Report on the Conference “Causality and Motivation”,

Rome, 13-14 April 2007

By Nicoletta Ghigi

The conference was held at the Istituto Pontificio S. Anselmo (Rome) and was the second meeting of the “Causality and Motivation” interest group within the SophiaEuropa project (www.sophiaeuropa.net).

On 13 April 2007, at 9.00, Dr Eric Weislogel delivered his welcoming address.

13 April 2007 – Morning Session

Ales Bello, Motivation in the constitution of the surrounding world.

The paper started from the opposition between the point of views of positivism and phenomenology in regard to the sciences. Positivism’s treatment of the sciences presupposes the world of experience without problematizing its origin, and hence without understanding the value of the Erlebnis as the lived experience which founds the sciences. The phenomenological treatment of the sciences distinguishes this natural and ingenuous attitude (grasping the object as it is given without considering the experience of it in consciousness) from the phenomenological attitude which instead arises from consideration of the Erlebnis and therefore from the terrain of lived experience (consciousness of the experience of grasping the object as it appears to us). This latter position therefore differs from the former in its transcendental position on the problem of the constitution of the object and therefore of the primary layer for constitution of the sciences. This new standpoint of the consideration of experience is crucial for understanding motivation. Motivation, in fact, is nothing other than ‘a relationship between meanings and objectives in regard to the constitution of the surrounding world as driven by the consciousness’. Is this a return to idealism? On considering intentionality, it emerges that the subject is tied to the world, not because it is his/her creation but because it can be grasped by the subject only through his/her lived experience. This is the substantial difference with regard to idealism. The lived experience which springs from intentionality in fact comprises a motivational causality which induces the subject to turn to the things of the world, and which differs from the causality of the subject as a ‘human being, a psychophysical unit’. The contents of this experience become objective, it is argued, through their recording (which is constitutive of the world) on a ‘glass plate’ whereon they are inscribed by progressively delineating the context of the intentional motivation. In this sense, physics is nothing other than a ‘logical-experiential determination’ of the nature given in intuition. All this prompts reflection on the causation of the constitution of the surrounding world and, therefore, on the problem of motivation. There are different levels of motivation: the first concerns the self and the relations among its acts (judgements may motivate feelings, and vice versa). The second level concerns the motivation of association, that is, it is a level that pertains to the sphere of passivity. The third level concerns the ‘hidden’ motivations that operate in every aspect of our experience. These levels highlight the passive genesis from which motivation arises. This, in fact, not only has the structure of the ego but also has a pre-egological formation. Thus, the temporal sphere represents possibility because motivation is a law of causation in constitution of the surrounding world, and this entails its not only egological but also pre-egological nature.

Roberto Poli, Anomalies and pathologies of motivation.

The paper started from the relationship between motivation and pathology. Bearing in mind Scheler’s analysis of the structure of the ego, it explained the meaning of personhood, and, therefore the meaning of intentionality in relation to Husserlian phenomenology. The layers of feeling are: body (the properly sensorial feelings), subject (psychological feelings like being happy), person (temperamental feelings like our way of relating to the world). These also include the relationship between acts and feelings: vital (of the body) acts, psychological (of the subject) acts, personal (of the person) acts. The second layer concerns the relationship between subject and person. The third layer is instead constitutive of the relationship between alter-ego and ego, where the perception of the alter-ego precedes perception of the ego. The fourth layer pertains to the types of emotional participation: Miteinandergefühl (immediate and direct), Mitgefühl (active participation, act of ‘sympathy’), Gefühlansteckung, Einfühlung (affective identification), Nachfühlung (sympathy, which is not a spontaneous act but a feeling, a reactive act). The fifth layer concerns sympathy and love. Sympathy is a feeling founded upon love where love is a spiritual spontaneous act which is the basis of sympathy (as a psychological feeling). The problem is understanding which is the layer of love. Love is something that ‘opens the spirit’ and makes the possible values of the beloved entity visible (the values are ‘felt’). This involves the relationship between values and disvalues, and therefore between the relation of preference (Brentano) and disorder of preference. The defects of preference comprise: pathologies of the heart (resentment, illusion of preference, inability to see the values present in one’s acts, states in which there are errors about one’s emotional states) and the ability to see values and their range (values are understood as dynamic essences whose intuition requires an anticipation).

Lilliana Albertazzi, Immanent realism: the nature of intentional reference

The paper divided into two parts. The first discussed immanent realism, and the second psychological causation and action at a distance. The first part began by addressing the subjective world and therefore the relationships between external and internal psychophysics. There followed the problem of the contemporaneity (the moment-now) that gives origin to the intention and the psychological layer (opposition between act and correlate). Then examined was structure of the act in subjective time (subdivisions within the representation) and in the constitution of inner time (Husserl’s theory of double intentionality). Consideration of the intentional act (the psychic, not instantaneous, present) was followed by Brentanian analysis of time (the relationship between listening to a sound and the flow of a melody with reference to the theories of Husserl and Meinong). The first part of the paper concluded with the treatment of temporal (spatial) location and the inner causality (causal connection). The second part discussed causality (the causal context is given by velocity and direction), the directions of psychological causation (attraction and repulsion), psychological causality (distance phases, spaces crossed, etc.) and the dynamics that drive motion. The paper concluded with a question (what is qualitatively perceivable in present time? What time/space continuum?) for which the sciences have yet to find an answer.

David Weissman, Motivation and character.

Starting from criticism of the phenomenological position and citing the aspect of abduction, the paper stressed behaviour as the concretization of motivation and questioned the difference between deterministic causation and description of the causes (which, it argued, is nothing other than phenomenology). From this one deduces that motivation is only describable at the functional level, not the structural one.

13 April 2007 - Afternoon Session

W. Henkmann, A phenomenological analysis of motivation.

Starting from consideration of the phenomenological method, and therefore from experience as conscious knowledge, the paper first addressed the problem of intuition as a priori experience. Phenomenology is inquiry into things as they are represented in the consciousness. The second point pertains to the life-world, which should not be viewed dogmatically but as the world of communication. Pfänder takes an anthropological approach to the problem of motivation. The theories of Husserl and Lipps are deemed essential to this perspective because both treat the psychological question from a particular standpoint, according to the polarity between motive and action. Phenomenology is concerned with the related concept of experience connected to action through the fulfilment of intention. Accordingly, the third point deals with motivation as described by the phenomenological approach of Ideas I in the guise of a spiritual function. The fourth point dwells on the question of experience and asks, concerning observation, which derives from the epochè, how the givenness of the objects of experience can be affirmed. Pfänder seems close in this regard to Husserl (he maintains that motives give the idea of the intention, while motivation causes action). The fifth point analyses the difference between spontaneous and experiential motivations and therefore the difference between motivations and motives. Finally, the sixth point concerns the motivational structure in its temporal aspect. It is argued that Lipps distinguishes between passive and active motion, and this re-connects to motivation its temporal aspect. B. Peirce, Action and reaction.The paper’s point of departure was that ‘organisms are part and parcel of nature, but they cannot be reduced to a complex network of physical causes’. Its argument consisted of the following points: 1. action as a type of causal process. Pertaining to this field are analyses of space-time extension, representation abstraction and interaction in abstract, and consciousness. 2. The conceptual distinction between action and reaction (voluntarily self-initiated action, and involuntary automatic reaction). 3. perceived differences (voluntariness, intentionality, rationality, causation, correlated processes). 4. perceived sources of control (external actual, internal hypothetical, external hypothetical, and actual internal factors). 5. the sources of control deriving from these aspects. 6. reactions (affective and physical), reflex actions and disconnected thoughts (where memory, the concept of time, and the capacity for abstraction are essential). 7. The sphere of remembered information, beliefs, and objectives ‘here and now’. 8. rationality and its relationship with intentional behaviour. 9. rational reactivity (multiple factors, internal and external, actual and hypothetical, direct or indirect, and decisive behaviour), and affective (physical) reactivity.

Dale Jacquette, Supervenience and the mind.

The paper started from Kim’s concept of supervenience: 1. weak (logical relations among various parts: there is weak supervenience on B only if for every property F is necessarily in A) and 2. strong (relations among the parts whereby A necessarily implies B). 3. The third part concerned the type-token categories, relations of supervenience. 4. Then discussed was the general model of mind-body supervenience (there is a circularity in supervenience: the mind ‘supervenes’ on a psychological state and vice versa. The token cannot supervene on the type). The analysis then divided into two parts: Part 1 dealt with psychological events (indexical tokens and indexical types) and token events and neurophysiological types. Part 2 discussed epiphenomena and mental causation (John Heil). Concerning this aspect are mental and physical events and the internal division of conjunction, temporal succession, spatial proximity, and relevant counterfactuals. The paper finished with the question of supervenience in Steroids as emergence (there is supervenience on B only in the logical or mental case that is given for x cases of various types).

B. Henning, Final causality and practical inference.

Analysis began by stressing that the natural process is a process characteristic of a natural thing, of which there may be atypical instances, while typicity depends on consideration of the natural thing (various examples followed of natural causation as given by animal motion). The second aspect concerned evidentiation of the final causes (proper to a natural process) to which teleological inference refers (example: the objective for an animal is construction of a dam, and the action is detaching pieces of wood from a tree) and practical inference (the objective, for instance, is to cure a patient whose treatment requires a massage, and which entails the action of performing the massage). Thus highlighted are the remote final causes whereby a remote final cause of a natural process P is the typical form of another natural process Q of which both P and Q are characteristics. Such causation thus links with another form of causation which is motivational.

14 April 2007 – Morning Session

Cyprian Love, Christian doctrine and theory of emergence.

Starting from Newmann’s analysis, the paper argued that Christianity cannot be reduced to the logical level and asked whether doctrine can be examined only in terms of past or future (doctrine of evolution). This question poses the problem of eschatology. The Church exists by virtue of its past because it will be what it becomes in time. Emergence is thus present in the theological interpretation of the Church. Tradition must not be abandoned, because tradition and emergence coincide, and this is confirmed by Christology. Christ is a new element in respect to Judaism, and was unforeseen (this is the unexpected, prophetic aspect). Hence, the future interprets the past in the history of the Church and the future is delineated as salvation (eschatological interpretation). Tradition is therefore not the past but the present in light of the past and the future. Revelation thus becomes an ‘eschatological causation’, otherwise also tradition is in danger. It is therefore necessary to move from the doctrine of evolution (development, Einsteinian theory of time) to that of emergence for which it is the future that drives the past. Christology derives in fact from tradition, and it is an initiative of the spirit that leads the Church towards the good. (The tradition is a living tradition that is updated with actuality)

I. Tasdelen, We are determined to be free.

The paper examined the causation and action relationship, which immediately raises the problem of the relationship between choice and determination whence action derives. The necessary conditions in this relationship are the existence of free action, possession of the resources to act, and the absence of external coercions. The determinism of action instead arises from the conflict between nature and abstract responsibility. The body is the condition for reaction (the possibility for reactions to occur), where the decision concerns a practical act that relates to a choice. But this action is determined by the bodily motion and in no case can be free. The resultant action is therefore on the one hand free, but on the other is essentially conditioned by its very possibility in bodily motion.

Johanna Seibt, Naturalized normativity

The paper began with a preliminary definition of metaphysical naturalism which takes account of its different interpretations: according to a fiscalist reductionism (only the elements of mind-less material energy are real); according to a generically reductionist thesis (all entities can be reduced to natural entities); according to a metaphysical as opposed to methodological naturalism (following the interpretation of Sellars). Then highlighted was Sellars’ critique of the myth of the given (for which there are given causal contents that can justify without being justified) and McDowell’s theory of passive experience. The naturalized Platonism of the latter gives rise to a different consideration of the fact in relation to experience and above all to openness towards the theme of intentionality as the world’s directedness (correlated questions: language and metalanguage). Finally considered was the problem of intentionality without representation, articulated into two phases: how we acquire language and metalinguistic interactions (however, various problems arise: how do we understand the normativity of conditioning processes? How do conceptual structures relate to reality?); and how we understand the levels of normativity (Wisdom: spatial orientation as interactivity, and ethical orientation as interactivity).

T. Gruene-Yanoff, Concrete preferences and abstract preferences.

The paper divided in four parts. The first discussed the various kinds of motivation-intuition (simple desire, conflictual desire, desiring actions with their specific consequences, apparent consistencies in paired decisions). The second part examined whether it is possible to explain the differences among desires (prospect and property, in formalization the different classes of prospects and properties coincide). The third part addressed the problem of abstract and concrete preferences and examined the levels of abstraction, the role of causal structure, identification of the state and level of relation. The last part considered intuitive differences (desire is not caused by content but by something else: in the case, for example, of the choice of one kind of coffee instead of another, which depends not on the bar, nor on the coffee itself, but on its aroma, which conditions the choice).

14 April 2007 – Afternoon Session

J.P. Smith, Motivations without motives.

The paper began with analysis of the feeling of guilt that animates all our action and behaviour. The motivation is the reason lying behind the motive, behind the intention to do something. The egoism of every single individual consists in the intention to sacrifice oneself (example of two men who die: one dies so as not to leave his friend, not to feel guilty at having left his friend). Consequently, there are no motivations without motives, and everything is determined by the motives (contrary to what psychologists maintain). But can one then talk of motivation in relation to free choice?

J. Ponzio, Motivation without causes: Levinas’ concept of pardon’.

Husserl discusses motivation in the first Logical Investigation. Motivation as restricted to the pure phenomenological field consists in causation and motivation. But Levinas criticises this distinction and considers the present as motivated action devoid of causes (in the physicalist sense). Whilst in Husserl the concept of motivation concerns the fact of temporal continuity (Ideas II distinguishes between subject and causality), for Levinas responsibility is extraneous to the relation. Nevertheless, it is in the temporal flow that the question of motivation arises. Husserl’s notion of motivation had antecedents in protension and therefore in the expectation of a certain type of event. Levinas resumes this theme by considering the problem of responsibility and pardon within this temporal dimension. The present causal law in Husserl becomes entirely feeble in Levinas’ analysis. If passive syntheses operate at the level of the formation of possible experience, the general law of motivation has no reason to exist. It is the others, in fact, who form the possibility of motivation in me and, correlated to it, the motivation.

Marek Maciejczak, The efficacy of prototypes.

The paper divided into two parts. The first one dealt with the immediate perception whereby a thing is perceived (the reference is to Merleau-Ponty and to a particular style of manifestation: ‘style of style’, with the norms of perception in constant structures). The second part discussed the system of consciousness, examining Husserl’s phenomenology as the basis for a theory of perception. Starting from the idea of autopoiesis, the structure of the cogito emerges as a hierarchy headed by the ego cogito. Essential here is the role of the passive genesis whereby associations render consciousness into a homogeneous system (primordial experience). Then treated were phenomenological problems of consciousness like the possibility of doing and acting that it culminates in self-constitution, or the evidence and level of connection of experiences (impressional and protensional). The conclusion to the paper concerned subjective structures (prototypes) in Merleau-Ponty’s theory of perception, which prompt questions on the structure of the experiences of consciousness as proposed by Husserl..

Boguslawa Lewandowska, Object and intentionality according to Roman Ingarden

The paper considered four main issues. The first was the difference between ontology (material and formal as description of possibility) and metaphysics (theory of what exists) that originates in Husserlian phenomenology. The second issue concerned resumption of the Husserlian concept of intentionality as a substratum in Ingarden’s formation of ontology. There followed the issue of temporality in relation to the occurrence of events in Ingarden, which implies rejection of the transcendental dimension. The paper concluded with the notion of intuition which unites Ingarden and Husserl.

A. Rueger, Non-reductive physicalism and the ‘stratified’ vision of the world.

Reductive physicalism maintains that all facts have a physical nature. But there is also a non-reductive physicalism to which it is possible to refer. It is necessary to understand, however, what ‘reduction’ means, by referring to the Putnam-Oppenheim hierarchy: social groups, living things, cells, molecules, atoms, elementary particles. The question that ensues from examples of functions relative to the problem of the reduction (equation of motion) concerns the possibility that macroscopic description can be reduced to microscopic description. But in reality the solution of the problem consists in the fact that macroscopic behaviour is a part of microscopic behaviour: that is, the limit of the micro is the macro (but not always is this distinction drawn unless two scales are introduced: micro and macro).