I am trying to overcome David Widerker's objection to Derk Pereboom's account of rational deliberation. I include both Pereboom's account and Widerker's objection as a reminder/introduction at the end of this post.
In doing this, I began by defining deliberation.
Deliberation: An active mental process whose aim is to figure out from among a number of distinct, i.e., mutually incompatible, alternatives, what would be best for one to do.
It occurred to me that I should first figure out what is meant by "agent", i.e., the entity capable of sustaining an active mental process; It would be silly to talk about what the "machine" is doing before figuring out what the "machine" even is. I came to the following description:
The human mind is essentially a meat-computer running a program. Upon being presented with a number of distinct alternative actions, this computer enters a deliberative subroutine. While in this subroutine, the computer will access its stored memory, searching for reasons to or not to choose one or another alternative. After some time in this subroutine, it will deem one of the alternatives best and carry out this action, returning to the default program.
I see this account as charitable to Pereboom: The act of entering a deliberative subroutine is such that the agent believes it will help them choose between distinct actions, i.e., they satisfy (DE). Further, upon entering a deliberative subroutine the agent has not yet accessed any stored memory, and so believes every proposition Ai or not Ai mentioned in (S) to be consistent with every proposition settled for the agent in the present context. That is, the agent discovers inconsistencies in the Ai through deliberation.
I also think this characterization pushes back on Widerker's objection by asserting that what the researchers do while Jones is asleep is actually configure in his mind a false deliberative subroutine. That is, Jones is a rational agent here only so far as he can be found in a deliberative subroutine, and he is incapable of regarding this as illusory while undergoing the process.
It also aligns with some ideas I hold about an individual's impression of having agency, which I argue manifests for the individual by way of a mental-narrative stringing together of intentions to exercise some (two-way) powers and the observation of a corresponding (two-way) event. It seems that while in a deliberative subroutine, one cannot even believe in determinism by way of the feeling of agency it fosters.
However, I received some push-back on these ideas from professors at my university. While they agreed it could be good to look closer at the sort of grappling between potential futures involved in the deliberative process and its implications for agency and rationality, they raised objections to the meat-computer idea. In particular, they argued that the initial action in a creative endeavor presents a roadblock for conceptualizing people as computers or Turing machines. E.g., that the Turing machine perspective doesn't account for the first brush-stroke in painting a piece of art.
I am unfamiliar with most of the contemporary literature on philosophy of mind. Can someone explain further this sort of objection, along with other objections to my idea that would be made? How could I improve this presentation, and do my ideas defend Pereboom as I think they do?
Pereboom's Account of Rational Deliberation
Pereboom introduces a belief-in-deliberative-efficacy condition (DE) and an epistemic-openness condition (S), the consequents of which, he claims, express each a distinct necessary condition for rational deliberation. Their conjunction, along with certain noncontroversial necessary conditions for rational deliberation, states, according to Pereboom, a sufficient condition for deliberating rationally between two (or more) actions, particularly one that can be satisfied by someone presuming determinism.
(DE) In order to rationally deliberate about whether to do A1 or A2, where A1 and A2 are distinct actions, an agent must believe that if as a result of her deliberating about whether to do A1 or A2 she were to judge that it would be best to do A1, then, under normal conditions, she would also, on the basis of this deliberation, do A1; and similarly for A2.
(S) In order to deliberate rationally among distinct actions A1,…, An, for each Ai, S cannot be certain of the proposition that she will do Ai, nor of the proposition that she will not do Ai; and either (a) the proposition that she will do Ai is consistent with every proposition that, in the present context, is settled for her, or (b) if it is inconsistent with some such proposition, she cannot believe that it is.
Widerker's Objection
Widerker presents an objection to Pereboom's account of rational deliberation by means of a thought experiment:
Jones has agreed to participate in a research study. The research involves subjecting a person to a specific neurological procedure, which is performed on the person when she is in a state of deep sleep. What the experimenters do, while Jones is unconscious, is to arrange his "neural hardware" in such a way that shortly after waking up, he is forced to undergo a process, during which it will seem to him that he is composing a poem. Let's also assume that the experimenters tell Jones they have done this, and that he believes them. How would Jones view the thought process forced upon him? Would he view it as his being truly involved in a creative process of composing a poem? Presumably not. For being rational and believing the experimenters, he would understand that it would not really be he who determines the thoughts he would think (and what he would write down on paper), but the experimenters, and that he would be just carrying out a process forced upon him by the experimenters. Composing a poem is an activity which by its very nature is such that when an agent is genuinely involved in it, it seems to her that she. determines how it goes. Call such an activity a 'seemingly autonomous' activity. Since in the thought experiment under consideration, Jones believes that what he does is forced upon him, he will have to regard this seeming as illusory. As a result, it is unclear whether the activity imposed on him could be properly described as his composing a poem. It obviously couldn't be regarded as his composing a poem in the standard sense, since then the agent does not have a reason to regard the seeming as deceptive.
The point of this thought experiment is this: Like composing a poem, so also an agent's deliberating what to do may be viewed as a seemingly autonomous activity. Hence, in a scenario in which Jones were told by the experimenters that he will be forced to deliberate in a certain way what to do, it would be also unclear whether the process he would undergo would count as his deliberating what to do. It certainly would not count as his deliberating what to do in its standard sense, since when this sense applies, the agent has no reason to think that her impression (its seeming to her) that she determines how her deliberating evolves is illusory; and here she has a reason to think so.
That is, understanding that in such circumstances she does not determine the thoughts she thinks, and the judgment she ends up with, such an agent (if she is rational) would also have a reason to regard its seeming to her that she controls the deliberation process as illusory. This implies that the thesis of deliberation-compatibilism -- that an agent's deliberating rationally between alternative actions is compatible with her presuming determinism and its incompatibilist consequences -- does not hold for deliberation in the standard sense, holding only for a seriously compromised sense thereof.
