The Minor Puzzle about Habitual Action

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The Minor Puzzle about Habitual Action

In this section I want to introduce a minor puzzle that follows from distinguishing habitual vs goal-directed processes.

It is a minor puzzle in the sense that we can solve it quite easily. But it is important because the solution reveals something interesting about the dual-process theory of action.

Which of these are when are these habitual actions:

doing your teeth;

smoking tobacco;

watching TV;

cycling the same route to work every day?

habitual vs habitual

‘A habitual action, state, or way of behaving is one that someone usually does or has, especially one that is considered to be typical or characteristic of them.’

--- collinsdictionary.com

habitual process

Action occurs in the presence of Stimulus.

Agent is rewarded [/punished] p(class=theCls)Stimulus-Action Link is strengthened [/weakened] due to reward [/punishment]

Given Stimulus, will Action occur? It depends on the strength of the Stimulus-Action Link.

‘goal-directed’ process

Action leads to Outcome.

Belief in Action-Outcome link is strengthened.

Agent has a Desire for the Outcome

Will Action occur? It depends on the Belief in the Action-Outcome Link and Agent’s Desire.

First point is that we are characterising a process, not an action.

Second point is that the process does not necessarily produce actions that are usual or characteristic, although it can.

‘Who is there that has never wound up his watch on taking off his waistcoat in the daytime, or taken his latchkey out on arriving at the door−step of a friend?

Very absent−minded persons in going to their bedroom to dress for dinner have been known to take off one garment after another and finally to get into bed, merely because that was the habitual issue of the first few movements when performed at a later hour.’

(James, 1901)

Are these habitual?

inconsitent with current preferences -> habitual processes

the same action
can be a consequence of habitual processes
at one time
but not another

Which of these are when are these habitual actions:

doing your teeth;

smoking tobacco;

watching TV;

cycling the same route to work every day?

Too hard to do a controlled experiment. Let’s consider an easier case.

You see a rat and a lever. The rat presses the lever occasionally. Now you start rewarding the rat: when it presses the lever it is rewarded with a particular kind of food. As a consequence, the rat presses the lever more often.

Is this lever pressing a habitual action?

It’s a trick question -- we can’t tell

habitual process

Stimulus is the layout of this room.

Rat (=Agent) is rewarded with food

Room-LeverPress (=Stimulus-Action) Link is strengthened due to reward

Thf LeverPress (=Action) will occur in this room (=Stimulus).

Problem: different hypotheses, same prediction

What if we devalue the food in extinction?

Explain devaluation (poison, or satiation)

habitual process

Stimulus is the layout of this room.

Rat (=Agent) is rewarded with food

Room-LeverPress (=Stimulus-Action) Link is strengthened due to reward

Thf LeverPress (=Action) will occur in this room (=Stimulus).

‘goal-directed’ process

Lever pressing (=Action) leads to food (=Outcome).

Thf LeverPress-Food (=Action-Outcome) Link is strong.

Rat (=Agent) has strong positive Preference for food.

Thf LeverPress (=Action) will occur.

Devaluation affects Preference, so changes what the instrumental hypothesis predicts.

Devaluation does not affect the Simulus-Action link. (It’s the fact that food was preferred in the past that matters: because of this, getting food was rewarding and so strengthened the Simulus-Action link.)

What if we devalue the food in extinction?

‘Goal-directed’ process : it will reduce lever pressing (to none)

Habitual process : it will have no effect on lever pressing

‘Mean lever-press rates during the extinction (left-handpanel) and reacquisitiontests(right-handpanel) followingthe devaluation of either the contingent (group D-N) or non-contingentfood (group N-D).’

Dickinson, 1985 figure 3

What if we devalue the food in extinction?

‘Goal-directed’ process : it will reduce lever pressing (to none)

Habitual process : it will have no effect on lever pressing

(a) Rat’s behaviour is dominated by a ‘goal-directed’ process (explained by their Preferences). (b) Hypotheses about processes underpinning decisions are scientifically testable.

‘the laboratory rat fits the teleological [goal-directed] model; performance of this particular instrumental behaviour really does seem to be controlled by knowledge about the relation between the action and the goal’

(Dickinson, 1985, p. 72)

so far ...

1. habitual ≠ habitual

2. What is habitual? processes (not actions!)

3. We can test whether an action is dominated by habitual or goal-directed processes using devaluation in extinction.

What if we devalue the food in extinction?

‘Goal-directed’ process : it will reduce lever pressing (to none)

Habitual process : it will have no effect on lever pressing

‘the laboratory rat fits the teleological [goal-directed] model; performance of this particular instrumental behaviour really does seem to be controlled byknowledge about the relation between the action and the goal’

(Dickinson, 1985, p. 72)

But there is a complication ...

It is not none!!!

Dickinson, 1985 figure 3

puzzle

If the action is not habitual but controlled by goal-directed processes, why does it still occur after devaluation?

Solution is to stop thinking that actions can be just one or the other. \emph{The instrumental/habitual distinction concerns proceses, not actions!}

What if we devalue the food in extinction?

‘Goal-directed’ process : it will reduce lever pressing (to none)

Habitual process : it will have no effect on lever pressing

‘the laboratory rat fits the teleological [goal-directed] model; performance of this particular instrumental behaviour really does seem to be controlled byknowledge about the relation between the action and the goal’

(Dickinson, 1985, p. 72)

Dickinson, 1985 p. 72

‘we did not conclude that all such responding was of this form.

Indeed, we observed some residual responding during the post-re-valuation test that appeared to be impervious to outcome devaluation and therefore autonomous of the current incentive value,

and we speculated that this responding was habitual’

and established by a process akin to the stimulus-response (S-R)/reinforcement mechanism embodied in Thorndike’s classic Law of Effect (Thorndike, 1911).

(Dickinson, 2016, p. 179)

Dickinson, 2016 p. 179

Dual-Process Theory of Action

some instrumental actions are ‘controlled by two dissociable processes: a goal-directed and an habitual process’

\citep{Dickinson:1985qp,dickinson:2016_instrumental}

Dickinson, 2016 p. 179

one action, two processes

(Strictly speaking, we might think that some actions were habitual and others goal-directed and that only the former remain.)

Earlier I asked, You see a rat and a lever. The rat presses the lever occasionally. Now you start rewarding the rat: when it presses the lever it is rewarded with a particular kind of food. As a consequence, the rat presses the lever more often.

Is this lever pressing a habitual aciton?

Now we can say the question is confused.

Is this action a consequence of habitual or ‘goal-directed’ processes? Probably both!

Which of these are when are these habitual actions:

doing your teeth;

smoking tobacco;

watching TV;

cycling the same route to work every day?

Our actions are a consequence of the interweaving of habitual and goal-directed processes.

This is actually what you want. The habitual are simple fast and robust but also quite limited and no good in entirely novel situations. So having a mix of habitual and goal-directed is ideal ... Especially if they both pull you in the same direction.

This has consequences for understanding the extent to which actions can be reasonable, and even for understanding what action itself is.

We find out in the evidence section how plausible it is that habitual processes play a significant role in your life.

significance

lokindra427’s question

This has consequences for the simple picture.

When you act,

there are reasons why you act;

you know the reasons;

you act because you know the reasons; and

the reasons justify your action. make your action intelligible.

lokindra427:

does it not turn out to be the case that anarchic hand syndrome and habitual processes provide evidence for refuting this claim?

Will return to this later in the course when we study it properly, but, yes, it looks to be the case.

...

ok, let’s take a closer look ...

lokindra427

In the case of habitual processes [...] can it be said that the agent has knowledge of the reasons for why they act?

What knowledge would they need to have regarding how this habit came about for us to consider the agent as knowing why they are acting in that way?

Does the answer "I did it out of habit" work, or does there need to be something more substantial and/or specific?

This has consequences for the simple picture.

When you act,

there are reasons why you act;

you know the reasons;

you act because you know the reasons; and

the reasons justify your action. make your action intelligible.

It seems that your knowledge of reasons is irrelevant to whether and why the action happens.

lokindra427:

In summary, I question the intuitiveness of the claim that we know the reasons for why we act. Maybe we can infer those reasons upon being prompted, but that doesn't seem to be enough.

So how might we defend the simple picture?

three types of responses

1. insist that there is knowledge of reasons even when habitual processes dominate actions

2. deny that knowledge of reasons is necessary for intentional action

3. argue that what habitual processes dominate are not actions

‘What is essential to behaviour being done for a reason is just that there is a rationalizing relation between the relevant mental state (say, the goal to go running) and the behaviour in question (say, reaching for one’s running shoes), and that the mental state is the (unconscious) cause of the behaviour.’

(Kalis & Ometto, 2021, p. 640)

NB: This is not Kalis and Ometto’s view!

Is this true in the case where habitual processes dominate an action? (I think it’s phrased in a such a way that it is actually unclear whether the condition is met where there are habitual processes.)

Is this a viable alternative to the Simple Picture? Does it amount to simply weakening the claim? Why think that the mental state is needed at all?

three types of responses

1. insist that there is knowledge of reasons even when habitual processes dominate actions

2. deny that knowledge of reasons is necessary for intentional action

3. argue that what habitual processes dominate are not actions

Let us have a look at a remedy Velleman proposed in response to a slightly different issue

The standard model (Davidson’s) ‘specifies the way in which behavior must be caused in order to qualify as a purposeful activity, but not the way it must be caused in order to qualify as an autonomous action.’

(Velleman, 2000, p. 9)

Why make this distinction?

‘When [beliefs and desires] are described as directly causing an intention, and the intention as directly causing movements, not only has the agent been cut out of the story but so has any psychological item that might play his [sic] role’

(Velleman, 2000, p. 125)

(Velleman is attacking Davidson’s model)

three types of responses

1. insist that there is knowledge of reasons even when habitual processes dominate actions

2. deny that knowledge of reasons is necessary for intentional action

3. argue that what habitual processes dominate are not actions

When you act,

there are reasons why you act;

you know the reasons;

you act because you know the reasons; and

the reasons justify your action. make your action intelligible.

lokindra427:

In summary, I question the intuitiveness of the claim that we know the reasons for why we act. Maybe we can infer those reasons upon being prompted, but that doesn't seem to be enough.

What I learned about why you are here

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The Minor Puzzle about Habitual Action

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