Causing Prior Intentions

Carl H. Flygt

April 2005

Let’s say it’s 2050 and Searle’s perfect science of the brain has materialized. Wilder Penfield IV is able to stimulate the brain in such a way that the subject reports, “For some reason, I’ve decided to stand on one foot,” and then he (she) does so on his (her) own. This state of affairs is brought about by Penfield IV’s interventions causing the subject’s (S’s)  brain to represent certain conditions of satisfaction to itself with biological specificity, thereby causing a prior intention to stand on one foot.  Is S’s action free?

For Davidson, I think the answer will have to be yes. Under Penfield IV’s intervention, S both believes he (she) can stand on one foot and is sympathetic with the idea of standing on one foot. S, in other words, has reasons to stand on one foot. S’s brain represents the conditions of satisfaction of his (her) standing on one foot, namely that he (she) stand on one foot, and this representation causes S (assuming the second gap between the intention-in-action and the bodily movement is unproblematic) to stand on one foot. This is a paradigm case of mental causation. Actually standing on one foot in this way satisfies a cognitive biological need. In this case, however, the cause of this need is exogenous stimulation, not the endogenous gap before the prior intention. Could Davidson accept a stimulation arising outside the biologically produced gap before the prior intention as causing a free action?

Again the answer should be yes, and here is the reason. Freedom in general is conferred by judgment. In general, if S’s brain can produce a concept that adequately represents the current state of affairs to him (to her), S is free from, in or over and against that state of affairs. This representation is the mechanism of freedom. Freedom in general is objectively valid conceptualization, and intentional (free) action in general is likewise action based on objectively valid conceptualization. Freedom is representing things to oneself in such a way that one is organically satisfied by an apparent universal validity in the action or even by an apparent universal validity in that very representation. Freedom is satisfactory conceptualization. Standing on one foot in the manner described above is a species of universally satisfactory conceptualization causing an attending action.

Now let us not be misled by the fact that the representation of the conditions of satisfaction of all intentions refer to that particular intentional state, and to no other. How could such particular reference be construed as universal reference? It seems plausible to think that intentional actions and intentional thoughts are radically particular, and not universal at all. But radical subjectivism is not the correct characterization of intentional states and intentional actions. The correct characterization of these states and actions is that they are governed by a species of natural law. What is important about the self-referentiality of a particular intentional state is not that it refers to itself alone, but that it is formally just like all the other similar states and actions that occur in other spaces and at other times. What is important about intentionality is that it is permeated by both a universality of form and a universality of content.

The universal content at work in the current case, and in the case of all intentional actions, is a conceptual representation, call it R, of the conditions which satisfy the intentional state, call it W, and would satisfy any such intentional state standing in organic need of completion. The representation of conditions of satisfaction, R, is the conceptual judgment which makes W free, or makes S free in W. Unless and until such a representation devolves, W is incomplete. In all likelihood, W’s incompleteness is what causes R to take shape. Normally and in vivo, R takes shape out of what Searle calls the gap between the attitudes of belief and desire and the prior intention (the decision) to act intentionally.

Searle and Davidson concur that what causes the prior intention, call it P, is difficult if not impossible to characterize. Searle’s mantra is “Nothing fills the gap.” Davidson says “coming to have (causally effective desires and beliefs) isn’t something the agent does.” Searle thinks the gap is a non-intentional capacity of the brain’s cognitive background, and he identifies this with freedom of the will. But as the example above shows, the deterministic model of the gap makes perfectly good sense, and suggests we should look elsewhere for the locus of freedom. The brain just is able to associate capacities in a manner that forms representations of conditions that satisfy its states. This association of capacities, moreover, is in principle lawlike and deterministic. Everyone is formulating prior intentions all the time in essentially uniform ways.

Freedom has nothing to do with how the representation of conditions of satisfaction are produced, nor with the causal relations between those representations and the states with which they are associated. Freedom is a matter of the conceptual representation in itself, a matter of the structure of that representation. The structure of freedom-bestowing representations or freedom-bestowing concepts is universality. If S senses the objective validity of his (her) representation, R, of the conditions of satisfaction of some state, W, of his (of hers), S is free in that state. Freedom to act on an impulse is possession of a sense of universal validity. One sees this readily in all free people, Americans for example. Americans are primarily, and if nothing else, supremely confident in the universal validity of their judgments, of their actions and of their states.

Why should it be the case that satisfactory conceptualization (i.e. understanding) is constitutive of freedom? Here I think the answer is rather profound, and to understand it fully we will need to complete the Kantian program. Our cosmic condition actually consists in more than three dimensions of space. Part of us, and even a very large part of us, exists in a fourth dimension. The fourth dimension is where we go when we lose consciousness, and it is what we awaken to when be become really conscious, as in spiritual enlightenment, or in experiencing a psychedelic substance. The fourth dimension, or time, is the inner sense. The inner sense of the fourth dimension is where the splendor of our freedom really resides.

Understanding something is bringing the inner sense to bear on it by constituting it in time and in three-dimensional space. Understanding is a stepped-down version of true freedom. It is making something what it is as a human object. Those who can do this in a masterly way are human beings, human selves. Human beings, because their consciousness exploits dimensions which completely transcend those of their objects, are intrinsically free. If the human self were not a gigantic, four-dimensional cosmic body, it would not be able to represent to itself in its stepped-down ordinary consciousness objects which themselves in reality are likewise gigantic four dimensional cosmic bodies.

Understanding (and freedom) are thus a consequence of deep, bottom-up causal laws. No human being can avoid being a free human being. The human being is caused to be free by the necessity of being rationally conscious of three dimensions of space and one of time. The animal, which has no understanding of its world and is not so conscious, is not free in this way. But the human being exhibits its freedom whenever it conceives (represents) the conditions which satisfy its cognitive biological need (its spiritual need) to understand itself over and against the reality of its existence, and when it acts unproblematically (willingly) on that conception.

Now suppose we could hold the self sense of the human being perfectly constant, such that his (her) inner sense became perfectly spatial, such that the fourth dimension sprang into being fully equipped. Suppose we had the institutional reality, and not merely the temporary chemicals, to cause this to occur. Suppose we had a science of conversation that, among other things, treated the self as a purely formal quantity, treated syntactic items as autonomous entities and treated human beings as ends and not as means. What sort of freedom would follow?

This would, I think, be a freedom of great ecstasy and of great intensity. Under such conditions, S would be more or less indifferent to his (her) circumstances and to his (her) sympathies and antipathies thereto. He (she) would be focused on something else. He (she) would be focused on a sense of self that transcended the appearances of space-time. He (she) just wouldn’t care much about them, preferring to focus on the moment-to-moment reality of his (her) existence. This would be a super-human freedom.

I think our societies are better off developing super-human freedom. A perfect science of the brain is really sort of silly. Other than easing the suffering of the mentally ill, brain science just doesn’t amount to much in terms of real value. What matters is freedom that transcends, by an incommensurate order of difference, the merely human freedom of exploiting the conditions of time, of space and of personality.