In chapter 6 of Attempts - PDF document

In chapter 6 of Attempts , Gideon Yaffe defends the thesis that it is “possible to attempt crimes of negligence” (2010, p. 173). Although I am persuaded that he is right about this, I find certain parts of his defense unpersuasive. My discussion of those parts of his argument motivates a thesis that goes beyond Yaffe’s: Not only can we attempt crimes of negligence, as he argues; but Yaffe’s defense of the claim that we can attempt crimes of negligence is both insightful and intricate. He uses an old example of mine to help motivate his thesis. Partly because that example puts me on familiar ground (familiar to me, that is), I start there: Ann is promised $10,000 for offending Bob unintentionally, and she knows that there is no reward for intentionally offending him. Wanting the money, Ann wants to offend Bob unintentionally. And wanting not to leave matters entirely to chance, she thinks hard about how she might bring it about that she does this. Ann knows that she tends to offend Bob unintentionally when she is extremely busy: when she is preoccupied with her work, for example, she tends, without then realizing it, to speak more tersely than she speech tends to offend him. Knowing this, Ann decides to undertake an engrossing project (writing a paper on intentional action), believing that her involvement in it will occasion when Bob calls (as he frequently does), she will unintentionally offend him. Bob unintentionally by implementing the strategy just described. (Mele 1999, p. 420) There is no explicit mention of attempting or trying (I will use the terms interchangeably) in this story. That is because the story’s purpose was to make a certain point about intentions. What happens after Ann forms the intention was not a concern. But suppose that Ann tried to execute her plan. Then I would accept the claim that Ann tried to bring it about that she offends is about? By undertaking the engrossing project I mentioned. How long did she try to do this? Suppose that after Ann worked on the writing project for a while, her work was no longer motivated even partly by her desire for the money. never even thought about the money or her moneproject. And when Bob calls her at the office and she unknowingly speaks tersely to him and unwittingly offends him (as she tends to do when he calls while she is engrossed in a project), I believe that she does not offend him intentionally, even though she intentionally brought it about that she offended him. The belief I just reported is directly relevant to Yaffe’s argument for the thesis that it is possible to attempt crimes of negligence. I will get to the connection in due time. Someone might appeal to the following thesis as part of an argument against my belief: . Necessarily, if S intentionally brings it about that he X -s, S X -s intentionally. 3 Is T1 true? Consider the following passage from another article of mine: If you are anything like me, trying to sneeze is not an option for you, but you can try to bring it about that you sneeze. Sniffing a little ground pepper would work for me. Similarly, trying to believe that you are not reading this is not an option for you, but you can try to bring it about that you believe that you are not reading this. Simply stop reading. Primed by the preceding sentences, you will believe, occurrently, that you are false that you believe what you do intentionally. Or so it seems to me. This is not to say that the following claims are false: . It was intentional on my part that I sneezed. . It was intentional on your part that you believed you were not reading. Perhaps C1 and C2 are true, and perhaps they are entailed by the claims that I intentionally But, if I am right, these claims do not entail that I sneezed intentionally and that you believed Someone might contend that even if I am right about my sneezing and your believing, I am mistaken in thinking that it is false that Ann offends Bob intentionally. It might be claimed that sneezing and believing differ from offending in a way that explains my mistake and that the crucial difference is that whereas sneezings and believings are never actions, some offendings This obviously raises the question what it is for something to be an action. I need to say something about this general issue if I am to evaluate the idea described in the preceding There are more and less inclusive uses of ‘action’ in ordinary English. In a very this very broad sense. We are primarily interested in intentional actions; but, in this connection, is to perform an intentional action is understanding how doing that differs from performing an Donald Davidson contends that “action . . . require[s] that what the agent does is intentional under some description” (1980, p. 50). He also contends that “a man is the agent of an act if what he does can be described under an aspect that makes it intentional” (p. 46). Putting these remarks together, we get the thesis that x is an action if and only if x intentional action under some description.inclusive sense of ‘action’ that I mentioned. Readers who are not familiar with Davidson’s theory of action individuation may find the light, and illuminate the room. Unbeknownst to me I also alert a prowler to the fact that I am home” (Davidson 1980, p. 4). How many actions has the agent, Don, performed? Davidson’s One obvious upshot is that the same action may be intentional under some descriptions and unintentional (or not intentional) under others. For example, Don performs an action that is intentional under the descriptions “flips the switch,” “turns on the light,” and “illuminates the room” but unintentional (or not intentional) under the description “alerts the prowler.” Unfortunately, this theory does not directly yield a diagnosis of why it is that someone who intentionally brings it about that he sneezes by sniffing pepper does not perform the action of sneezing. “What I do” in my example about sneezing is intentional under various descriptions: for example, “bring it about that I sneeze” and “sniff pepper.” Even so, my an action in a broad sense of the term in which acids act.) It may be suggested that the answer is to be found by focusing on the brief span of time during which I sneezed. However, I was trying to cover my nose and mouth with my left hand at that time (so as to avoid offending my companions), and I succeeded in this. “What I do” during that span of time is intentional under One alternative to Davidson’s theory is Alvin Goldman’s fine-grained theory. It treats actions A and B as different actions if, in performing them, the agent exemplifies different act- On this view, Don performs at least four actions, since the act-properties at issue are distinct. An agent may exemplify any of these act-properties without exemplifying any of the others. Someone may even turn on a light in a room without illuminating the room: The light may be painted black. A fine-grained theorist can say that my sneezing is not an action act-property.) But this does not help with some related cases. For example, some instances of blinking are actions and some are not. Goldman understands an act-property as “a property such that at least one of its instances is an act-token” (1970, p. 16). On this view, some exemplifications of the act-property blinking are actions and some are not. In this article, I leave both of these competing theories of individuation open. Readers of action individuation (and the same goes for the term ‘action’). Those who favor the coarse- I claimed that it is false that Ann offends Bob intentionally. The objection to me on the table now includes the idea that my alleged mistake has something to do with the fact that offendings (unlike sneezings and believings) sometimes are actions. Brief attention to blinking may prove useful. Suppose someone offers Ann $100 for nonintentionally blinking within three seconds. Fortunately, there is an empty squirt gun on the of air causes her to blink. Although some blinkings are actions, the one at issue now is not. Ann that she blinked. Did she also succeed in bringing it about that she blinked nonintentionally? intentionally even so? This question is very plausibly answered no , despite the truth of the Like blinkings and belchings, some instances of offending are actions and some are not. Bill may offend his grandmother by falling asleep while she is talking to him. He offends her nonactionally and nonintentionally. In the case of Ann and Bob, matters are different. Ann offended Bob by speaking in a certain way, and in speaking to Bob she was acting. The same is true of her speaking tersely to him; in doing thatactions are intentional. For example, in ordinary cases of unknowingly and inadvertently speaking tersely, one is not intentionally speaking tersely. As I see it, this is also true in my bringing it about that she is in a frame of mind that will render her speech terse when he calls (as With this background in place, I turn to Yaffe’s discussion of the story of Ann and Bob. My guiding question is whether he has shown that I should retract some of my claims about the Yaffe defends three claims about my story: (c) If Ann intentionally acts as she intends, then she will not offend Bob unintentionally (although she will offend him). (p. 181) In this section, I assess his arguments for theses (a) and (c). Yaffe’s argument for (a) includes an argument for the claim that Ann is trying to offend Bob. Here is the latter argument: “[Ann is] trying to get the money, and she believes quite adopting a course of conduct that she hopes will culminate in her doing so. That surely is I am not persuaded. As I see it, just as I am not trying to sneeze in my story about sneezing, there is no point in time at which Ann isanother story of mine may help: Carl sees it, once he makes the announcement, his failing to follow through would carry a cost that he is unwilling to pay: his children would think less of him for backing out. His motivation to paint it tonight. (2009, p. 20) The passage continues as follows: “Obviously, in making his announcement at breakfast, Carl is not trying to paint his kitchen tonight; but in making his announcement, he is trying to bring it Similarly, as I see it, once Ann is thoroughly engrossed in her trying to offend him, she is not trying to offend him unintentionally. Yaffe says that “once we agree that [Ann] is trying to offend Bob, it becomes quite difficult to deny that she is trying to offend him unintentionally” (p. 181). But I do not will not be in a position to offend Bob until he calls; and when he calls, she is not trying to offend him. Nor, as I see it, was she trying to offend him before he called. But there was a time at which she tried to bring it about that she would offend him later, just as there was a time at I turn to thesis (c): If Ann intentionally acts as she intends, then she will not offend Bob unintentionally (although she will offend him). Here defense of thesis (b) (“Ann intends to offend Bob unintentionally”), Yaffe appeals to the claim reject that claim, I believe that there is a stretch of time during which Ann intends to offend Bob unintentionally. From “Ann intends to we can infer that she intends to offend him him unintentionally. In light of the point just made about what Ann intends, one may wish to consider the unintentionally (although she offends him). does not offend Bob unintentionally (although she offends him). unintentionally (although she offends him). offend Bob unintentionally and that she intentionally offends him (in which case, she does not unintentionally offend him). I agree with Yaffe that 1 is true, and I will not review his argument for this. Because I Bob. I turn now to his defense of the claim that she does. Over some stretch of time, as I said earlier, Ann intends to offend Bob. If we were to intention to do it” (p. 185), Yaffe reviews the main way appropriate to her offending him intentionally. At one point, he claims that Ann “has the intention to offend Bob throughout” the process (p. 186); and he adds that “she offends him as a she anticipates when she forms the intention.” Imagine, if you can, that when Ann was working on developing a plan for bringing it about that she offends Bob unintentionally, she worried that her plan might be undermined offends him. She worried that even if she were not conscious of her intention at the time, somehow the offending would not count as unintentional. Ann decided to read my “Persisting Intentions” (Mele 2007) to see whether it might shed any light on her worry. She found the paper confusing and her mind wandered. Eventually, her wandering mind fastened on an occurred to her that she could have her friend Beth (a prize-winning pharmacologist) selectively erase at an appropriate time her memory of the offer and any intention she might have to offend I should mention that it occurred to Ann that evintention to persist were to warrant the claim that her intention to offend Bob persists even while on her behavior at the office, the persistence of the intention at the time of the offense may be quite compatible with her offending Bob unintentionally. She thinks that even if she were to have the intention at issue at the time of the offense, it would be both unconscious and inert; and But Ann knows that theoretical matters can be very complicated, and she does not want to take a chance with so much money at stake. In the version of the story that involves the erasing I described, it is clear that Ann does not have “the intention to offend Bob throughout” the process. Even so, she offends him “as a result of that intention in precisely the way that she anticipates when she forms the intention” offend Bob at (or anywhere near) the time of the offense, and given that what was going on at that time was just the sort of thing that is going on when Ann unintentionally offends some callers with her terse speech, the claim that, on that occasion, Ann intentionally offended Bob seems implausible. Is the claim that Ann intentionally offended Bob much more plausible if it is assumed intention”? I think not. My explanation is forthcoming. It was Paul who offered Ann the money for offending Bob. Not long after he made the offer, he happened to read chapter 6 of Attempts , which persuaded him that Ann could not win the money. A few days later, Ann, with Beth and Bob in tow, visited Paul and presented him Paul thought about the evidence for a while. Then he said that even if Ann did not believe that she intended to offend Bob when she took the lie detector test, she might have had unconscious intention might still have been present at the time of the offense and that, if it was, Beth told Bob about a procedure she could have used. It renders intentions unconscious but preserves them in such a way that, under – and only under – extreme hypnosis, they can be recalled. She assured him that, after the procedure, these intentions can play no role in shaping inert intention to offend Bob at the time of the offense would have rendered Ann’s offending , as he surely should. And the game was lost. Beth informed him that when her intention-erasing procedure fails, the result is exactly the result of the other An argument for the thesis that Ann intentionally offended Bob that depends on the claim that, at the time of the offense, she had an intention to offend him can be defeated. The claim might be false; but even if it is true, that intention is doing no work at all at the time of the And I do not see how its mere presence at the time (as an unconscious intention) can As I see it, Ann intentionally brought it about that she offended Bob. Someone might infer from this that she intentionally offended Bob. As I have mentioned, I do not make this inference. But one of the lessons of work in experimental philosophy on intentional action is that not everyone uses the adverb “intentionally” in the same way (Cushman and Mele 2008). Someone might use “intentionally” in accordance with thesis T1 (from section 1): . Necessarily, if S intentionally brings it about that he X -s, S X -s intentionally. 14 Such a person would say the following about relevant cases discussed earlier: (S1 ) I intentionally sneezed, (S2 ) you intentionally believed that you were not reading, and (S3 blinked (in the empty squirt gun story). If you (dear reader) believe that these claims are correct, should believe that these claims are correct, I would like to know why I should. How would you ? And if you believe that Ann intentionally offended Bob but reject one or more of , S2 , and S3 relevant truth about proper usage of “intentionally” of which I am ignorant, what is it? And how would you defend the claim that it is true? I have been discussing a version of Yaffe’s thesis (c). I mentioned a second version that I does not offend Bob unintentionally (although she offends him). Return to Yaffe’s claim that Ann offends Bob “as a result of” her intention to offend him “in precisely the way that she anticipates when she forms the intention” (p. 186). One might say that the intention at issue, more fully described, is Ann’s intention to bring it about that she offends can see, the apparent obstacles to the claim that Ann succeeded at this have been removed – And I have not seen an argument for T1 . If, as I believe, Ann intentionally brings it about that she offends Bob unintentionally, things get even more interesting than Yaffe has shown they are. Not only is it “possible to attempt crimes of negligence,” as Yaffe argues, it also is possible to succeed. A look at a fictional book on etiquette crimes may prove instructive. Part of the book is on what are called “common crimes of impoliteness.” Under the heading “offending of friends,” The sub-entry that concerns me involves actions associated with habits or tendencies that “the occasionally cause them to behave impolitely, they soon become cognizant of this, seek to correct the habits, and succeed without much trouble.) Amazingly, the example offered features a professor’s habit of unwittingly and unintentionally speaking tersely to people who call her at first market trial for caller ID. Back then, many people were in the habit of answering their do so.) The pronouncement being illustrated reads as follows: “Whenever, in acting out of an impolite, corrigible habit, one unintentionally offends a friend and it is reasonable for the friend to take offense, one is guilty of this crime of negligence.” There is no mention of an exception for cases in which one’s plan was to recruit the impolite habit to generate the offense. But my hunch is that if the author of this book had thought of such cases and were in the business of recommending reactions to etiquette crimes, the recommended reaction would be more severe than one for a comparable ordinary case of In light of this brief discussion of the book on etiquette crimes, one can describe what Ann attempted as the etiquette crime known as “negligent offending of a friend.” And if I am right, her attempt was successful. 3. Yaffe’s Guiding Commitment View Yaffe advocates a view of trying – the “Guiding Commitment View” (GCV) – that, in my opinion, has some counterintuitive consequences. But perhaps, as Yaffe says, the word “try” is used “in various ways in different circumstances” (p. 101); and it may be that in some circumstances or contexts, claims about what an agent tried that I regard as counterintuitive should be accepted. For this reason and others, GCV merits discussion here. According to GCV, a person D attempts C if and only if, for “all those things that are true when a person C’s” (all “Ei,” in Yaffe’s shorthand), “the following criteria are met”: (1) Either role, then Ei” (the “Commitment Criterion”) and (2) “D is guided by his commitment to Ei” (the “Guidance Criterion”) (p. 73). Because an agent might have more than one intention at a time, I The point I just made about the expression “D’s intention” is relevant to Yaffe’s h of whom intend to run the race and both of whom have an intention to go to the store, an intention which is formed because the agent believes going to the store is a means to running the race” (p. 93). He writes: One of them is moved by the first intention (and perhaps the second, as well); the other is moved only by the second. So under the account of guidance offered here, the first is guided by the commitments constituted by his intention to run the race, the second is not. Thus, under the Guiding Commitment View, the first is trying to run the race when he Call the first runner Al and the second runner Bob. If both men have both intentions and Al is moved by both whereas Bob is moved only by his intenti Yaffe makes a claim that may seem to provide a partial basis for an answer. Here it is: “The causal influence of an intention on a person’s behavior is motivational in the sense of relevance to guidance if and only if the Completion Counterfactual is true” (p. 95). That counterfactual reads as follows: “If (1) from t1 to t2 D has the ability and the opportunity to C and does not fall prey to ‘execution failure’, and (2) D does not (at least until after t2) change his mind, then D would C” (p. 94). Is there something in Yaffe’s story about the two runners that explains why a relevant conditional of this kind is not true of both men? Suppose that both men start driving to the store when “D” designates Al, it is true as well when “D” designates Bob: If (1) from t1 to t2 D has D does not (at least until after t2) change his mind, then D would run the race.” Might it be that whereas Al satisfies the Commitment Criterion regarding running the race, Bob does not? Well, Bob’s intention to run the race commits him to running the race: The answer seems to be no . So, again, if both men intend to run the race and intend to go to the store and only Al is moved by both intentions when he goes to the store, in virtue of what is that true? Yaffe can say that when an agent has more than one intention at a time, GCV is meant to apply just to one of them, and this is an intention the agent is acting on at a time. In Al’s case, he can say that the pertinent intention is to go to the store as a means to running the race.intention commits him both to going to the store and to running the race. Bob, by hypothesis, has no single intention that commits him to both deeds. So we infer from the combination of the infer from the details of Bob’s case and GCV (understood in the same way, of course) that it is false that, when Bob went to the store, he was trying to run the race. Bob was motivated at the time by his intention to go to the store, and that intention does not commit him to running the race. Why might Al, but not Bob, have an intention to go to the store as a means to running the race despite the important similarities between them in Yaffe’s story, including the facts that both men “intend to run the race,” that both “have an intention to go to the store,” that both form the latter intention because they believe that “going to the store is a means to running the race,” and that each man “is motivated to go to the store because he intends to run the race” (p. 93). One possibility is that Al has developed a habit of agglomerating his intentions for means with his intentions for ends and Bob has not. They misphere. Al’s style is such that after he forms an intention for a means to an end, he habitually forms or acquires another intention with representational content that links the means to the end. Bob’s style is different: He gets by with his intention for the end and his intention for the means – for example, his intention to run the race and his intention to go to the store. He does not agglomerate. When we move to the legal sphere, do we really want to allow the difference between committing and not committing crime x to hang on a difference of this kind? Suppose that both Alice and Betty intend to murder Tom six months from now. (Neither knows about the other’s mputer would be very useful in planning the murder. Consequently, both intend to buy one; and both drive to a mall to buy one.a habit of agglomerating her intentions for means with her intentions for ends. She has a third intention that represents her driving to the mall as a means to buying a laptop, her buying a laptop as a means to murdering Tom, and her driving to the mall as a means to murdering him. Betty lacks Alice’s agglomerating habit, and she has no such third intention. She knows why she is driving to the mall, but she has no intention whose content links her driving there to her murdering Tom. On Yaffe’s view, other things being equal, it seems that when the women are driving to the mall, one of them is trying to murder Tom and the other is not. It seems that, on his view, Alice is committing a serious crime – attempted murder – at the time in question and Betty is not. Can this much really hang on the featured difference between the two agents? Recall the claim of mine about Carl that I quoted in section 2: “Obviously, in making his announcement at breakfast, Carl is not trying to paint his kitchen tonight; but in making his announcement, he is trying to bring it about that he paints it tonight.” Suppose that, when he makes his announcement, an intention with the following content is at work: As a means of bringing it about that I paint the kitchen tonight, I announce to my kids that I intend to paint it tonight. Suppose also that the following conditional is true: If (1) from the time he makes his announcement until late that night, Carl has the ability and the opportunity to paint his kitchen tonight and does not fall prey to execution failure, and (2) Carl does not (at least until after t2) change his mind, then Carl would paint his kitche trying to paint his kitchen tonight when he makes his announcement. But my own assessment of the case does not change. As I see it, when he makes his announcement, Carl is not yet trying to paint his kitchen. Instead, he is trying to do something that we should distinguish from that: He is trying to bring it about that he paints it tonight or trying to make it the case that there is a very Should I take a different view of matters in a context in which an agent is taking means to a criminal end? I do not see why. The story about Alice and Betty gives us such a context. And a view that puts Alice on the hook for attempted murder while keeping Betty off that hook seems Cushman, F. and A. Mele. 2008. “Intentional Action:Knobe and S. Nichols, eds. Experimental Philosophy . New York: Oxford University Press: 171-88. Davidson, D. 1980. Essays on Actions and Events . Oxford: Clarendon Press. Ginet, C. 1990. On Action . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goldman, A. 1970. A Theory of Human Action . Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Mele, A. 1995. “Motivation: Essentially Motivation-Constituting Attitudes.” Philosophical Review Mele, A. 1999. “Is There a Place for Intention in an Analysis of Intentional Action?” Philosophia 27: 419-32. Mele, A. 2003. Motivation and Agency . New York: Oxford University Press. Mele, A. 2007. “Persisting Intentions.” Noûs 41: 735-57. Mele, A. 2009. “Mental Action: A Case Study.” In L. O’Brien and M. Soteriou, eds. Mental Actions and Agency Yaffe, G. 2010. Attempts . Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1. This example derives from one in Mele 1995. Back then, I did not have to say that Ann does is a description of what he did that makes true a sentence that says he did it intentionally” (1980, 4. My claim about my sneezing may be disputed. Consider a light switch that works as follows: An action of mine describable as flipping suppose that my sniffing pepper causes air to shoot through my nose in a way distinctive of sneezing two seconds later. Someone might claim that an action of mine describable as sniffing pepper is also describable as an action of sneezing. As I see things, my sneezing is analogous to the light’s going on (a nonaction) – not to my turning it on. The imagined disputant sees things differently and is not simply using ‘action’ in the very broad sense I identified (in which even 5. For another alternative, the component 6. My claim about Carl may be disputed. Someone might contend (1) that, when he makes his announcement at breakfast, Carl is acting on his intention to paint his kitchen tonight and (2) that this fact suffices for its being true that he is trying at this time to paint his kitchen tonight. As I with the idea that at breakfast Carl is acting on his intention to paint his kitchen tonight. We can distinguish acting on an intention from executing (or being in the process of executing) an Ann’s case differs from one in which he executes a plan for drenching me in flour by setting up a bucket of flour over a certain door. He open the door and the flour falls on me. Other things being equal, Yaffe observes, he intentionally drenched me in flour. My answer is that unintentionally. The other is that what was going on at the time of the offense is exactly the sort 8. Given the twists and turns in my discussion, some readers might have lost track of what motivated me to discuss this claim. Reminder: My motivation is Yaffe’s claim that Ann “has the 9. I am not claiming that it is false that Ann offended Bob unintentionally only if T1 One can try to motivate a principle that is weaker than T1 (that is, that is entailed by T1 but does not entail it) and yields the result that Ann did not offend Bob unintentionally. 10. Readers will recall Yaffe’s claim (quoted earlier) that the runner I am calling Al is moved by an intention to run the race (p. 93). Perhaps he would say that in being moved by his intention to go to the store as a means to running the race, Al is moved by an intention to run the race.assuming that the intentions to go to the store were passively acquired rather than actively formed. I assume the same here about the intentions to buy a computer and to drive to the mall. On the difference between actively formed and passively acquired intentions, see Mele 2003, ch. 12. I am grateful to Gideon Yaffe for comments on a draft of this paper. This paper was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.