Agency and Imagination

Agency and Imagination

The topics of agency and imagination are generally treated separately in contemporary philosophy, but they are closely connected. Imagination is implicated in agency and agency is part of imagination. This is not difficult to see: we often imagine what we intend to do, and imagining is an act in its own right. We act imaginatively and we imagine actively. The philosophy of action needs to incorporate the imagination, and the philosophy of imagination needs to bring in agency.  This may change both action theory and imagination theory. The details, however, are not simple. It is clear that I may imagine a future action before performing it, this playing a role in how I act (or whether I act), but how widespread is this phenomenon? Is it rare or common, even universal? Does it characterize a distinctive class of actions (imagination-driven actions)? It is true that I am constantly imagining many actions that I might end up performing, but is every action I perform preceded by an act of imagination? That seems like stretching a point, since many of my actions are quite unreflective and automatic—and what about animal actions? But maybe imagination is less conscious and deliberate than we think—we don’t always notice it, pay attention to it. Don’t we somehow envisage every action we perform—anticipate it, plan it, mentally represent it? Doesn’t the brain have to form some sort of picture of it, a model, a schema? Maybe what we call imagination comes in many forms, from the subconscious and routine to the conscious and creative. I reach for my cup enacting a mind-brain motor representation of the act that controls how my hand moves; I can also carry out a series of actions intended to bring about a future I have consciously planned and seen in my mind’s eye (say, a trip to a foreign land). These are both acts of imagination, but they differ in their degree of presence to introspective awareness. I don’t think we should preclude this view of things, and it does offer a nicely uniform account of how imagination and action relate. The question is empirical; conceptually, it seems like a feasible theory. Action is always the result of a prior (and perhaps simultaneous) imaginative construction; the cognitive science of action is imagination-based. The organism mentally represents what it is about to do, and the name of this faculty is “imagination”. When training yourself to perform a certain type of action, you are training your brain to form an accurate and usable picture of the action, this being causally involved in producing the action (the competence behind the performance). Your brain doesn’t just brutely cause the action without any kind of internal guidance—how could it? The action is controlled and fine-tuned by the internal picture (sketch, image, blueprint). In any case, a great many human actions are the result of clearly imaginative acts, as when you picture yourself going to the supermarket and then go. If this is true, then we need to include imagination in our philosophy of action, not just desires, beliefs, and intentions. Actions are imaginings realized.

What about imagination as a species of action? Here things are more straightforward: imagining is a type of action like bodily action. It is therefore subject to the same principles as action generally. It is motivated, rational (though not always), intentional, known about directly not inferentially, skilled or unskilled, habitual or novel, done self-consciously or absent-mindedly, etc. However, certain features of bodily action are less obviously present in acts of imagination, and we should highlight these. First, are there such things as sub-intentional imaginative actions analogous to rolling the tongue around the mouth or finger-tapping or head-bobbing? You can do these things without knowing you are, but can you imagine things without knowing you are? That seems difficult to comprehend because you typically know your mental images, while bodily events can escape your attention (they are outside your mind). Could you repeatedly imagine someone’s face and not be aware of it? On the other hand, not all imagining is intentional in the sense that it is deliberate or planned; an image can suddenly pop into your consciousness seemingly from nowhere—you didn’t intend to form it. But it sounds funny to say that an action popped into your body when you did it without thinking. The bodily act and the imaginative act don’t map neatly onto each other here. Second, how are trying and acting related in the two cases? You can try to move your finger and fail because of paralysis, but can you try to imagine a red patch and fail? Is there such a thing as paralysis of the imagination, permanent or temporary? Have you ever tried to imagine passing a test and not been able to—yet you can try to pass a test and fail to. Trying to move your body is up you but succeeding isn’t, but trying to move you mind and succeeding are inseparable. How could you try to imagine a cube and fail? If this is right, then we can’t analyze imagining as consisting of two components: a trying component and a succeeding component. The body may fail to implement the trying, but the mind always obliges—you just have to try and hey presto. There is no counterpart to the bodily movement in the case of imaginative action, so not all action is analyzable into a trying part and a succeeding part—a sort of mental body that may or may not be up to the job. Third, weakness of will: is it applicable to both? It is true that I might imagine things I wish not to imagine, as I can physically do things I wish not to do, but the cases are dissimilar in that morality and prudence don’t apply to both equally. You can’t act immorally in the imagination, since no one is affected thereby, and imagining taking a drink while sworn off alcohol will not get you drunk. Even if there is such a thing as weakness of the imaginative will, it isn’t consequential in the way bodily action is. So what if I can’t stop imagining boozing and hitting people, no one is suffering harm. No amount of weakness of will purely in the sphere of imagination will amount to doing anything bad, but the body is another matter. You can let your imagination run amok and nothing untoward happen—that is one of its great virtues. It may even be a good thing to have a weak imaginative will, an escape valve. Fourth, are there breakdowns of imaginative action like breakdowns of bodily action? Is there a Tourette’s syndrome of the imagining mind? Apparently not: the imagination isn’t subject to these chaotic motor oddities; it doesn’t have tics and spasms. It may be deranged or insane, but it isn’t detached from the will. Nor does it suffer from muscular fatigue or cold weather or laziness or numbness or broken bones. Bodily action is fraught with danger and prone to injury, but mental action is free of these impediments and risks. We never need the analogue of physiotherapy. Imaginative action is more godlike, less vulnerable to malfunction. In sum, imagination is like bodily action in some important respects but unlike it in others; accordingly, the general principles enunciated by orthodox philosophy of action only partially apply to it.

Which came first? You might think it must be bodily action because organisms acted before they had anything deserving to be called imagination. Imagining must be some sort of internalization of this (moving in the head, as it were). But this is not clearly correct because such early forms of bodily movement may not be actions in any real sense, as movements of inanimate objects are not. Actions proper have traces of mind in them—desires, intentions, the will. If we take that view, then mental actions came first—acts of will occasioned by mental states. We call certain bodily movements (not all) actions because of their close relation to inner actions such as reasoning and deciding. It may be that imagination came before properly intentional external action; it was when organisms began to imagine possibilities that they began to choose and therefore act in the full sense of the word (before that they were just bending with the breeze, loafing basically). Action is selecting from among envisaged alternatives, and imagination does the envisaging. If so, the philosophy of mental action is basic and prior, temporally and conceptually. The bodily movement considered in itself was never a type of action; only in combination with intending and trying does it count as an action (a deed, a doing, an expression of will). The philosophy of action should thus start with the imagination and only then extend to the realm of bodily behavior—first the spirit, then the flesh. Our very idea of the animal body is actually infused with mental concepts; considered just as flesh and bone it isn’t an animal body at all. A dead body isn’t a body, just a carcass or ex-body. It is a relic of materialist behaviorism to suppose that the human and animal body is the same as the lump of matter that composes it. Philosophy of action is not the study of this but of the mind-infused agent, and this includes the agent’s imagination. In the beginning was the mentaldeed.[1]

[1] The aphorism “In the beginning was the deed” is commonly taken to encapsulate a behaviorist philosophy, but properly understood it is independent of that viewpoint and expresses the centrality of the active, best exemplified by the will (Schopenhauer not J.B. Watson). Energy not matter, change not static forms. Doing not being. The imagination is the epitome of the active—fast, mutable, spontaneous, energetic, untiring.