Doris's skeptical challenge and proposed account of responsible agency in his provocative book, Talking to Our Selves, are built around what he calls “defeaters”: “causes of [an actor's] cognition or behavior [that] would not be recognized by the actor as reasons for that cognition or behavior, were she aware of these causes at the time of performance” (Doris Reference Doris2015b, p. 64). We agree that human life is shot through with defeaters, so understood. Especially if causes count as defeaters even when they only have a small impact on behavior (and Doris argues they do), the diversity and ubiquity of defeaters is even more staggering than Doris himself acknowledges. They include not just the causes of curiosities like the Watching Eyes Effect, implicit egotism, and the Ballot Order Effect, but also a whole host of more mundane factors – good news for Doris because at least some of these curiosities are likely to be false positives (e.g., Northover et al. Reference Northover, Pedersen, Cohen and Andrews2017 on the Watching Eyes Effect). People's cognition and behavior is influenced by their cultural background (Nisbett et al. Reference Nisbett, Peng, Choi and Norenzayan2001), upbringing (Cherlin et al. Reference Cherlin, Furstenberg, Chase-Lansdale, Kiernan, Robins, Morrison and Teitler1991), personality type (Back et al. Reference Back, Schmukle and Egloff2009), mood state (Gardner Reference Gardner1985), hunger (Bushman et al. Reference Bushman, DeWall, Pond and Hanus2014), etc. In some cases, the actor would recognize these causes as reasons for her behavior; in many, however, she would not, and they would count as defeaters.
For instance, consider Reyna, whose decision to use reusable grocery bags at the store is causally influenced by the fact that she grew up in Portland, Oregon; that she is highly extroverted; and that she was raised by a hippie. (None of these factors makes all the difference, we may suppose, but they all contribute in the sense that hometown, personality type, and parental attitudes have a small but significant effect on reusable bag use.) Nevertheless, Reyna probably wouldn't say that being from Oregon, having an extroverted personality, or being the child of a hippie is a reason to use reusable bags. As Doris (Reference Doris2015b) puts it, these are “rationally and ethically arbitrary influences” on her behavior (p. 64).
But Doris is not a skeptic about human agency; indeed, he wants to save it in the face of apparent defeaters. A central task for a theory of agency, he claims, is to rule out the presence of defeaters in putative cases of agentive behavior (Doris Reference Doris2015b, p. 66). His valuational account of agency is supposed to accomplish this: “[W]hen we are justified in asserting that a person's conduct expresses her values, we are justified in ruling out the presence of defeaters, and are therefore justified in attributing an exercise of agency” (p. 159).
But this can't be right. Even when an action expresses the agent's values, it must still be influenced by a myriad of causes that she would not recognize as reasons, were she aware of them. For instance, Reyna's use of reusable bags expresses her liberal values, which are themselves influenced by the place of her upbringing, among many other rationally arbitrary causes. Doris is sensitive to the possible mediation of such causes by reflection and seems to restrict the notion of a defeater to unmediated influences. As he puts it early on in Talking to Our Selves, “Best to distinguish cases where happenstance engages rational capacities from cases where happenstance bypasses rational capacities. I've been worrying about cases of bypassing: influences that are not vetted by rational capacities.” And then: “It is these [bypassings] that must be ruled out . . . We do well to acknowledge that the origins of behavior are complex, and will often include any number of mediating factors” (Doris Reference Doris2015b, pp. 72–73). These remarks should be extended to value expression as well. The category of defeaters must not include rationally arbitrary influences that are mediated by an agent's values. But this restriction isn't enough: Even behavior that expresses individuals' values is likely to be influenced by rationally arbitrary causes that are not mediated by them. Even if Reyna is expressing her value for environmental stewardship, that doesn't mean her behavior isn't also influenced by her extroverted personality. Or, to use Doris's own example, you may vote for the first candidate on the ballot because it is an expression of your values and because you are susceptible to the Ballot Order Effect. (“Because” here just implies that the factor has a nonzero effect size with respect to the behavior in question.) Surely Doris does not deny that behavior, like pretty much everything else, is multiply determined.
In short, value expression is entirely compatible with the presence of so-called defeaters. The valuational account of agency should therefore only require that, in order for an agent to be morally responsible for an action, the action must express at least one of the agent's values. It may also reflect numerous arbitrary causal influences (mediated or unmediated) that the agent would not recognize as justificatory; but that is not enough to disqualify it as agentive.
This friendly amendment to Doris's valuational account of agency raises the question: Aren't the same moves available to the reflectivist? Doris characterizes reflectivism as the doctrine that “the exercise of human agency consists in judgment and behavior ordered by self-conscious reflection about what to think and do” (Doris Reference Doris2015b, p. 19). Its corollary, he claims, is the idea that “the exercise of human agency requires accurate reflection” (p. 19). Before discussing reflectivism further, let us note an ambiguity in Doris's characterization: The idea that human agency rests in some way upon our capacity for reflection is distinct from the claim that every individual instance of agentive behavior must be preceded by reflection. Doris takes the latter as his target, but we suspect that at least some of the authors he cites are only committed to the former. For the purpose of this Commentary, however, we'll go along with Doris in taking reflectivism to be the claim that reflection precedes every exercise of responsible agency.
It would seem that the reflectivist can adopt clarifications analogous to those that Doris's valuational account of agency requires. First, she can emphasize that many putative defeaters are in fact mediated by reflection, and so don't count as genuine defeaters. If Reyna's Oregonian childhood prompts her to reflect on the environmental consequences of her actions and thus to use reusable bags, her hometown would not be a true defeater. As noted above, Doris gestures at this response but seems to think it does not apply to his cases (Doris Reference Doris2015b, pp. 71–73). We suspect, however, that some of the empirical findings that he cites result from mediation of this kind. For instance, the Ballot Order Effect may be caused by voters reflecting for a diminishing amount of time on the accomplishments of each candidate as they scan down the ballot (Hogarth & Einhorn Reference Hogarth and Einhorn1992; Krosnick et al. Reference Krosnick, Miller, Tichy, Crigler, Just and McCaffery2004). If the effect arises because the order of names influences the amount of cognitive resources that voters devote to reflecting on each one, the result does not undermine reflectivism as Doris intends. Second, the reflectivist can argue that the exercise of agency requires only some “self-conscious reflection about what to think and do,” and that it is compatible with the presence of other rationally arbitrary influences on behavior (Doris Reference Doris2015b, p. 19). These two modifications exactly parallel the modifications to the valuational theory of agency proposed above.
We have little interest in reviving reflectivism, at least as Doris understands it. Rather, the point is this: presence or absence of rationally arbitrary influences on a behavior is orthogonal to the question of whether it constitutes an exercise of agency. Rationally arbitrary causes can be present simultaneously with reflection or with value expression. Thus, “defeaters” is in fact not a very appropriate name: Rationally arbitrary causes by themselves do not defeat responsible agency.
More importantly, once we recognize this point, it becomes clear that empirical research on defeaters per se is not what Doris needs to undermine reflectivism and support his valuational account of agency. Instead, Doris must show that some behaviors that are genuine exercises of agency do express a person's values without involving reflection. Let's call this task “the valuationist's challenge.” Doris has too little to say about the positive part of the challenge. After raising doubts about whether a diverse array of behaviors are agentive, he does not go on to show how those behaviors are expressive of people's values, and thus safe from the specter of skepticism. The negative part of the valuationist's challenge is to show that some presumed exercises of agency are brought about with no reflection at all. It is not sufficient to argue (as Doris convincingly does) that agents often fail to reflect on some of the causes of their behavior.
Meeting the valuationist's challenge, particularly its negative part, is likely to be difficult because the reflectivist can appeal to a conception of reflection that falls short of undertaking an episode of conscious practical reasoning in which various alternative courses of action are considered and one is deliberately selected. True, if that is the type of reflection reflectivists are committed to, then some genuinely agentive behaviors take place without reflection, but that battle isn't worth fighting: A few minutes of introspection reveal the shortcomings of reflectivism so understood. Perhaps reflection involves instead “bringing to mind ideas or images meant to have some rational relation to the topic being considered, in the service of reaching a conclusion about what to think or do” (Arpaly & Schroeder Reference Arpaly and Schroeder2012). Or perhaps it only requires paying attention to task-relevant cues and acting on that basis (Wu Reference Wu2014, Ch. 3). On these understandings of reflection, Doris's task would be to provide empirical evidence that no such ideas or images are brought to mind, or no attention is paid to any relevant cues, prior to some apparently agentive behavior. The vast social-psychology literature on rationally arbitrary influences on behavior is silent on these questions.
Even more minimally, a dominant tradition in the philosophy of action is based on the idea that the exercise of agency requires that one act for the sake of reasons (Anscombe Reference Anscombe1957; Raz Reference Raz1999). Recently several authors have argued that non-conscious processes may be “responsive to reasons qua reasons” and thus give rise to intentional or rational action even in the absence of deliberation (Railton Reference Railton, Sobel and Wall2009; see also Railton Reference Railton, Wallace, Pettit, Scheffler and Smith2006; Arpaly & Schroeder Reference Arpaly and Schroeder2012). To dispute this view, Doris would need to demonstrate a total absence of reason-responsiveness in some behavior we would want to call agentive. While Doris may respond, perhaps reasonably, that this minimalist account of agency is not reflectivist, and therefore not his target, this response would be less convincing for the views mentioned above.
The fulfillment of the valuationist's challenge requires a clearer understanding of what reflection is and the presentation of apparent exercises of agency without it. Demonstrating the presence of “defeaters” is not enough, because the ubiquity of non-mediated causal influences on behavior ought to be acknowledged by proponents of both reflectivist and valuational accounts of agency.
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Doris's skeptical challenge and proposed account of responsible agency in his provocative book, Talking to Our Selves, are built around what he calls “defeaters”: “causes of [an actor's] cognition or behavior [that] would not be recognized by the actor as reasons for that cognition or behavior, were she aware of these causes at the time of performance” (Doris Reference Doris2015b, p. 64). We agree that human life is shot through with defeaters, so understood. Especially if causes count as defeaters even when they only have a small impact on behavior (and Doris argues they do), the diversity and ubiquity of defeaters is even more staggering than Doris himself acknowledges. They include not just the causes of curiosities like the Watching Eyes Effect, implicit egotism, and the Ballot Order Effect, but also a whole host of more mundane factors – good news for Doris because at least some of these curiosities are likely to be false positives (e.g., Northover et al. Reference Northover, Pedersen, Cohen and Andrews2017 on the Watching Eyes Effect). People's cognition and behavior is influenced by their cultural background (Nisbett et al. Reference Nisbett, Peng, Choi and Norenzayan2001), upbringing (Cherlin et al. Reference Cherlin, Furstenberg, Chase-Lansdale, Kiernan, Robins, Morrison and Teitler1991), personality type (Back et al. Reference Back, Schmukle and Egloff2009), mood state (Gardner Reference Gardner1985), hunger (Bushman et al. Reference Bushman, DeWall, Pond and Hanus2014), etc. In some cases, the actor would recognize these causes as reasons for her behavior; in many, however, she would not, and they would count as defeaters.
For instance, consider Reyna, whose decision to use reusable grocery bags at the store is causally influenced by the fact that she grew up in Portland, Oregon; that she is highly extroverted; and that she was raised by a hippie. (None of these factors makes all the difference, we may suppose, but they all contribute in the sense that hometown, personality type, and parental attitudes have a small but significant effect on reusable bag use.) Nevertheless, Reyna probably wouldn't say that being from Oregon, having an extroverted personality, or being the child of a hippie is a reason to use reusable bags. As Doris (Reference Doris2015b) puts it, these are “rationally and ethically arbitrary influences” on her behavior (p. 64).
But Doris is not a skeptic about human agency; indeed, he wants to save it in the face of apparent defeaters. A central task for a theory of agency, he claims, is to rule out the presence of defeaters in putative cases of agentive behavior (Doris Reference Doris2015b, p. 66). His valuational account of agency is supposed to accomplish this: “[W]hen we are justified in asserting that a person's conduct expresses her values, we are justified in ruling out the presence of defeaters, and are therefore justified in attributing an exercise of agency” (p. 159).
But this can't be right. Even when an action expresses the agent's values, it must still be influenced by a myriad of causes that she would not recognize as reasons, were she aware of them. For instance, Reyna's use of reusable bags expresses her liberal values, which are themselves influenced by the place of her upbringing, among many other rationally arbitrary causes. Doris is sensitive to the possible mediation of such causes by reflection and seems to restrict the notion of a defeater to unmediated influences. As he puts it early on in Talking to Our Selves, “Best to distinguish cases where happenstance engages rational capacities from cases where happenstance bypasses rational capacities. I've been worrying about cases of bypassing: influences that are not vetted by rational capacities.” And then: “It is these [bypassings] that must be ruled out . . . We do well to acknowledge that the origins of behavior are complex, and will often include any number of mediating factors” (Doris Reference Doris2015b, pp. 72–73). These remarks should be extended to value expression as well. The category of defeaters must not include rationally arbitrary influences that are mediated by an agent's values. But this restriction isn't enough: Even behavior that expresses individuals' values is likely to be influenced by rationally arbitrary causes that are not mediated by them. Even if Reyna is expressing her value for environmental stewardship, that doesn't mean her behavior isn't also influenced by her extroverted personality. Or, to use Doris's own example, you may vote for the first candidate on the ballot because it is an expression of your values and because you are susceptible to the Ballot Order Effect. (“Because” here just implies that the factor has a nonzero effect size with respect to the behavior in question.) Surely Doris does not deny that behavior, like pretty much everything else, is multiply determined.
In short, value expression is entirely compatible with the presence of so-called defeaters. The valuational account of agency should therefore only require that, in order for an agent to be morally responsible for an action, the action must express at least one of the agent's values. It may also reflect numerous arbitrary causal influences (mediated or unmediated) that the agent would not recognize as justificatory; but that is not enough to disqualify it as agentive.
This friendly amendment to Doris's valuational account of agency raises the question: Aren't the same moves available to the reflectivist? Doris characterizes reflectivism as the doctrine that “the exercise of human agency consists in judgment and behavior ordered by self-conscious reflection about what to think and do” (Doris Reference Doris2015b, p. 19). Its corollary, he claims, is the idea that “the exercise of human agency requires accurate reflection” (p. 19). Before discussing reflectivism further, let us note an ambiguity in Doris's characterization: The idea that human agency rests in some way upon our capacity for reflection is distinct from the claim that every individual instance of agentive behavior must be preceded by reflection. Doris takes the latter as his target, but we suspect that at least some of the authors he cites are only committed to the former. For the purpose of this Commentary, however, we'll go along with Doris in taking reflectivism to be the claim that reflection precedes every exercise of responsible agency.
It would seem that the reflectivist can adopt clarifications analogous to those that Doris's valuational account of agency requires. First, she can emphasize that many putative defeaters are in fact mediated by reflection, and so don't count as genuine defeaters. If Reyna's Oregonian childhood prompts her to reflect on the environmental consequences of her actions and thus to use reusable bags, her hometown would not be a true defeater. As noted above, Doris gestures at this response but seems to think it does not apply to his cases (Doris Reference Doris2015b, pp. 71–73). We suspect, however, that some of the empirical findings that he cites result from mediation of this kind. For instance, the Ballot Order Effect may be caused by voters reflecting for a diminishing amount of time on the accomplishments of each candidate as they scan down the ballot (Hogarth & Einhorn Reference Hogarth and Einhorn1992; Krosnick et al. Reference Krosnick, Miller, Tichy, Crigler, Just and McCaffery2004). If the effect arises because the order of names influences the amount of cognitive resources that voters devote to reflecting on each one, the result does not undermine reflectivism as Doris intends. Second, the reflectivist can argue that the exercise of agency requires only some “self-conscious reflection about what to think and do,” and that it is compatible with the presence of other rationally arbitrary influences on behavior (Doris Reference Doris2015b, p. 19). These two modifications exactly parallel the modifications to the valuational theory of agency proposed above.
We have little interest in reviving reflectivism, at least as Doris understands it. Rather, the point is this: presence or absence of rationally arbitrary influences on a behavior is orthogonal to the question of whether it constitutes an exercise of agency. Rationally arbitrary causes can be present simultaneously with reflection or with value expression. Thus, “defeaters” is in fact not a very appropriate name: Rationally arbitrary causes by themselves do not defeat responsible agency.
More importantly, once we recognize this point, it becomes clear that empirical research on defeaters per se is not what Doris needs to undermine reflectivism and support his valuational account of agency. Instead, Doris must show that some behaviors that are genuine exercises of agency do express a person's values without involving reflection. Let's call this task “the valuationist's challenge.” Doris has too little to say about the positive part of the challenge. After raising doubts about whether a diverse array of behaviors are agentive, he does not go on to show how those behaviors are expressive of people's values, and thus safe from the specter of skepticism. The negative part of the valuationist's challenge is to show that some presumed exercises of agency are brought about with no reflection at all. It is not sufficient to argue (as Doris convincingly does) that agents often fail to reflect on some of the causes of their behavior.
Meeting the valuationist's challenge, particularly its negative part, is likely to be difficult because the reflectivist can appeal to a conception of reflection that falls short of undertaking an episode of conscious practical reasoning in which various alternative courses of action are considered and one is deliberately selected. True, if that is the type of reflection reflectivists are committed to, then some genuinely agentive behaviors take place without reflection, but that battle isn't worth fighting: A few minutes of introspection reveal the shortcomings of reflectivism so understood. Perhaps reflection involves instead “bringing to mind ideas or images meant to have some rational relation to the topic being considered, in the service of reaching a conclusion about what to think or do” (Arpaly & Schroeder Reference Arpaly and Schroeder2012). Or perhaps it only requires paying attention to task-relevant cues and acting on that basis (Wu Reference Wu2014, Ch. 3). On these understandings of reflection, Doris's task would be to provide empirical evidence that no such ideas or images are brought to mind, or no attention is paid to any relevant cues, prior to some apparently agentive behavior. The vast social-psychology literature on rationally arbitrary influences on behavior is silent on these questions.
Even more minimally, a dominant tradition in the philosophy of action is based on the idea that the exercise of agency requires that one act for the sake of reasons (Anscombe Reference Anscombe1957; Raz Reference Raz1999). Recently several authors have argued that non-conscious processes may be “responsive to reasons qua reasons” and thus give rise to intentional or rational action even in the absence of deliberation (Railton Reference Railton, Sobel and Wall2009; see also Railton Reference Railton, Wallace, Pettit, Scheffler and Smith2006; Arpaly & Schroeder Reference Arpaly and Schroeder2012). To dispute this view, Doris would need to demonstrate a total absence of reason-responsiveness in some behavior we would want to call agentive. While Doris may respond, perhaps reasonably, that this minimalist account of agency is not reflectivist, and therefore not his target, this response would be less convincing for the views mentioned above.
The fulfillment of the valuationist's challenge requires a clearer understanding of what reflection is and the presentation of apparent exercises of agency without it. Demonstrating the presence of “defeaters” is not enough, because the ubiquity of non-mediated causal influences on behavior ought to be acknowledged by proponents of both reflectivist and valuational accounts of agency.