The aims of the commentary were first to understand, why Pacherie’s social creation myth is more than a myth. Second, I elucidated whether it could, in principle, lay the foundations for an explanation based on and in line with philosophical and experimental ideas about mental causation. This discussion was based on the more general question: do conscious intentions have a causal function in the world? To my mind this question cannot yet be answered conclusively, at least according to our current knowledge. Postulating a lack of causal function of conscious intentions, as based on analytical considerations and empirical data, might be the only possible solution of the problem. The argument from causal closure postulates that a conscious intention as a mental phenomenon is causally irrelevant, because it is not needed to explain a following physical phenomenon. The experimental data might suggest that an intention becomes conscious only after the neuronal activity is detected. Yet, there still is the strong experience of a causal function for our behaviour.
Now, I want to summarize the problems for the social creation myth, based on the above mentioned discussion and I want to consider possible ways to keep and develop the social creation myth as a potential explanation about the function of conscious intentions. The general question about the function of experienced conscious intentions, as Pacherie puts it, is the question about “the normative sense, in which having these functions confers benefits on intention-forming creatures that explains why these creatures have this capacity” (this collection, p. 1). This general question is one of the interpretation and explanation of human nature and not a question about causality. The creation myths of Bratman and Anscombe mainly address the question of why we experience our intentions as conscious and goal directed. The question about real-world, physical causality seems unessential for a pragmatic or epistemic benefit for our being and self-awareness, because the pragmatic or epistemic benefit of conscious intentions arises from the experience of a conscious intention and not from its causal effect. The intentions remain theoretical intentions or mental representations and no downward causality is needed. This does not mean that they cannot have a specific and more complex function, but a strong claim about a localized control-function in motor action is simply not possible. In addition, the epistemic and the pragmatic creation myth as well as conscious intentions considered as a spandrel remain “narrative” accounts and even if they would break the causal closure of the physical world, this would not matter in the context of a myth.
Pacherie’s social creation myth first seems to be of a similar kind, explaining human nature and human interaction on the basis of mutual representation of others’ actions and formation of joint actions, which do not necessarily have to be causal for joint action, but only for communication intentions and our understanding joint action. The social creation myth is based on the conceptual, hierarchical model of motor initiation and control. It explains conscious intentions not only in a teleological way, but in an analytical way. It is about practical intentionality. Yet, this confronts it with neuroscientific findings and philosophical considerations about causality:
Conscious intentions in Pacherie’s social creation myth exert an organizing and structuring function in the motor process and therefore might have a causal function.
According to standard metaphysical models for psychophysical relations, the conscious intentions in the myth could be interpreted as a non-reducible mental phenomenon. But if this is the right interpretation, we are confronted with the argument of causal closure and they are either causally irrelevant or we have to deny causal closure of the world.
According to neuroscientific data, we only know little about the nature of conscious intentions, yet nevertheless we have a strong general trend underlying empirical research, a trend that increasingly supports the assumption of a generation of the wanting or the urge to move from neuronal activation, simultaneously or after, but not prior to the movement.
What does this mean for the social creation myth? Regarding the outlined considerations about causality, the problem of the social creation myth about the function of conscious intentions can be solved in different ways. Either we could regard it as a myth in line with the teleofunctional creation myths, only trying to answer the “why”-question about conscious intentions and leaving questions about causality aside. This could sidestep the problem of causality in an easy yet unsatisfying way. But if we stick to a myth without acknowledging the physical rules of the world we live in, then we will never achieve more detailed knowledge about the nature and the function of conscious intentions. There will be no epistemic progress after the formulation of the myth itself.
Or we try to preserve Pacherie’s approach and keep searching for an explanation about the function of conscious intentions. Yet, if conscious intentions have a structuring and organizing function in individual and joint motor action but—according to the common interpretation of above mentioned empirical data—cannot have distinct causal function, how else can the function be described?
One possible solution is, that we might have to overcome the problem of causality in another way. Most interpretations of neuroscientific experiments and the analytical argumentation of causal closure are based on a temporal, linear one-way causality in the way that A causes B because A precedes B. Additionally, one single intention is typically regarded as the cause of the action in a quasi-linear model. My claim is that the common interpretation that a conscious intention—qua being conscious—can only be causally relevant if the conscious intention precedes the motor action, has to be revised. A first motivation for this claim is the fact that there are multiple theoretical and practical limitations regarding the experiments themselves (e.g., Mele 2011; Radder & Meynen 2012; Pacherie 2014).
But even if the common conceptual interpretation was right, there might be a further terminological problem. In the whole debate about conscious intentions in the social creation myth, we seem to assume that there must be a certain effect of the being conscious of the intention. Because an intention is conscious, it has an effect to align and control motor action. If it was not conscious, it would not have this effect. To overcome these problems in the debate of the function of conscious intentions, I suggest that a different concept of causation should be considered. This alternative refers to a parallel generation of a conscious intention and movement planning. As it is a parallel process and we might be confronted with two aspects of one and the same process, the conscious intention neither precedes nor follows the action generation, but occurs simultaneously and both are influenced reciprocally (Desmurget 2013). Even further steps may have to be taken. It has been postulated that we cannot trace back the motor action onto one I-Intention in a linear model or to one single place of neuronal activity in the brain. We rather face a semi-hierarchical, parallel and dynamic network from which the motor action arises, without single, identifiable conscious intentions in a direct line of causality but rather fluctuacting activity (Schurger 2014). This would mean that various intentions exist and each of them can influence, control and generate motor action on a neuronal level in parallel, these intentions are among others generated through the observation and interaction with others. Multiple goal representations might form a context for each other. On a conceptual level there would be different I-intentions and different motor programmes going on at the same time. But let us assume that only some of these I-intentions are conscious. Being conscious, for Pacherie, is a necessary condition to exert a motor function and to align actions with others; being conscious is necessary for the causal role in her creation myth. Maybe the function of being conscious could exert a certain weight to an I-intention, not in the way of a linear causality but in a way of dynamic modelling a given social context.
This could save the social creation myth and sheds new light on the interpretation of neuroscientific findings. Whether or not this move answers the question about the function of conscious intentions remains open. The aim should be to further integrate the analytical definitions of mental phenomena and mental causation into neuroscientific research about conscious intentions and try to find a working definition and a concept of what a conscious intention is like. The focus should be on the function of practical conscious intentions and analyse their causal role and function for the human nature on a neuronal level. Maybe future attempts to arrive at a satisfactory explanation should try to address the causal power of a conscious intention while being conscious and not because of being conscious.