equilibrium. If we imagine a state-space diagram describing changes in muscular tension and relaxation, with one dimension for each of the various muscles involved in walking, then the centre of gravity serves as a coordinating point for the trajectories which describe changes of state within the animal’s muscular system. Importantly, this singular point does not itself represent a possible state for the system, as the trajectories of its components can only approach it asymptotically (De Landa 2004, p. 34). The reality of the singularities is the internal structure they give to state space (Deleuze 1994, pp. 208209). They “preside over the genesis” (Deleuze 1990, p. 54) of the individual trajectories which describe the actual behaviour of the system. The structures they define can be realised in any number of different physical systems, as in Manuel Delanda’s example of the single point attractor which governs both the formation of soap bubbles and crystal growth (De Landa 2004, p. 15). Deleuze therefore understands the actual behaviour of a system’s components, together with their intrinsic temporalities, as governed by virtual singularities. Whether the object under consideration is the metabolism of an organism or the rates of population change within an ecosystem, the phenomena are constrained by elements which are nonactual, yet real. Singularities do not just produce periodic regularities that define the “living present” of a system, however. They also govern how it can re-order itself, either internally or in combination with other systems. This is possible because, Deleuze argues, the virtual is already completely differentiated qua structure, although it is never expressed within the actual all at once. It is comprised of diverse sets of singularities which are related to each other by a progressive “adjunction” of differences (Deleuze 1994, p. 187). These sets are effectively nested within each other, and through their relationship to each other define different potential phases of a system. At certain critical points of intensity of energy transfer through a system (as when the temperature of the water in a vessel increases or the biochemical concentrations within an egg fluctuate), it reaches a condition in which it shifts phase, receiving a shock which re-orders its state space around a new set of attractors (De Landa 2004, pp. 19-20). At these “bifurcation points,” the system (depending on the nature of its internal complexity

165 and/or external relationships) may be faced with a “choice” between sets of singularities. While the bifurcation point is necessarily critical for the system in the sense that it represents a trajectory which is so far away from an attractor that it cannot return to it, which set of attractors the system is nudged towards is a matter of chance, that is, of the kind of external shock which is being experienced by the system (Prigogine and Stengers 1985, p. 177). The “phases” of a system, if recurrent, will also express a recurrent sequence of sets of attractors. For example, heating a vessel of water eventually shifts the system from homogeneity (equal temperature throughout) to a less symmetrical but more ordered state, where convection currents flow. At this critical point, the single point attractor that governed the homogeneous system is replaced by periodic attractors. Further heating produces turbulence, at which point the system shifts again, the periodic attractors being replaced by chaotic singularities. (Prigogine and Stengers 1985, pp. 142-144, 167-148). Living systems, as we noted above, are governed by their own internal temporalities, which taken the form of periodic oscillations at different scales. Being therefore far from equilibrium, they tend to be governed by multiple nested sets of periodic attractors. For example, when a horse moves from walk to trot to gallop, the state space which describes the relaxation and contraction of its muscles is shifted between different periodic singularities as the rhythm of its movements speeds up and slows down (Deleuze and Guattari 1988, p. 483). The virtual is therefore operative within the actual in two senses, and is in neither case reducible to it. First, it constrains what it can do, and in this sense represents the “destiny” of the actual (Deleuze 1990, p. 169). That an actual system has a destiny does not mean, however, that it is subject to a deterministic necessity of the kind posited in classical mechanics (Deleuze 1990, p. 170). Destiny never consists in step-by-step deterministic relations between presents which succeed one another according to the order of a represented time. “Rather, it implies between successive presents nonlocalisable connections, actions at a distance, systems of replay, resonance and echoes, objective chances, signs, signals and roles which transcend spatial locations and temporal successions” (Deleuze 1994, p. 83). “Non-localisable connections” which govern the long-term tendencies of a system are ones which need to be described in terms other than those (such as the familiar billiard-ball metaphor) appropriate to mechanical causation. Crucial here is the point that, being non-

166 localisable, they are not part of any present moment in which actual systems take on some specific spatio-temporal configuration—as noted above, singularities are never actualised. Instead of having causal efficacy in the way that changes in intensive properties do, the virtual plays a quasi-causal role (Deleuze 1990, p. 169). It defines the longterm regularities which are expressed, in divergent ways, in the genesis of individual entities, without playing the role of a cause which determines exactly what happens from instant to instant. The second way in which the virtual is operative within the actual is in the way it holds it open, allowing chance and novelty to enter. Just as the potential futures which Jonas ascribes to the living organism shape the constitutive lack which drives it onward, the virtual offers alternative routes which actual systems can take. For Deleuze, however, the virtual is not a manifestation of lack or absence. It is itself fully determinate, without being actual. He likens this condition of the virtual to the determinateness of a vector field in relation to a state space (Deleuze 1994, p. 177). A state space specifies (or in Deleuze’s terms, expresses) its singularities through the trajectories within it, which represent “integral curves,” i.e. solutions to non-linear differential equations. The vector field, by contrast, is the set of instantaneous rates of change, obtained mathematically through differentiation, which define the shape and tendencies of trajectories and therefore also locate the singularities of a particular multiplicity or virtual structure. This field lacks nothing; its reality consists in its being a fully-determinate product of continuous, differential relations. As such, virtual multiplicities represent Deleuze’s transformation of the structuralist concept of differential structure.3 A key problem for structuralist theory is the temporal status of structure and its relation to the history of actual systems. This is solved by Deleuze through the application of the theory of singularities. As noted above, the relations singularities establish with the actual world are non-localisable: they are not actualised within the material world. This gives them a unique temporal status: the temporality of virtual structures is different from that of actual systems, which is composed of living presents. To virtual time Deleuze gives the name Aion, borrowed, like Chronos, from Stoicism. Rather than being composed of more or less extended presents, which draw into them pasts and futures, Aion is an instantaneous form of temporality without presence, in which change 3

On the relation between Deleuze’s concept of difference and that utilised by structuralism, see e.g. May (1993).

167 has always already happened and is about to happen. For example, a singular point which marks a phase transition, such as that between ice melting and water freezing does not occupy a moment within a living present and therefore mark a definite state, but rather marks the indeterminacy between actual states, embodying whatever divergent directions of becoming can be taken by the actual system at the same time (Deleuze 1990, p. 80). All the nested sets of virtual multiplicities which describe the potential destinies of actual systems are thought of as coexisting within Aion, and are actualised within the intensive processes through which actual systems maintain themselves and evolve. When systems suffer shocks and thereby communicate through flows of energy with other systems, if these perturbations shift the trajectories occupied by the system enough, then it will “select” from the virtual a new destiny. The future of a system is therefore essentially unpredictable insofar as it is open to its environment. As non-linear systems are the prevalent form of organisation in nature, this unpredictability is not therefore limited to organic systems. Depending on conditions, such as the capacities which create compatibilities between systems (like the tubeworm and its symbiotic bacteria), unforeseen transformations can occur at any point. The identity of a system is defined by the intrinsic destinies which constrain its actual development in time, but these destinies also define potentials for sudden and unforeseen shifts which destabilize the identities of things and force upon them sometimes violent metamorphoses (Turetzky 1998, p. 227). The future, for Deleuze, can therefore possess a “pure” form, that of “events in play,” a kind of groundlessness (Lampert 2006, p. 55), in which the conjunction of actual and virtual marks a transition between destinies too quick to notice. This future is qualitatively distinct from the future of a living present, which is always located somewhere further along the trajectory which a system traces around its periodic attractors. While this “ordinary” future is largely a function of extrapolation, the “singular” future never is, as it transforms and redistributes the intrinsic temporalities of systems (Turetzky 1998, p. 229). In this way, what counts as a present changes dynamically with the becoming of systems, undermining McTaggart’s B-series concept of a timeless set of temporal relationships between events.

168 6. Conclusion The problem with which we began, to understand how novel forms of order can emerge within the world, is answered by Jonas and Deleuze in divergent ways. For Jonas, the organism is a centre of indeterminacy, but this “gap” within it always has a more or less definite shape. This derives from the degree of complexity inherent in its needs and the ways these could be met. Its capacities for adaptivity and behavioural variation in general are shaped primarily by its genotype, which yields its modes of sensory access to its environment, its needs, and with these the formation of its characteristic Umwelt (in von Uexkull’s terminology). The futures of the organism are shaped by the behavioural routines made available to it by its genetic inheritance and its modes of interaction with the world. For organisms with higher degrees of internal complexity, more scope for behavioural variation is available, in line with the greater complexity of their needs. A range of possible futures becomes real “in practice” for organic life insofar as it inserts a determinate lack into the living present from moment to moment. For Deleuze, by contrast, the indeterminacy of the future is not a by-product of conatus, that is, of the form of an individual entity. Rather, it is produced by the ontological difference within matter between virtuality and actuality. The complexity of the virtual ensures that transitions between different phases of order within actual systems are both constrained and unpredictable. The chance interactions between actual systems can lead to all manner of transformations, even within otherwise stable entities. But the openness of the future does not mean that it is empty. Just as Jonas sees the range of futures an organism produces for itself as possessing a more or less determinate shape, the operation of selection performed by actual interactions upon the virtual reconstitutes the destiny of a system in ways which, from the point of view of the actual world, are entirely unforeseen yet, from the point of view of the virtual, are entirely determinate. For both Jonas and Deleuze, the future possesses a certain determining efficacy which is neither rigidly necessary nor merely possible. Both thinkers therefore argue that the formal constraints which govern our accounts of change need to be reinterpreted in order to understand novelty. For Jonas, this implies the necessity of acknowledging the body as a source of interpretive knowledge about complex systems. For Deleuze, it requires that we rigorously expunge essentialism from our ontologies. In either case, Aristotle’s ambiguous category of aition is invoked in the readmission of

169 futurity as a necessary dimension of understanding change in the present. 7. Acknowledgements This paper is based on research conducted on the three-year research project ‘In Pursuit of the Future’ (http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/futures/), which was funded by the UK’s Economic and Science Research Council (ESRC) under their Professorial Fellowship Scheme. References Arnoldi, J. (2004). “Derivatives—Virtual values and real risks,” Theory culture and society, 21, 6, pp. 23-42. Bonta, M. and Protevi, J. (2004). Deleuze and geophilosophy: A guide and glossary, Edinburgh, Edinburgh university press. Delanda, M. 2004. Intensive science and virtual philosophy, London, New York, Continuum. Deleuze, G. (1990). The logic of sense, London, Athlone Press. Deleuze, G. (1991). Bergsonism, New York, Zone Books. Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and repetition, London, Athlone. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1988). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia, London, Athlone. Di Paolo, E. (2005). “Autopoiesis, adaptivity, teleology, agency,” Phenomenology and the cognitive sciences, 4, 4, pp. 429-452. Ingarden, R. (1970). Ueber die Verantwortung: Ihre ontische Fundamente, Stuttgart, Reclam. Jonas, H. (1982). The phenomenon of life, Chicago, London, University of Chicago press. Jonas, H. (1984). The imperative of responsibility: In search of an ethics for the technological age, Chicago, London, University of Chicago press. Kant, I. (2005). Critique of judgement, Mineola, N.Y., Dover publications. Kull, K. (1999). “Biosemiotics in the twentieth century: A view from biology,” Semiotica, 127, 1-4, pp. 385-414. Lampert, J. (2006). Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy of history, London, New York, Continuum.

170 Massumi, B. (1998). “Event horizon,” In J. Brouwer, ed, The art of the accident, Rotterdam, Dutch Architecture Institute/V2, pp. 154168. May, T. (1993). “The system and its fractures: Gilles Deleuze on otherness,” Journal of the British society for phenomenology, 24, 1, pp. 3-14. McTaggart, J. M. E. (1993). “The unreality of time,” in R. Poidevin and M. McBeath, eds, The philosophy of time, Oxford, Oxford university press. Prigogine, I. and Stengers, I. (1985). Order out of chaos: Man’s new dialogue with nature, London, Fontana. Prigogine, I. and Stengers, I. (1997). The end of certainty: Time, chaos, and the new laws of nature, 1st Free Press ed. New York, Free Press. Stewart, I. (1989). Does God play dice? The mathematics of chaos, Oxford, Basil Blackwell. Turetzky, P. (1998). Time, London, New York, Routledge. Varela, F. J. (1997). “Patterns of life: Intertwining identity and cognition,” Brain and cognition, 34, 1, pp. 72-87. Weber, A. and Varela, F. J. (2002). “Life after Kant: Natural purposes and the autopoietic foundations of biological individuality,” Phenomenology and the cognitive sciences, 1, pp. 97-125.

Christian Doctrine and Theories of Emergence Cyprian Love

Notions of causality have been formulated and reformulated many times in the history of Western science and philosophy. Currently, certain ideas of what is called emergent causality are becoming prominent. Holmes Rolston III writing in Science and Religion outlines his particular version of emergent causality, and draws out its implications for understanding the development of our planet. He writes: [T]here are always causes behind effects, but these nevertheless have surprising effects that the causes never seem completely to specify. The stream steadily rises above its source. Some engine carries life steadily upslope. The effects over time, whether probable or improbable, initiate events the likes of which have not been seen before: life, learning, joy, suffering, resolvedness … [I]n the developing evolution we keep getting more out of less.1

“More out of less.” This seems the essential theme of emergent causality, a kind of causality for which normal deterministic or efficient causes do not apply. The claim made by emergent causality (and there are several versions of this theory) is that not every event arising in the present can be traced to causes in the past. Such a belief that every event arising in the present can be traced to causes in the past embodies a more restricted understanding of causality, associated in our culture with what may be called mechanical or Newtonian causality. Unlike emergent causality, Newtonian causality proposes a world which is held to function predictably like a great machine with fixed laws. According to this theory, the universe behaves in “regular manner which is capable of observation and explanation.”2 The universe is assumed to behave in a predetermined and predictable way, rather according to the popular 1 2

Rolston III 1987, pp. 243-244. McGrath 2004, p. 70.

172 image of a “clockwork universe.”3 Nothing emerges without its concomitant cause in the past. This mechanistic worldview from early modernity has already been discredited by a number of insights from the sciences such as quantum mechanics, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and Ilya Prigogine’s work Order out of Chaos. However, while discredited in science and philosophy, the mechanical or Newtonian view of causality still has a strong hold on Western consciousness at the level of cultural reception. By contrast, the idea of emergent causality, being in relative infancy, is widely perceived as embodying unfamiliar and indeed curious suggestions. How, it is queried, do we get more out of less, effects without preceding causes? The cultural reception of emergent causality is therefore, so far, quite problematic outside specific intellectual milieux. Just as it is valuable to speculate on what kind of causality underlies the gradual rise of the natural world, so, too, questions arise regarding the nature of the causality which supports another area of development, the historical development of Catholic doctrine. What do we mean by the idea of the development of Catholic doctrine? For the Church’s understanding, the historical point of termination for God’s revelation in Christ is the New Testament, or, to be more exact, the death of the last Apostle. Nevertheless the Church also recognises that points of doctrine not made explicit in the New Testament are able to emerge gradually in the historical tradition of the Church. This is essentially what the idea of the development of doctrine means and it has been expounded in many ways by many different thinkers. The idea of doctrinal development has not enjoyed universal acceptance. Some, like the theologian Bossuet in the seventeenth century explicitly denied there was any such thing as the development of doctrine and Bossuet’s position is instructive, though it does not reflect the current mind of the Church. He remarks in a famous passage that: “If at any time someone says that the faith includes something which yesterday was not said to be of the faith, it is always heterodoxy. It is recognised at once, whenever it appears, simply because it is new.”4 Despite extreme positions like this, however, a great deal of positive creative attention has been given to the idea of the development of doctrine, especially since the nineteenth century. The most famous theorist in this area was the Englishman John Henry Newman. Since his 3 4

McGrath 2004. Bossuet 1828, 30, pp. 419-420.

173 Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845), the idea that doctrine develops in history has become a guiding axiom of dogmatic theology. There is more than just one theological approach to the development of doctrine, as I noted. Newman lived at a time when great diversity and debate surrounded the question of how doctrine develops in the Church. This debate continued into the twentieth century when some theorists like Francisco Marin-Sola (L’evolution homogène du Dogme catholique, 1924) claimed that an essentially syllogistic and logical process underlay doctrinal development. Marin-Sola believed “that the new dogmatic statement is derived from a revealed statement by means of a syllogism.”5 A new dogma is “simply a logical conclusion arrived at by ratiocination.”6 This logical model of doctrinal process, which would imply that every development of doctrine is traceable to or contained in explicit past doctrine, belief and authoritative utterances has something in common with mechanical/Newtonian causality. For John Henry Newman, however, things were more subtle. It was not a case, for him, of such logical deduction. Christianity, according to Newman, enters the world as an ‘idea’ whose richness we do not logically deduce but gradually intuit. According to Newman, the mind of the Church does not syllogise its way into new developments, but subtly intuits how a new point of doctrine fits into the total pattern of what is already believed. For Newman, hidden content unfurls in the Church’s doctrine by a kind of instinct or discernment, called the illative sense, which is really a kind of imaginative inference. This power of inference is, for Newman, in his words, “an organon more delicate, versatile, and elastic than verbal argumentation.”7 Newman and Marin-Sola represent instructive poles in the way doctrinal development has been theorised (respectively the imaginative and the logical poles). Nevertheless, they do share a presupposition, important in the present context, that doctrine develops through the gradual influence of the past upon the present. More recently for Karl Rahner there is understood to be an element of the development of doctrine even within the books of Scripture themselves.8 The Apostles were already not only recording but also reflecting upon their experience of Christ and this reflection naturally 5

Hammans 1967, p. 53. Hammans 1967. 7 Newman 1979, p. 217. 8 Hammans 1967, p. 56. 6

174 implies a certain development within the apostolic writings. Thus it appears that development does not just flow from the original deposit of revelation, it occurs within revelation itself. Here, as so often in human thought, “the originally inarticulate knowledge of something and the reflective articulate knowledge of it are mutually interdependent and progressive elements of a single experience.”9 It is impossible to do justice to the complexity of theological thought on doctrinal development. In the present context, what is important to stress is that all Catholic theologians of development have had something in common, namely, they have all believed that developing doctrine is primarily an effect in the present of the revelation of Christ and the Word of Scripture handed down from the past. The central idea here is of some kind of working out of doctrinal development over the course of time, whereby Christian truth latent in the past is gradually made explicit at a later time. Yet, to return to the emergentist context with which we began, in the scientific analysis of Holmes Rolston III, “[t]he stream steadily rises above its source.” For him, the historical sources revealed by science are not enough to explain the natural development of our world. Could it be that the development of Catholic doctrine also somehow “rises above its source”? To frame the question in another way: Does doctrinal development really have to be wholly explicable in terms of the past? This is not to deny the major significance of the historical sources of doctrine in Scripture. But are these past norms the limit of the originating impulse behind doctrinal evolution? Is it really necessary to say that God energises doctrinal development solely or even mainly in the mode whereby the doctrinal past causally impels Christian understanding of revelation towards the future? In suggesting, following certain promptings in Holmes Rolston III, that the stream also rises above its source in doctrinal development, we wish to imply that some force or forces going beyond past norms might exert their influence upon doctrinal evolution. One interpretative option here would be to think of a force which draws doctrine from the future. We might wish to imply that eschatology, the end-time, God’s promised future, is the overarching norm within which the norms handed down from the historical past are to be received. This presents a new view of doctrinal development, as driven or impelled not chiefly from the past but chiefly from the final 9

Hammans 1967, p. 55.

175 climactic moment of the Church’s development, the final Kingdom of God which is to be revealed fully only at the end of time. The theology of John Zizioulas is relevant in this context. Paradoxically and crucially for Zizioulas, the end, the eschatological goal of the Church (in Greek, the eschata or last things) is really the logical beginning of the Church’s life. He writes: [W]e must think of the eschata as the beginning of the Church’s life ... that which brings forth the Church, gives her identity, sustains and inspires her in her existence. The Church exists not because Christ died on the cross but because he has risen from the dead, which means, because the kingdom has come.10

Traditional Eastern Orthodox iconography of the crucifixion reflects this futural emphasis, in its classic depiction of Christ robed and in glory, rather than, as in the West, suffering the agonies of the historical past on Calvary. Here, in this Eastern iconographical tradition, Kingdom gives meaning to Cross. Zizioulas speaks also of the Church’s “eschatological identity” and of the eucharist as “an echo of the future state of things.”11 Here, the life of the Church is depicted as not tied to the historical past, because its historical landmarks are not understood to be its primary source. Its primary source is the end-time. The Church is driven by its final goal. Eschatology, we might say, is Chapter One of the history of the Church and from this Chapter One all else flows. As Zizioulas says: “[The Church] is the great mysterium fidei, precisely by being in this world but not of this world, by drawing, that is, her identity from what she will be.”12 Zizioulas describes the Church as a tree which grows from the end of time, “the memory of the future.”13 In line with this theology, we might infer, the Church is not chiefly impelled by a causality coming from the past on an analogy with a Newtonian or mechanical model of development in science, nor even following John Henry Newman’s more subtle and intuitive model. Doctrinal development is not chiefly history-driven at all, but instead emerges dynamically out of an eschatological call or end-time causality, originating from the future. Newman’s theory of development, along 10

Zizioulas 1988, p. 296. Zizioulas 1988, p. 300. 12 Zizioulas 1988. 13 Zizioulas 1993, p. 180. 11

176 with all the others which understood development as primarily an extrapolation of doctrinal truth from the historical past, is surpassed. What we see here is an analogy in theology with one form of emergentist view in science, whereby “higher-level laws or properties have causal—or top-down—power over the lower-level laws and properties”14 and in which “the whole really causes things to happen among lower-level parts.”15 Here in the theology of Zizioulas, the greater whole, which causes things to happen among lower-level parts, corresponds to the end-time fullness of Christ and His Kingdom. This is the great whole, which, according to a top-down model, causes doctrine to develop over the course of Christian history. “More out of less” is thus admitted to our understanding of doctrinal development, a view which might have several consequences. In the first place it might invite an understanding of Christian truth whereby the latter can emerge in forms radically new, surprising and not apparent at earlier stages of the historical development process in the Church. This is because, according to this new model, continuity with the past is not a universal requirement of valid doctrinal development. On the contrary, in addition to organic continuity, breaks or historical discontinuities may be admitted as an unavoidable aspect of doctrine’s mode of development. This phenomenon of the break in continuity, which is really an irruption of the power of the future into the present, is perhaps what we are seeing in our own day in the Catholic Church, in the form of what is often referred to as theological ‘dissent’ from the official teaching of the Church. Since Vatican II we observe the presence in theological thought of elements of novelty, hard to account for in terms of past influences, but which nevertheless lead the field in numerous branches of theology. We see theologians who are willing to be novel, and ungrounded in the past with respect to certain aspects of theology, and we see the ideas of these theologians well received by the People of God. The ideas they propound enjoy a better popular reception than official teaching which, characteristically, is rooted in the past. Could it be that this type of ‘dissent’ is really an emergence, a theological “more out of less”? The phenomenon of post-Conciliar dissent from the teachings of the ecclesiastical magisterium is not of course all of this radical kind. For much of it, novelty is not an aim but rather a different reading of the historical tradition, one which aims at a retrieval of patristic or biblical 14 15

Donnelly 2006, p. 19. Donnelly 2006, p. 20.

177 perspectives perceived to have become obscured. Nevertheless, the element of what one might call a truly emergent mode of doing theology is becoming influential, and an example will follow below. The traditional term ‘dissent’ is of course tendentious. When we use the term ‘dissent’ of the mood established since Vatican II, we account for this post-Conciliar break in continuity solely in terms of past-driven modes of causality. ‘Dissent’ implies ‘dissent from past norms.’ If, however, we speak instead of the emergence of doctrine, a new interpretation is placed on the same phenomenon. Is perhaps the real message of the current period of supposed crisis and ‘dissent’ a new eschatological emphasis in the way truth emerges in the Church, by means of an emergence which refuses to be confined by past norms? We are thus being called to think of doctrinal evolution less exclusively in terms of organic continuity with the past and more perhaps in terms of a model of death and rebirth, or perhaps a model of repentance and conversion, or of breaking and remaking, under the fecundating impulse of the future, according to the initiative of the Spirit. In theological terms we are presented with a view of tradition rooted less exclusively in anamnesis and more in epiclesis, as the renewing power of the Spirit ever forms the theological lineaments of the believing Church anew ex nihilo. Zizioulas writes: “[The Church] is in her institutions and structure so transparent as to allow the eschatological realities to be reflected in them all the time … [The Church] is what she is by becoming again and again what she will be.”16 The essential insight and paradox here seems to be that, precisely in order to be faithful to tradition, doctrine is required to reinvent itself constantly, that is, to look ideologically to the future in order to be faithful to a true interpretation of the past. More than one contemporary theologian implicitly takes this idea as a starting point. For Leonardo Boff in Ecclesiogenesis: The base communities reinvent the Church (1986), emergence is an inescapable feature of the theology of the Church. Speaking of the rise of new emergent styles of Church organisational life in South America, organisational life which he terms “base communities,” Boff writes: We are not dealing with an expansion of an existing ecclesiastical system, rotating on a sacramental, clerical axis, but with the emergence of another form of being church, rotating on the axis of the word and the 16

Zizioulas 1988, p. 301.

178 laity. We may well anticipate that, from this movement, of which the universal church is becoming aware, a new type of institutional presence of Christianity in the world may now come into being.17

Boff appears at first sight simply to be sanctioning a break with theological tradition in the way the Church is to be understood. (His translator even happens to employ the word ‘emergence,’ though I did not choose the quotation for that reason.) Yet, when placed in an alliance with the suggestions made above by Zizioulas, whereby the Church has its foundations in the future, Boff’s notion of the “emergence of another form of being church” appears in a new light altogether. If, following hints in Zizioulas, tradition is really rooted in the future, then we are not confronted with the following choice: either obey the tradition, or abandon it so as to submit to an emergent paradigm of Christianity. Instead, because tradition itself is futural and an eschatological summons, the ideas of tradition and emergence converge and they are no longer in tension. If theological and ecclesial tradition is grounded in the future, then tradition is itself the authority for certain breaks with the past. Theological ‘dissent’ now comes to be seen not as a subversive denial of a sacred deposit conveyed from the past, but as an eschatological re-reading of the tradition in the light of an open future. Christians are, in the words of Jean-Luc Marion, “overcome by newness … thrown forward in a world too new for us.”18 The idea of Christian truth as containing an emergent dimension has its origins at the point of christology itself. Jesus Christ was an example of the stream of Judaism “rising above its source,” and undoubtedly He was “more out of less.” He transgressed all known models of Jewish Messiahship which, crucially, failed to explain Him, and He was an example of emergence, rather than a development fully explicable from within the tradition which produced Him. He is not explainable as a logical development of Judaism nor even (following Newman) as a legitimate inference by the illative sense from the Jewish ‘idea.’ The fact that he was “more out of less” is indeed precisely why He could not be assimilated to Jewish expectations. The newly revealed reality of Christ, as Hans Urs von Balthasar has said, “absorbed in itself in a transcendent way the entire reality of the old aeon” and therefore “overflows on all

17 18

Boff 1986, p. 2. Marion 2002, p. 124.

179 sides the latter’s receptive capacities.”19 “[A]bsorbed in itself in a transcendent way the entire reality of the old aeon”: there is a strong sense of top-down causality in this idea, and the idea that Christ “overflows on all sides” the old aeon’s receptive capacities is strongly suggestive of emergentism. This point about Christ’s emergent properties is both obvious and also easy to overlook, in the sense that it is often obvious things that we fail to see. It is difficult for humans to see clearly the world in which we are embedded precisely because we are embedded in it. Inability by Christians to perceive the emergent implications of Christ has led the Church to fixate on a view of tradition which is excessively retrospective, and intransigent towards the unexpected, the prophetic, the marginal, the “still small voice.” In the development of this theoretical position, we need to look now more deeply at what we mean by ‘tradition’ or traditio. The Latin term means ‘handing on’ or ‘handing down.’ So far, we have concentrated on the established interpretation of the word ‘tradition’ which applies it to the historical sphere of the Church’s life. However we might usefully choose to apply it not just at the point of ecclesiology but further back at the point of christology, that is to say, where the very originating events of salvation arise, at the point where Christ hands down (traditio) salvation to His Church. In this originary traditio, as we noted with Zizioulas, the Kingdom interprets the Cross, that is, the future interprets the past. The Cross had to take place first in time, but it is made comprehensible only in the light of the Resurrection and the Kingdom. Here, then, in the very work of Christ, the future interprets the past. A hermeneutical circle is in operation: Cross is required for Kingdom, but Kingdom interprets Cross. Our plenary sense of ‘tradition’ consists, then, of what Christ hands to His Church from the eschatological Kingdom in the future. The important point is that the historical tradition of the Church exists not autonomously of, but rather as an analogy of this original ‘tradition’ of Christ’s handing on of salvation to the Church out of the future. That is why the duplication of the word across both senses is useful. If the history of the Church is an analogy of Christ’s work of salvation in which the future interprets the past, then we are invited to infer that the future interprets the past within the context of the Church’s historical tradition also. This eschatological re-reading of ecclesial tradition is seen to be grounded in the fact that, in Christ’s salvific work, the future 19

von Balthasar 1990, p. 246.

180 Kingdom acts as the hermeneutical key. The future Kingdom is the hermeneutical key to the ecclesial tradition also, because the ecclesial tradition is nested within Christ’s work of salvation. This suggests that we need now to learn to speak rather more of the futurality of Christian doctrine.20 The eschatological re-reading of ecclesial tradition proposed here forms a counterpoint to new eschatological emphases in eucharistic theology. Many voices in contemporary eucharistic theology tend to reempower the futural, eschatological dimension of the eucharist. For Zizioulas, the eucharist is particularly important as the place where the Church is able to contemplate her eschatological nature.21 For Nathan Mitchell: “The eucharistic memorial is neither mimesis nor ‘recall and retrieval’; it has less to do with our remembering God from the past than with God’s remembering us from the future.”22 Liturgical traditions in the West have, in recent decades, become increasingly responsive to this futural trajectory. Methodist theologian Geoffrey Wainwright observed in 1978 that “[e]schatological and pneumatological themes have reappeared in liturgies from which they had almost vanished.”23 To bring out the importance of the eschatological character of liturgy empowers our present eschatological thesis about doctrinal tradition, because liturgy is the original site of the doctrinal tradition. Doctrine is deeply related to liturgy in the sense that the earliest formulations of doctrine were doxological and confessional, set in the context of the eucharist and of baptism. Doctrine belongs to liturgy and what must be true here eschatologically for liturgy must be true for doctrine. 20

This suggestion in support of doctrinal futurality simply develops one step further the emphasis on the historicity of human experience, and therefore of Christian doctrine, which emerged as a familiar theme in the theology of the Second Vatican Council. We read in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes), section 5: “[M]ankind substitutes a dynamic and more evolutionary concept of nature for a static one, and the result is an immense series of new problems calling for a new endeavour and synthesis.” Similarly in Walter Kasper: “We already have a new outlook on being, which ... has come to regard freedom, time and history as the most comprehensive framework. In this outlook, we are not dealing with accidental changes in a perduring system of essences; on the contrary, nature and being only become real within the all-embracing cloak of history.” Kasper 1969, p. 55. 21 See Zizioulas 1993, pp. 20-21. 22 Mitchell 2006, p. 559. 23 Wainwright 1978, p. 504.

181 Liturgy has always dealt more flexibly and subtly with time than any other expression of the Christian faith, being able to create a symbolic world in which past, present and future are simultaneous. Past, present and future co-inhere and are remade at the point of the eucharist. Liturgists accordingly handle subtleties of time fluently. It is in liturgist Robert Taft that we may read the insight that “tradition is not the past, but the present insofar as it is in continuity with the past.”24 So, tradition is the present: but what, we might ask, is the present, if not, as Heidegger would say, a constant projection of ourselves into the future? The present points us forward, for there is no state of present ‘now’ apart from the fact that a future is constantly arising for us. If we put all these insights together, little remains of the classic idea of tradition solely as a depository of past actions and utterances. A more nuanced view is distilled. We may say that tradition is the present as it interprets the past in the light of the future. In this analysis, the past, the Scriptural revelation, which we have always been told to cleave to as the essence of tradition, is still very much a potent force. However, we have to see how this historically rooted aspect of tradition interacts in the present with tradition as eschatological. It would be completely false to suggest that we have to choose either a mysterious impulse rooted in the future or a normative process of development based in the historical past. The notion of an eschatological causation driving the development of Christianity invigorates the theology of tradition but does not obliterate our traditional sense of doctrinal evolution as having crucial roots in the historical past. Just as Cross is required for Kingdom, but Kingdom interprets Cross, so, historical tradition is required for doctrinal development, but historical tradition is given its meaning from the future. The ideas about doctrinal development being presented here suggest, at first sight, certain tensions between temporal trajectories, as when the assertion is made that doctrinal development is simultaneously historical and futural. However, these tensions are likely to be resolvable with the aid of insights drawn from liturgical theology, with its greater capacity to grasp time polyvalently. The symbolic world of liturgy, because it tends to empower the dynamic of ‘both/and’ rather than the dynamic of ‘either/or,’ does not force us into invidious decisions between past and future. Once the theological tensions described here 24

Taft 1982, p. 115.

182 are resolved in terms of liturgical theology, doctrine will, fortuitously, have come home to liturgy, and interpreting the nature of doctrinal growth in history will be reconfigured as a liturgical issue. Ecclesial tradition is the provident work of a God with Whom all initiatives rest, and is by its very nature a living tradition, and therefore has an inherent tendency to exceed itself, to exceed its past. Is not the essential and crucial difference between a ‘tradition’ and a ‘living tradition’ that the latter is, though critically related to the past, yet not entirely bound to it? Is not the final perfection of the idea of a living tradition that of a tradition refreshed from a future source? There is therefore an inevitable counterbalance of possibility and actuality in the Church’s living tradition. Without this counterbalance, the tradition is in danger of being transmuted into a cult object rather than remaining a space for God. As Richard Kearney has argued in The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion (2001), we are inclined in the West to view the concept of the possible as something less metaphysically energetic than the actual. Possibility is a wraith or a shadow. Kearney observes that “conventional metaphysical concepts of the possible—as dunamis, potentia, or possibilitas—fail to appreciate its force as something higher rather than lower than the actual.”25 This is why we fail to appreciate its force in the ecclesial context also. It is therefore not enough to see the possibilities of ecclesial tradition as possibilities which realise the potential of an existing seed or idea, as Newman would claim. This is to emasculate possibility and confine it within the actual. We need to see ecclesial tradition as a more radical power of autonomous possibility which sheds new light on the past. We need to reverse the priority of possibility and actuality, moving from development of doctrine to emergence of doctrine.26 25

Kearney 2001, p. 99. There is an analogy to be found here in the emergent qualities of human genius. Genius tends to display what was referred to above as “a more radical power of autonomous possibility.” “In the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart we can observe the roots of his style and all the points at which it is dependent on Leopold Mozart, J. C. Bach, Sammartini, Piccinni … and so many others; but we have not thereby explained the phenomenon of Mozart … [W]e can analyse “German” and “Italian” elements, homophony and polyphony, the erudite and the courtly, continuity and contrast of theme, and nevertheless lose sight of the new, unique, specific Mozartean feature: this is the whole in its higher unity rooted in the freedom of the spirit, it is Mozart himself in his music.” Kűng 1978, pp. 549-550. If ecclesial tradition cannot rise above its source, after the fashion of human genius as 26

183 In the emergence of doctrine, the grace of the end-time functions similarly to what emergentists in the natural sciences would call an attractor state.27 Thus, rather than being increments in a process driven from the past, doctrinal forward movements in history are microeschatologies by anticipation. Moreover, because, in this model, doctrinal tradition is balanced away from what we already have and know, and balanced more towards something unknown in the future towards which we hope and trust, our engagement with the doctrinal tradition becomes slanted away from the cognitive/epistemic and slanted towards the ethical. A more healthy spirituality is opened out by this fruitful open-handedness towards the future which, unlike an emphasis on doctrine as past tradition, does not entail the risk of transmuting Christian tradition into a cult object or idol, but retrieves a sense of the link between growth in doctrinal truth, and virtuous living. Put simply, God does not give tradition to us in a glass case for our inspection, but enables it to grow in us when we live the Gospel. In times past, a preoccupation with Christian truth as cult object or even idol in the form of past tradition has sometimes furnished an excuse for not really living the Gospel at all. The treatment of heretics in past times constitutes one example. Imagine what spiritual blessings would have flowed in the history of the Church, if, instead of devising new ways of cruelly punishing heretics, the Church had expended the same imaginative energy in finding new forms of love to show them.28 This is a good example of what could have happened if the Church in those times had successfully situated issues of doctrinal truth not simply within the context of the cognitive/epistemic, but within the context of love and trust in God’s future goodness. In this case, the Church’s guiding light in dealing with heretics would have been a principle not of universal doctrinal exactitude achieved by coercion, but a principle that, by prayerfully trusting God’s providence and living the Gospel of love “all manner of things would be well.”29 The Church would have realised that a coherent doctrinal consensus comes about because we increase our love, hope and trust in the future. God’s truth is not a fortress to be described here, then we have set the fecundity of the Holy Spirit in Christian tradition lower than human creativity. 27 I am grateful for this clarification to David Weissman, 2nd Causality and Motivation Workshop, Collegio S. Anselmo, Rome, 14th April 2007. 28 “Let us see what love can do.” William Penn (1644-1718), Quaker founder of Pennsylvania. 29 Julian of Norwich (1342-c. 1416).

184 protected by violence, but a gift of grace ever given anew when the Gospel life is lived. What we seem to be dealing with, as a result of the theological proposals being advanced here, is a view of sacred history which runs two ways, both from the past and from the future. Sacred history is rooted both in the original revelation and in the end-time. Since Einstein revolutionised our understanding of time, exposing its paradoxes and its counterintuitive structure, a theological interpretation of sacred history as running both ways may not seem as daunting as it might otherwise have done. One of the twentieth century’s most striking achievements was, after all, the reinterpretation of time and of notions of temporal trajectory. So far this reinterpretation has not touched the theological understanding of sacred time in the Catholic tradition. The overall renewal of temporal concepts gained by Einstein in physics needs to be passed on to the theology of the Church’s time. We need a theological ‘Einstein’ to represent sacred history (or do we now say sacred histories?) anew for us, in a movement beyond unilinear notions, by showing how sacred history may, like natural time, be counterintuitive, and not simply a motion from past to future. In certain respects at least, this would be a theological manoeuvre analogous in its temporal implications to the Theory of Relativity. The philosophy and science of reality, and especially of temporality, were never simple. There seems no reason to think that the time of Christ and of His Church is any less polyvalent than the temporal basis of the natural cosmos in which we live. Roman Catholicism, as was seen above, has tended to work, if not with a “wooden repetition of yesterday’s certainties”30 at least with a view of ‘living’ tradition which nevertheless emphasises the fixed nature of doctrinal formulations.31 “John Henry Newman had no doubt that each generation could wrest further insights from the Catholic tradition; its substance, however, would not change.”32 By contrast with this Catholic emphasis, the suggestion that doctrinal truth is elicited as much in the Church’s responsiveness to emergent change as in its attention to the historical past, finds a strong resonance in the history of certain strands of Protestantism, which can be viewed as creating a “conceptual

30

McGrath 2007, p. 467. McGrath 2007. 32 McGrath 2007. 31

185 space for the innovation, development, and experimentation”33 that are disallowed under more static models of doctrinal development. McGrath writes: “The twentieth century … saw a rediscovery of the radical, dangerous Protestant principle of starting all over again, wherever necessary dismantling outmoded approaches and forging new ones, shaped by the biblical witness.”34 Some patterns of Protestantism exhibit “an endless cycle of birth, maturing, aging, and death, leading to renewal and reformulation.”35 This Protestant principle of permanent correctability, which is enshrined in the maxim ecclesia semper reformanda, is essentially an expression of trust in the future as source of truth and grace. It is another inflection of the perspective which Zizioulas invokes in his inversion of Cross and Kingdom, and which the present essay reflects in its attention to Holmes Rolston III and scientific theories of emergence. Simon Chan notes that ecclesial experience “is not merely historical but includes the vertical dimension, what Zizioulas calls ‘Pentecostalcharismatic events,’ through the on-going work of the Spirit.”36 He adds: The Spirit is not only the one who guides the Church and therefore guarantees her preservation in truth. He is also the Spirit of the Eschaton, the one who anticipates the end, who reveals something of the end to us, and who guarantees the Church’s fulfilment of its intended end. Therefore the development of the gospel story must follow a certain trajectory determined by the Spirit who is the ‘power of the future’ indwelling the Body of Christ.37

Finally, as Bernard Prusak has noted, paraphrasing Karl Rahner: [T]he future is not simply the prolongation of our past, nor merely the actualization or implementation of our present plans. Such an understanding of the future would be primarily a projection of a static present. The real future is ‘uncertain’ and is not just the unfolding of our present ideas or strategies. It is not simply a calculated human creation involving ‘plans plus time.’ Rather, the open future that comes to meet 33

McGrath 2007, p. 465. McGrath 2007. 35 McGrath 2007, p. 463. 36 Chan 2004, p. 67. Reference to Zizioulas 1993 (1985 edition), pp. 115-116. 37 Chan 2004, p. 72. 34

186 us brings surprises. That unforeseen future requires provisionality, since it cannot be calculated or controlled; “it rips up the nets of our plans.”38

References Boff, L. (1986). Ecclesiogenesis: The base communities reinvent the church, New York, Orbis. Bossuet, J.-B. (1828). Complete works, Paris. Chan, S. (2004). “The church and the development of doctrine,” Journal of pentecostal theology, 13, 1, Oct, pp. 57-77. Donnelly, M. (2006). “Why is there something rather than nothing? How did that something get here?” Science and theology news, March, pp. 18-22. Hammans, H. (1967). “Recent Catholic views on the development of dogma,” Concilium, 1, 3 (January), pp. 53-63. Kasper, W. (1969). The methods of dogmatic theology, Shannon, Ecclesia Press. Kearney, R. (2001). The God who may be: A hermeneutics of religion, Bloomington, Indiana Univ. Press. Kűng, H. (1978). On being a Christian, Glasgow, Collins. Marion, J.-L. (2002). “The gift of a presence,” in prolegomena to charity, New York, Fordham Univ. Press. McGrath, A. E. (2004). The science of God: An introduction to scientific theology, London, T&T Clark. McGrath, A. E. (2007). Christianity’s dangerous idea: The protestant revolution. A history from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first, New York, Harper One. Mitchell, N. D. (2006). “The amen corner,” Worship, 80, 6, pp. 551-566. Newman, J. H. (1979). An essay in aid of a grammar of assent, London, Notre Dame Univ. Press (1st ed. 1845). Prusak, B. P. (2004). The Church unfinished: Ecclesiology through the centuries, New York, Paulist, p. 313. Rahner, K. (1973). “A fragmentary aspect of a theological evaluation of the concept of the future,” in Theological investigations, Volume 10, Writings of 1965-1967 (2), London, Darton, Longman and Todd, p. 236 and p. 237. Rolston III, H. (2006). Science and religion: A critical survey, Philadelphia and London, Templeton Foundation (1st ed. 1987). 38

Prusak 2004, p. 313. Citations from Rahner 1973, p. 236 and p. 237.

187 Taft, R. (1982). “Liturgy as theology,” Worship, 56, 2 (March), pp. 113117. von Balthasar, H. U. (1990). Mysterium paschale, Edinburgh, T&T Clark. Wainwright, G. (1978). “The understanding of liturgy in the light of its history,” in C. Jones, G. Wainwright, and E. Yarnold, eds, The study of liturgy, London, SPCK. Zizioulas, J. (1988). “The mystery of the Church in Orthodox tradition,” One in Christ, 24, 4, pp. 294-303. Zizioulas, J. (1993). Being as communion, New York, St. Vladimir’s seminary press.

The Contributors to this Volume

Liliana Albertazzi is Associated Professor at the Faculty of Cognitive Science of Trento University. She has published five books, edited eighteen volumes and more than one hundred scientific papers. She works both theoretically and experimentally on the qualitative structures of perception and natural language. Recent publications include Immanent realism. An introduction to Brentano (Springer 2006), Visual thought (editor, Benjamins 2006), Information in perception (coeditor, MIT Press, Fall 2010). Angela Ales Bello is Emeritus Professor of History of Contemporary Philosophy at Lateran University in Rome and past Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy. She is the President of the Italian Center of Phenomenological Researches affiliated to the World Phenomenological Institute, Hanover, U.S.A. Her research is directed towards the German Phenomenology in relationship to other contemporary philosophical currents according to a historical and theoretical approach. Among her essays: General Principles of Phenomenology, in Phenomenology World-Wide edited by A.T. Tymieniecka “Analecta Husserliana” vol. LXXX, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publisher 2002, Edith Stein’s Contribution to Phenomenology and Hedwig ConradMartius and the Phenomenology of Nature (“Analecta Husserliana” vol. LXXX). Among her last books: L’universo nella coscienza – Introduzione a Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein, Hedwig Conrad Martius (The Universe in the Consciousness. Introduction to the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein, Hedwig Conrad-Martius (2007²), Sul femminile – Scritti di antropologia e religione (On Women Studies – Essays in Anthropology and Religion (2004) and The Divine in Husserl and Other Explorations, “Analecta Husserliana”, Dordrecht: Springer 2008. Ales Bello is the co-editor of the Italian translation of Edith Stein’s works (Città Nuova Publisher, Rome).

190 Chris Groves’ work draws on a background of scholarship in sociology, German Idealism, and contemporary French philosophy in tracing three interlinked themes—how the future is socially constructed within diverse social practices, how attachment, expectation, and stability play a role in promoting human flourishing, and how the widespread use of advanced technology foregrounds risk and uncertainty as ethically and politically significant concerns. These themes are brought together in the monograph Future Matters: Action, Knowledge, Ethics (Brill, 2007), co-authored with the eminent sociologist and time theorist Professor Barbara Adam. Drawing on the work of figures like Hans Jonas, G.W.F. Hegel, F. W. J. Schelling and Gilles Deleuze, his ongoing research aims to develop an original social theory and ethics of (and for) the future. He is a researcher at the ESRC Centre for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS) at Cardiff University in the UK. Dale Jacquette is Lehrstuhl ordentlicher Professor für Philosophie, Schwerpunkt theoretische Philosophie (Senior Professorial Chair in Theoretical Philosophy), at Universität Bern, Switzerland. He is the author of numerous articles on logic, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and aesthetics, and has recently published Philosophy of Mind: The Metaphysics of Consciousness, Ontology, Wittgenstein’s Thought in Transition, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, and David Hume’s Critique of Infinity. He has edited the Blackwell Companion to Philosophical Logic, Cambridge University Press Companion to Brentano, Schopenhauer, Philosophy, and the Arts, also for Cambridge University Press, and for North-Holland (Elsevier) the volume on Philosophy of Logic in the Handbook of the Philosophy of Science series. Brother Cyprian Love is a Benedictine monk of Glenstal Abbey, County Limerick, Ireland. He lectures in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, where he currently specializes in Catholic liturgy. He is also a musicologist with a special interest in musical improvisation and its interdisciplinary application to ontological frameworks. This application arises in relation to emergent and ‘chaordic’ (i.e. chaos + order) views of reality particularly as understood within various dimension of Christian

191 theology. He is an organist and has produced a number of CDs of organ repertoire and of his own improvisation. Riccardo Manzotti is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychology at IULM University in Milan. His main interests are the nature of consciousness and the design and implementation of models of conscious agents. He is a lecturer in Psychology of Art, and Neuroscience of Perception. He got a degree in Philosophy and another in Electronic Engineering. He got a PhD in Robotics focusing on Artificial Intelligence and models of Artificial Consciousness and GoalDriven Artificial Agents. He published several papers on consciousness, externalism, and ontological issues as to the nature of phenomenal experience in a physical world. He edited a book on the topic of artificial consciousness. Roberto Poli has published 4 volumes, edited more than 20 books or journals’ special issues and published more than 100 academic papers. During the past few years, Poli has been working on three main topics: (1) The category of person and the theory of values (Between Hope and Responsibility. An Introduction to the Ontological Structures of Ethics, 2006, in Italian), (2) Ontology, in both its traditional, philosophical, acceptation and the new, computer-based acceptation (TAO—Theory and Applications of Ontology, 2 vols, Springer 2010, with coeditors), and (3) The category of the future and in particular the theory of anticipatory systems (coeditor of the special issue of Foresight 2010 on anticipatory systems). As far as Poli can see, these three topics are mutually interrelated and are but different sides of a unique categorical framework, even if mainstream wisdom assigns them to different disciplinary fields. In order to better counteract the unwelcome consequences of this unfortunate situation, Poli is starting to address the problem of developing a synthetic methodology, able to go beyond the limitations of the otherwise much needed analytic decompositions of the whole of reality into smaller and smaller fragments. Jean-Michel Roy teaches philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Lyon in France, where he is directing the Center for the Epistemology of Cognitive Science. He is investigating the foundations of contemporary cognitive science and their relations to the analytical

192 and phenomenological traditions. His most recent publications include the “Subjectivity; First and Third person methodologies” entry in the Elsevier Encyclopaedia of Consciousness edited by W.P. Blanks (Vol. 2, Amsterdam, Elsevier, 2009), and the volume of collected essays Rhin et Danube: essais sur le schisme analytico-phénoménologique (Paris, Vrin, 2010). David Weissman is a professoor of philosophy at the City College of New York. His books include A Social Ontology (2000), Styles of Thought (2007), Eternal Possibilities (2008) and the forthcoming Cities, Real and Ideal.

PhilosophischeAnalyse PhilosophicalAnalysis 1 Herbert Hochberg Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein The Revival of Realism

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