Most contemporary philosophers of action accept Aristotle’s view that actions involve movements generated by an internal cause. This is reflected in the wide support enjoyed by the Causal Theory of Action (CTA), according to which actions are bodily movements caused by mental states. Some critics argue that CTA suffers from the Problem of Disappearing Agents (PDA), the complaint that CTA excludes agents because it reduces them to mere passive arenas in which certain events and processes take place. Extant treatments of (...) PDA, most notably those of Michael Bratman and David Velleman, interpret the problem as a challenge to CTA’s ability to capture the role of rational capacities like deliberation and reflection in the etiology of human action. I argue that PDA admits of another interpretation, one that arises when we appreciate that the exercise of higher rational capacities in action presupposes possession of a prior lower-level capacity for basic self-movement – the power to initiate and control one’s bodily behavior. Bolstering CTA so that it accommodates richer exercises of practical thought – as Bratman and Velleman do – will not resolve PDA unless CTA already captures this basic agential power. Adequately responding to PDA, therefore, requires answering a question unaddressed by current responses: How do bodily movements caused by sub-agential items like mental states count as movements actively performed by the whole agent? I argue that CTA can answer this question by adopting a normative account of the nature of self-moving agents. On this view, self-moving agents are teleologically constituted, meaning (1) their nature and proper function derives from their characteristic ends and aims, and (2) the nature and proper function of their parts depend on these ends and aims. Basic self-movement consists of movements caused by a sub-agential part whose own proper function is to generate behavior that constitutes or contributes to the pursuit of the agent’s overall proper function. After showing how this picture applies to artifactual and collective agents (i.e., robots and teams), I extend the account to organic agents (human beings) by sketching a broadly Aristotelian picture of the nature of living things. (shrink)

She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg, if there was a draught, she sat in it—in short, she was so constituted that she never had a mind or wish of her own, but preferred to sympathise always with the minds and wishes of others. — Virginia Woolf (1979, 59).

According to the Causal Theory of Action (CTA), genuine actions are individuated by their causal history. Actions are bodily movements that are causally explained by citing the agent’s reasons. Reasons are then explained as some combination of propositional attitudes – beliefs, desires, and/or intentions. The CTA is thus committed to realism about the attitudes. This paper explores current models of decision-making from the mind sciences, and argues that it is far from obvious how to locate the propositional attitudes in the (...) causal processes they describe. The outcome of the analysis is a proposal for pluralism: there are several ways one could attempt to map states like “intention” onto decision-making processes, but none will fulfill all of the roles attributed to the attitudes by the CTA. (shrink)

Clark and Chalmers propose that the mind extends further than skin and skull. If they are right, then we should expect this to have some effect on our way of knowing our own mental states. If the content of my notebook can be part of my belief system, then looking at the notebook seems to be a way to get to know my own beliefs. However, it is at least not obvious whether self-ascribing a belief by looking at my notebook (...) is a case of introspection the same way that knowing my non-extended beliefs is. Traditionally this sort of introspection is thought to be privileged and special in ways that the extended introspection case seems not to be. There is nothing privileged about looking at my notebook. Anyone could do it. The aim of the paper is to find out how to understand extended introspection and whether there is something privileged and special about knowing one’s own extended beliefs. Moreover, the notebook case has close analogs using twenty-first century technology. It seems possible to know our beliefs that are extended to smartphones, wearable technology or a cloud-based data store. First, I present the case of extended introspection. I then discuss whether it should be understood as ordinary introspection or as mind-reading. Both seem to be bad fits, which finally prompts an original account for extended introspection based on epistemic rules. (shrink)

When does it make sense to act randomly? A persuasive argument from Bayesian decision theory legitimizes randomization essentially only in tie-breaking situations. Rational behaviour in humans, non-human animals, and artificial agents, however, often seems indeterminate, even random. Moreover, rationales for randomized acts have been offered in a number of disciplines, including game theory, experimental design, and machine learning. A common way of accommodating some of these observations is by appeal to a decision-maker’s bounded computational resources. Making this suggestion both precise (...) and compelling is surprisingly difficult. Toward this end, I propose two fundamental rationales for randomization, drawing upon diverse ideas and results from the wider theory of computation. The first unifies common intuitions in favour of randomization from the aforementioned disciplines. The second introduces a deep connection between randomization and memory: access to a randomizing device is provably helpful for an agent burdened with a finite memory. Aside from fit with ordinary intuitions about rational action, the two rationales also make sense of empirical observations in the biological world. Indeed, random behaviour emerges more or less where it should, according to the proposal. (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)

We are agents: we can deliberate about what to do, and then act on the basis of that deliberation. We are also capable of normative self-governance: we can identify and respond to reasons as reasons. Many theorists believe that these two capacities are intimately connected. On the basis of this connection they conclude that practical reasoning must be carried out under the guise of a justification. This paper explores two strategies for avoiding that conclusion. The first, which just denies the (...) connection between agency and normative self-governance, is rejected as too costly, since it leaves the normative significance of agency unexplained. The second, which suggests that we can respond to a consideration as a reason without representing it as a reason, seems more promising, but it requires a reductive account of reasons for action. The upshot is that metaethics and action theory are entwined in ways that few have recognized. (shrink)

Hume''s farmer''s dilemma is usually construed as demonstrating the failure of Humeanism in practical reason and as providing an argument in favor of externalism or the theory of resolute choice. But thedilemma arises only when Humeanism is combined with the assumptionthat direct and intentional control of our desires – desiring atwill – is impossible. And such an assumption, albeit widely accepted,has little in its support. Once we reject that assumption we can describe a solution to the dilemma within the bounds (...) of Humeanism. Moreover, wefind in this new solution as argument for the idea of desiring at will. (shrink)

Sharon Ryan has recently argued that if one has compatibilist intuitions about free action, then one should reject the claim that agents cannot exercise direct voluntary control over coming to believe. In this paper I argue that the differences between beliefs and actions make the expectation of direct voluntary control over coming to believe unreasonable. So Ryan's theory of doxastic agency is untenable.

While deliberation has traditionally played a central role in philosophical and behavioral accounts of ethical decision-making, several recent studies challenge the value of deliberation. These studies find that deliberative thinking, such as considering divergent views or different perspectives, leads to less ethical decisions. We observe, however, that these studies do not address normative deliberation, in which decision-makers consider or apply a normative standard. We predict that normative deliberation improves ethical decision-making. Across six experiments, we examine the effects of non-normative deliberation (...) and normative deliberation on ethical decision-making. We find that normative deliberation improves ethical decision-making and, in contrast to recent studies, no form of deliberation harms ethical decision-making. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The goal of this paper is to find out if Michael Smith's version of the causal theory of action is able to solve David Velleman's agency par excellence challenge. Smith has claimed that his theory can deal with the challenge insofar as the exercise of the capacity to be instrumentally rational plays the intermediating role which Velleman thinks of the agent as playing in the causation of action. However, I argue Smith misunderstands the challenge at hand, thereby failing to (...) find the agent's proper role in action explanation. Moreover, I claim Velleman's objection puts Smith's account of the causal theory in trouble by showing it cannot reconcile the causal explanation of intentional action with our ordinary conception of agency. If Smith intends to explain what a 'full-blooded' intentional action is, I then believe he needs to incorporate into his theory a more robust account of rational guidance. Resumo: O objetivo deste artigo é descobrir se a versão da teoria causal da ação de Michael Smith é capaz de resolver o desafio da agência por excelência de David Velleman. Smith tem sustentado que sua teoria pode lidar com o desafio na medida em que o exercício da capacidade de ser instrumentalmente racional desempenha o papel que Velleman imagina que o agente desempenhe na causação da ação. Contudo, argumento que Smith não compreende corretamente o desafio em questão, falhando desse modo em encontrar o papel adequado do agente na explicação da ação. Além disso, defendo que a objeção de Velleman põe a abordagem da teoria causal de Smith em apuros ao mostrar que ela não é capaz de reconciliar a explicação causal da ação intencional com nossa concepção ordinária de agência. Se Smith pretende explicar o que uma ação intencional 'plena' é, então acredito que ele precisa incorporar em sua teoria uma abordagem mais robusta de orientação racional. (shrink)

Kiesewetter defends the normativity of rationality by presenting a new solution to the problems that arise from the common assumption that we ought to be rational. He provides a defence of a reason-response conception of rationality, an evidence-relative account of reason, and an explanation of structural irrationality in relation to these accounts.

The temporal period between the moment of deliberation and the execution of the intention varies widely—from opening an umbrella when one feels the first raindrops hit to planning and writing a book. I investigate the distinctive ability that adult human beings have to deliberate for their far future selves exhibited at the latter end of this temporal spectrum, which I term prospective deliberation. What grounds it when it is successful? And, why does it fail in some cases? I shall argue (...) that an agent is warranted in deliberating for a future self when her reasons give her the right kind of cross-temporal authority. I argue that this authority is distinctive and cannot be accounted for by theories of agential authority that take desires, value judgments, or willings as the ground of authority in standard cases of deliberation. According to the theory I propose having the right kind of cross-temporal agential authority is not only a matter of having epistemic access to a future self’s reasons or being the same metaphysical person as a future self, it requires confidence that the agent’s reasons support undertaking such a normative commitment and that that future self will see the normative force of those reasons as the agent sees them. In other words, cross-temporal agential authority requires that the past self and the future self share a normative perspective. I show that this further condition only obtains if the agent sees her reasons in deliberation as having certain features. (shrink)

This paper examines the relations between, on the one hand, accounts of the distinction between an agent's identifying with, as opposed to feeling alienated from, their attitudes; and on the other, metaphysical accounts of action. It claims that a commitment to an event-causal conception of agency, which would analyse agency in terms of the causal potency of psychological states and events, appears to render mandatory a particular style of account of identification and alienation – namely, the hierarchical model offered by (...) Harry Frankfurt and Michael Bratman. It is argued that such accounts fall foul of a dilemma: the Authority Problem. The failure of attempts to avoid the Authority Problem is then used to motivate an attractive alternative style of account of the distinction, offered by Richard Moran. However, it is pressed that Moran's account rests on claims about agency which seem incompatible with the event-causal conception of agency. By making the links between the metaphysics of agency and accounts of identification and alienation more explicit, the paper allows us to better comprehend both the apparent need for and characteristic failures of some traditional accounts of identification and alienation, as well as make clear the action-theoretical debt incurred by those who would offer an alternative. (shrink)

The contemporary philosophical debate over practical reasoning---over how one ought to figure out what to do---has been almost entirely focused on whether there is more to it than means-ends reasoning. But a prior and very difficult question has to do with why instrumental deliberation is so important an aspect of our cognitive life. I consider an answer broached by Harry Frankfurt, that having ends is the alternative to being literally bored out of one’s mind, and adapt an argument from John (...) Stuart Mill’s political and psychological writings to show what more there is to not being bored than just having something to aim for. (shrink)

On the Causal Theory of Action (CTA), internal proper parts of an agent such as desires and intentions are causally responsible for actions. CTA has increasingly come under attack for its alleged failure to account for agency. A recent version of this criticism due to François Schroeter proposes that CTA cannot provide an adequate account of either the executive control or the autonomous control involved in full-fledged agency. Schroeter offers as an alternative a revised understanding of the proper role of (...) consciousness in agency. In this paper we criticize Schroeter’s analysis of the type of consciousness involved in executive control and examine the way in which the conscious self allegedly intervenes in action. We argue that Schroeter’s proposal should not be preferred over recent versions of CTA. (shrink)