It seems paradoxical to say that an action's normative status ‐ whether it is right, wrong, or obligatory ‐ depends on whether or not it is performed. In this paper, I shall argue that in itself this dependency is not paradoxical. I shall argue that we should not reject a normative theory just because it implies this kind of dependency. Not all dependencies of this kind are bad, or at least not bad enough to warrant wholesale rejection. Instead, we should (...) reject a theory when this dependency makes it a poor guide to action, in particular, when the dependency makes it impossible for agents to comply with the theory. (shrink)

This paper argues that we can benefit or harm people by creating them, but only in the sense that we can create things that are good or bad for them. What we cannot do is to confer comparative benefits and harms to people by creating them or failing to create them. You are not better off (or worse off) created than you would have been had you not been created, for nothing has value for you if you do not exist, (...) not even neutral value. (shrink)

In paradigm exercises of agency, individuals guide their activities toward some goal. A central challenge for action theory is to explain how individuals guide. This challenge is an instance of the more general problem of how to accommodate individuals and their actions in the natural world, as explained by natural science. Two dominant traditions–primitivism and the causal theory–fail to address the challenge in a satisfying way. Causal theorists appeal to causation by an intention, through a feedback mechanism, in explaining guidance. (...) Primitivists postulate primitive agential capacities in their explanations. The latter neglect to explain how primitive capacities integrate with findings from natural science. The former do not explain why some feedback mechanism’s activity amounts to the agent’s guidance. In this paper I argue that both traditions should acknowledge a capacity to guide, as actually constituted by the executive system. I argue that appeals to this empirically discovered psychological system explain how individuals guide in a way that integrates with explanations from cognitive science. Individuals’ capacity to guide is embedded in the natural world through the activity of its constituent (mechanistic) components. (shrink)

In some recent work on omissions, it has been argued that the causal theory of action cannot account for how agency is exercised in intentionally omitting to act in the same way it explains how agency is exercised in intentional action. Thus, causalism appears to provide us with an incomplete picture of intentional agency. I argue that causalists should distinguish causalism as a general theory of intentional agency from causalism as a theory of intentional action. Specifically, I argue that, while (...) intentional actions may best be understood as the causal products or outcomes of causings, we should identify exercises of intentional agency with causal processes. With a causalist account of intentional agency sketched, I respond to the challenge to causalism from omissions. I argue that when an agent intentionally omits there is a causal process that has a zero-sum outcome. But the causal process is sufficient to make it true that the agent exercises intentional agency in intentionally omitting. (shrink)

This paper identifies and critiques a theory of mental causation defended by some proponents of nonredutive physicalism that I call “intralevelism.” Intralevelist theories differ in their details. On all versions, the causal outcome of the manifestation of physical properties is physical and the causal outcome of the manifestation of mental properties is mental. Thus, mental causation on this view is intralevel mental to mental causation. This characterization of mental causation as intralevel is taken to insulate nonreductive physicalism from some objections (...) to nonreductive physicalism, including versions of the exclusion argument. This paper examines some features of three recent versions of intralevelism defended by John Gibbons, Markus Schlosser, and Amie Thomasson. This paper shows that the distinctive problems faced by these three representative versions of intralevelism suggest that the intralevelist strategy does not provide a viable solution to the exclusion problem. (shrink)

In this article, I challenge the dominant view of the importance of the debate over action-individuation. On the dominant view, it is held that the conclusions we reach about action-individuation make little or no difference for other debates in the philosophy of action, much less in other areas of philosophy. As a means of showing that the dominant view is mistaken, I consider the implications of accepting a given theory of action-individuation for thinking about doxastic agency. In particular, I am (...) interested in the implications for thinking about the variety of evaluative control we can exercise over the formation of our doxastic attitudes. I show that our assumptions about how to individuate actions matters for how we think about doxastic agency and, hence, the conclusions we reach about action-individuation are of greater significance than some have thought. (shrink)

What are the most detailed descriptions under which subjects intend to perform bodily actions? According to Pacherie (2006), these descriptions may be found by looking into motor representations—action representations in the brain that determine the movements to be performed. Specifically, for any motor representation guiding an action, its subject has an M‐intention representing that action in as much detail. I show that some M‐intentions breach the constraints that intentions should meet. I then identify a set of intentions—motor intentions—that represent actions (...) in as much detail as some motor representations while meeting the constraints that intentions should meet. (shrink)

Lethal organ donation is a hypothetical procedure in which vital organs are removed from living donors, resulting in their death. An important objection to lethal organ donation is that it would infringe the prohibition on doctors intentionally causing the death of patients. I present a series of arguments intended to undermine this objection. In a case of lethal organ donation, the donor’s death is merely foreseen, and not intended.

While philosophers of mind have devoted abundant time and attention to questions of content and consciousness, philosophical questions about the nature and scope of mental action have been relatively neglected. Galen Strawson’s account of mental action, arguably the most well-known extant account, holds that cognitive mental action consists in triggering the delivery of content to one’s field of consciousness. However, Strawson fails to recognize several distinct types of mental action that might not reduce to triggering content delivery. In this paper, (...) we argue that meditation provides a useful model for understanding a wider range of types of mental action than heretofore recognized. Conclusions yielded by two distinct bodies of current psychological research on meditation and cognition, and meditation and introspection, buttress meditation’s suitability for this role. (shrink)

My primary aim is to defend a nonreductive solution to the problem of action. I argue that when you are performing an overt bodily action, you are playing an irreducible causal role in bringing about, sustaining, and controlling the movements of your body, a causal role best understood as an instance of agent causation. Thus, the solution that I defend employs a notion of agent causation, though emphatically not in defence of an account of free will, as most theories of (...) agent causation are. Rather, I argue that the notion of agent causation introduced here best explains how it is that you are making your body move during an action, thereby providing a satisfactory solution to the problem of action. (shrink)

I argue against a priori objections to the view that causation may be reducible to some micro-structural process in principle discoverable by physics. I distinguish explanation from causation, and argue that the main objections to such a reduction stem from conflating these two notions. Explanation is the collection of pragmatically relevant, possibly counterfactual information about causation; and causation is to be identified in a necessary a posteriori way with whatever physical processes underwrite our explanatory claims.

En el presente artículo utilizamos el concepto de filosofía formalizada de Hansson, así como las categorías de idealización simplificada y perfeccionista que se le asocian, con el fin de proponer un metaanálisis de tres enfoques teóricos de la argumentación, a saber, la pragmadialéctica de van Eemeren y Grootendorst, los esquemas argumentativos de Walton y el enfoque conversacional de Jacobs y Jackson, en relación con el tratamiento de las falacias como un tipo de trasgresión de reglas pragmáticas. Concluimos que mientras las (...) dos primeras están ancladas en una concepción centralizada de lo falaz, la tercera abandona toda posibilidad de normatividad. (shrink)

This paper details the ways that gender structures our senses of agency on an enactive framework. While it is common to discuss how gender influences higher, narrative levels of cognition, as with the formulation of goals and in considerations about our identities, it is less clear how gender structures our more immediate, embodied processes, such as the minimal sense of agency. While enactivists often acknowledge that gender and other aspects of our socio-cultural situatedness shape our cognitive processes, there is little (...) work on how this shaping takes place. In order to provide such an account, I will first look at the minimal and narrative senses of agency (Gallagher 2012), a distinction that draws from work on minimal and narrative selves (Zahavi 2010). Next I will explain the influence of the narrative sense of agency on the minimal sense of agency through work on intention-formation (Pacherie 2007). After a discussion of the role of gender in the narrative sense of agency, I’ll expand on work by Haslanger (2012) and Young (1980) to offer three ways in which gender influences the minimal sense of agency, showing the effect that gender has on how we perceive our possibilities for interaction in a phenomenologically immediate, pre-reflective manner. (shrink)

In this paper I present an analysis of causal relevance for properties. I believe that most of us are already familiar with the notion of a causally relevant property. But some of us may not recognize it "under that description." So I begin below with some intuitive explanations and some illustrative examples.

In 'A Theory of Human Action' (1970) Alvin Goldman launched an attack on what has become known as the Anscombe-Davidson Identity Thesis. In brief, this is the thesis that our acts are our body movements, and that all the different effects of that movement do not entail that different acts have been performed, but only that an identical act has different descriptions. In her response to Goldman, Anscombe (1981) claims that Goldman is arguing at cross-purposes. I will argue that this (...) is partially true, but only because she accepts what I shall call the Symmetry Thesis. This thesis in turn is natural if you accept a third thesis called the Irreducibility Thesis. These three theses form a consistent set that the defenders of the Identity Thesis would accept and its detractors would deny. It follows that the best way to attack the Identity Thesis is to attack the Irreducibility Thesis on which it is based. I believe that this can be done and that Goldman is basically right, but I will not be concerned with a full defense of Goldman's method of individuating actions against its competitors. Rather, I want to show the grounds, some of them extralogical, upon which preference can be made. (shrink)

Can human acts be causally explained in the same way as the rest of nature? If so, causal explanation in the manner of the Hempelian model shouldn’t the human sciences and the natural sciences equally. This is not so much a question of whether the Hempelian model is a completely adequate account of causal explanation, but about whether it is adequate or inadequate in the same way for each: if there is some unique feature of human acts that dictates that (...) they are to be explained differently from natural events, then it is reasonable to suppose that this feature will be revealed by consideration of Hempelian explanations whether this is our final account of explanation or not, and if no such feature is revealed then it is reasonable to suppose that there are no fundamental differences between the human and natural sciences in how causal explanations proceed, whether this explanation is Hempelian or of some other kind. Two arguments have been given for there being such a feature. One - the well-known "Logical Connection Argument" - states that there cannot be a causal relation between a human action and the intention to perform that action. If this argument succeeds, then our ordinary explanations of human acts in terms of psychological states like intentions are not causal explanations at all. Although this does not mean that no causal explanation is true, we have the problem of finding appropriate causal antecedents of the acts. The other - the anti-predictionist argument - concludes from the fact that at least some human acts cannot be predicted that they cannot be causally explained. I wish to disarm the force of both of these arguments, and thus argue for explanatory monism: we do not need to adopt a mode of explanation for human sciences distinct from that of natural sciences. (shrink)

Most event-referring expressions are vague; it is utterly difficult, if not impossible, to specify the exact spatiotemporal location of an event from the words that we use to refer to it. We argue that in spite of certain prima facie obstacles, such vagueness can be given a purely semantic (broadly supervaluational) account.

There is an ongoing debate in the philosophical literature whether the conditionals that are central to deliberation are subjunctive or indicative conditionals and, if the latter, what semantics of the indicative conditional is compatible with the role that conditionals play in deliberation. We propose a possible-world semantics where conditionals of the form “if I take action _a_ the outcome will be _x_” are interpreted as material conditionals. The proposed framework is illustrated with familiar examples and both qualitative and probabilistic beliefs (...) are considered. Issues such as common-cause cases and ‘Egan-style’ cases are discussed. (shrink)

Le concept de responsabilité vient généralement et spontanément à l'esprit de la plupart d'entre nous quand il est question d'action humaine. Il est surprenant pour cette raison que dans l'histoire de la philosophie de l'action, particulièrement l'histoire récente, la responsabilité ait été tenue autant à l'écart des discussions. En effet, après avoir joué chez les philosophes de la première génération suivant Wittgenstein, comme Hart, Melden, Chisholm et Rayfield, un rôle important, le concept de responsabilité a été, semble-t-il, progressivement évacué des (...) débats en philosophie analytique de l'action. Évidemment, l'action est encore affaire de responsabilité, puisque toute action peut être en principe sujette à une évaluation normative. Mais c'est le processus par lequel on en vient à évaluer la responsabilité d'une action qui ne semble plus faire partie des préoccupations des philosophes de l'action. Ceux-ci considèrent en général que de telles attributions devraient rester du resort de l'éthique ou du droit et n'ont rien à voir avec l'entreprise de la philosophie de l'action contemporaine qui, a bien des egards, se definit tout d'abord comme une extension de la philosophie de l'esprit. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to enquire into neuroscientific research on memory and relate it to topics of skill, knowledge and consciousness. The article outlines some contemporary theories on procedural and working memory, and discusses what contributions they give to sport science and philosophy of sport. It is argued that memory research gives important insights to the neuronal structures and events involved in knowledge and consciousness contributing to sport skills, but that these explanations are not exhaustive. The article argues (...) that phenomenal consciousness in skills is not explained by the neuroscience of memory, and hence neither are skills. (shrink)

Monists and pluralists disagree concerning how many ordinary objects there are in a single situation. For instance, pluralists argue that a statue and the clay it is made of have different properties, and thereby are different. The standard monist’s response is to hold that there is just a single object, and that, under the description “being a statue”, this object is, e.g., aesthetically valuable, and that, under the description “being a piece of clay”, it is not aesthetically valuable. However, Fine (...) provided an ontological reading of the expression “an object under a description”: the theory of rigid embodiments. The debate between monists and pluralists reduplicates in the domain of ordinary occurrences, like walks and conferences. Specifically, they disagree whether an occurrence in progress (also called “process”) like John’s walk that is happening at tn is identical to some completed occurrence (also called “event”) like John’s walk that happened between, e.g., t1 and tn. Under the adoption of the pluralist’s position, the article aims to provide a novel theory of ordinary occurrences that develops the ontological reading of “under a description” to account for occurrences in progress and completed occurrences. As a first result, we formulate a theory according to which both occurrences in progress and completed occurrences are rigid embodiments. As a second result, we argue that the suggested theory is explanatorily powerful to the extent it solves two puzzles that we call “the Puzzle from the Completion of a Process” and “the Metaphysical-cum-Semantical Puzzle”. (shrink)

The distinction between occurrent and non-occurrent mental states is frequently appealed to by contemporary philosophers, but it has never been explicated in any significant detail. In the literature, two accounts of the distinction are commonly presupposed. One is that occurrent states are conscious states. The other is that non-occurrent states are dispositional states, and thus that occurrent states are manifestations of dispositions. I argue that neither of these accounts is adequate, and therefore that another account is needed. I propose that (...) occurrent states are active states. (shrink)

John goes out for a walk. If John endures and his walk perdures, they are different entities. However, what if both John and his walk perdure? Is John’s walk identical to his relevant temporal part? Some philosophers answer in the affirmative. Their motivations rest on ontological parsimony and the quest for clear-cut identity criteria for existing things. By contrast, one of the most widely accepted theories of events – the theory of events as property-exemplifications – allows us to formulate an (...) argument to the effect that objects’ temporal parts are distinct from the events they participate in: the AID argument, as I shall call it. In this paper, I argue that accepting austere nominalism is the best strategy a supporter of the identification between events and temporal parts of objects can take in order to resist the AID argument. (shrink)

I outline a theory of moral motivation which is compatible with the metaphysical claims of strong emotionism—a sentimentalist account of morality first outlined by Jesse Prinz and supported by myself which construes moral concepts and properties as a subset of emotion-dispositional properties. Given these claims, it follows that sincere moral judgements are necessarily motivating in virtue of their emotional constitution. I defend an indefeasible version of judgement motivational internalism which takes into consideration both positively and negatively valenced affective states and (...) how they promote both approach and avoidance motivation, respectively. On this view, in making sincere moral judgements agents are antecedently motivated by standing Desires to avoid or approach the stimuli picked out by their judgements. I also defend internalism against the objections from defeating circumstances and amoralists. As regards the former, I claim that the tendency of philosophers to frame the motivation debate in terms of positive moral judgements makes the argument from defeating circumstances appear more plausible than it is; as regards the latter, I claim the amoralist argument only has force if it is empirically well supported and that psychological data has hitherto been unconvincing. (shrink)

In 1956 U. T. Place proposed that consciousness is a brain process. More attention should be paid to his word ‘process’. There is near-universal agreement that experiences are processive—as witnessed in the platitude that experiences are occurrent states. The abandonment of talk of brain processes has benefited functionalism, because a functional state, as it is usually conceived, cannot be a process. This point is dimly recognized in a well-known but little-discussed argument that conscious experiences cannot be functional states because the (...) former are occurrent, while the latter are dispositional. That argument fails, but it can be made sound if we reformulate it with the premise that occurrent states are processive. The only way for functionalists to meet the resulting challenge is to abandon the standard individuation of functional states in terms of purely abstract causal roles. (shrink)

Dialogue has its origins in joint activities, which it serves to coordinate. Joint activities, in turn, usually emerge in hierarchically nested projects and subprojects. We propose that participants use dialogue to coordinate two kinds of transitions in these joint projects: vertical transitions, or entering and exiting joint projects; and horizontal transitions, or continuing within joint projects. The participants help signal these transitions with project markers, words such as uh-huh, m-hm, yeah, okay, or all right. These words have been studied mainly (...) as signals of listener feedback (back-channel signals) or turn-taking devices (acknowledgment tokens). We present evidence from several types of well-defined tasks that they are also part of a system of contrasts specialized for navigating joint projects. Uh-huh, m-hm and yeah are used for horizontal transitions, and okay and all right for vertical transitions. (shrink)

a comprehensive, somewhat Gricean theory of speech acts, including an account of communicative intentions and inferences, a taxonomy of speech acts, and coverage of many topics in pragmatics -/- .

This paper replies to criticisms of the author's accounts of intending ("journal of philosophy", 1973), wanting ("philosophical studies", 1973), and common-sense explanations of intentional actions; and it extends the nomological theory of intentional action developed in those and other articles. the paper argues, negatively, that theoretical construct accounts of intentional concepts do not entail implausible views of self-knowledge, nor assimilate reasons to mechanical causes; and, positively, that both the way in which reasons render intelligible the actions they explain and the (...) apparently non-contingent relation certain reasons bear to the actions they explain can be accommodated by a sound nomological theory of intentional action. (shrink)

This paper defends a cognitive-motivational account of intending against recent criticism by J. Garcia, connects intending with a number of other concepts important in the theory of action — including decison, volition, and planning — and explores some principles of intention transfer construed as counterparts of epistemic principles governing closure for belief and justification. Several routes to intention formation are described; the role of intentions in planning is examined; and a holistic conception of intention formation and change is stressed. The (...) proposed conception of intending as embodying at once a cognitive and a motivational commitment to action is thus shown to help in understanding both the explanation of action and the rationality of agents. (shrink)

Belief is a central focus of inquiry in the philosophy of religion and indeed in the field of religion itself. No one conception of belief is central in all these cases, and sometimes the term 'belief' is used where 'faith' or 'acceptance' would better express what is intended. This paper sketches the major concepts in the philosophy of religion that are expressed by these three terms. In doing so, it distinguishes propositional belief (belief that) from both objectual belief (believing something (...) to have a property) and, more importantly, belief in (a trusting attitude that is illustrated by at least many paradigm cases of belief in God). Faith is shown to have a similar complexity, and even propositional faith divides into importantly different categories. Acceptance differs from both belief and faith in that at least one kind of acceptance is behavioral in a way neither of the other two elements is. Acceptance of a proposition, it is argued, does not entail believing it, nor does believing entail acceptance in any distinctive sense of the latter term. In characterizing these three notions (and related ones), the paper provides some basic materials important both for understanding a person's religious position and for appraising its rationality. The nature of religious faith and some of the conditions for its rationality, including some deriving from elements of an ethics of belief, are explored in some detail. (shrink)

Some philosophers hold that objective consequentialism is false because it is incompatible with the principle that “ought” implies “can”. Roughly speaking, objective consequentialism is the doctrine that you always ought to do what will in fact have the best consequences. According to the principle that “ought” implies “can”, you have a moral obligation to do something only if you can do that thing. Frances Howard-Snyder has used an innovative thought experiment to argue that sometimes you cannot do what will in (...) fact have the best consequences because you do not know what will in fact have the best consequences. Erik Carlson has raised two objections against Howard-Snyder’s argument. This paper examines Howard-Snyder’s argument as well as Carlson’s objections, arguing that Carlson’s objections do not go through but Howard-Snyder’s argument fails nonetheless. Moreover, this paper attempts to show that objective consequentialism and other objectivist moral theories are compatible with the principle that “ought” implies “can”. Finally, this paper analyses a special kind of inability: ignorance-induced inability. (shrink)

This paper argues that habits, just like beliefs, can guide intentional action. To do this, a variety of real-life cases where a person acts habitually but contrary to her beliefs are discussed. The cases serve as dissociations showing that intentional agency is possible without doxastic guidance. The upshot is a model for thinking about the rationality of habitual action and the rationalizing role that habits can play in it. The model highlights the role that our history and institutions play in (...) shaping what actions become habitual for us. (shrink)

Whereas some philosophers view all reasons for action as psychological states of agents, others—objective favourers theorists—locate the overwhelming majority of reasons for action outside the agent, in items that objectively favour courses of action. (The latter may count such psychological states as a person's belief that demons dance in his kitchen as a reason for him to seek psychiatric help.) This article explores options that objective favourers theorists have regarding cases in which, owing significantly to a false belief, an agent (...) performs an action for which there is no objective favourer. Topics addressed include whether such theorists, including Jonathan Dancy himself, should accept Dancy's thesis that 'intentional, deliberate, purposeful action is always done for a reason' and whether there are two different concepts of reasons for action, one geared to action-evaluation and the other to action-explanation. (shrink)

In this article we present the bases for a computational theory of the cognitive processes underlying human communication. The core of the article is devoted to the analysis of the phases in which the process of comprehension of a communicative act can be logically divided: (1) literal meaning, where the reconstruction of the mental states literally expressed by the actor takes place: (2) speaker's meaning, where the partner reconstructs the communicative intentions of the actor; (3) communicative effect, where the partner (...) possibly modifies his own beliefs and intentions; (4) reaction, where the intentions for the generation of the response are produced; and (5) response, where an overt response is constructed. The model appears to be compatible with relevant facts about human behavior. Our hypothesis is that, through communication, an actor tries to exploit the motivational structures of a partner so that the desired goal is generated. A second point is that social behavior requires that cooperation be maintained at some level. In the case of communication, cooperation is, in general, pursued even when the partner does not adhere to the actor's goals, and therefore no cooperation occurs at the behavioral level. This important distinction is reflected in the two kinds of game we introduce to account for communication. The main concept implied in communication is that two agents overtly reach a situation of shared mental states. Our model deals with sharedness through two primitives: shared beliefs and communicative intentions. (shrink)

According to the Causal Theory of Action, actions are causally produced events and causal transitivity seems to apply to all such events. However, strong intuitions support the idea that actions cannot be transitively caused. This is a tension that has plagued this theory’s effort to account for action. In particular, it has fueled a serious objection suggesting that this theory of action seriously distorts the attribution of agency when two agents interact with each other. Based on Donald Davidson’s analysis of (...) the accordion effect and the nature of actions, I provide an answer to the problem of agential attribution. It is an answer that shows that the Causal Theory of Action can unambiguously attribute agency without resorting to a stipulation or denying that actions can be transitively caused. I then identify the sources of the problematic intuitions in the need to recognize spheres of agential influence and preserve their integrity. (shrink)