RJG wrote: ↑December 7th, 2018, 10:41 pmConsul wrote:...there is nothing contradictory about saying that my thinking (or imagining) is a mental doing of mine which is experienced by me.
Do you actually believe you can consciously experience the "doing" part? If so, then please tell me 'specifically' what it is that you
experience that indicates this.
The (sensory) experiences involved in my actual arm-raising are visual sensations (I see my arm raise) and bodily sensations: muscular tension and a kinesthetic (proprioceptive) sensation (of the position and movement of my arm).
RJG wrote: ↑December 7th, 2018, 10:41 pmNote: we can only experience 'experiences' (effects), and NEVER the 'causation' or "doing" part.
Thinking and imagining are experiential, (phenomenally) conscious events; that is, you experience your thinkings and imaginings; and if they are mental doings, you experience your mental doings. They are then experienced cognitive performances, experienced cases of mental action or behavior.
Thinkings and imaginings qua mental actions—I know you're denying that they are really actions—are experienced by their subjects and they can also be innerly perceived (introspected) by them, whereas purely physical actions (bodily motions) cannot be experienced but only perceived.
(Nonexperiences are perceived by means of experiences, especially sensations. For instance, you perceive your arm through sense-impressions of it.)
RJG wrote: ↑December 7th, 2018, 10:41 pmCausation is only presumed to exist, and is impossible to ever experience.
Really?
"The acceptance of the singular causation raises a very interesting epistemological question. Can we perhaps perceive causation, perceiving it in the direct sort of way that we perceive colours, shapes, distances, and other sensible qualities and relations? We could hardly do this if a Humean account of causation is correct because it would be magical to be perceptually sensitive to vast regularities over space and time. The best one could do then is to make some sort of inference from bodily sensations. But if causation is singular, then there seems to be an obvious candidate for perception: the action of various forces upon our body. This is information that we need for the immediate conduct of life and if it is lacking we would be most grievously handicapped. Relevant here seems the case described by Oliver Sachs of the woman in ‘The Disembodied Lady’ (in Sachs 1986) who suffered total loss of her proprioceptive capacity (perception of her own body), leaving her with almost no information about the state of her body save what could be painfully and artificially gained by vision. She could not be directly aware of the action of the world on her body. But we luckier ones are so aware, and so, it seems plausible, are aware of causal action on our body. Of course, even if my suggestion here is correct, we would not be experiencing the operation of a causal law. What we experience when we experience the operation of causes on our body will be the mere resultant of the causes operating upon some portion of our body at that time.
You can put the point by saying that among our sense impressions should be included sense impressions of some of the forces that act upon our body. David Hume, it may be remembered, argued that all our ideas (concepts) are derived, directly or indirectly, from sense impressions. But he says that he is unable to find any impression of causality, and in particular he denies that there is any impression of the necessary connection between cause and effect. All the senses give us, he assumes, are regular successions. I think that this is very likely quite wrong. In Humean terms, there are impressions from which we can derive the idea of causation. There are such impressions, impressions of forces acting on our body. Impressions can err, of course (error is always possible in perception), but in veridical cases we are able, I claim, to perceive causal action on our own body. (And we don’t have to think, as Hume seems to assume, that this would have to be a necessary connection. It could be contingent.)
Incidentally, Hume also denies that we experience causality in connection with willing our actions (in many places in his Treatise and Enquiries). I think he may be wrong here also. There seems to be direct introspective awareness of causes here, once again. We can be aware, with the usual caution that we might be mistaken, that we have successfully acted in a certain situation, that what we did sprang from our will as cause."
(Armstrong, D. M.
Sketch for a Systematic Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. pp. 45-6)
RJG wrote: ↑December 7th, 2018, 10:41 pmFirstly, you can never experience a "doing" of anything.
If thinking or imagining is a mental action, I experience it and can perceive it innerly, i.e. introspectively. I don't experience my physical actions, i.e. bodily motions, but I can perceive them both extrospectively and interoceptively/proprioceptively.
Footnote: In ordinary-language usage, "to experience" is often used in the sense of "to perceive"; but, strictly philosophically speaking, nonexperiences are only perceptible rather than experienceable.
RJG wrote: ↑December 7th, 2018, 10:41 pmSecondly, your "sense of agency" is a creation of indoctrinated belief.
I doubt that my subjective impression of (intentional) physical or mental action is just an illusion. For there is perceptual evidence for my being a subject with active powers. I can consciously (intentionally/voluntarily) do something and thereby make something happen, which wouldn't have happened if I hadn't done something.
As for thinking and imagining as mental actions, I'm not saying that all events of thinking or imaging are acts, i.e. things I do intentionally, but at least cases of explicit philosophical or scientific reflection are.
For example, when I ask you to imagine an ice cube and to let it rotate around one axis for ten seconds, you can intentionally do that, can't you? Or when I ask you to add all natural numbers ≤10 in your mind, you can intentionally do that, can't you?
RJG wrote: ↑December 7th, 2018, 10:41 pmConsul wrote:If you were right, there would be no difference between winking and blinking, and between shaking one's body and shuddering…
If one 'experiences' a difference between winking/blinking and shaking/shuddering, then they do. If they don't, then they don't.
My sense of agency is not an illusion, because I am well aware of the difference between a blinking that just happens to me (e.g. due to a neural malfunction) and a winking that is (consciously/intentionally/voluntarily) done by me. Normal self-conscious subjects such as human ones aren't just passive "event-watchers"; they aren't just remote-controlled "puppets on strings", because they have certain active powers and a certain degree of self-control.
RJG wrote: ↑December 7th, 2018, 10:41 pmConsul wrote:There really is such a thing as (intentional) physical or mental action.
Not so. Firstly, it is not possible to ever consciously "intend" (or "do") anything. Secondly, "intending" itself is a meaningless self-stultifying (self-defeating) word.
One cannot “intend” anything without there existing a prior “intention” to do so. But this prior “intention” defeats any viability of true 'intentionality', thereby making the term itself self-contradictory; logically impossible; self-stultifying.
In other words, just ask yourself, did you cause (intend) your intention, ...or was this intention unintentional? If you intended your intention, then did you also intend this intending, ...or was it unintentional? Continue on with this never ending process, until you finally realize that "intending" anything is logically impossible.
I reject your premise that one cannot intend to do x unless one also intends to intend to do x. Intentions to action and intentional actions don't impossibly require an infinite regress of prior intentions to intentions.
When I act freely in accordance with my intentions (in the compatibilist sense of freedom of action), these are just there and haven't been freely chosen by me. However, there are indirect ways of changing one's intentions.
RJG wrote: ↑December 7th, 2018, 10:41 pmOne can only 'experience' (the urge called) intention, and never ever the "intending" itself!
Intending to do x is not the same as feeling an urge to do x. For example, when I (rationally) intend to go to the dentist, I never feel an urge, a desire, or impulse to do so (on the contrary!). I can intend to do (and do) what I don't desire or want to do.
By the way, there's a distinction between intention-
to-action (planning to do x), intention-
in-action (intentional action, the exertion of the will: voluntarily attempting/trying to do x), and intention-
of-action (the purpose of doing x: doing x in order to…).
RJG wrote: ↑December 7th, 2018, 10:41 pmConsul wrote:"Active and Passive Consciousness:
To anyone who reflects on his conscious experiences, there is an obvious distinction between the experience of voluntary intentional activity on the one hand and the experience of passive perception on the other.
Obvious? If this were "obvious", then one could easily identify and point out this distinction. But one can't. One can't because one can only experiences 'effects', and never the causers themselves.
There are "agentive experiences", i.e. experiences of oneself as an agent who is a causer of things.
"Consider what it is like to engage in a mundane action, such as waving goodbye to a friend. In addition to experiencing one’s body as moving in a certain way, one will also experience oneself as acting and, indeed, as carrying out a particular kind of action (say, waving). One will experience the movements of one’s arm as intentional and as goal-directed; one will experience oneself as the agent of the action. One may also experience oneself as having a certain degree of control over both the initiation and execution of the action; one may experience the action as “up to oneself.” The action might be experienced as involving a certain amount of effort. It might also be experienced as an action that one performs freely or voluntarily. Each of these types of mental states is, I assume, familiar to you from your own experience. I will group these states together under the heading of “agentive experiences.”
Within the class of agentive experiences we can distinguish between core and non-core elements. The core elements of agentive experience are elements that must be possessed by any agentive experience whatsoever. As the name suggests, the core elements of agentive experience lie at the heart of the phenomenon. We might think of the core as “the feeling of doing” or “the sense of agency.” A minimal construal of this core would identify it with nothing more than a bare experience of oneself as acting—what Ginet (1990) refers to as “actish phenomenology.” A richer conception of the agentive core might identify it with the experience of acting on the basis of a particular aim or goal. We need not decide between these two conceptions of the agentive core here.
By the “non-core” elements of agentive experience I mean to identify those elements of agentive phenomenology that need not be present within an experience of agency. It is something of an open question just what phenomenal features might qualify as non-core elements of agentive experience, but I would include experiences of effort and experiences of freedom in this category. Although many of our actions involve a sense of effort or a sense of freedom, these elements are not essential to the sense of agency as such. Arguably, one can experience a movement as an action without experiencing it as something in which one is investing effort or as something that one is executing freely."
(Bayne, Tim. "Agentive Experiences as Pushmi-Pullyu Representations." In
New Waves in Philosophy of Action, edited by Jesús H. Aguilar, Andrei A. Buckareff, and Keith Frankish, 219-236. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. pp. 219-20)
RJG wrote: ↑December 7th, 2018, 10:41 pmOne falsely believes that they 'voluntarily' raised their arm, because they 'experienced' the preceding 'urge' to raise their arm. Without the preceding urge (prior to stimulating the muscle movement), there is no urge, and hence no false belief of 'voluntary' action.
Note: the experiencing of an urge, does not mean one consciously caused said urge.
No, a voluntary arm-raising needn't involve any urge. An urge can motivate me to raise my arm, but I can as well do so without feeling any urge to do so. I can simply decide to raise my arm and do so. (And when I feel an urge to raise my arm, I can decide to resist it and not to raise my arm.)
RJG wrote: ↑December 7th, 2018, 10:41 pmConsul wrote:I can know what I intend or want to do before doing it, but of course I cannot know what I am doing before I start doing it...
No problem with 'knowing' your experiences; being conscious of your intentions/desires. The problem (impossibility) is in knowingly causing these intentions/desires.
Of course, I cannot freely choose or decide to have the intention or desire to do x; and, ultimately, even meta-intentions or meta-desires to change one's intentions or desires aren't freely chosen. (For example, an alcoholic can have the meta-desire to get rid of his addictive desire to drink alcohol.) But it doesn't follow that intentional (physical or mental) actions are impossible.
RJG wrote: ↑December 7th, 2018, 10:41 pmConsul wrote:My active arm-raising is accompanied by a passive perception of my arm's rising, but the former is not reducible to the latter.
There is never a consciously experienced "active arm-raising". One cannot experience "active" events", one can only experience 'experiences' (effects). Consul, if you truly believe you can experience an "active" causal event, then please be specific and identify this (impossible) active '
experience'.
You perceive your physical actions through certain sensations accompanying it. In the case of purely mental actions (deliberate thinking or imagining as the using of linguistic or non-linguistic mental images for conscious cognitive processes such as reasoning, deciding and problem-solving), you cannot perceive them sensorily but only introspectively. But you don't have to introspect your mental actions in order to experience them. All mental actions involve experiences of mental images, but qua being actions rather than mere passions they don't just consist in the passive enjoyment of mental images but in the active employment of mental images by the subject. That is, the actively thinking or imagining subject doesn't just passively have thoughts or images, because s/he intentionally
uses them for something.
Your mental or physical actions are also accompanied by a distinctive sense of agency or "action awareness" (Christopher Peacocke):
"The content of such action awareness is first-personal and present-tensed. It has the form ‘I am doing such-and-such now’."
RJG wrote: ↑December 7th, 2018, 10:41 pmConsul wrote:When I raise my arm I see it rise, with the arm-rising not being caused by my seeing it; but, again, the active raising of my arm is not reducible to a passive seeing of its rising. For it includes an intention…
Experiencing an intention, is NOT
causing (intending) that intention.
True, but I didn't say it is.
The intention included in my arm-raising is an intention-in-action, a voluntary attempt of mine to actualize my (prior) intention-to-action, in virtue of which the arm-raising is more than a mere arm-rising.
RJG wrote: ↑December 7th, 2018, 10:41 pmExperiencing the attempt to raise the arm, is NOT
causing the attempt to raise the arm.
No, but my intention or decision to raise my arm plus my voluntary attempt to do so are part of the cause of my arm-rising.
Ceteris paribus, my arm wouldn't have risen if I hadn't intended/decided and attempted to raise it.