# Kriegel on the Phenomenology of Action ![rw-book-cover](https://cdn.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/cms/images/pmc-card-share.jpg?_=0) ## Metadata - Author: [[Joshua Shepherd]] - Full Title: Kriegel on the Phenomenology of Action - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Document Tags: [[agentive phenomenology]] - Summary: Kriegel argues that the experience of deciding and trying is central to understanding conative phenomenology, which relates to motivation and action. However, the author challenges Kriegel's view that this experience is tied to a commitment to the goodness of the actions involved. Instead, the author suggests that the core of conative phenomenology may be better understood through the acts of trying and acting themselves. - URL: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5612388/ ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > The project involves an attempt to chart a kind of map of the phenomenal realm, guided by a concern to understand the identity and nature of the types of what Kriegel calls primitive phenomenology. For Kriegel, a type of phenomenology is primitive if it is best placed within the second layer of a broader structure of determinable-determinate relations. He is looking for *second*-layer determinables because the first layer is characterized very abstractly ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jejf2dz2jbjrx3e218gwzccf)) > I agree with Kriegel against James that there is an irreducibly agentive or actional element to the phenomenology. Elsewhere, I have argued that there is no good empirical reason to identify this aspect of phenomenology with anticipative imagery, and furthermore that there is some reason to think that this aspect is at least partially constituted by executive states such as intentions and command signals.[9](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5612388/#R9) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jejfc463hfffpreqcj3ykvfp)) > What seems to characterize conative states is their *value*-*commitment*. To want ice cream, to wish for ice cream, to like ice cream, to approve of ice cream – all these commit to the goodness of ice cream. The notion of goodness at play here is maximally neutral – a kind of completely generic goodness. It covers both moral and other kinds of goodness (e.g., aesthetic). It covers relative goodness (“good for”) and absolute goodness (good *tout court*). It covers the goodness of states of affairs, but also the goodness of actions (“rightness”), mental states (“fittingness”), and persons (“virtue”). It covers intrinsic and final goodness, as well as instrumental goodness. We may call this *generic goodness*, or goodness-G for short. Positive conative states (such as liking or approving of something) are characterized by their goodness-G-commitment; negative ones (disliking, disapproving) by their badness-G-commitment ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jex4zf1wn1g5d6ww4j06ppcy)) > Kriegel first considers the experience of deciding, as explicated by Ricoeur.[12](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5612388/#R12) The phenomenology of deciding is marked by several features. First, decisions are directed to projects represented as in the future. They thereby have a «character of futurity»; second, deciding «presents the project as *in my power*»; third, deciding involves a felt pull to action: «unless a mental state involves a pull to action, it is not a decision».[13](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5612388/#R13) As Ricoeur has it, in deciding «I feel myself somehow charged, in the way a battery is charged: I have the power to act».[14](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5612388/#R14) Further, this pull to action is categorical, distinguishing deciding from related states such as desire. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jejftjtsp7cpr52dgmay7dng))