Blackwell Reference Online

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Any question about action explanations that appeal to the unconscious raises the prior question of what is meant by unconsciousness and by unconscious mentality. Though a full treatment of these questions lies beyond the scope of the present chapter, some comment on them is needed in order to avoid taking for granted conventional philosophical uses of ‘unconscious’ as introducing a well-demarcated topic or set of topics. As regards action explanations that appeal to the unconscious themselves (henceforth, for brevity, ‘unconscious action explanations’), the questions addressed here are mainly two. First, to what extent are unconscious action explanations of a distinctive kind or kinds; in particular, how, if at all, do they differ from the kinds of action explanations supplied by conscious factors, and from the kinds of explanation, conscious or unconscious, of doings of ours which are not actions? Secondly, how closely is the phenomenon of irrationality in action connected with the availability of an unconscious explanation? Many things people do are explained by things about themselves that they don't know – that is, by things about themselves of which they are, in a non-technical sense, unconscious. A man knocks over a glass thanks to a Parkinsonian twitch, without knowing he has the disease; a woman vomits because she is pregnant, though she doesn't know it yet. But these doings ... log in or subscribe to read full text