Agentive Phenomenology and the Space of Epistemic Reasons
Matjaž Potrč

The rich and multi-faceted phenomenal character of agentive experience encompasses not only the phenomenology of voluntary agency—which normally accompanies phenomena like intention formation and overt behavior—but also the phenomenology of involuntary agency. Belief formation is a case in point. Although belief formation is an involuntary phenomenon, nevertheless normally it is experienced not passively—not as a state-causal mental process occurring within oneself—but rather as an active (albeit involuntary) exercise of one’s rational agency: one experiences oneself appreciating the evidential force of pertinent reasons (qua reasons), and one experiences oneself actively (albeit involuntary) adopting the belief because of one’s appreciation of the evidential force of those reasons. Although reasons appreciation and subsequent belief formation presumably are phenomena that take place within what Wilfrid Sellars called “the space of causes,” they are not experienced that way; rather, they are experienced as taking place agentively (although not voluntarily) within what Sellars called “the space of reasons.” (Although the “becausal” connection linking one’s reasons appreciation to one’s belief formation may well be a state-causal connection, it is not experienced as one; instead it is experienced as a rationally compelling “evidential pull,” rather than as a “state-causal push.”) In this paper we urge the extreme introspective plausibility of these phenomenological claims, and we explore some potential implications for philosophy of mind and for epistemology.

Phenomenology of agentive experience
The rich and multi-faceted phenomenal character of agentive experience encompasses not only the phenomenology of voluntary agency—which normally accompanies phenomena like intention formation and overt behavior—but also the phenomenology of involuntary agency. 
	If I walk and somebody pushes me in such a manner that I bump into an old lady which then falls and breaks her leg, I am not responsible, for my contribution to the story was just causal. I did not form any intention for the activity into which I happened to be causally involved. The responsible guy is the one who pushed me, for he has formed the intention. This is a case of causal interaction into which I happen to be involved, without that I would figure as the agent in that situation, either in a voluntary or in an involuntary manner.
	There seems to be a fine line between cases of one’s just causal and agentive involvement. But there seems to be gradation in cases involving involuntary and voluntary agency. One may presume that real voluntary agency involves explicit formation of intentions. While involuntary agency, all in still being an agency of mine, does not involve my intentions in an explicit manner, and here a gradation of less to more explicit intention cases is on offer.
People do things, all the time. Here are some of my actions. In the morning I wake up, wash myself and dress, and then I eat breakfast. Later on I just read a book, or again I plan my activities as related to my schedule. Sometimes I have to think about whether I should engage in some activity, and how I should exercise it. At other times I just indulge into reading a book, or simply await what is going to happen and then go along with the stream that takes me with it. These are agentive experiences of mine. 
There is phenomenal character of agentive experience. Phenomenology is the qualitative what-it’s-like experiential feel. Phenomenology is often portrayed as accompanying the experience, but it may actually be whatever constitutes intentional and other kinds of experience. Voluntary agency has a certain qualitative feel to it which characterizes it as the free agency into which I indulge. Basically, I experience myself as the source of that agency. In the case as I form intention towards exercising some action this seems to go along with it. 
	But many of the activities into which I engage are not really preceded by my forming explicit intention in their direction, and may not be characterized as my premeditated overt behavior. This is where I rather follow the outcome of forces in an ongoing dynamical space of reasons. These still are my activities all right, and I am responsible for them, deserving praise or blame in their respect. A case in point may be described as follows. In the morning I am headed to my office with clear intention that I have to finish writing a paper for which the looming deadline is approaching. On my way to office I encounter a student and noticing him before he notices me, my first reaction is to avoid our encounter, the reasons being that first, our coming together would disrupt my original intention to write the paper for which the deadline is looming, and the second reason being that the student did not really actively participate in lectures during the previous semester. But on the other hand I also realize that I have -- although not decisively -- promised to help with his rehearsing the subject matter which is important because of tomorrow’s exam. Now, this exam may decide the student’s career, and here I have reasons to help him. In respect to the original intention about my activities I may say that now, as I decided to approach the student and help him with the exam preparation, my actual activity is involuntary. But perhaps it is voluntary again, in the sense that I have formed a new intention what to engage into, in the manner as I have just described it. There is certainly phenomenology that goes along with altered intentionality of my action. On the one hand this action of mine may be described as involuntary -- in respect to my first original intention -- or again as voluntary, in respect to my newly formed intention, appearing after several reasons or forces in my experiential space have pushed me into this direction. 
	There is rich and multi-faceted phenomenal character of agentive experience. Several forces, involving reasons that sometimes end up in my exercising voluntary agency, and sometimes involuntary agency, are in the hopper. Often it is difficult to find out what exactly is the reason for my decision to engage into my action in some way and not in another, or if there is some reason behind my activity at all. The discussed cases though will have a variable phenomenology of agency, which will succeed perhaps more like a stream and not in the form of atomic decision cases. The border between voluntary and involuntary actions many times seems to be blurred. Experiential phenomenology follows suit.
My various activities that I exercise while driving, such as turning the wheel of the car slightly towards left and then towards right, proceed reflexively and automatically. In fact, being able to do those things automatically and without thinking, without any explicit forming of intention is what makes me a good and skilfull driver. Yet I would not just be legally responsible for these automatically forthcoming activities of mine if something went wrong in the traffic flow, but I would also myself feel responsible about exercising what I would judge to be my wrong automatically succeeding moves. I can say that I exercise these automatic activities involuntarily, in the sense that I do not form explicit intention for each of these exactly how they should come about. Yet on the other hand I certainly do not experience these activities of mine passively. I am not responsible for the action where I was merely causally involved into what happened. This is however not the case with activities that are involved into my driving from place A to place B, for which I feel responsible despite that they are automatically exercised. I experience them as my activities, although they are not performed by myself in an explicit voluntary manner. The activity of mine to drive from place A to place B may be described as being a causal interaction of forces, and causality would not portray it as my activity. It would be rather an objective kind of interaction of forces in causal space. And yet I experience it as being my activity. I do not experience it as something that succeeds passively  -- as a causal process that pushes me along by the forces that are proper to it -- but as a process into which I engage along a kind of evidential basis. Turning a little bit too much left in a situation like this would be potentially dangerous for participants in the traffic. I can experience that it would be wrong, and also what kind of my automatic reaction to the situation, on the other hand, would be the right one. I can feel that the mentioned evidence guides me towards some reasons, which are not there in an explicit manner, but which illuminate the situation, providing to me the evidential feel that counters the situation being experienced as involuntary. 
There is difference between voluntary and involuntary action. The first one is keyed to intentional formation and decisions, along with overt behavior that goes along with it. It has causal proceedings in the world as its underlying matter, which do not really enter into the real basic characterization of action. Involuntary action seems to be closer to causal matters, as it does not involve any explicit intention formation and no overt behavior following it. Yet it is still experienced as one’s own action. Phenomenology of voluntary action involves my reasons to act in an explicit manner. Whereas phenomenology of involuntary action just involves reasons to act from the background which evidentially illuminates the situation.  

Belief formation
Belief formation is a case in point. Although belief formation is an involuntary phenomenon, nevertheless normally it is experienced not passively—not as a state-causal mental process occurring within oneself—but rather as an active (albeit involuntary) exercise of one’s rational agency: one experiences oneself appreciating the evidential force of pertinent reasons (qua reasons), and one experiences oneself actively (albeit involuntary) adopting the belief because of one’s appreciation of the evidential force of those reasons.
How do I form beliefs? If there is a cat in front of myself, I form a belief which I may express “A cat is sitting there” or “Lo, a cat”. In this case my belief is formed upon the basis of causal encounter of myself and the cat in question. Even more, the belief is true, as it seems, precisely in the case where there exists a causal connection underlying it. If I look at the cat and form a belief that there is rabbit there, something still caused my belief, namely the cat, but the belief is not true. Beliefs are not just the outcome of causal powers and relations. It may happen that I was raised in a community where there weren’t any cats, but an abundance of rabbits. In such a case it would become plausible to some extent that I have formed the belief that there is a rabbit where there really was a cat causally triggering my belief. But it seems now obvious that just causal relation does not suffice for formation of beliefs. Some rational ingredient is needed. I need to have characterizations of a cat in the background in order that I can recognize something as a cat. One may say that I need to have cat-properties somehow encoded into my cognitive background in order to be able to recognize something as a cat. The information that is accumulated in my cognitive background and allows me to recognize something that I encounter causally in my environment as a cat, may be characterized as properties ranging something as belonging to the cat category, or perhaps as principles or reasons underlying cat recognition.
 	Typical cases of belief formation, as we have glanced at them, may be portrayed as matters of causal interaction between the external data and my cognitive gathering of these and storing them. Yet we have also seen that just the causal connection, although necessary for typical cases -- perhaps not for all of these -- is far from being sufficient. Categorization ability is needed, and this one belongs to the rationalist part of belief formation reposing upon reasons. 
	Observed from the agency angle, belief formation is involuntary phenomenon, in respect to the external information that one encounters, and which is causally responsible for forming of belief. But the very fact that beliefs need cognitive background categorization support of reasons or principles which enable recognizing something as a cat, makes it plausible that the belief formation is as well experienced as an active exercise of one’s rational agency. This has its impact upon the justificatory role of belief, so that epistemic justification of belief is a mixed variable enterprise of reliabilist and evidential elements. As we recognize an item as a cat, forming the corresponding belief, there is evidential pull coming from categorizing reasons that enable this, and there is also causal precondition for belief formation, which is more adapt to reliabilist form of epistemic justification as forthcoming along the process of belief formation. 
	The rational background of reasons which are waiting in cognitive hopper enabling categorization of the encountered item, or other cases of forming belief, pushes one to appreciate the evidential force of reasons which enter the process of categorization and belief formation.
As one forms beliefs, one experiences this as happening without one’s explicit voluntary contribution. In typical cases my belief that the cat is sitting over there is formed by my encounter of that cat, and so the causal contribution of that fact is what matters here, and not my wish that the cat would be over there, despite that it isn’t. There is a strong feeling that one’s beliefs do not depend upon one’s desires and whims, and that forming beliefs upon such a basis may end up in delusion. One cannot really and confidently believe what one would like to believe. Despite that beliefs have other sources too, causal contribution of external information may be seen as a natural basis of belief formation. 
	Typical cases of beliefs have thus sources that are independent from us. But still we form beliefs as our own beliefs. And once we have some beliefs we are not easily ready to ditch them. This is patent in various forms of disagreements into which we engage, such as the ones concerning our political opinions and our views in philosophy. In fact, one may think that it is even morally required that in disputes of the mentioned kind one sticks to one’s beliefs which one has formed in good faith, and not to reconcile in a lighthearted manner. (Potrč’s Principle, see Horgan and Potrč Forthcoming) Once as one acquires a belief, one treats it as a kind of one’s own possession or property: it is not easy to get rid of it and there is persistence tendency at work in having a belief.
Where does this persistence of belief come from? The answer is that not just causal links, but also rational background abilities which we may call reasons are involved into belief formation. The belief that the cat is on the mat cannot be formed by a rock, despite that rock stands in causal relation to the concerned scene. Rock, namely, has no cognitive background that I possess and that allowed me to form belief. Everything which sits in my background cognition is in principle available for me as I form belief. The pertinent matter includes first of all whatever allows me to categorize causally encountered item as a cat. These are cat properties such as having fur and whiskers and being of a certain shape, meowing. These category supporting properties may be characterized as reasons which are there in my cognitive background which allow me to categorize causally encountered item as a cat. Categorization and recognition succeed in an automatic manner.
So on the one hand beliefs are formed upon a causal basis, as is the case with perceptual beliefs. But on the other hand beliefs also involve cognizer’s background stored information, featuring properties that enter into certain categories. These properties or reasons are part of rationality which enters into belief formation. Because of these basic rationalistic ingredients that enter into belief formation, so that our stored background knowledge is active in it, it is not experienced just as involuntary, which would follow from causal links that are involved into it. Despite that belief formation is experienced as involuntary, it is as well experienced as a part of our agency, given that it leans upon our rational abilities. This is reflected in phenomenology of producing and entertaining beliefs. On the one hand beliefs are experienced as being independent of our will. But on the other hand beliefs are phenomenologically also experienced as being part of our experience, given that our rational contribution is involved into them.

Epistemic matters
Reasons, properties or principles that are involved into belief formation are epistemic. Beliefs are part of an account of knowledge. In relation to belief formation and the ensuing justification, we use phenomenological considerations that pull into direction of evidentialism. More specifically we introduce agentive phenomenology. This leads towards distinction of involuntary and of voluntary kinds of agency, which further on may be applied to involuntary and voluntary species of belief formation. Notice that both involuntary and voluntary moves are experienced as agentive. The middle term providing bridge between phenomenology of agency and phenomenology proper to belief formation are reasons. We deal with space of reasons. Given that reasons and their mode of effectivity were not really appreciated in several areas, phenomenology also failed to be of importance. Here is a couple of broadly accepted assumptions that we challenge:

	(R) Reasons cannot be accorded constitutive role in epistemic matters.

	(D) The eventual reasons’ effectivity in epistemic matters may only be direct.

According to the understanding of knowledge as justified true belief, epistemic matters involve justification, truth and belief. Take the sentence

(C) The cat is on the mat.

Under which circumstances can I have attributed knowledge in respect to (C)? 
First, (C) needs to be true. Truth can be construed as direct correspondence, which means that there has to be a cat and a mat in the world, so that the first one is positioned upon the second one and not the other way round. If the sentence (C) corresponds to such a worldly situation, then it is true. Notice that if truth cannot be attributed to (C), then neither can one know that (C). So truth is a necessary condition for knowledge. Notice that (R), i.e. reasons or other normative stuff does not really exercise any substantial contribution in the just given direct correspondence account of truth. Also, the just mentioned account is direct and therefore in accordance with the assumption (D), although it even does not explicitly involve reasons.
We propose construal of truth as indirect correspondence, which counters both (R) and (D). According to our view, truth may thus well be construed as correspondence, but not as a direct and rather as an indirect one. Truth can be construed as direct correspondence in the case where there are entities such as cat and mat in the ultimate ontology. Given that all such supposed entities are of vague nature, we conclude that these entities cannot inhabit the realm of ultimate ontology. Just the world as a monistic entity is capable of this. (Horgan Potrč 2008). So, if we utter (C), then one refers to the world in a direct manner, but  to cats and mats only in an indirect manner. Now, normativity comes into picture by truth construed as indirect correspondence, especially given that it is introduced by contextual account. Truth as indirect correspondence goes against both assumptions (D) and (R), so that normativity provides reasons through contextually variable parameters.
	Let us consider belief now as the second standard constituent of an account of knowledge. If a sentence is true, namely, no knowledge needs to follow. A psychological link of some kind to the sentence is needed, and this one usually goes under the name of belief. Given that this is a psychological connection to the sentence such as (C) in our case, there does not seem to exist any constitutive normative support in this matter, or support of reasons. This goes along with the assumption (R), and further it is enhanced by the usual construal of justification, as we will point out in a moment. Belief is namely understood, along assumption (R), to be supported and construed by some objective link to the represented reality, such as causal one, to which it just adds  a kind of representative psychological cap. Following to some extent assumption (D), the psychological assessment of (C) may only be direct. 
	Justification as the third ingredient of knowledge succeeds through one’s direct psychological contact with causal encounter, subscribing thus to assumptions (D) and (R). If causal relation is primary, then normativity or reasons will not be accorded a central role. 
	But now consider a possible subversion of both (R) and (D) along the already hinted lines. In order to have a belief, one needs to be able to categorize. But if this is the case, the causally encountered item needs to be normatively assessed if it is to figure in belief. Capability of categorization is namely close to the information about items, coming in form of reasons or categorization principles that the cognizer possesses in her overall memory. So something like properties or reasons will be needed to form belief and having justification for it, countering (R). And this information will need to be active in an indirect manner, countering (D). 
	We have argued in favor of transglobal reliabilist evidentialism (Henderson, Horgan and Potrč 2007). Evidence is a direct psychological link, but if reasons are involved, then (R) is countered first, and these categorization enabling reasons being a part of the cognizer’s background knowledge, the information involving reasons indirectly illuminates the (possibly) causally encountered scene. So (D) is countered as well. The transglobal ingredient puts discussion into the experiential world, accentuating the phenomenological angle.
	The assumption (R), or the refusal to recognize constitutive role of reasons, i.e. rational elements in several areas, such as belief formation, perception is due to the largely externalist and possibly causally underscored stories of perception, belief formation and for similar areas.  Agency, and especially phenomenology of agency, shows that this is mistaken. Narrow or BIV (brain in a vat) rendering of these areas may be of help here in order to tackle their real nature.
	The assumption (D) allows just a direct and explicit kind of reasons effectivity, if it is recognized at all. Against this, the background nature of reasons should be acknowledged. What is the effectivity of reasons like? Effectivity of reasons comes from the background, in an indirect manner; they chromatically illuminate the encountered scene.
	
The space of reasons
Although reasons appreciation and subsequent belief formation presumably are phenomena that take place within what Wilfrid Sellars called “the space of causes,” they are not experienced that way; rather, they are experienced as taking place agentively (although not voluntarily) within what Sellars called “the space of reasons.” (Although the “becausal” connection linking one’s reasons appreciation to one’s belief formation may well be a state-causal connection, it is not experienced as one; instead it is experienced as a rationally compelling “evidential pull,” rather than as a “state-causal push.”) 
A typical case of belief formation, we have said, involves causal interaction, such as it comes on stage in beliefs that are formed upon the perceptual basis. Causal encounters of a perceptual kind may also be typically responsible for the very formation of properties or reasons which enter into belief formation. These properties or reasons are then active in categories based recognition of an item and the subsequent belief formation. The very fact that this kind of rational categorization background is involved into belief formation is the basis for the agentive feel of belief formation. Beliefs are not experienced as succeeding in a voluntary manner, and yet they are experienced as inhabiting agentive space. Belief formation may be happening as underpinned by the space of causes, which deliver to it the basic perceptual and also properties and categorization ability involving matters. But belief formation is not experienced as happening in the space of causes, but rather in the space of reasons, in an agentive -- although not voluntary -- manner. The “becausal” connection which links one’s appreciation of reasons to one’s belief formation may well be a state-causal connection. But it is not experienced as state-causal connection. As I encounter the cat in what I may call a causal space that gives the basis for my belief formation hat (C), I do not experience this as a case of causal connection. To the contrary, there is the “evidential pull” available from the properties or reasons-involving categorization ability for cats which allow that item’s recognition. I certainly do not experience belief formation as I encounter the cat as a “state-causal push”. Rather, I experience it as an evidential pull, which shows that there are reasons involved into the interaction, and that belief formation of mine is then experienced as my activity. 

Philosophy of mind and epistemology illuminated by phenomenological data 
In this paper we urge the extreme introspective plausibility of these phenomenological claims, and we will explore some potential implications for philosophy of mind and for epistemology.
Phenomenological claims which provide the evidential reasons supported categorization in belief formation are introspectively extremely plausible. In such cases you do not experience belief formation to be an outcome of a causal push, but rather to be aftermath of an evidential space of reasons supported pull. 
	The lessons for philosophy of mind that one can get from here go into direction of the appreciation of the background, evidentially supported basis for belief formation. This goes against the assumption (D). It goes along with the role of morphological content in belief formation, and with the reasons’ part in it. Properties or reasons, we say, chromatically illuminate the causally available scene and lead in this manner to belief formation.
The lessons for epistemology go into direction of evidentialist pull that is available in belief formation. This accords well with countering of assumption (R), and recognizing the space of epistemic reasons along the agentive phenomenology lines as involved into belief formation.

References
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