Suppose I make a promise to meet
a friend for lunch on Friday. By promising, I incur an obligation to meet my
friend for lunch. One explanation of why I incur this obligation is that the
concept of promising (as well as the action of promising) possesses an
essentially normative element. If I make a promise to do such and such, then I
have a normative reason to do such and such. If I do not intend to perform a
particular action, then I ought not promise to do it — that is, given that I
understand what is involved in promising, I have a normative reason not to
promise anything that I do not intend to carry out. If I do keep my promise to
meet my friend, the reason for my action can be explained in terms of my having
promised to do so. (There is a distinction here between the reason why the two
of us are meeting — to catch up with each other, say goodbye, talk shop, etc. —
and the reason why I carry through with my promise.) My keeping the
promise to my friend is guided by the grasp I have of the concept of promising
and my understanding of the normative commitment making a promise incurs — to
do what is necessary to keep the promise, barring extenuating circumstances.

Promising is a familiar case of
an activity by which a person incurs normative commitments. In Understanding
People, Alan Millar seeks to extend this kind of analysis to propositional
attitudes, particularly belief and intention, and to argue that these
propositional attitudes possess essentially normative features. When we explain
a person’s actions (or beliefs) in terms of intentional psychology, we offer a rationalizing
explanation of the person’s action. That is, we explain what the person
does in terms that make the performance of the action make sense (seem
rational) from that person’s point of view (i.e. given that person’s beliefs,
desires, intentions, etc.). We offer reasons for the person’s acting as
she does which make sense of the person’s action. Millar calls this kind of
explanation and the insight gained by it personal understanding. Insofar
as states like believing and intending are states of a whole person, these
explanations make sense of action at the personal level at which we interact
with each other in our everyday affairs (rather than sub-personal explanations
that divide the individual into various cognitive mechanisms). Millar argues
that these personal level explanations are explanatorily potent and that
the reasons employed in rationalizing explanations are constituted by normative
commitments that agents incur by having the beliefs and intentions they do. The
upshot of this argument is that normativity is built in to our language and
concepts, many of our propositional attitudes, and our practices, and it is on
the basis of the normative commitments we incur that a personal understanding
of human behavior is possible.

Consider the following two cases,
one concerning belief, and the other intention. Suppose I believe that (a)
either Jim or Mary stole my cookies and (b) Mary didn’t steal my cookies. Given
(a) and (b), I should also believe that (c) Jim stole my cookies. Millar would
say that my believing (a) and (b) commits me either to believing (c) or
to revising one of my other beliefs (a) or (b). Now suppose (d) I intend to
replenish my cookie jar. To do so, (e) I must go to the grocery store and buy
more cookies. Here my intention (d) commits me either to doing (e) or to
giving up my intention (d).

Millar argues that the above
commitments are constituted by general ideals of reason (p. 76). Intentions are
guided by the Means-End Ideal:

For any φ, avoid intending
to φ while never getting around to doing what is necessary if you are to
φ.

Beliefs are guided by the Implication
Ideal:

For any π, θ, if θ
is implied by π, then avoid believing π while giving a verdict on
θ other than belief.

Millar then proposes that there
are "requirements of rationality" that correspond to each of these
ideals, which claim that an agent "should do justice to the reason there
is" to avoid having intentions that are not carried out and to avoid
particular inconsistencies in one’s beliefs (p. 77). The reason there is for
doing justice to these ideals is that failure to conform to these ideals
constitutes a failure of rationality.

The conception of rationality
with which Millar operates, as well as the accompanying ideals of reason,
comprise a "high" conception of rationality, in which rationality
requires a significant level of self-awareness, knowledge about the world (so
that one has true beliefs and knows what means to pursue in order to achieve
intended ends), and knowledge of oneself (of one’s beliefs, intentions, etc.).
This conception of rationality does not entail that all false moves and false
beliefs lead one into irrationality; some forms of ignorance, oversight, or
other kinds of error are not necessarily irrational. But Millar’s view of
rationality does require that the agent possess reflective capacities. Millar
argues that intentions and beliefs are reflexive in the sense that for these
attitudes to contribute to our performing reasoned actions, we must have
conscious access to our own intentions and beliefs (Chapter 5). (His view is
compatible with our having dispositional, or unconscious, beliefs as long as
those beliefs could be brought into the light.)

This view generates a recurring
problem concerning the rationality of non-human animals, which presumably lack
the right kinds of reflective capacities, but to which we seem licensed to
ascribe intentions and beliefs in order to explain their behavior. Millar tries
to avoid this problem by arguing that we can grant non-human animals an
intentional psychology while also holding that our intentional
psychology is different in that the capacity for reflective thought figures
into the nature of human intention and belief (see 134-136). The
difference is that ascriptions of intentions and beliefs to rational
agents have normative import — having particular intentions or beliefs, for
beings with reflective capacities, gives rise to normative reasons to act or
think in other particular ways (137). Because we, as rational agents, are able
to reflect upon the reasons we have for acting and thinking, we are normatively
committed both to managing our beliefs and intentions and to believing or doing
the things that these attitudes require of us (as set out by ideals of
rationality).

The normative commitments we
incur by having the beliefs and intentions we do figure into rationalizing
explanations by constituting the reasons by which we explain why agents go on
to act and believe in the ways that they do. If I return a book to the library
on its due date, my action can be explained in terms of the commitment I
incurred by checking out the book two weeks ago. In order to check out a book,
I know I must go to the library to get the book and that I must return it when
the check-out time is up. Here my obligation to return the book is generated by
my participating in the practice of being a library patron. I return the books
I check out because I know that this is part of what it is to check out books from
the library. The commitment I incur is in this case linked to my original
intention to check out the book. Why do I return the book? Because I am
committed to doing so.

In the above case, the normative
commitments I have are purely conventional, linked to a particular practice.
Millar argues that the normative commitments linked to believing and intending
in general are similar, albeit stronger, because the background against which
these commitments arise is simply one’s being a speaker of a language, or of
being a rational agent (see Chapter 3, Section 4 and Chapter 6).

Thus, what it is to be a rational
agent is to be surrounded in one’s beliefs and actions by a normative order
which explains how our behaviors come out to be rational: they do so by conforming
to the normative commitments we have based on our other beliefs and intentions.
Not everyone will be happy with such a conception of human rationality. Millar
addresses the issue of eliminativism regarding propositional attitudes, and
argues that even if the scope of personal understanding and commonsense (or
folk) psychology is limited (in ways pointed out by, e.g., Churchland’s "Eliminative
Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes"), such limitations do not
entail that folk psychology is false. The problem Millar must face is that
there has been and will be resistance to the idea that normativity is built in
to propositional attitudes and language in a way that transcends mere
convention. Millar may be able to deflect such objections by pointing out that
the normative commitments incurred are conventional, but that the
conventional nature spreads over and applies to all rational agents (so that
the objection doesn’t amount to anything other than a general form of
skepticism), and that this normativity neither does nor needs to make it impossible
for agents to act or think otherwise. If they do act otherwise, they will
simply be subject to criticism, and if they stray too far from rational
requirements it may become impossible to understand them at all qua
rational agents. And that — understanding people as rational agents — is
a kind of understanding about humans which is of great interest to us, and
differs, for example, from the understanding of humans we gain from disciplines
such as neuroscience.

Millar’s book will be of interest
primarily to those working in the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and
practical reason.

© 2005 Matthew Pianalto

Matthew Pianalto
is a Ph.D. student in philosophy at the University of Arkansas, where he has
also taught logic and introduction to philosophy. He holds a B.A. in English,
and an M.A. in Philosophy. His master’s thesis, "Suicide & The
Self," attempts to reinvest in the philosophical nature of the problem of
suicide. More info at his website: http://comp.uark.edu/~mpianal.
(See "Suicide & Philosophy" link for resources on suicide.)

Categories: Philosophical, Psychology