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Method in Philosophical Psychology
Submitted by J. L. Speranza
Harry Frankfurt has become famous for his second-order and higher-order
desires. Grice was exploring similar grounds in what came out as his
"Method in philosophical psychology" (originally American Philosophical
Association presidential address for 1975, now reprinted in "The conception
of value"). M. J. Bratman (of Stanford), much influenced by Grice (at
Berkeley then) thanks to their "Hands-Across-the-Bay" program, has helped us to
understand this 'pirotological' progression towards the idea of strong
freedom (Recall that Grice's 'pirots' combine Locke's "very intelligent parrots"
with Russell's and Carnap's nonsensical 'pirots' of which nothing we are
told other than they 'karulize elatically'.
Grice writes: "My purpose in this section is to give a little thought to
the question 'What are the general principles exemplified, in
creature-construction, in progressing from one type of pirot to a higher type? What
KINDS of steps are being made? The kinds of step with which I shall deal here
are those which culminate in a licence to include, within the
specification of the content of the psychological state of certain pirots,
a range of expressions which would be inappropriate with respect to lower
pirots; such expressions
include connectives, quantifiers, temporal modifiers, mood indicators,
modal operators, and (importantly) names of psychological states like
"judge" and "will". Expressions, the availability of which leads to the
structural enrichment of specifications of content. ... In general, these
steps will be ones by which items or ideas which have, initially, a
legitimate place outside the scope of psychological instantiables (or, if you
will, the expressions for which occur legitimately outside the scope of
psychological verbs) come to have a legitimate place within the scope of such
instantiables: steps by which (one might say) such items or ideas come to
be internalised. I am disposed to regard as prototypical the sort of
natural disposition which Hume attributes to us, and which is very important
to him; name, the tendency of the mind 'to spread itself upon objects' to
project into the world items which, properly (or primitively) considered,
are really features of our states of mind. I shall set out in stages the
application of aspects of the genitorial programme.” We then start with a
zero-order, with pirots equipped to satisfy unnested judging and willing
(i.e. whose contents do _not_ involve judging or willing). We soon reach
Pirot-1. "It would be advantageous to pirots-0 if they could have judging
and willing, which relate to their own judging or willing." Such pirots
(pirots-1) could be equipped to control or regulate their own judgings and
willings. They will presumably be already constituted so as to conform to
the law that caeteris paribus if they will that p and judge that ~p, if
they can, they make it the case that p in their 'minds'. To give them some
control over their judgings and willings, we need only extend the
application of this law to their judging and willing. We equip them so that
caeteris paribus IF they will that they do not will that p and judge that they do
will that p, (if they can) they make it the case that they do NOT will
that p. And we somehow ensure that sometimes they CAN do this. It may be
that the installation of this kind of control would go hand in had with the
installation of the capacity for evaluation."
Pirot-2. Unlike it is the case with a pirot-1, a pirot-2's intentional
efforts depend on the motivational strength of its considered desires at the
time of action. We have been seeing the process by which conflicting
considered desires motivate action as a broadly causal process, a process that
reveals motivational strength. But a pirot-2 might itself try to weigh
considerations provided by such conflicting desires in deliberation about the
pros and cons of various alternatives. In the simplest case, such weighing
treats each of the things desired as a prima facie justifying end. In the face
of conflict it weighs such desired ends, where the weights correspond to
the motivational strength of the associated considered desire. The outcome
of such deliberation will match the outcome of the causal motivational
process envisioned in our description of a pirot-2. But since the weights it
invokes in such deliberation correspond to the motivational strength of the
relevant considered desires (though perhaps not to the motivational
strength of the relevant considered desires), the resultant activities will
match those of a corresponding pirot-2 (*all* of whose desires, we are
assuming, are considered). To be more realistic we might limit ourselves to saying
that a pirot-2 has the capacity to make the transition from unconsidered
to considered desires but does not always do this. But it will keep the
discussion more manageable to simplify and to suppose that *all* its desires
are considered.
Pirot-3. We shall not want these pirots-2 to depend, in each will and act
in ways that reveal the motivational strength of considered desires at the
time of action, but for a pirot-3 it will also be true that in some (though
not all) cases it acts on the basis of how it weights the ends favoured by
its conflicting considered desires. Pirot-3's considered desires will
concern matters that cannot be achieved simply by action at a single time.
Pirot-3 may, for example, want to nurture a vegetable garden, or build a house.
Such matters will require organized and coordinated action that extends
over time. What the pirot-3 does now will depend not only on what it now
desires but also on what it now expects it will do later given what it does
now. It needs a way of settling now what it will do later given what it does
now. The point is even clearer when we remind ourselves that pirot-3 is not
alone. It is, we may assume, one of some number of pirots-3; and in many
cases it needs to coordinate what it does with what other pirots-3 do so as
to achieve ends desired by all participants, itself included.
Pirots-4. These costs are magnified for a pirot-4 whose various plans are
interwoven so that a change in one element can have significant ripple
effects that will need to be considered. Let us suppose that the general
strategies pirot-4 has for responding to new information about its circumstances
are sensitive to these kinds of costs. Promoting in the long run the
satisfaction of its considered desires and preferences. Pirot-4 is a somewhat
sophisticated planning agent but it has a problem. It can expect that its
desires and preferences may well change over time and undermine its efforts at
organizing and coordinating its activities
over time. Perhaps in many cases this is due to the kind of temporal
discounting. So for example pirot-4 may have a plan to exercise every day but
may tend to prefer a sequence of not exercising on the present day but
exercising all days in the future, to a uniform sequence the present day
included. At the end of the day it returns to its earlier considered preference
in favour of exercising on each and every day. Though pirot-4, unlike
pirot-3, has the capacity to settle on prior plans or plaices concerning
exercise, this capacity does not yet help in such a case. A creature whose plans
were stable in ways in part shaped by such a no-regret principle would be
more likely than pirot-4 to resist temporary temptations.
Pirot-5. So let us build such a principle into the stability of the plans
of a pirot-5, whose plans and policies are not derived solely from facts
about its limits of time, attention, and the like. It is also grounded in
the central concerns of a planning agent with its own future, concerns that
lend special significance to
anticipated future regret. So let us add to pirot-5 the capacity and
disposition to arrive at such hierarchies of higher-order desires concerning its
"will".
Pirot-6. This gives us a new creature, pirot-6. There is a problem with
pirot-6, one that has been much discussed. It is not clear why a higher-order
desire -- even a higher-order desire that a certain desire be one's "will"
-- is not simply one more desire in the pool of desires (Berkeley God's
will problem). Why does it have the authority to constitute or ensure the
agent's (that is, the creature's) endorsement or rejection of a first-order
desire? Applied to pirot-6 this is the question of whether, by virtue solely
of its hierarchies of desires, it really does succeed in taking its own
stand of endorsement or rejection of various first-order desires. Since it
was the ability to take its own stand that we are trying to provide in the
move to pirot-6, we need some response to this challenge. The basic point is
that pirot-6 is not merely a time-slice agent. It is, rather, and
understands itself to be, a temporally persisting planning agent, one who begins,
and continues, and completes temporally extended projects. On a broadly
Lockean view, its persistence over time consists in relevant psychological
continuities (e.g., the persistence of attitudes of belief and intention)
and connections (e.g., memory of a past event, or the later intentional
execution of an intention formed earlier). Certain attitudes have as a
primary role the constitution and support of such Lockean continuities and
connections. In particular, policies that favour or reject various desires have
it as their role to constitute and support various continuities both of
ordinary desires and of the politicos themselves. For this reason such
policies are not merely additional wiggles in the psychic stew. Instead, these
policies have a claim to help determine where the agent -- i.e., the
temporally persisting agent -- stands with respect to its desires. Or so it
seems to me reasonable to say.
Pirot-7. So the psychology of pirot-7 continues to have the hierarchical
structure of pro-attitudes introduced with pirot-6. The difference is that
the higher-order pro-attitudes of pirot-6 were simply characterized as
desires in a broad, generic sense, and no appeal was made to the distinctive
species of pro-attitude constituted by plan-like attitudes. That is the
sense in which the psychology of pirot-7 is an extension of the psychology of
pirot-6. Let us then give pirot-7 such higher-order policies with the
capacity to take a stand with respect to its desires by arriving at relevant
higher-order policies concerning the functioning of those desires over
time. Pirot-7 exhibits a merger of hierarchical and planning structures.
Appealing to planning theory and ground in connection to the temporally extended
structure of agency to be one's "will". Pirot-7 has higher-order policies
that favour or challenge motivational roles of its considered desires.
When Pirot-7 engages in deliberative weighing of conflicting, desired ends it
seems that the assigned weights should reflect the policies that
determine where it stands with respect to relevant desires. But the policies we
have so far appealed to -- policies concerning what desires are to be one's
will -- do not quite address this concern. The problem is that one can in
certain cases have policies concerning which desires are to motivate and yet
these not be policies that accord what those desires are for a
corresponding justifying role in deliberation.
Pirots-8. A solution is to give our creature -- call it pirot-8 -- the
capacity to arrive at policies that express its commitment to be motivated
by a desire by way of its treatment of that desire as providing, in
deliberation, a justifying end for action. Pirot-8 has policies for treating (or
not treating) certain desires as providing justifying ends -- as, in this
way, reason-providing -- in motivationally effective deliberation. Let us
call such policies self-governing policies. We will suppose that these
policies are mutually compatible and do not challenge each other. In this way
pirot-8 involves an extension of structures already present in pirot-7.
The grounds on which pirot-8 arrives at (and on occasion revises) such
self-governing policies will
be many and varied. We can see these policies as crystallizing complex
pressures and concerns, some of which are grounded in other policies or
desires. These self-governing policies may be tentative and will normally not
be immune to change. If we ask what pirot-8 values in this case, the answer
seems to be: what it values is constituted in part by its higher-order
self-governing policies. In particular, it values exercise over nonexercise
even right now, and even given that it has a considered (though temporary)
preference to the contrary. Unlike lower pirots, what pirot-8 now values is
not simply a matter of its present, considered desires and preferences. Now
this model of pirot-8 seems in relevant aspects to be a (partial) model of
us.
(in our better moments, of course). So we arrive at the conjecture that
one important kind of valuing of which we are capable involves, in the
cited ways, both our first-order desires and our higher order self-governing
policies. In an important sub-class of cases our valuing involves reflexive
polices that are both first-order policies of action and higher-order
policies to treat the first-order policy as reason providing in motivationally
effective deliberation. This may seem odd. Valuing seems normally to be a
first-order attitude. One values honesty, say. The proposal is that an
important kind of valuing involves higher-order policies. Does this mean that,
strictly speaking, what one values (in this sense) is itself a desire --
not honesty, say, but a desire for honesty? No, it does not. What I value
in the present case is honesty; but, on the theory, my valuing honesty in
art consists in certain higher-order self-governing policies. An agent's
reflective valuing involves a kind of higher-order willing.
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