Semiotics Denatured

The theory of the sign (Semiotics) is perhaps most closely associated with the work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. Over the last century, semiotics has had a very significant influence in numerous fields of research from the arts and literary criticism to biology and cognitive neuroscience. This post is intended to expose what I think is a major flaw in the theory of the sign, a flaw that continues to beleaguer scientific research and philosophical enquiry often in quite far reaching ways.

The Wikipedia entry on signs distinguishes between “natural” signs (or what Peirce called “indexical signs”) and “conventional” signs (“symbols”). In an influential paper from 1955 H. P. Grice makes a similar distinction between what he calls "natural" and "non-natural" meanings. Grice's distinction can therefore be seen in the same light that I aim to shed upon the concept of natural signs.

On the subject of the sign, Wikipedia states: “A natural sign bears a causal relation to its object—for instance, thunder is a sign of storm, or medical symptoms signify a disease.” I hope it is already evident that something isn't quite right about this formulation. Symptoms are caused by disease but they are not signals produced by disease. Likewise, thunder is caused by storms but its influence upon the world is not a consequence of its possible status as a sign. Such a status is not a property of thunder but can only be ascribed to the sound of thunder in much the same way that the function of a tool is assigned to it through use. This is not to suggest that nonverbal creatures cannot be influenced by regularly occurring states of affairs and develop efficacious responses as a consequence. But what I do want to suggest is that Pavlov’s dogs, for example, did not salivate because they interpreted the bell as a sign for dinner but because they had developed an autonomic response to the sound of the bell. Autonomic responses do not function by way of interpretation, unconscious or otherwise. Such a suggestion would undermine the important distinction we typically assume between intentional behaviours (actions) and the many non-conscious processes and responses that support, enable and propagate the vast majority of life on Earth.

Discussing C.S. Peirce's theory of the sign, Noble and Davidson (1996) state: "A mouse rustling in the undergrowth is producing an indexical acoustic sign of itself." If this is true, then every effect would have to be a sign of its cause and the entire universe must be a teeming mass of communicating representations.  According to Semetsky (2005 p.232) this is precisely what Peirce believed: “Everything is a sign: the whole universe, for Peirce, is perfused with signs.” Interestingly, Semetsky also identifies a paradox in Peirce’s thinking since he also claimed that: “nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign.” Indeed it should be obvious that the universe is only composed of signs to the extent that we sign users are capable of interpreting it as such. So when someone states: "A footprint... can communicate a message." this is either just a handy metaphor or the attribution of communicative agency where none is warranted. Such marks are interpretable by someone capable of extrapolating from them in causal terms, but without a skilled interpreter—moreover a symbol user capable of making meaningful attributions — the marks are merely whatever they are: a cluster of properties. Interpretable things are not communicators, but become interpretable only by being treated as if they are part of practices of use  — most commonly as part of practices of communication. Treating things in this way has significant predictive and retrodictive efficacy, so much so in fact, that we regularly assume (mistakenly of course) that all life must be capable of the same skills of attribution.

An advocate of semiotics might wish to interject here by denying that natural signs are representations at all. This is the move that biosemiotician, Marcello Barbieri (2013) makes when he claims that a natural sign “cannot show or inform, it can only point to an object as if to say: ‘There it is!’” But this is misconceived. What is pointing after all if not a form of showing? Pointing is precisely equivalent to holding something up, presenting it or nodding towards it. Likewise, if nothing is pointed to or shown when we exclaim “There it is!” the utterance is unintelligible. Barbieri continues: “A thermometer and a footprint are natural indices.” The suggestion that a sophisticated instrument of numerical (i.e. symbolic) measurement is a natural sign is simply absurd. But it gets worse. Barbieri claims:

Any metabolic process presupposes a goal directed organism and as such it is a semiotic process, since the organism selects and evaluates environmental stimuli with respect to their adequacy or inadequacy for the purpose of the organism’s survival. (2013)

Barbieri is by no means alone in the attribution of goal directed action to the most simple of forms of life:

The discovery and use of natural signs is a required prerequisite of existence for any living system because they are indispensable to movement, the search for food, regulation, communication, and many other information-related activities. (Sukhoverkhov 2012)

Sukhoverkhov and Barbieri evidently agree that even the most simple organisms necessarily treat the world as if it were composed of signs that they use to direct their behaviour. More astonishingly still, Peirce agrees: “The microscopist looks to see whether the motions of a little creature show any purpose. If so, there is mind there.” On this view then, not only is the universe perfused with signs, but all life is perfused with mind.

The assumption that mind is a prerequisite for any living system should be rejected as both implausible and wildly extravagant. And the conclusion drawn by Peirce on the basis of the movements of a microorganism is in obvious need of revision. The point of error lies in the unjustified assumption that efficacious movements constitute purposeful (i.e. goal directed) behaviour: actions.

If the most simple organisms require minds to survive and propagate then there can be no explanation of how mindedness could ever have evolved. A scientifically parsimonious explanation of the evolution of intelligent life must therefore distinguish between efficacious behaviour on the one hand and its more highly evolved and genuinely purposeful cousin (action) on the other. When a microorganism moves along a food gradient it is not propelled by a goal; it is propelled by the causal influence of the food gradient. This sophisticated but nonetheless predictable behaviour has been honed by millions of years of evolution in which innumerable less well adapted creatures have perished. And whilst this behaviour may resemble action, one thing should be certain: microorganisms are not capable of producing representations of any sort, let alone goals.

There is nothing natural about so called “natural signs”. Nor is interpretation a prerequisite of life on Earth. Sensory discrimination is certainly a prerequisite of all life, but it is certainly not a sign of mind, not even incipient or rudimentary mind.

If we want to understand the evolutionary emergence of mindedness, we first need to be clear about what it takes for a creature to treat an object as if it has properties that it does not actually possess. Such skills are certainly not to be found amongst microorganisms. Mind is born of culture.

In the case of non-linguistic signs there is always the danger that their meanings will seem natural; one must view them with a certain detachment to see that their meanings are in fact the products of a culture, the result of shared assumptions and conventions. But in the case of linguistic signs the conventional or ‘arbitrary’ basis is obvious, and therefore by taking linguistics as a model one may avoid the familiar mistake of assuming that signs which appear natural to those who use them have an intrinsic meaning and require no explanation. (Culler 1975, p.6)

Mute Witnesses

"While photographs may not lie, liars may photograph." Lewis Hine (1909)

“Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second."” — Jean-Luc Godard

Remarks of this kind are familiar. They suggest that images—and unedited photographs in particular—stand in some special relation to truth: that they testify, bear witness, or in some sense “tell” us how things are.

It is easy enough to speak this way, but less easy to say clearly what it amounts to.

We often describe images using terms borrowed from verbal communication. We say that they “convey meaning”, that they “tell” us something, that they “refer” to, “describe” or even “explain” the world. Photographs are said to document, to testify, to lie, or to reveal the truth. In everyday use, such talk is unproblematic. But it can begin to mislead if taken too literally, as though images function in the same way as sentences.

The difficulty becomes clearer if we attend, not to how we speak about images, but to how they are actually used. A photograph of a cup does not say anything. It does not assert, deny, or qualify. It does not exhibit anything like the structure of a sentence. Yet this does not make it empty or inert. On the contrary, its effectiveness lies precisely in the fact that it does not need to be read in this way. One simply sees what it is of. This recognition is typically immediate. No decoding is required, no translation into words. The question of what an image is about may be open, and often contested, but the question of what it is of is usually resolved without effort. Only after this does the further question—what it is about—begin to arise, and that question is rarely straightforward. We readily distinguish between uncertainty at these two levels. An ambiguous image may prompt disagreement about what it is of, but once that is settled, differences in interpretation do not ordinarily cast it back into doubt. What it shows remains stable, even where what it is taken to mean does not. This difference is important because if it made no difference what an image was of, then it could be replaced without loss by a description. In most cases, it cannot.

Part of what makes this possible is the use of illusionistic effects, with perspectival distortion as a particularly clear example. Images are made so that, under suitable conditions, they resemble what they depict closely enough for recognition to occur directly. Lines, tones, perspective, shading, focus—these are not arbitrary devices, but ways of exploiting regularities in how we see. A drawing can suggest depth; a photograph can stand in for what it shows, not completely, and not without remainder, but sufficiently for it to be taken, in certain respects, for the thing itself.

It is important to note that photographs are not, for the most part, illusions in any strong sense. We do not generally mistake them for the things they depict. But they employ illusionistic means, and under particular conditions—distance, blur, scale, lighting—they can produce effects that approach indistinguishability. The possibility of illusion is built into their operation, even where it is not realised.

Words do not work in this way. Words do not resemble the things they are about. Their use depends upon learned conventions, upon the ability to follow rules and to participate in practices of predication. Images make use of quite different capacities. They engage perception directly, relying not on symbolic substitution, but on visible similarities. For this reason, it is not obvious that images should be treated as bearers of truth or falsehood in the same way as sentences. A statement can be true or false because it asserts something about how things are. An image may depict something that did not occur, or present things in a misleading way, but it does not itself make an assertion. It shows, and what is shown can then be taken up in various ways. This is not to deny that images can be used in acts of deception, or that they can mislead. But the source of that deception lies in how images are used, combined, or interpreted—not in the image taken in isolation. Just as a gesture can be misleading without being a lie, so an image can mislead without asserting anything at all.

Two questions are often asked of an image: what is it of? and what is it about? The first is more basic. Without some answer to it, the second cannot get started. The temptation to reverse this order—to treat images primarily as vehicles of meaning—is understandable, but it risks obscuring the conditions under which they function.

This is perhaps most evident in theoretical discussions, where images are frequently assimilated to models drawn from language. They are described as signs, as messages, as objects to be decoded. Such frameworks can be useful, but they can also encourage the thought that images depend fundamentally on processes of interpretation, in the sense in which words do. What recedes in this picture is the extent to which images rely upon ordinary perceptual capacities—on the ability to recognise, to discriminate, and to respond to visual similarities. These capacities do not depend on linguistic competence, although they can be extended and organised by it.

In this respect, images might better be understood as things used in acts of showing. They make aspects of the world available in a way that can be shared. What follows from that—what they mean, how they are interpreted, what role they play—depends upon the practices in which they are embedded or inserted.

The appeal to truth, then, may be less fundamental than it appears. When we say that an image shows the truth, we are not attributing truth to the image itself so much as situating it within a wider context of use. A photograph may serve as evidence; it may support or undermine a claim. But the truth does not reside in the image as such. To recognise this is not to diminish the importance of images, but to clarify it. Their force lies not in their ability to state or to assert, but in their capacity to present—to place something before us in a way that can be taken up, examined, and discussed.

It is in that taking up, rather than in the image itself, that questions of truth and falsity arise.

Bewitched by Language

Towards the end of his life, the Austrian British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote: "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language." In his earlier and perhaps most famous work, "The Tractatus Logico Philosophicus", Wittgenstein expressed the view that language is a kind of "picture" of the world that frames and encapsulates experience. He remarked: "The limits of my language are the limits of my world." Wittgenstein later rejected the metaphor of language as a kind of picture of the world preferring instead to focus on the ways in which different usages of language lead us into philosophical confusion.

One of the leading and certainly one of the most prolific scholars of the work of Wittgenstein is Peter Hacker. Hacker does an outstanding job of illuminating and elaborating on Wittgenstein's analysis and of exposing numerous conceptual confusions that continue to beleaguer not merely philosophy but cognitive neuroscience also. He is not without his critics of course, but having encountered his work after first arriving at several of the same conclusions through the theories of Donald Brook, I find a great deal of Hacker's theorisation to be extremely congenial. Nonetheless, there are times when I think his emphasis on language leads him astray. The following passage is from his book "The Intellectual Powers: A Study of Human Nature." (2013)

It is because we can think, that is reflect, that we can have an "inner life". Animals who lack language do not. They are conscious, and are conscious of features of their surroundings; they have and pursue ends; they feel pain and pleasure; but that does not suffice for an inner life. They cannot reflect upon their experience, cannot think thoughts and reflect upon them. They cannot dwell, in joy or sorrow, upon their past experiences. They cannot reason, reflect upon reasoning or weigh its conclusions. They have no imagination, and cannot fantasize, wonder about possibilities or imagine how things might have been. This is one kind of reason why we should not follow Cartesians in identifying having a mind with mere consciousness or conscious experience. Only if one can think thoughts and reason from what one thinks, imagine things and dwell upon what one imagines, enjoy and suffer experiences and reflect on one's joys and sufferings, can one be said to have a mind. Only creatures with a mind can be said to have an inner life.

Consider the following. Otto is a nonverbal human child who likes to play with toys and to act the part of different animals and individuals. Otto is a gifted mimic. He can draw and likes to watch animated cartoons. He also likes to play hide and seek and is very skilful in hiding himself in unexpected places. He likes to make things with Lego and modelling clay and commonly invents fantastical figures and participates in and understands sophisticated and elaborate forms of pretend play.

None of these skills requires language. Prior to the acquisition of language, many human infants show clear competence in many of these skills and it is implausible in the extreme to suppose that these could not develop further with practice and in the continued absence of language. In light of this evidence it is clearly mistaken to argue that an individual such as Otto has no imagination and cannot fantasize.

If it is true, as Hacker rightly acknowledges, that nonverbals can "have and pursue ends" then it falls on Hacker's shoulders to explain how these ends can be had and pursued in the absence of mind. If an end cannot be thought of, then how exactly can it be had? It makes no sense to say that a language user has her ends absentmindedly or mindlessly and that she cannot communicate them when appropriately prompted. Nor does it makes sense to say the same of a nonverbal. Hacker seems to be of the opinion not only that nonverbals are incapable of communicating their ends but that they are unaware of their ends too.

To pursue a goal is to be capable of calling it to mind, moreover, it is to be capable, at least in principle, of communicating it. If language were the only form of creaturely communication, then Hacker would be right to regard language as exclusive to mindedness. But language is by no means the only form of communication.

Ends and goals are typically things that we think of, that are "called to mind", that we "have in mind" or "on our mind." If we forget our goals we have to retrace our steps until we are reminded of them. These are not linguistic skills (although they may be assisted by language), they are procedural skills that presuppose memory and the ability to recall past events.

Hacker would probably want to point out here that many acquired efficacious behaviours need not be the result of having anything in mind. Such behaviours are not goal-directed and thus do not threaten to undermine Hacker's thesis. But if a nonverbal agent performs an action with the aim of eliciting a response on the part of another perceiver, then it is reasonable to suppose that it must have an end in mind and must, at least in principle, be capable of performing or otherwise publicly representing this anticipated outcome. Communicative actions are intentional precisely because they are driven by goals but not all communicative actions are verbal and nor are the goals that drive them.

To be "put in mind" of an earlier event or to "bear something in mind" is to have a memory but it is not necessarily to have a word, concept or utterance at the ready. And when sufferers of global aphasia lose their linguistic abilities they do not lose their ability to imagine or to fantasize (although these capacities may also be diminished as a consequence of the same affliction causing the aphasia). So whilst I agree with Hacker that it is impossible for a nonverbal to reason, to make judgements or to draw conclusions, I think it is mistaken to suppose that nonverbals are necessarily incapable of imagination or fantasy.

As we have already seen, acquired behaviours need not always involve mindedness. Hacker draws a line at the capacity to use language, but I hope the preceding evidence and arguments are persuasive in explaining why I think Hacker remains to some degree under the spell of language. If Hacker were to spread his net a little further to include nonverbal communicative practices, then I think his theorisation would benefit significantly.

Wittgenstein was right to give up on his notion that the limits of our language are the limits of our world. If instead he had claimed that the limits of our communicative capacities are the limits of our world, then perhaps this would have left us with a far more revealing and enduring picture of what it actually is to be a minded creature.

Pretending to Ourselves

"You only live twice

Or so it seems

One life for yourself

And one for your dreams."

The purpose of this post is to challenge the view that imagined episodes qualify as experiences of the things imagined. Do those who claim to have a rich imagination live a life in addition to the one they actually live? Fortunately for most of us, actual life and imaginary life are clearly not the same. My aim is to explore some of the differences and to explain why we might sometimes be led to the mistaken conclusion that our lives are divided between the public world of perception and a private realm of what Sartre called "quasi observation" or quasi experience.

Many people would rightly argue that imagining a traumatic event can be a deeply unsettling experience, so it would seem that my argument must necessarily fall at the first hurdle. I don't deny that imagined episodes are experiences, but what they are experiences of, are not experiences of the things and states of affairs imagined but rather they are experiences of imagining those things and states of affairs.

Now it might be objected that I am twisting language, but my aim is to do precisely the reverse. When we pretend to eat a lemon we are not eating a lemon. The experience is simply an experience of pretending. And whilst this may share much in common with the actual experience, there is one obvious missing component that must be taken into account. Eating a lemon involves the perception of an actual lemon. When we pretend to eat a lemon, we elicit many of the same embodied responses — for example we might salivate more. And when we imagine eating a lemon these same responses are also triggered to some degree.

So my argument is simply this: imagining is a species of pretending. And in the same way that pretend experiences are not experiences of the things pretended, nor are imaginary episodes experiences of the things imagined.

Unlike imagining, pretending is typically an interpersonal activity. Pretending and performing are thus intimately intertwined in a way that imagining and performing are not. To pretend is to act as if something is the case when in fact the pretend condition or object is absent. To imagine is to know how to pretend. It is to know how to perform in such a way as to elicit (in oneself and others) the embodied responses that accompany perceptions of the things imagined. Just as we learn to read out loud before we learn to read in silence, so too I suggest, do we first learn to pretend in public before we learn to pretend to ourselves: to imagine. This is why I believe that it makes good sense to view imagination is a species of pretending, because imagination is parasitic upon our skills as performers; as producers and consumers of communicative actions.

It might be objected that I am neglecting something important about imagining. When we conjour up remembered episodes, colours, sounds, tastes etc. the experience (of imagining) might be thought by many to be more fulsome, more rich and more substantial than a mere deceipt, dissimulation or act of feigning. Some philosophers might even argue that imaginings have what they describe as "phenomenal character"; a term that refers to the "feel" of imagined experiences. But the point that needs to be borne in mind is that an imagined colour, texture, sound or flavour etc. has no sensory component and cannot therefore be "felt." What we might be tempted to treat as the felt component of such imagined experiences is precisely the embodied responsiveness already outlined above. Whenever we ordinarily perceive objects and states of affairs, we are subject to a whole variety of causally generated responses. And when we imagine or pretend to experience objects and states of affairs we are also subject — though to a lesser degree of course — to many of the same causal influences. Imagining and pretending are thus skills of expectation, of having learned and not forgotten what Gilbert Ryle called "perceptual lessons." Julia Tanney puts it like this:

Imaging or picturing involves knowledge how things look or sound and not having forgotten. But it does not require, what Hume seems to have thought, that in imagining Vinzelles’s gooseberry green eyes, his eyes have left a visual sense impression that occurred when my eyes were open which cause or bring about a faint sort of impression (or representation).

Tanney continues with a quote from Ryle:

All that is required is to see that learning perceptual lessons entails some perceiving, that applying those lessons entails having learned them, and that imaging is one way of applying those lessons.

Professor Adam Zeman of Exeter University has been in the media recently in relation to his coining of the term "aphantasia." Aphantasia refers to a reported inability to produce mental images, a condition (although Zeman is careful to emphasise that it is "not a disorder") that has been documented for more than a century at least. A portion of people — around 1 in 50 Zeman estimates — are subject to aphantasia.

As a scientist, Zeman's research clearly garners a fair amount of credence, but if my analysis is not mistaken then there may be reason for skepticism regarding his conclusions. Many of the people who report aphantasia are understandably distressed at their incapacity to perform the feats of imagination that others seem to be readily capable of. One aphantasiac put it like this: “I was devastated... Actually, it put me into a depression, realizing that everyone saw the world in a different way — like suddenly discovering you’re blind.”

I think these people have been misled. Like many artists, I would say that I have a vivid imagination. I spend a lot of my time visualising ideas, daydreaming and thinking about how things look. And like most art teachers, I have no difficulty imagining the images and objects that students discuss on a daily basis and I would say that I am quite skilled in making suggestions of how these plans might be improved or how the associated pitfalls might best be avoided. But in spite of these pleasures and skills, I have never once mistaken my imagination for perception and not do I expect to. The two are so unalike that there is no question of confusing one for the other. 

Like many people I have spoken to on this subject, I have never regarded the term "mental image" as anything other than a convenient metaphor for the ability to think of how things appear. Taken literally the term simply mischaracterises imagination by reference to a class of very specific tangible cultural contrivances that cannot possibly be formed in the mind or brain. There are no "pictures in the head," just as there are no "inner eyes" to see them.

Imagining is not an inner display of any sort. It is a skill of knowing what to expect in acts of looking, listening, tasting etc. It is the capacity moreover, of effortlessly having expectations (perceptual lessons learned) and being surprised whenever these expectations are thwarted. When we imagine eating a lemon, we do not find ourselves surprised that the imagined flavour is not as we expected. We might be disappointed that it does not have the zest of experience but that of course is one of the characteristic differences between imagining and perceiving. We can pretend to compare lemons, but only actual lemons bear comparison.

The Price Of Intention

"Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense." —Ludwig Wittgenstein, "Culture and Value" p.59.

I am sure I have often said and have certainly often heard others say: "I didn't realise until afterwards, what I was trying to do." This post is an attempt to pay close attention to the nonsense buried in this utterance and to tentatively suggest that the associated notion of unconscious striving — of unconscious desire even — is incoherent. It may already be clear that such a view runs contrary to one or two foundational ideas within psychoanalysis, some of which continue to garner significant recognition within the arts. If we shouldn't be afraid of talking nonsense, then we probably shouldn't be afraid of identifying nonsense either.

To realise something after the fact is to have learned something new; to have become aware of something that was previously unclear or inaccessible. The sentence "I didn't realise until afterwards, what I was trying to do." is commonly used as an acknowledgement that our goals are often vague, fragmentary or imprecise and only through the gradual, or sometimes sudden, accumulation of understanding do we become capable of clearly articulating this more developed knowledge. But whilst our goals can be sketchy, a vague intention is not an intention for vague outcome. A sketchy idea for a diagram is rarely a desire for a sketchy diagram.

There is nothing confused or paradoxical about such thoughts. Where the confusion arises is in the suggestion that some part of us, some inner and inaccessible intelligence, seeks to express itself through our actions; that an alleged unconscious or subconscious self is trying to tell us things that may only dawn upon our conscious awareness later. Certainly there are times when we recognise patterns or significances in our past actions. But is this sufficient grounds for the supposition that we are host to unconscious intentions that are striving to articulate themselves? I hope to show that it is not.

Trying, striving, endeavouring, pursuing, envisaging, seeking, aiming etc. are intentional goal orientated behaviours. Without goals there can be no striving  because there can be nothing to strive towards. If we were never capable of communicating an outcome of our actions in any shape or form, then we could not be said to try to achieve something either. "All 'willing' is willing something," as the neurologist Oliver Sacks puts it.

If someone asks us what we are doing and we have no answer, then we cannot be said to be acting purposefully. It is for this reason that goals are fundamentally reliant upon our powers of communication; upon our ability to offer some sort of token, word or gesture that would be acceptable to others as a representation of our intention.

In a 2006 paper, Jack Glaser and John Kihlstrom argue that: "Unconscious Volition Is Not an Oxymoron." They write:

...the unconscious, in addition to being a passive categorizer, evaluator, and semantic processor, has processing goals (for example, accuracy, egalitarianism) of its own, can be vigilant for threats to the attainment of these goals, and will proactively compensate for such threats.

Clearly Glaser and Kihlstrom recognise that volition demands goals, but it is extraordinary that they are prepared to suggest that unconscious behaviour is fundamentally intentional: that it has ulterior motives, even if these are as seemingly benign and basic as accuracy and egalitarianism etc. In its most extreme form, such a view opens the door to any number of unwitting intentions and renders us as nothing more than witnesses to motives beyond our control or ken.

If goals can be pursued without our conscious awareness or control, then we are puppets in a theatre not of our own making, and all we can do is observe our actions like passive audience members in the hope of gleaning some comprehension of the hidden goals that actually drive us. Consciousness never looked more wretched.

The alternative is to reject the notion of unconscious volition altogether and to seek a less extravagant explanation.

When in 1974 Oliver Sacks broke his leg whilst fleeing from a bull, the trauma of the injury left him with a temporary inability to properly sense or move his leg. In essence the episode had rid him of all knowhow in the use of his leg. A closely related condition is sometimes experienced by people who become temporarily blind in response to the traumatic loss of a loved one or some other major upset. These sorts of psychological responses to trauma are known as "Conversion Disorders" and it is interesting to note that the term was first coined by Freud as an alternative to "hysteria" or "hysterical blindness."

In a paper on the subject of conversion disorders, Harvey et al. (2006) point out that: "One difficulty facing research in this field is the complexity of the conceptual issues and variable ways in which terminology has been used." The authors helpfully include a table of definitions and explanations of key terminology and they also explicitly state that conversion disorders are “not intentionally produced” and cannot be feigned. It should be made clear that they do not make any suggestion that conversion disorders are the result of unconscious intention, striving, trying etc.

When overtired drivers are overcome by sleep, their unconscious is not striving to take control. If you attempt to kill yourself by holding your breath, it is not inner volition that will rob you of consciousness before the job is done. These are simply highly evolved autonomic responses that have no goals and do not have to strive, seek or endeavour to impose themselves. They have no more volition than the iris of the eye. No doubt conversion disorders are similarly rooted in complex autonomic processes.

Can we aim for one thing only to find that we were actually aiming for something else? If goals are necessarily communicable, then it follows that we cannot be oblivious of those we are pursuing. We can certainly aim for inappropriate goals or be confused, uncertain or vague about our goals, as I have already mentioned. But I don't think we can be mistaken that the thing we are intent upon is actually the thing we are intent upon. That would come at an extremely high price; the price of intention itself.

Indivisible Atoms of Intention

We are purposeful creatures. That would seem to be beyond serious doubt. Aside from the occasional twitch, sneeze, hiccup, yawn, or blush—and a wide range of autonomic processes—our behaviour is not merely efficacious but directed. It consists of actions.

But what makes an action intentional? A common assumption is that intention consists in some prior inner event: a thought, a decision, or a particular configuration of neural activity that initiates what follows. We have reason to resist that assumption.

Consider a familiar case. When you rose from your bed this morning, you did so intentionally. But it would be a mistake to suppose that your intention consisted in a discrete episode in your brain—a nascent act that then caused your body to move. Certainly there was neural activity, but there is no need to treat it as an inner “intender” issuing commands. There is no agent within the brain pulling the strings.

Instead, intention is better understood as a feature of the organism as it is situated in its world—as a way it is poised to engage with its circumstances. It concerns how you are constituted: your situated dispositions to respond to particular situations, prompts, and possibilities in certain ways. When you get out of bed, you act as the kind of creature you are, in the situation you are in: one whose habits, sensitivities, and history incline it toward that behaviour. This is what we register when we say that someone “acts in character.”

Put this way, intentional action can begin to look merely habitual. But habits need not be blind. What matters is not whether an action is preceded by explicit thought, but whether it belongs to an organised field of responsiveness—one that is sensitive to circumstances, open to adjustment, and able, in the right conditions, to be made explicit.

Here a further feature becomes important: our readiness to communicate what we are doing. If I were to interrupt you and ask what you are doing, you would almost certainly have something to say. You are not covertly narrating your life in advance; rather, you are disposed to communicate your activity when prompted, within practices where such communication has a place.

This readiness is not merely evidence of intention, though it is that. It is also part of what it is to act intentionally. To act intentionally is, in part, to be the sort of creature whose engagements with the world belong to organised patterns of responsiveness—patterns that sustain, and sometimes give rise to, communication, though not always.

This cannot depend on actual performance. One might be gagged, interrupted, or otherwise unable to respond, and yet still act intentionally. What matters is not the act of communication itself, but the underlying preparedness: a structured sensitivity to situations and to others that would ordinarily enable it.

Seen in this light, more explicit forms of deliberation—imagining outcomes, weighing reasons, anticipating consequences—are not more intentional than ordinary, habitual actions. They are more elaborate expressions of the same underlying capacities. Some actions involve explicit communication; others unfold through gesture, movement, or skilled response. All belong to a continuum shaped by the ways in which an organism is situated and able to respond.

This perspective also raises a further question. What of animals? When a dog chases a squirrel, is it acting intentionally? It would be too strong to deny this. Dogs exhibit patterns of behaviour that we readily take to be directed toward outcomes, and they respond to their surroundings in flexible and intelligible ways. Their behaviour expresses urgency, pursuit, and excitement in forms we recognise.

Part of what is at work here is that we find it easier to attribute intention where there are signs of responsiveness that resemble communication, broadly understood. We are more confident in attributing intention to a dog than to simpler organisms, not because the behaviour is more complex in a purely causal sense, but because it is more evidently embedded in patterns of signalling, coordination, and response.

Wittgenstein draws attention to a related shift in perspective: “We say: ‘The cock calls the hens by crowing’ … Isn’t the aspect quite altered if we imagine the crowing to set the hens in motion by some kind of physical causation?” What changes here is not the observable behaviour, but how we are prepared to situate it. In one case, it belongs to a pattern of interaction; in the other, it is reduced to a mechanism. The difference lies not in the presence of some hidden ingredient, but in whether the behaviour is taken as part of a responsive exchange.

A similar sensitivity can be seen within our own species. Doubts about intention are sometimes expressed—or allowances made—in cases where communicative responsiveness is diminished or unfamiliar: in descriptions of so-called feral humans, or in early encounters between cultures whose forms of expression were not yet mutually intelligible. In such cases, it is not simply behaviour that is in question, but whether it can be situated within a shared field of response and recognition. Where that field is thin or disrupted, our confidence in attributing intention can falter.

What differs across these cases is not the presence or absence of intention as an inner state, but the richness and accessibility of the situations in which behaviour can be understood. Human beings possess highly developed practices for making activity explicit—for describing, explaining, and evaluating what they are doing. This does not create intention, but it deepens and refines it, situating action within more complex networks of possibility and response.

If this is right, then we should be cautious about locating intention in inner mechanisms, whether neural or otherwise. Communication, in its various forms, is not the output of a hidden agent, but an expression of organised engagement with the world. Agency is not something contained within us as a part; it is a feature of us as situated organisms.

There has, in other words, to be a cutoff. Intention does not extend indefinitely inward to organs, cells, or atoms. But neither is it located in some inner component. It belongs at the level of the organism as it is situated in its world—the level at which a living being can act, respond, and, in its various ways, make sense of what it is doing.

Animal Minds?

The American essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, once wrote "The ancestor of every action is a thought." Superficially this idea seems plausible enough, but on closer examination it turns out to conceal a vicious paradox. If every purposeful action necessitated a prior thought, then every act of thinking – every thought – would itself have to be initiated by a further motivating thought. This inextinguishable spiral of antecedent thoughts is sometimes known as a “Rylean regress,” named after the British philosopher Gilbert Ryle who took the view that “intelligent practice is not a step-child of theory.”

At the core of Ryle’s philosophy was the conviction that intelligent behaviours are not the result of practical knowledge but are instead instances of practical knowledge. Confusion arises because we tend to conceive of knowledge as an independent "thing" that leads to, results in or produces actions. Ryle exposed the “category mistake” implicit in this reified conception. Knowledge for Ryle is neither an entity nor a neurological region that we can point to on a fMRI scan – it is a repertoire of aptitudes, skills and dispositions. For Ryle, skillful action is a form of thinking. And if thought and action are indivisible in this way, then there need be no prior “thought processes” driving intelligent behaviour. Actions are already integrated processes of intelligent engagement with the world.

So, do animals think before they act? A Rylean analysis would suggest not. But this is not to support the view that only language users are capable of contemplating the future or of making plans. Many plans are diagrammatic objects after all. Nonetheless what it does strongly suggest is that the skills involved in planning and other sophisticated forms of future directed activity, rely upon techniques that must be learned and practiced through trial and error. In the human case this is achieved through publicly negotiated forms of communication, both verbal and nonverbal. Without such public exchanges it is extremely doubtful that any creature could ever develop the capacity to ponder with any degree of complexity or proficiency. Skills are demonstrated and tested in the unforgiving crucible of actuality, not in the cosseted ether of thought or imagination.