Passive actions: a body-first account
- Autores: Marta Vidal Perera
- Directores de la Tesis: Kevin Mulligan (codir. tes.), Olga Fernández Prat (codir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona ( España ) en 2018
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Anna Estany Profitós (presid.), David Pineda (secret.), Fabrice Clement (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Ciencia Cognitiva y Lenguaje por la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona; la Universidad de Barcelona y la Universidad Rovira i Virgili
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: TESEO
- Resumen
This dissertation places passive actions at the heart of our capacity to act. Passive actions are those actions which the subject experiences as something which happens to them. Although most actions are accompanied by this experience, the explanation of passive actions is in tension with important intuitions about what it is to act. Actions are what a subject performs, and performing something is opposed, normally, to mere happenings. The experience of passivity seems thus to threaten what is essential to acts, the fact that the subject performs an action. Can an action be, at the same time, something performed by the subject and something which happens to her? In chapters 1 and 2 I present two different strategies to explain passive actions. One strategy considers that the performance of an action is not incompatible with a passive mechanism. Bach, Searle and Pacherie modify standard theories of action, according to which the subject who intends an action causes it, by substituting for this subject a representation of bodily movements which cause actions. A second strategy considers that the so-called ‘passive actions’ result from a process different from the process which results in actions. Clark proposes that a visuomotor neural system results in bodily movements which are an action and which the subject experiences passively. I also explored Dreyfus’ view. He presents a basic relation between the environment and the subject which results in the body actively moving. Since this relation is not grounded in the subject’s will (or something analogous), it can explain the experience of passivity. However, because of the theoretical framework Dreyfus uses, his model only explains environmentally-driven actions. Dreyfus’ model has also problems when it comes to taking into account the subject who controls and can modify the action.
In Chapter 3, I explore a novel way of approaching passive actions which considers whether it is possible to relate passive actions to the basic dimension of action, which is introduced when discussing non-basic actions. Non-basic actions are those actions which are performed through or by performing another action and basic actions are those actions which stop the possible regress that might occur if all actions were non-basic. I argue that both phenomena exist, since actions are performed by moving the body. In Chapter 4, I explore thus what different theories claim about the movements involved in an action. First, I explore the view of Bargh, who claims that sub-personal mechanisms result in movements. The second view, proposed in different ways by Steward and Hornsby, is that bodily movements are the result of engagement of the agent with their body (different from their engagement with the action). Neither view manages to explain the fact that the movements are agential movements.
In Chapter 5, I present my own positive view. According to this view, the movements of an action are the result of a tendency of a body to move. Presented in this way, the movements do not require the performance of an action in order for them to be the movements of an action: they are the movements of an action in a basic way. This yields an explanation of the movements which is not grounded in the will of the subject. This view does not result in a picture in which intentions play no role, since this tendency of a body to move might satisfy a pattern of movements related to intentions. However, intentions would not be something essential for action, and the relation between action and intention would be indirect and mediated by the tendency of a body to move.
