Lieke Asma

This paper challenges the dualism between individualist and structuralist accounts of discrimination by offering a Hegelian analysis of bias as habit. It argues that a division between individual and structural factors obscures the deeply interdependent nature of individual agency and structural context. Drawing on Hegel’s philosophy – especially his conceptions of habit (Gewohnheit), ethical life (Sittlichkeit), and practical freedom – we develop a framework in which biases understood as habits are not merely individual mental states but embodied and embedded enactments of social norms. Habits, we argue, are both expressive of individual agency and constitutive of the structures within which that agency unfolds. This reconceptualization allows us to understand discriminatory behavior not as unconscious belief or isolated action, but as a habitual way of acting that fits seamlessly within unjust social structures – and thus often remains unnoticed or perceived as unproblematic by the acting agent. In this light, implicit bias is less about internal mental states and more about the implicit reproduction of structural inequality through habitual action. This Hegelian perspective reframes the discussion on bias interventions and social change: it highlights the need to attend to how individuals inhabit social norms and structures.

This chapter examines suicidality and suicidal ambivalence through the lens of situated cognition. It examines how contextual factors can actively influence and shape the decision-making process and behavior of a person in the context of suicide, by focusing on the impact of means restriction and the role of other people in prevention of suicide in public spaces. The chapter argues that rethinking suicidality from the perspective of situated cognition offers valuable insights for our understanding of suicidality and suicidal ambivalence, as it is well placed to address both the physical and the social context of the suicidal person. We apply the relational concept of affordances, and introduce the concept of “suicidal affordances”, to show how specific material and socio-cultural environments offer possibilities for dying by suicide, to which the agent might be responsive. Our situated perspective offers a new look on suicidal agency, decision-making processes and the desire to end one’s life, as already situated and actively shaped by the environment and its affordances. The chapter thereby inspires rethinking currently prevailing approaches to suicidal ambivalence and decision-making that are focused on individual and interpersonal factors, accounting for the effectiveness of environmental interventions, and opening new avenues for research.

One of the central aims of suicide research is trying to understand why people decide to end their lives and to identify the persons particularly at risk of doing so. Since suicide is by definition intentional, it is important to investigate the reasons persons have for suicide. But what is exactly involved in understanding a person’s reasons? Is it similar to uncovering causal influences, or is acting for reasons of a substantially different nature? This chapter has two aims. First, the nature of acting for reasons is examined and applied to provide insight into three central characteristics of suicide: its unpredictability, fluctuations in wish to die versus wish to live, and ambivalence. Second, an alternative perspective on the importance of understanding suicide is proposed, in which the central focus is not on predicting suicide, but on how understanding itself, most importantly a person’s self-understanding, can play a role in preventing suicide. This insight is of crucial importance, because there is reason to think that suicidal ideation hampers the process of self- understanding, because of which ambivalent persons run the risk of becoming more suicidal rather than less.

A substantial amount of research demonstrates that we sometimes discriminate against members of certain social groups, even in the absence of an intention to do so. One possible remedy to this kind of discrimination may be empathy. Perhaps, if we better understand what other people feel and think, and cultivate empathic feelings like sympathy and compassion, we will be less implicitly biased against them. In this paper, we critically reflect on the studies that have investigated this relationship. We argue that in order to establish whether empathy really helps to overcome implicit bias, critical questions about the conceptualization, operationalization, and measurement of empathy and implicit bias need to be addressed first. In the second part of the paper, we reflect on the character of implicit bias and the role empathy may play in diminishing it, and argue that the relationship between empathy and implicit bias is not straightforward.

Implicit bias involves unintentionally disadvantaging persons in virtue of their membership of a certain social group. It is not completely clear, however, why agents sometimes are conscious of unintentionally discriminating, while in other scenarios they are not. Typically, this is explained in terms of characteristics of the individual agent, for example whether they are motivated or have the cognitive resources to reflect on their initial evaluation. In the paper, I argue that we need to consider characteristics of the decision-making situation as well, and not just the time an agent has for making up their mind. In certain contexts, I argue, agents are more prone to unintentionally discriminate without realizing it, because they take their decision to be fair, i.e., not based on facts that involve disadvantaging a member of a certain social group. Moreover, the context makes it so that agents are less likely to receive feedback that they made a mistake. I explain this in terms of (1) misattribution: the agent attributing their evaluation to the wrong source and (2) rationalization: the agent being able to rationalize their decision as non-discriminatory.

Waarom je denkt objectief en rechtvaardig te zijn, maar dat toch niet bent. We kunnen mensen onrechtvaardig behandelen zonder het te willen, en zelfs zonder het op te merken. Onbewust en ongewild maken we onderscheid tussen personen op basis van hun gender, etniciteit, leeftijd, lichaamsgewicht of seksuele oriëntatie. Hoe kan het dat ons zelfbeeld zo afwijkt van ons gedrag? Het antwoord lijkt helder: in het onbewuste liggen vooroordelen opgeslagen, die ongemerkt onze gedachten, gevoelens en beslissingen beïnvloeden. Maar is dat wel de juiste manier om over deze problematiek na te denken? Is het wel behulpzaam om de blik naar binnen te richten? Filosoof en psycholoog Lieke Asma pleit voor een radicaal ander perspectief. Om oog te krijgen voor onze blinde vlekken, moeten we de aandacht juist verplaatsen naar de wereld buiten ons. Alleen door te kijken naar patronen in gedrag, keuzes en reacties, en door te luisteren naar ervaringen van anderen kunnen we discriminatie herkennen en voorkomen.

In this paper, I argue that instead of primarily paying attention to the nature of implicit attitudes that are taken to cause implicit discrimination, we should investigate how discrimination can be implicit in itself. I propose to characterize implicit discrimination as unintentional discrimination: the person responds to facts unintentionally and often unconsciously which are, given their end, irrelevant and imply unfair treatment. The result is a unified account of implicit bias that allows for the different ways in which it can display itself and can be explained. Furthermore, the view can account for the central characteristics of implicit bias: (1) that it is, for a variety of reasons, difficult to control, (2) that we are not necessarily unconscious of implicit bias but not properly conscious either, and (3) that we can unintentionally discriminate regardless of whether we claim to care about fairness.

This special section is the outcome of a conference organized in Würzburg, as part of the interdisciplinary research project Motivational and Volitional Processes of Human Integration: Philosophical and Psychological Approaches to Human Flourishing (2018–2021). The goal of the project was to connect (philosophical) perspectives on flourishing to empirical research that suggests that implicit motives play an important role in who we are and what we do and decide. One main aim was to find a middle ground between two extremes that conceptualize implicit motives either as recalcitrant states that hamper flourishing, or as reflecting who we really are, much more than our explicit motives. We propose that both implicit and explicit motives are crucial to flourishing. The articles in this special section bring up other important questions as well. First of all, what is the role of the external world? It seems to be crucial for being a self, but it may also hamper flourishing. And second, how should the relationship between the self as basic subjectivity, and the self with certain values, desires, and intentions be understood?

Surprisingly little attention has been paid to the nature of conscious control. As a result, experiments suggesting that we lack conscious control over our actions cannot be properly evaluated. Joshua Shepherd (2015; 2021) aims to fill this gap. His proposal is grounded in the standard causalist account of action, according to which, simply put, bodily movements are controlled by the agent if and only if they are caused, in the right way, by the relevant psychological states. In this paper, I argue that the proposal does not succeed in distinguishing between mere causation and actual control; it does not solve the problem of deviant causation. On the basis of my criticism, Anscombean action theory promises to offer a valuable perspective. It suggests that an important function of consciousness is to integrate an action into a rational whole. If this is on the right track, it supports Shepherd’s overall claim that the importance of consciousness for action control is often underestimated, because this contribution of consciousness may often go unnoticed in experimental settings.

Reflection on the relationship between free will and consciousness has mainly revolved around Libet-style experiments, for example by criticizing the claim that conscious intentions never cause what we do. Less attention has been paid to whether this response captures the sense in which consciousness is relevant for free will, however. In this paper I argue that scholars seem to accept two assumptions they should reject: (1) that the relationship between free will and consciousness is best characterized in terms of conscious states and/or processes being part of the causal chain leading up to the action, and (2) that the third-person perspective is a suitable means to capturing the relationship between free will and consciousness. I provide an alternative proposal of how free will and consciousness may be related, in which an agent’s self-understanding of what she is doing and why, while acting, takes center stage. In order to capture the relationship between the two, I argue, the first-person perspective should be investigated instead of explained away.

Vrije wil is een raadselachtig fenomeen. Wij mensen hebben de indruk dat we zelf keuzes maken, maar de wetenschap vertelt een heel ander verhaal: onze handelingen zijn slechts het resultaat van onze persoonlijke eigenschappen, onbewuste associaties en hersenprocessen. Ons bewuste zelf is niets meer dan een passieve toeschouwer. Het is dan ook niet verrassend dat wetenschappelijk onderzoek vaak uitmondt in determinisme of ‘willusionisme’. Maar wat is vrije wil eigenlijk? En wat betekent het om zelf te kiezen? In Mijn intenties en ik verkent Lieke Asma vrije wil en legt ze nauwgezet uit hoe we over de vrijheid van onze eigen keuzes en handelingen moeten nadenken. Wat blijkt? Filosofisch onderzoek en het in ogenschouw nemen van het perspectief van de handelende persoon zijn essentieel voor een goed begrip van vrije wil.

David McClelland’s research on the different kinds of (implicit) motives and how to measure them has a substantial influence on contemporary psychology of motivation. He did not, however, reflect on the nature of implicit motives in much detail. In this paper I fill this gap. I argue that implicit motives should not be understood as mental states the agent has no introspective access to. Instead, I propose that the implicit motives that McClelland and others in the field distinguish – the power, achievement, and affiliation motive – are generic descriptions of specific ends an agent may act for. These motives are implicit, because they are not explicitly expressed but merely implied in what the agent does, thinks, and feels. Establishing whether an agent acts for or has a certain implicit motive, then, is a matter of interpreting the agent’s expressions. This proposal is in line with and explains the empirical findings.

How can agents act virtuously out of habit? Virtuous actions are done for the right reasons, and acting for (right) reasons seems to involve deliberation. Yet, deliberation is absent if an agent’s action is habitual. That implies that the relationship between reasons and actions should be characterized in such a way that deliberation is unnecessary. In this paper, I examine three possible solutions: radical externalism, unconscious psychologism, and unconscious factualism. I argue that these proposals all fail to cast reasons in their proper role. In light of that, I propose an alternative view of how to account for habitual virtuous actions, based on the work of G. E. M. Anscombe. I maintain that if we focus on the inherently rational structure of actions, the tension between acting habitually and acting for the right reason dissolves.

Theories based on Frankfurt’s (Am Philos Q 15(2):157–162, 1978) view of action have recently been developed to account for passive, automatic, and habitual actions. What these theories share is that they aim to distinguish between actions and mere bodily movements without appealing to psychological states as causes. Instead, agents have guidance control over their actions. In this paper I argue that the versions of the theory that have been proposed are problematic. I propose to pay attention to Frankfurt’s other claim instead: that actions and mere bodily movements are inherently different. I argue that Anscombe’s approach to action does take this inherent distinction seriously, and is able to account for passive, automatic, and habitual actions.

Neuroscience and the Illusion of Free WillCurrently, few neuroscientists and philosophers still defend the claim that neuroscience has shown the brain ‘decides’ what we do and that free will is an illusion. This does not imply, however, that this kind of neuroscientific researchcould notsay anything about the existence of free will. Neuroscience can offer insights in the unconscious causes and underlying processes of our actions and, because of this, could perhaps show whether we act out of free will or not. In this paper I will argue that in this regard the possibilities of neuroscientific research are limited. I understand free will, in line with Dana Nelkin and Susan Wolf, as the ability to do the right thing for the right reasons. I will show that whether someone acts intentionally, what it is that she is doing, and for which reasons she acts cannot be determined by studying unconscious causes or other unconscious processes related to the action. The action and reason necessarily depend on the perspective of the acting agent. Furthermore, neuroscientific research cannot show us whether the reasons and the actions areright. It could perhaps offer a unique contribution when it comes to the question of whether we areableto the right thing for the right reasons. To what extent it can remains an open question.

In this paper, I analyse how neuroscientists come to the conclusion that the brain 'decides' what we will do. I do so by focusing on a recent study on free won't, from which it is concluded that the decision to veto is not free. First, I argue that assumptions about voluntariness and freedom that underlie this and other Libet-style experiments are more stringent than assumed by other critics. Second, I claim that these assumptions lead to an experimental setting in which the conclusion that the brain 'decides' is almost unavoidable. This is because the only decisions subjects are allowed to make in these experiments are spontaneous decisions that are not based on reasons. Even if the subjects acted for reasons or deliberated about what to do it would not be interpreted as such. Because of this, alternative definitions of voluntariness and freedom are necessary for neuroscientific experiments to provide a valuable contribution to the debate on free will.