Luca Ferrero
http://www.uwm.edu/~ferrero C.V.
Diachronic Agency
Philosophy of Action and Moral Psychology
Self-Knowledge
Personal Identity
Practical Reasoning
Political Philosophy
Reviews
DissertationDecisions, Diachronic Agency, and the Division of Deliberative Labor
The binding force of decisions on future conduct appears to be of a rational rather than of a merely causal sort. It is thus often suggested that a decision to φ at f influences the agent at the time of action by giving her a novel, decision-based reason to act as originally decided. This proposal faces a dilemma. Decisions are supposed to make a difference to future conduct in a non-manipulative way, yet a decision-based reason can secure the decision's effectiveness only by introducing a potentially manipulative change in the future situation of choice. On the other hand, if the decision-based reason does not add to the original considerations in support of the action, the reason is dispensable and the past decision ineffective. I argue that the only way out of the dilemma is to think of decisions as tools for the transtemporal division of deliberative labor. The agent’s record of her past assessment that φ is to be done at f gives the agent at f an exclusionary reason to φ at that time. This reason is accepted by default. Hence, there is no need for a full redeliberation at the time of action. The exclusionary reason is not manipulative because it does not add to the original merits of the case. It is rather a stand-in for them. The agent delegates to her past self the work of figuring out what she is to do in the future. Nonetheless, the past assessment merely facilitates the agent in deciding what she is to do at the time of action. The ultimate control is exerted by the agent’s acceptance of the past assessment at the time of action and, in principle, we might do away with effective decisions althougether, since they are just instruments for the division of deliberative labor over time.
(Philosophers' Imprint - to appear)
It is customary to
draw a distinction between intentions in action and future‑directed
intentions.
The former are contemporaneous with the action, since they initiate and
guide it.
The latter, instead, are directed at actions that take place in the
distant
future. To have a future directed intention is usually taken to be
different
from actually doing something, let alone doing what one intends to do.
Contrary
to this view, in this paper I argue that intending to φ at a
future time f
is already to be engaged in φ-ing even before the
timef. Hence,
there is a sense in which all
intentions are in (extended) actions. Intending to φ and
φ-ing are just stages
of courses of action. I contend that the distinction between intending
and
doing only reflects a context-relative measurement of the intensity of
the
agent’s involvement in a particular pursuit, but it does not
map on some hard
and fast metaphysical divide between a non-actional intending and an
active
doing.
(final draft, 45 pages)
What Good is a Diachronic Will?
There are two standard conceptions of the functioning of and rationale for the diachronic will, i.e., for the agent’s capacity to settle on her future conduct in advance. According to the pragmatic-instrumentalist view, the diachronic will benefits us by increasing the long-term satisfaction of our rational preferences. According to the cognitive view, it benefits us by satisfying our standing desire for self-knowledge and self-understanding. Contrary to these views, I argue for a constitutive view of the diachronic will: the rationale for it that it makes possible to engage in activities with a radically novel temporal structure, activities that are not merely continuous over time, but temporally integrated and unitified. These activities are essential to our form of life and to our existence as temporally unified agents. The instrumental and cognitive benefits, if any, are merely secondary to the ontological ones.
(under review)
Three Ways of Spilling Ink Tomorrow
There are three ways to control our future conduct: by causing it, by manipulating our future selves, or by taking future-directed decisions. I show that the standard accounts of decisions fail to do justice to the distinctive nature of their role in intentional diachronic agency. These accounts divide in two groups. First, accounts that conflate the operation of decisions with the operation of devices for either physical constraint or manipulative self-management. Second, accounts that, although they acknowledge the non-manipulative nature of decisions, offer too restrictive a view of source of their distal influence. I argue that a comprehensive view of decisions must acknowledge that there is a variety of ways in which they can be effective, that range from the exercise of rational authority to the reliance on subagential psychological propensities. What keeps all of these mechanisms together as possible explanations of the role of decisions is that they operate under a common regulative ideal of diachronic agency, the agent’s reliance on the continuous sense of the stability of the choiceworthiness of the action, regardless of the decision to perform it. In light of this regulative ideal, the contribution of effective decisions to diachronic agency is only instrumental, not constitutive.
(in E. Baccarini, S. Prijic-Samarzija (eds.), Rationality in Belief and Action, Rijeka, 2006, pp. 95-127)
Conditional IntentionsAlthough we often express our
intentions in the categorical form 'I intend to φ' or 'I will
φ', usually we do not mean to say that we intend to φ no matter what.
For most intentions there is at least a condition C such that the
intention would be better described as the intention to φ if C.
Despite the familiarity of conditional intentions (and the large
literature on related issues―such as indicative conditionals and
conditional obligations), conditional intentions have been surprisingly
neglected in the philosophical literature. This neglect could be
justified if accounting for conditional intentions were a
straightforward matter. But this is so. Conditional intentions raise
many puzzling questions. First, there are many different ways of
interpreting the role of the condition in avowals of intentions. Does
the condition qualify the acquisition, justification, or object of the
intention? Second, are clauses such as 'if I can', 'if I do not change
my mind', 'if I am alive' genuine conditions on intentions? Third,
under which circumstances is a conditional intention to φ if C
satisfied? Does the falsity of C count? What is the agent supposed to
do if she has the ability and opportunity to influence the occurrence
of C, while she holds the conditional intention to φ if C? Fourth,
what is the relation between conditional intentions and contingency
planning? Is a conditional intention a weaker kind of commitment than
an unconditional one? In this paper, I sketch an account of the
different kinds of conditional intentions that avoids some of the
confusions generated by the conflation between what I will call
external conditions, internal conditions, and necessary preconditions
of an intention. I will then try to answer some of the questions raise
above, with particular attention to what is distinctive of conditional
intentions as planning attitudes with respect to other conditional
attitudes and speech acts.
(final draft)
Identification: Transparency vs. HierarchyAccording to the
hierarchical model, a subject identifies with a mental state when she
is unreflectively satisfied with a second order desire to have that
state. For the transparency model, instead, identification is a matter
of the mental state's responsiveness to the subject's judgment that the
state is supported by good enough reasons. I argue that there are two
interpretation of the hierarchical model, both unsatisfactory. On the
one hand, the first order level can be taken to be that of raw psychic
material. If so, the model applies only to non-judgment sensitive
attitudes. On the other hand, if the first order comprises
judgment-sensitive attitudes, the hierarchy needed for identification
can be shown to collapse. The transparency model avoids both problems
and it is thus to be preferred. But it needs to be integrated to
account for the role of reflection in identification, which is a major
reason for casting identification in hierarchical terms. I argue
that there are forms of non-hierarchical reflection that can be
succesfully used by the transparency model to give a full account of
identification.
(presented at Njemegen Conference, May 07)
An Elusive Challenge to the Authorship Account of First-Person AuthorityIn "Elusive Reasons: A Problem for First-Person Authority" (Philosophical Psychology, 2003, 16.4), Krista Lawlor argues that social psychological studies present a challenge to the authorship account of first person authority. According to her, taking the deliberative stance does not guarantee that self-ascriptions are authoritative. For self-ascriptions might be based on elusive reasons and thus lack agential authority (i.e., they are no guide to the subject’s future conduct). I argue that Lawlor’s challenge is not successful. I claim that we can make sense of the nature and importance of agential authority only within the framework of the authorship account. Agential authority is part of the regulative ideal of the deliberative ve stance, but its absence does not undermine the first-person authority of self-ascriptions, since first-person authority is primarily a matter of deliberative, rather than agential authorship.
(Philosophical Psychology, 2003, Dec 16.4, pp. 565-577)
Conditional Requirements and Detachment
J.Dancy has
recently presented a novel argument for a
generalized ban on the detachment of ‘one ought to
q’, Oq, from the combination of a wide-scope conditional
requirements O(p→q) and the fact that p. Dancy contends that
the problem with detachment becomes apparent when we direct our
attention to the detachment from O(¬q→¬p),
the contraposition of the original wide-scope conditional requirement.
By detaching from O(¬q→¬p) we can
derive claims of the form (¬q→O¬p)
that,
according to Dancy, are either false or senseless. I argue that
Dancy’s argument is unpersuasive. When applied to the most
interesting sorts of conditional requirements, those in which both p
and q are actions or attitudes under the agent’s control,
Dancy’s argument is question begging. Dancy is right,
however, that claims of the following form
(¬q→O¬p)are senseless when applied to
scenarios in which the agent
does not control p. However, the problem in these cases is not with
detachment. The problem is with the failure to distinguish the
variables that stand for circumstances under the agent’s
control from those that stand for circumstances outside of the
agent’s control. These two kinds of variables behave
differently under a deontic operator and this explain why (¬q
→O¬p) is senseless. The problem therefore does not
arise because of detachment, as shown by the fact that the failure to
distinguish between the variables appears to make even the wide-scope
deontic requirement O(¬q→¬p) senseless.
(under review, 15 pp)
Normative Requirements and the First Person
In a series of recent papers, John Broome has argued that many discussions of theoretical and practical rationality are marred by the conflation between reason-relations and what he calls ‘normative requirements’. I argue that the distinction is useful but its implications differ depending on whether we are considering the relations between (a) the contents of theoretical/practical inferences, (b) the judgments and assertions formulated in the first-person, and (c) the mental states considered as mere psychological facts from a third-person perspective. Broome’s failure to distinguish between these different applications of his distinction invalidates many of his criticisms of standard theories about the rationality of beliefs, intentions, and actions.
(draft, 20 pages)
The Difference Principle: Equality or Incentives?
In this paper, I
argue for a
novel
interpretation of the argument in support of Rawls’
difference
principle (DP). First, I reject
G.A. Cohen's claim that the argument for DP is consistent only in so
far as the
DP mandates a strictly egalitarian distribution. The problem with
Cohen's thesis is that an egalitarian distribution could be as
efficient as the one required by DP only if the citizens are
forced to fill jobs and positions contrary to their preferences. This
is
unacceptable for Rawls
because it violates the constraints imposed by the priority of liberty.
Second, I show that the incentives
offered by DP are only needed to
attract the citizens to fill socially useful positions (rather than to
defray educational and training expenses). This is true even when there
is an equal distribution of natural endowments and talents. Incentives
are ultimately required to compensate for the misfit between the
citizens’ preferences about their occupations and the
requirement of
efficient social cooperation. Lastly, I introduce a novel argument for
DP that forestalls some of
the traditional objections and
makes apparent its connection with the principle of reciprocity. DP is
usually formulated as mandating the maximization of the index of
primary goods enjoyed by the worst-off. This formulation invites the
objection that DP legitimates the imposition of th
e least advantaged over the most talented. I suggest that DP is better
understood as requiring the maximization of
an equal share of primary goods, i.e., an equal share of the surplus
that the
talented citizens produce by taking up socially productive jobs. It
follows that there is no reason for a citizen to identify herself as a
member of the group of
either the most or the least advantaged. Each citizen bargains only for
her own incentive,
not in coalition with any other citizens. The other citizens are rather
trying to maximize their equal share of the increase in productivity.
The worst-off are those citizens who, at the end of
this bargaining process, are not offered any incentive to occupy
socially useful positions. They receive an equal share of the
surplus of the more efficient division of labor, but no incentive. Yet
the bargaining process guarantees the maximization of their index of
primary goods, as required by DP. I argue that this presentation of the
working of DP makes clear to what extent this principle can be said to
be an egalitarian one.
(45 pages. This is a longer and improved version of a paper originally
published
in Italian as "Il Principio di Differenza: Incentivi o Uguaglianza?", Filosofia
e Questioni Pubbliche, 1995, I, pp. 47-63).
Making Up One’s Self: Agency, Commitments, and Identity
(330 pages, Ph.D. Dissertation in Philosophy, Harvard University, 2002 -- Summary and Table of Contents)