Justin Williams 1

Agentive Experience Existing within Second Nature

It is sometimes assumed that our experience is fully agentive. While an agent can be defined within many contexts popularly in sports, entertainment, and insurance we are concerned with the one that the majority of us take for granted. I feel as though I own my actions, thoughts, feelings, etc. While agency, being the initiator of those actions, thoughts, or feelings, is assumed in experience, how are we to be sure that we are fully agents, by definition, in our experience? In this paper, I will first explain the need of a McDowellian model to explain our agency. I will then explain how the idea of second nature can distort the line between agency and non-agency. Finally, I will quell the concern that we may not be agents to the full extent of the word in our experiences. John McDowell, in Mind and World1, was clearly concerned with the dissolution of the modern framework of philosophy which had been the spark of so much disagreement in the past. Bald naturalisms causality left us with the anxiety of being stuck on the rollercoaster of life with no choices but to see where the track led us. To use McDowells language: We lost all spontaneity in experience1. Coherentisms dependence on the rational judgment of experience left us with nothing to ground our experience in. How could we reach the object of our experience in such a case where we needed no reference to the object? Like a top in the vacuum of space, our experience was left frictionlessly spinning in the void1. McDowell solved this problem by taking it to be true that the faculty of spontaneity conceptualization is drawn upon in the moment of receptivity sense experience. 1 This left us with many possibilities as agents. At the time that an object comes to our attention, we have chosen which one of those beings. It could mistakenly be concluded that

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objects have no -ness about them. In this case, objects would be blank slates whose identities would be dependent upon the agents own judgments. However, this would leave us stuck in the sort of frictionless spinning that Coherentism left us in. The fact that an object exudes its [many] properties and its qualia so that the agent must take them all in means that at that time there must be active conceptualization of the object by the agent as something. The spontaneity that the agent has in the act of conceptualizing would make us believe that we are fully agentive in our experience. This may not be the case, however. For instance, we could see a stool as something that has many beings. When our feet are on it, we are recognizing its being as a footrest. When we sit on the stool, it is a chair. When we set a stack of books on it, we see its table-ness (or if we still dont think it is a table then at least we are conceptualizing the object as one with the ability to support a stack of books). I could keep going, but Im sure the point has been made. The agent makes the choice to bring into experience the chair-ness of the chair and to nihilate the other nesses of the object. The problem is that while the agent is free to choose how they want to see the object, their choices are still confined within a certain group, bound by a number of factors. One such factor is the physical properties of the object. When we see a paper cup, its properties lead us to believe that it could not be used to house a family (it is too small) or to sit on (it would crush under the weight of the normal human). It most likely cannot be used as a weapon either, for it is hardly an intimidating structure like a sharp and heavy sword is. Another factor that drives how we conceive of objects is second nature. This second nature is essentially a judgment about a judgment of objects. McDowell says on page 84 of Mind and World, Since ethical character includes dispositions of the practical intellect, part of what happens when character is formed is that the practical character acquires a determinate shape. 1 Forming these

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dispositions is like actively arranging (judging) those topics that make up out practical intellect, which are based upon rational judgment anyhow. This is where we get morality and ethics from. One such hesitation with a claim like this is that it would cause an infinite regress whereby judgments are constantly being judged in some more derived system of belief. This is both unapparent in experience, making it irrelevant, and unnecessary to expand upon in the context of this paper, but it is there. For our paper, it is most important to note where this second nature originates from. McDowell, in the quote below from 84 of Mind and World, notes that second nature cannot be completely transcendent: This should defuse the fear of supernaturalism. Second nature could not float free of potentialities that belong to a normal human organism. This gives human reason enough of a foothold in the realm of law to satisfy any proper respect for modern natural science.1 What McDowell says is that second nature must be grounded in the realm of laws, but it cannot exist within disenchanted nature because its judgments are formed on judgments that were themselves formed within the realm of reason. Taking all of this in, we get second nature, which forms, as the layman might say, our culture. Individually, it is the ability to form judgments on many topics such as whether one way to hold a pencil is better verses another. When a group of these individuals get together, we get society that builds a culture. This culture agrees upon societal norms, analogously (possibly homologously) to how an individual agrees with themselves upon norms. This capacity for second nature, which assumes the capacity to recognize and conceptualize societal norms and individual norms, puts another set of restraints upon our spontaneity.

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If it is not already apparent, we are building a pretty thick filter through which the many beings of an object have to pass through before the agents faculty of spontaneity can actively choose which one to accept. While spontaneity is still active in the moment of receptivity, the gross of possibilities that are received are thinned down to a net which is much smaller than the baseline. This is where our pressing question arises. If we are bound by cultural and societal norms, are we truly agents in our experience? When I walk down the street there are numbers of invisible strings telling me what to do and what not to do. Jean-Paul Sartre would turn in his grave if I did not agree that we certainly have the freedom to go against these norms. I can of course choose to not write this paper and accept an F. I could simply doodle on the paper, or I could even choose to plagiarize this paper using the many online resources. Thankfully though for my grades, I am driven by society to see these things as wrong to do in this circumstance. I want to be an upstanding and educated man and doing any of these things would not portray me as such. That is why I choose to turn in a paper covered in printer ink, free of doodles, and completely original. The case of the rebellious lover of the counter culture, who goes against the set of norms set up by society, is also one bound by these norms. They choose to do what is not normal. It is easy to see that no matter the example given, agents are driven by some sort of norms or by a belief system whose parameters the agents choose to act within but also MUST act within. So, how can we fully be agents if we are always bound by this system? If there is some sort of causal framework that our spontaneity acts within, is our experience truly as an agent or as something else? Maybe as a sentient being that is aware of some choices but is ultimately destined on certain paths? It is easy to fall into this trap because of the dire consequences of this

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sort of conclusion. What (or who) decides the path that I was chosen to be on? Why was I chosen to be on this path? However, be not afraid, for in asking these pressing questions, you have answered your own questions. If we look back to building blocks of these torments, we come to how second nature forms the individual (one with a concept of I). The capacity for second nature does not mean that the agent does not choose which culture to pick (even if it is a counter culture). The agent must pick to be a traditionalist, a rebel, or a mix. Even in the case of the mix, the agent would be rebellious in certain situations and a traditionalist in others. If we reduce culture to the individual, the individual will have their own set of laws and rules that they apply to the culture they want to exist in. To be one agent, not one human, one must act logically in the space of reason/nature. To act illogically would be to act as multiple agents. In cases such as schizophrenia, manic-depressive, and bipolar disorders, these humans will have different agentive experiences at different times. Second nature does not blur the sense of agency in experience. It allows for the possibility of agency because it permits one to make judgments and rules. Agency, therefore, is dependent upon second nature. It is important to note where this paper may fall short in explanation. It is for particular reasons that it does so. The focus of this paper was to figure agency into McDowells model of conceptualization in experience. How does one decide on concepts? McDowells focus himself is more about dissolving an old framework and developing a new framework for justifying knowledge. Now that we have confirmed full agency (one grounded in nature) in our experience, McDowells new framework will be even more satisfying. We can say I have knowledge, and truly feel ownership of that knowledge.

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References:
1. McDowell, John. Mind and World. 1sr. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1996. 67-86. Print