The moral of Buridan's Ass is that it can sometimes be rational to perform one action rather than another even though one lacks stronger reason to do so. Yet it is also commonly believed that it cannot ever be rational to believe one proposition rather than another if one lacks stronger reason to do so. This asymmetry has been taken to indicate a deep difference between epistemic and practical rationality. According to the view articulated here, the asymmetry should instead be (...) explained by the difference between rational intentions and rational actions. Thus, it turns out, Buridan's Ass-style cases do not indicate an asymmetry between epistemic and practical rationality as such. (shrink)

In this article, I examine recent debates concerning the existence and the nature of basic actions. The discussion is structured around four theses, with which Arthur Danto introduced basic actions to contemporary theorists. The theses concern (i) the relationship between agency and causality, (ii) the distinction between basic and complex actions, (iii) the regress argument for basic actions, and (iv) the structure of practical knowledge in the light of these actions.

Philosophers of perception are familiar with the argument from illusion, at least since Hume formulated it to challenge a naïve form of realism. In this paper, I present an analogous argument but in the domain of action. It focuses on slips, a common kind of mistake. But, otherwise, it is structurally similar. The argument challenges some contemporary views about the nature of action inspired by Wittgenstein. The discussion shows how thinking about these common mistakes helps illuminate aspects of human agency (...) that tend to be overlooked whenever too much emphasis is placed on the rationality of human actions. (shrink)

Mental acts are conspicuously absent from philosophical debates over the nature of action. A typical protagonist of a typical scenario is far more likely to raise her arm or open the window than she is to perform a calculation in her head or talk to herself silently. One possible explanation for this omission is that the standard ‘causalist’ account of action, on which acts are analyzed in terms of mental states causing bodily movements, faces difficulties in accommodating some paradigmatic cases (...) of mental action – or so I argue. After drawing out these objections to causalism, I outline a more promising approach. Building on previous work, I show how the approach I favour, on which the attempt to analyze action is dispensed with, provides a unified account of both mental and physical action. (shrink)

The paper motivates a novel research programme in the philosophy of action parallel to the ‘Knowledge First’ programme in epistemology. It is argued that much of the grounds for abandoning the quest for a reductive analysis of knowledge in favour of the Knowledge First alternative is mirrored in the case of intentional action, inviting the hypothesis that intentional action is also, like knowledge, metaphysically basic. The paper goes on to demonstrate the sort of explanatory contribution that intentional action can make (...) once it is no longer taken to be a target for reductive analysis, in explaining other, non-intentional kinds of action and voluntariness. (shrink)

Theoretical and practical deliberation are voluntary activities, and like all voluntary activities, they are performed for reasons. To hold that all voluntary activities are performed for reasons in virtue of their relations to past, present, or even merely possible acts of deliberation thus leads to infinite regresses and related problems. As a consequence, there must be processes that are nondeliberative and nonvoluntary but that nonetheless allow us to think and act for reasons, and these processes must be the ones that (...) generate the voluntary activities making up ordinary deliberation. These nondeliberative, nonvoluntary processes by means of which we are able to deliberate for reasons are the fundamental processes by means of which we can think or do anything for a reason: once it has been seen that they must exist, it can be recognized that they are ubiquitous. As a result, the usefulness of deliberation to rational belief and action is intermittent, contingent, and modest. Deliberation is a tremendously valuable tool for increasing human capacities to think and act for good reasons in challenging contexts, but in the end it is merely a tool, wielded by people through the same nondeliberative, nonvoluntary capacities to think and act for reasons that they are enhancing the effectiveness of by deliberating. (shrink)

The paper begins with an objection to the Desire-Based Reasons Model. The argument from reason-based desires holds that since desires are based on reasons (first premise), which they transmit but to which they cannot add (second premise), they cannot themselves provide reasons for action. In the paper I investigate an attack that has recently been launched against the first premise of this argument by Ruth Chang. Chang invokes a counterexample: affective desires. The aim of the paper is to see if (...) there is a way to accommodate the counterexample to the first premise. I investigate three strategies. I first deal with the idea that the motivation for the premise may be the thesis that an action is intentional if and only if it is done under the guise of perceived reasons. This offers us a way of defending the premise: by showing that actions prompted by affective desires are not intentional. I, however, argue that this strategy is unworkable. This brings me to the second strategy. Here I consider the idea that the premise does not require a conscious normative thought on the part of the agent; in fact, it may not require any such thought, conscious or unconscious. I claim that this strategy too is a failure. Finally, the third approach builds normative judgment in the desire. This is the approach that I think works; in particular, recent work by Jennifer Hawkins may help us accommodate affective desires. The challenge of affective desires, I conclude, can be tackled. (shrink)

Actions expressing emotions (such as caressing the clothes of one's dead friend in grief, or tearing apart a photograph out of jealousy) pose a notorious challenge to action theorists. They are thought to be intentional in that they are in some sense under the agent's control. They are not thought to be done for a reason, however, because they cannot be explained by considerations that favor them from the agent's point of view. This seems to be the case, at least, (...) if one subscribes to the Davidsonian standard model of action explanation. So far, philosophers have had three different reactions to this challenge. Rationalists insist that such actions can be rationalized by re-interpreting them. Arationalists insist that there simply is no reasoning process moving agents in emotional states to act. A third reaction questions the intentionality of such actions altogether. All three reactions, however, share the assumption underlying the standard account: if an agent is thought to act for a reason - and hence acts intentionally - he must entertain a desire and some means-end belief reflecting his reasoning process about how to attain what he desires by acting. In this paper, I try to show that this reflective reasoning mechanism is only one way to rationalize an action. Another way is by tracing an action to an unreflective valuing stance respresenting reasons the agent has from his point of view. Emotions are attitudes that help to grasp reasons the agent has. Since emotions come with a strong motivational potential they move the agent to act expressively. But the agent typically allows himself to do so, thereby monitoring the way in which he does it. To the extent that the agent unreflectively acts on a motive that is itself representative of his point of view, his expressive actions can be regarded as rationalizable. (shrink)

I argue that the moral distinction in double effect cases rests on a difference not in intention as traditionally stated in the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE), but in desire. The traditional DDE has difficulty ensuring that an agent intends the bad effect just in those cases where what he does is morally objectionable. I show firstly that the mental state of a rational agent who is certain that a side-effect will occur satisfies Bratman's criteria for intending that effect. I (...) then clarify the nature of the moral distinction in double effect cases and how it can be used to evaluate the moral blameworthiness of agents rather than the moral status of acts. The agent's blameworthiness is reduced not by his lack of intention but by his desire not to bring about the side-effect, and the 'counterfactual test' can be used to determine whether he desires the effect in acting. In my version, the DDE has its rationale in virtue ethics; it is not liable to abuse as the traditional version is; and it makes more plausible distinctions when applied to standard examples. (shrink)

This paper offers an analysis of the logical form of plural action sentences that shows that collective actions so ascribed are a matter of all members of a group contributing to bringing some event about. It then uses this as the basis for a reductive account of the content of we-intentions according to which what distinguishes we-intentions from I-intentions is that we-intentions are directed about bringing it about that members of a group act in accordance with a shared plan.

Este texto tem como objetivo apresentar a principal motivação filosófica para se defender uma teoria causal da memória, que é explicar como pode um evento que se deu no passado estar relacionado a uma experiência mnêmica que se dá no presente. Para tanto, iniciaremos apresentando a noção de memória de maneira informal e geral, para depois apresentar elementos mais detalhados. Finalizamos apresentando uma teoria causal da memória que se beneficia da noção de veritação (truthmaking).

Amanda works in a library, and a patron asks for her help in learning about duty-to- rescue laws in China. She throws herself into the task, spending hours on retrieving documents from governmental and non-governmental sources, getting electronic translations, looking for literature on Scandinavian duty-to-rescue laws that mention Chinese laws for comparison, and so on. Why? She likes to gain this sort of general knowledge of the world; perhaps the reason she works so hard is that she is learning fascinating (...) facts in doing so. She is also a proud librarian; perhaps the reason she works so hard is that a patron needs her assistance. She is a library employee; perhaps her reason for working so hard is that this sort of effort is noted by her employer and gives her career a boost, or perhaps it is just that doing this sort of work is the condition of her continued employment. Perhaps the reason is that the patron is charming. (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 take it that the following is a desideratum of our theories in the philosophy of mind. A theory in the philosophy of mind should help us better understand ourselves as agents and aid in our theorizing about the nature of action and agency. In this paper I discuss a strategy adopted by some defenders of nonreductive physicalism in response to the problem of causal exclusion. The strategy, which I refer to as “intralevelism,” relies on treating mental causation as intra (...) level mental to mental causation, rather than as involving any inter level mental to physical causation. I raise problems for intralevelist theories of mental causation that stem from action-theoretic considerations. Specifically, I focus on the failure of intralevelist proposals to account for the problem of basic causal deviance in the etiology of action. To the extent that intralevelism fails to make room for basic causal deviance, the strategy fails to satisfy the aforementioned desideratum, viz ., that our theories in the philosophy of mind should be of use in theorizing about action and agency. The upshot is that intralevelism is a less promising strategy for nonreductive physicalists than it appears at first glance. (shrink)

Actions expressing emotions pose a notorious challenge to those concerned with the rational explanation of action. The standard view has it that an agent's desires and means‐end beliefs rationally explain his actions, in the sense that his desire‐belief conglomerates are seen as reasons for which he acts. In light of this view, philosophers are divided on the question of whether actions expressing emotions fall short of being rational, or whether the standard model simply needs to be revised to accommodate them (...) as rational. In this paper, I will show that a core class of actions expressing emotions can be explained as rational, yet not within the framework of the standard model. Instead, such actions can be thought of as grounded in reasons provided by the evaluative perspective that an agent has acquired over time, and by which he has come to identify himself. What moves him to act expressively is the fact that he faces rational pressure to revise or re‐affirm his ongoing evaluative perspective in light of changes in his environment that call that very perspective into question. Such expressive actions serve the function of helping the agent re‐adapt to the environment and re‐establish coherence within his evaluative perspective so as to avoid inner division. (shrink)

In contemporary philosophy of action, the existence of intentional and unintentional action is relatively uncontroversial. What is controversial is whether there exists a third kind of action—action that is neither intentional nor unintentional. This third kind of action is known in the literature as non-intentional action. In this paper, I develop a pair of arguments in favor of non-intentional action. More specifically, I argue that non-intentional action exists in the form of lucky and side-effect acts.

The standard case of weakness of will involves a strong temptation leading us to reconsider or act against our judgments. Here, however, I consider cases of what I call ‘habitual weakness', where we resolve to do one thing yet do another not to satisfy any grand desire, but out of habit. After giving several examples, I suggest that habitual weakness has been under-discussed in the literature and explore why. These cases are worth highlighting for their ubiquity, and I show three (...) further advantages of appreciating habitual weakness as a kind of weakness: It challenges purportedly necessary conditions on akrasia, it side-steps outstanding skeptical concerns, and it provides a new model for considering the weak-willed behavior of group agents. I conclude by arguing that cases of habitual weakness are genuine cases of akrasia and weakness of will. Rather than lacking strength of will, habitual weakness involves lacking diligence, vigilance, or fortitude. (shrink)

In this contribution, I comment on Raffaella Campaner’s defense of explanatory pluralism in psychiatry (in this volume). In her paper, Campaner focuses primarily on explanatory pluralism in contrast to explanatory reductionism. Furthermore, she distinguishes between pluralists who consider pluralism to be a temporary state on the one hand and pluralists who consider it to be a persisting state on the other hand. I suggest that it would be helpful to distinguish more than those two versions of pluralism – different understandings (...) of explanatory pluralism both within philosophy of science and psychiatry – namely moderate/temporary pluralism, anything goes pluralism, isolationist pluralism, integrative pluralism and interactive pluralism. Next, I discuss the pros and cons of these different understandings of explanatory pluralism. Finally, I raise the question of how to implement or operationalize explanatory pluralism in scientific practice; how to structure the “genuine dialogue” or shape “the pluralistic attitude” Campaner is referring to. As tentative answers, I explore a question-based framework for explanatory pluralism as well as social-epistemological procedures for interaction among competing approaches and explanations. (shrink)

Regress arguments show that to do something for a reason, one does not have to have reflectively endorsed that reason. This might seem to establish that reflection does not play a fundamental role in agency. This paper argues that this conclusion rests on too narrow a conception of agency. If agents are not just creatures who act for reasons but also creatures who can take ownership of the reasons for which they act, then there is a central role for reflection (...) to play in agency even if it's not the role that philosophers of action have typically envisioned for it. (shrink)

Actions expressing emotions pose a notorious challenge to those concerned with the rational explanation of action. The standard view has it that an agent's desires and means‐end beliefs rationally explain his actions, in the sense that his desire‐belief conglomerates are seen as reasons for which he acts. In light of this view, philosophers are divided on the question of whether actions expressing emotions fall short of being rational, or whether the standard model simply needs to be revised to accommodate them (...) as rational. In this paper, I will show that a core class of actions expressing emotions can be explained as rational, yet not within the framework of the standard model. Instead, such actions can be thought of as grounded in reasons provided by the evaluative perspective that an agent has acquired over time, and by which he has come to identify himself. What moves him to act expressively is the fact that he faces rational pressure to revise or re‐affirm his ongoing evaluative perspective in light of changes in his environment that call that very perspective into question. Such expressive actions serve the function of helping the agent re‐adapt to the environment and re‐establish coherence within his evaluative perspective so as to avoid inner division. (shrink)

We describe and report on results of employing a new method for analyzing lay conceptions of intentional and unintentional action. Instead of asking people for their conceptual intuitions with regard to construed scenarios, we asked our participants to come up with their own scenarios and to explain why these are examples of intentional or unintentional actions. By way of content analysis, we extracted contexts and components that people associated with these action types. Our participants associated unintentional actions predominantly with bad (...) outcomes for all persons involved and linked intentional actions more strongly to positive outcomes, especially concerning the agent. People’s conceptions of intentional action seem to involve more aspects than commonly assumed in philosophical models of intentional action that solely stress the importance of intentions, desires, and beliefs. The additional aspects include decisions and thoughts about the action. In addition, we found that the criteria that participants generated for unintentional actions are not a mere inversion of those used in explanations for intentional actions. Associations between involuntariness and unintentional action seem to be stronger than associations between aspects of voluntariness and intentional action. (shrink)