[Note

from the author: this paper is a response to a paper in Analysis by Carolyn

Dicey Jennings and Bence Nanay. Im grateful to Carolyn and Bence for substantively
engaging with my work. It was submitted twice to Analysis but rejected both times.
The first time, I wrote it in my own voice and this second time, on the assumption
that the reason for rejection was that the first submission was not blinded, in the
third person. It was rejected a second time. I find it extremely puzzling that the
journal would make space for criticisms of an authors view but not find space for a
short reply by said author. Of course, it is the Editors prerogative to determine what
is published and what is not, but it is hard not to see the response as a failure to
promote the intellectual aims of the journal and to allow the three authors to engage
publically in responses on an issue that was, apparently, important enough to
publish on in the first place. In any event, the response is presented here]

Action implies Attention: A Response to Dicey Jennings and Nanay
Wayne Wu

The connection between attention and agency has captured renewed philosophical
focus. The idea was present in William James (1890) famous definition of attention:
It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what
seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought...It implies
withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others. In the 1980s,
Alan Allport (1987) and Odmar Neumann (1987) developed these ideas as the
selection for action account of attention, and more recently, the link has been
advocated, in different ways by Christopher Mole (2011) and Wayne Wu (2014).
There is a critical link between attention and agency, reflection on which should
transform our thinking about all aspects of agency.
But how strong is this link? Developing the selection for action account, Wu
has argued that action requires attention because action requires solution to what
he calls the Many-Many Problem. If correct, there is a fundamental connection
between two central psychological capacities: agency and attention. Specifically,

attention is necessary for action. Call this the Necessity Thesis.1 Carolyn Dicey
Jennings and Bence Nanay (2014) seek to reject the Thesis by questioning the
necessity of solving the Many-Many Problem when one acts, and the attempt to
demonstrate this by providing two types of actions as counterexamples. Their
objection, however, stems from a misunderstanding of Wus argument. They fail to
show that attention and the Many-Many Problem are not necessary for action.

While their counterexamples are meant to illustrate action without attention,

it is worth noting that their examples involve attention. To show this requires
getting clear on what attention is. All that is needed here is a sufficient condition for
attention that is plausibly fulfilled. Wu has argued that cognitive scientists assume a
simple condition for attention, namely that when subjects select an X to
guide/inform their action, they are attending to X (Wu 2014). This condition is
entailed by the standard experimental paradigms for attention, for the experimental
tasks are designed to ensure that the subjects deployment of attention can be
specifically directed. Cognitive scientists accomplish this by making the selection of
a target necessary for successful execution of the experimental task. In experiments,
subjects are directed to attend to targets that they must track, detect, remember and
otherwise act on.

In Dicey Jennings and Nanays stimulus-guided behavior cases, the subject

responds precisely because the stimulus is relevant to programming the response,

whether it is reaching for a ball thrown (Nanay at the beach) or recoiling from a

1 Tyler Burge comes close to endorsing an implication of this thesis for perceptually
guided action when he writes: the presence of a perceptual perspective that guides
action or realization of need virtually guarantees a capacity for attention (Burge
2010, 372)

sudden movement (Darwin and the snake). These are cases of the capture of
attention, so they are informed by attention to an external object. Such actions
involve attention. The case of anarchic hand is trickier in that it is controversial
whether the subject whose body is anarchic is the agent behind the anarchic
movements. Let us grant that these are the subjects actions. In that case, the subject
must still select a relevant body part to move, even if the subject is alienated from
that movement or cannot recover the mental preparation for it. The subject moves
that body part in a guided way, guidance that is not independent of specific
information about the part in question. By assumption, the subject selects
information from the limb to reach for it. Such selection can be unconscious, but
there is good evidence for unconscious attention (Kentridge 2011).

On the main issue, Dicey Jennings and Nanay have a direct argument against

Wus claim that the Many-Many Problem is necessary for action, but they
misunderstand his argument. They read Wu as holding that the dichotomy between
pure reflex and behavior that emerges from solving the Many-Many Problem exhaust
the types of subject level behavior. In contrast, they suggest that there is a third
category, behavior that exhibits a prior one-one correspondence between stimulus
and response and yet involves what they call mental preparation. They do not define
what mental preparation amounts to but clearly allow that intention is one form (3).
Their counterexamples thus do not invoke a ManyMany Problem because, from
the perspective of the agent, there is a preset oneone mapping between stimulus
and response (5).

Unfortunately, this must be a misinterpretation of Wus position. Wu allows

for intentions as preset one-one mappings. Thus, intention driven action, intentional
action, involves a preset one-one mapping (Wu 2008, 1010). As he emphasized,
intention is one way to solve the Many-Many Problem by identifying an appropriate
response to a target, say through practical deliberation or the spontaneous
acquisition of an intention. Thus, one can intend to drink that wine, and in that
intention represent a stimulus to response. This intention then generates action by
directing attention, and this by imposing structure on the many-many options of the
behavioral space. Dicey Jennings and Nanay cannot have interpreted Wu correctly
since their proposed third option is captured in Wus talk of the Many-Many
Problem where intentions structure a solution. It is not a distinct category.

Wus idea of a pure reflex is less clear than it should be. Dicey Jennings and

Nanay suggest a strong reading of pure reflex where the input necessitates the
response but reject that reading in that it is too strong to capture paradigmatic
cases of reflex (3). I think it clear that Wu did not intend to use pure reflex to
cover all reflexes but to isolate a specific kind of behavior incompatible with agency
(indeed, mundane reflexes are eliminated from discussion because the driving input
is not a mental state). Pure reflex was introduced to contrast with actual reflexes
since the former is needed in an argument for the metaphysical necessity of the
Many-Many Problem (Wu 2011).

The intuition is that where a creature is subject to a reflex of the strongest or

pure form, i.e. the creature must respond in a certain way given a stimulus, that
creature is not an agent at all. Let us grant this intuition (it can be disputed of

course). Once we allow that pure (necessary) reflexes are incompatible with agency,
the question is what would make agency possible. Wus suggestion was that if this
necessity abolishes agency, necessity must be broken for agency to be restored. This
entails that failure of response must be a possibility given the input. This yields a
behavior space with two paths: behavior and its absence. In the absence, the input is
mapped to the null: no response in light of a stimulus. This creature, with an
additional behavioral possibility (so a one-two (many) mapping) has agency opened
to it. One might wonder about the path that maps the input to the null, but this path
is clearly present in agents like us who can intend to withhold actions in light of a
stimulus and thereby intentionally fail to act.
The failure to act is a possibility whenever a specific action type is available
to an agent. To deny this in the case at issue is to reintroduce necessity of the one-
one mapping of input to response, and then the subject is at the mercy of a
necessary (pure) reflex. By hypothesis, that subject is not an agent. So, where action
is a possibility because necessity is broken, we can invoke the empirical sufficient
condition for attention noted above: if the input state is a subject level psychological
state, then where it guides the response, it amounts to attention. Where there is no
mental preparation, attention will be automatic. In the case of guided bodily action
on which Dicey Jennings and Nanay focus, attention is necessary for guidance.
It is worth pointing out that cases of intentional inaction where the input is
mapped to the null might be more plausible cases of action without attention. Such
cases need further elaboration within the selection for action account. Still, all the
parties can agree that philosophers should not ignore the association between

attention and action, whether it is merely typical or metaphysically necessary. It has

great potential significance for our understanding not just of agency but of cognitive
bias, epistemic agency, introspection, and consciousness (see Wu 2014).


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