Al Mele Turns the Table on Intentionality

Al Mele recently posted a comment here that I thought was worthy of its own post.

Here's a question about table turning. Consider the following from Daniel Wegner's 2002 book: "a group of people sit gathered around a table, all with their hands on its surface. If they are convinced that the table might move as the result of spirit intervention . . . and sit patiently waiting for such movement, it is often found that the table does start to move . . . . Carpenter observed that 'all this is done, not merely without the least consciousness on the part of the performers that they are exercising any force of their own, but for the most part under the full conviction that they are not' " (p. 7).

Naturally, the people gathered at the table are moving it. But, apparently, at least some of them are contributing to its motion without having any idea that this is so. Imagine that one of them, Tab, begins to feel some clockwise motion of the table. His hands move in the direction of the motion, as he notices, and he thinks he is merely allowing them to be dragged along by the table. In fact, however, he is pushing the table in that direction ever so slightly. Is Tab *intentionally* pushing the table along?

On the one hand, I think that according to the folk concept of intentional action, Tab did not intentionally push the table along. However, I am admittedly only speculating. If we wanted to determine whether a majority of laypersons would judge that Tab intentionally turned the table, we would have to ask them. Anyone interested in doing the legwork? On the other hand, I think that according to most philosophical analyses of intentional action, Tab did not intentionally move the table. After all, he did not desire to turn the table nor did he believe he was turning the table. And according to standard belief-desire models of intention, this means that Tab did not intend to turn the table since desiring to x (as either a means or an end) and believing that one is x-ing are necessary for intending to x. And since intending to x is necessary for intentionally x-ing--at least according to the Simple View--Tab did not intentionally turn the table. Of course, not everyone adheres to the belief-desire model of intention or to the Simple View, but it appears that even on competing models, Tab neither intended nor intentionally turned the table given that he lacked a plan to turn to the table, he was not aware that he was turning the table, his turning the table was not the result of practical reasoning, etc. Of course, one might insist that Tab did not unintentionally turn the table either--which seems correct. But as Mele himself has correctly pointed out in the past, just because an agent did not unintentionally x, it does not follow that she intentionally x-ed. After all, there is a middle ground--viz., non-intentionally x-ing. As far as I can tell, this is the category that best captures Tab's turning the table--if, of course, it still makes sense to talk of Tab turning the table at all given that he was unaware that he is doing so. This presents us with another interesting question: Is Tab's turning the table an action at all any more than my non-intentionally blinking is an action?

Comments

[Samdouglas]

It might be that there are degrees of non-intentionality, given that blinking is regulated by certain parts of the nervous system that are unconcious, or at least more sub-concious than, what ever part of Tabs brain that intended to move that table. Intentionality seems to be one of those things that becomes difficult when under close scrutiny. Depending on which model of mind I was working with I might argue that the body had some intention to blink, ie the metabolic process that leads to blinking exists for a purpose. But that fails on two fronts; firstly even if my body intends to do something I still want to say that "I" don't and secondly, it does ont really seem to fit with what we mean when we talk about intention. I think that you are right in questioning how intentional Tabs action is and what that might mean. Does it go into the category of actions that Aquinas described that are not to any end? He would put blinking in that category, but getting the table to move could be interpreted as something that was an end woth moving towards, if only the were aware that htey were doing it.
-Sam.