Folk psychology tells us that our bodily movements, our actions, are guided by our intentions. One prominent conception of this assumption was developed as part of a non-reductive approach taken by Searle. For Searle, an action is “a causal and intentional transaction between mind and the world” (1983, p. 88). Searle distinguishes between two kinds of intentions, a prior intention and an intention-in-action. This distinction serves to preserve the difference between an intention as a basic idea or plan, preceding an action and an intention while carrying out an action. If a person P has a prior conscious intention for an action A, P has a representation of A without actually doing A. This is—according to Searle—a deliberative state and represents the action as a whole. Contrary, the intention-in-action occurs simultaneously with the action, representing the actual conditions of the action. Conditions can be regarded as certain steps, an action needs to be carried out. P has an intention-in-action-while A. But, the prior intentions are causally responsible for the intention-in-action and the action itself (Searle 1983).
This is, what—to my understanding—Pacherie’s social creation myth stresses as well. At the beginning of Pacherie’s paper about conscious intentions, a crucial point is made about the causal connection between intentions and actions: “Roughly, the notion on intentions is of a mental state that represents a goal (and a means to that goal) and contributes, through the guidance and control of behaviour, to the realization of what it represents” (this collection, p. 1). Her considerations about intentionality are about practical intentionality, as they concern conscious intentions in action, not only theoretical or cognitive intentions as mental representations. On the level of metaphysics, her statement could be interpreted along the lines of two kinds of property dualism. First it could be interpreted in a functionalist way in which conscious intentions are abstract mental properties possessing a causal role for our actions, in which they have a neuronal realisation or implementation in the background (Lycan 1987; Clark & Chalmers 2002). Secondly, it could be interpreted in a way that declares conscious intentions to be non-reducible, non-physical mental properties, to be local instantiations, which are preceding or accompanying our actions. This notion of conscious intentions describes the conscious intention as a supervening or emerging mental property, which has a physical basis but is not identical or causally dependent with it (Davidson 1980; Kim 1998).
These non-reductional understandings are challenged from a variety of directions. Psychophysical correlations can also be conceptually interpreted using metaphysical models like identity theory (Feigl 1967; Place 1960; Smart 1959) or reductive or eliminative materialism (Churchland 1981), leaving no room for any causal function of conscious intentions. So, according to the most popular models developed after World War II, no conscious intention is a distinct mental entity or an ontological substance in a Cartesian sense. Nevertheless, different assumptions about the nature and the causal function of conscious intentions do exist. To present these in a provocative and simplified way, conscious intentions can either be a mental phenomenon in a physical world and have a causal role (compare: functionalism or non-reductive approaches), or they are causally irrelevant, since they are a by-product of our actions, an epiphenomenon, and as such non-existent (compare this to eliminative materialism).
I now want to focus on non-reductive approaches, as they seem to be relevant for the understanding of Pacherie’s social creation myth. Non-reductive approaches, which are supported by the common sense of conscious intentions and intentional action, and which all suggest that our conscious intention initializes the following action, however, might lead to a dilemma. As Heil and Mele put it: “We confront a dilemma. Either we concede that ‘purposive’ reason-giving explanations of behavior have only a pragmatic standing, or we abandon our conception of the physical domain as causally autonomous” (Heil & Mele 1995, v). The intuition that mental states have causal power is opposed by the rule of causal closure of the physical world. Kim develops one notion of causal closure with the argument of causal exclusion and supervenience in his essay: Mind in a Physical World (1998). In a physical world, in which we do not have a complete physical monism but a non-reductive physicalism with supervenience, two premises are true: (1) every mental property M needs a physical basis P, which is sufficient for the existence of M and on which it supervenes and (2) every physical effect has a sufficient physical cause. Suppose M causes another mental property M*. M* has a physically sufficient basis P*. The problem which arises then is that M and P* as a causally sufficient basis are both responsible for the occurrence of M*, so M has to cause the physical basis P* of M* in a way of mental-to-physical causation. This result conflicts with the premise of causal closure of the physical world, according to which every physical event that has a cause has a physical cause (P causes P*). Facing now an over-determination of P*, with two different causally sufficient events competing for the causation of P* (M and P), and as P is causally sufficient for M, P seems to be causally sufficient for P*, and M does not have any causal effect itself. A mental phenomenon, according to this view, seems to be causally irrelevant. This is a rather short version of the causal closure-argument; the whole discussion about mental causation and causal closure cannot be displayed here (for an overview see e.g., Heil & Mele 1995). But the causal closure argument seems to be a problem for both: non-reductionist and functional approaches.
What consequences have to be drawn from these considerations about the causal function of conscious intention? Asking for the function of conscious intentions, the different creation myths face the problem of causality in a different way. Both the pragmatic (Bratman) and the epistemic (Anscombe) creation myths are set on a rather abstract mental level of description. Now, coming back to the two-level distinction of intentions introduced by Searle, both teleological myths are about prior intentions. One could say that neither teleological myths require any assumptions about causality, as they do not involve a mind-world directed causality, but rather an intra-mental causality. In the pragmatic creation myth, intentions are preceded and followed by other intentions or intentions to act. Intentions are merely theoretical intentions as they only have a representational character. We can think of the pragmatic creation myth without any real action going on, as an abstract framework for an explanation of the existence of conscious intentions. The epistemic creation myth does not affect the debate about mental causation either. As only a correlation between conscious intention and action is necessary for the epistemic creation myth, it only draws conclusions about self-awareness and does not make any claim about a causal relation of this self-awareness and an action. In Vellemann’s view, conscious intentions are a spandrel, a by-product. This model does not imply any explicit claim about causality either. One could go even one step further and postulate that these myths only address the structure of phenomenological experience of conscious intentions and not the intention itself.
In Pacherie’s social creation myth, one cannot deny a causal role of conscious intentions any more. This is what I outlined above, referring to Pacherie’s definition about conscious intentions. Intentions are not “just” a representation of abstract goals, but of ongoing control and they structure motor processes and “themselves generate movements” (Pacherie this collection, p. 10). Even more, if conscious intentions are needed to modify a joint action, the perception of goal-directed movements of others leads to a mental representation of this action and the formation of a conscious intention for another action follows from this. The problem with conscious intentions in Pacherie’s social creation myth could arise when we understand—as outlined above—the I-Intention as purely functional or supervening mental properties in a non-reductive metaphysical framework. Regarding Searle’s distinction between prior intentions and intentions-in-action, I assume that in Pacherie’s model the I-intentions could be regarded as prior intentions and the P- and M- intentions rather correspond to intentions-in-action. To be more precise in this comparison we should talk about the experience of an intention as conscious mental representation (I-intention). As outlined above, one major analytical constraint against this understanding is the argument of causal closure. If the conscious intention (the I-intention) as a mental phenomenon or a mental representation has a causal function in action, we have to accept downward causation to understand this (which would be against the rule of causal closure). If the I-intentions only supervenes or emerges from its neuronal activity, or is identical with it, then the intention as a conscious mental representation is causally irrelevant and not necessary for the function of motor control. My claim here is that Pacherie’s social creation myth needs the causal function of conscious intentions as mental representations to work. Yet requires that we accept the idea of mental causation. As long as the social creation myth is only a myth, we can break the rules of causal closure easily and just offer the gist or general structure of a potential explanation about the function of conscious intentions. Yet if the myth is an explanation, it has to fit the rules of causal closure, and we have to reconsider either the myth or our understanding of causal closure. Last, we could try to create a myth fitting our physical knowledge, yet have to deny the causal effect of the conscious intentions in motor control.