Disciplinary
psychology has always exhibited signs of strong schizophrenia in its attitude
towards the objects of its own research. On the one hand, the very notions
which psychology works with presuppose that intentional agency exists. On the
other, however, the discipline’s efforts to be recognized as a natural science
has lead it to reduce the explanation of human choice and action to a series of
culturally and/or biologically determined events which threaten to undermine
our intentional agency, and with it, one would think, the intentional framework
within which disciplinary psychology proceeds (indeed, if we were not
intentionalagents, psychology would be of very little practical use to
us).

The
authors of this book bravely maintain that in oscillating between these two
conceptions, psychology (as a discipline) fails to give a coherent account of
how human beings function. In so doing, they present us with a clear (though
very condensed) summary of some of the most important literature on the
subject, complete with their reflections on it, and a persuasive account of
reductionism in psychology (ch. 2). Their conclusion, that the basic assumption
that undergirds the idea of psychology as a natural science is an error, may
well be right, however, the authors do themselves no favors by making a number
of interrelated conceptual muddles.

First,
the question they purport to address is that of agency tout court, rather
than intentional agency. This is unfortunate, because nothing in this
general notion of agency implies that agents do not work in a wholly
deterministic fashion. Indeed, we often talk about inanimate agents. Acid is
one such case, washing detergents another. We attribute agency to such
substances because they have active causal powers. When a washing
detergents acts on any given material, it is only appropriate to view
the former as an agent, and the latter as a patient. The authors’ case would
have been far more persuasive had they limited their talk to intentional
agency. For although causal power is a necessary condition of
intentional agency, it is not sufficient. Intentional agency also
requires that the agent can exercise this power at will, and can (and
typically will) do so for reasons. It is these abilities, and not agency
in general, which are incompatible with the deterministic model of behavior.

No
doubt Martin et al. have something like the aforementioned abilities in mind
when they deny that agency is incompatible with determinism. This is evident
when they misdefine the term on their opening page:

Broadly speaking, agency is the freedom of human
beings to make choices and to act on these choices in ways that make a difference
to their lives. (p1)  

Not
only is this a wildly inaccurate definition of agency in general, it is
so-far-fetched that it even fails to capture the more restrictive notion of
intentional agency. This brings me to the next two conceptual muddles. Intentional
action is not necessarily voluntary action (or vice versa). When a
person does something under duress, their action is intentional but not
voluntarily: they do not chose to do what they do, and this is because
they are not free to do so. Sartre notoriously denied that this was
true. But his version of existentialism does not show that there is no such
thing as restricting someone’s freedom (which would be a reductio) but,
rather, that an unfree action is not necessarily determined. This is because even
when under duress, we initiate our actions at will, and for a reason. The
authors ask:

[I]f all our decisions and actions are fully
determined by conditions and factors outside of ourselves, in what coherent way
might we be said to initiate our own actions? (p2)

But
any (respectable) psychologist will tell you that determined agency is
determined by intrinsic states, not extrinsic ones. This is why we say
that acid has the power to initiate a chemical reaction. What we don’t
say is that in so acting it ha performedan action, let alone for
reasons, or at will. These are the concepts which Martin et. al should
be working with. Instead, their conflations lead down the garden path of modern
trends and they end up talking not just about freedom, but also about free
will and moral responsibility. The authors argue (ch. 3) that free
will is incompatible with determinism, and that as this is so, any
deterministic account of human choice and action will end up eliminating
agency. It is not clear that this is a battle they can win. The important
thing, however, is that they don’t need to. Nor do they need to demonstrate, as
they unsuccessfully attempt to, that we are free to desire whatever we
want to. All they need to show is that determinism is incompatible with the
notion of intentional agency. This is something that can be done, and
authors’ provide us with a good starting point: although not everything we
do is determined, a large part of us nevertheless functions in a deterministic
fashion e.g. our process of digestion. The authors’ view their position as a
kind of compatibilism (ch. 4), but this is misleading since it is based on the
idea that agency is incompatiblewith determinism. Their view
would also be made more plausible if, like Aristotle (which, incidentally, on
p. 50 they appeal to using an unsatisfactory translation of ‘hekousios’), they
widened the scope of their determinism to include the acquisition of our
beliefs and desires. Instead they chose a more metaphysical route, and appeal
to irreducible ‘psychological kinds’ (ch. 5).

   The book ends with a very interesting
chapter entitled ‘Putting Agency Into Psychology’ though it is chiefly
concerned with putting agency into education and politics. Here the authors’
(all of whom are Professors of Education at Simon Fraser University) are in
their strongest territory. The discuss ethical and educational issues
surrounding reductionism in psychology, with particularly persuasive emphasis
on the unfortunate sociopolitical impact which reductionsim in psychology has
had. This only serves as a reminder of what a shame it is that this
well-intentioned book is in so much need of conceptual clarification.

© 2004 Constantine Sandis

Constantine
Sandis is about to submit his PhD on The Things we Do and Why we Do Them
at the University of Reading. He also teaches in the Philosophy Department
there, as well as at the University of Bath (Division of Lifelong-Learning),
and for the Royal Institute of Philosophy.

Categories: Philosophical, Psychology