The account of intentional action Anscombe provides in her Intention has had a huge influence on the development of contemporary action theory. But what is intentional action, according to Anscombe? She seems to give two different answers, saying first that they are actions to which a special sense of the question ‘Why?’ is applicable, and second that they form a sub-class of the things a person knows without observation. Anscombe gives no explicit account of how these two characterizations converge on (...) a single phenomenon, leaving us with a puzzle. I solve the puzzle by elucidating Anscombe's two characterizations in concert with several other key concepts in ‘Intention’, including, ‘practical reasons’, the sui generis kind of explanation these provide, the distinction between ‘practical’ and ‘speculative’ knowledge, the formal features which mark this distinction, and Anscombe's characterization of practical knowledge as knowledge ‘in intention’. (shrink)

In this discussion I shall argue that some fairly widely held views about human habits are mistaken. These misconceptions are important because of the pervasiveness of the habitual in human behavior and because it is the concept of habit that has served as the prototype of various conceptions of conditioned response which are used in psychological explanation. One major task of this analysis is to show that accounts in which actions are explained by reference to rules are not incompatible with (...) accounts in which the same behavior is seen as the product of habit. (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)

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)

In this paper I shall give reasons for rejecting one type of analysis of the basic constituents of action, and reasons for preferring an alternative approach. I shall discuss the concept of basic action recently presented by Alvin Goldman, who gives an interesting version of the sort of analysis I wish to reject. Goldman agrees with Danto that bodily movements are basic actions, and his definition of ‘basic’ resembles Danto's fairly closely. What is new is a useful concept of level-generation (...) between actions, which Goldman uses both in his recursive definition of action and in his definition of a basic action, as one whose performance does not depend on level-generational knowledge. In brief, an action is an event which is level-generated by or capable of level-generating another action, and a basic action is one which is not level-generated by any other action. I shall examine this concept of level-generation, and point out incoherences I think endemic to views of this sort. In the last part of the paper I shall indicate the direction in which a more satisfactory account of basic action is to be sought. The criterion of basicness I shall sketch will select as basic actions not bodily movements, but a more interesting class of actions, and one whose demarcation can help us see the relation between actions and intentions, and the differences between intentions and other states of mind. (shrink)

This article defends the idea that causal relations between reasons and actions are wholly irrelevant to the explanatory efficacy of reason-explanations. The analysis of reason-explanations provided in this article shows that the so-called “problem of explanatory force” is solved, not by putative causal relations between the reasons for which agents act and their actions, but rather by the intentions that agents necessarily have when they act for a reason. Additionally, the article provides a critique of the principal source of support (...) for the thesis that reason-explanations are causal explanations, namely, Davidson's argument in “Actions, Reasons, and Causes.” It is shown that Davidson's argument for this thesis rests crucially on two mistakes: his definition of intentional action and his ontological prejudice against intentions. (shrink)

The volitional theory of human action has formed a basis for a prominent account of voluntary behavior since at least Aquinas. But in the twentieth century the notions of will and volition lost much of their popularity in both philosophy and psychology. Gilbert Ryle’s devastating attack on the concept of will, and especially the doctrine of volition, has had lingering effects evident in the widespread hostility and skepticism towards the will and volition. Since the 1970s, however, the volitional theory has (...) received some renewed interest in the philosophy of action. Some philosophers even consider that ‘in current philosophy of action it is perhaps the most widely held view, at least regarding the immediate antecedents of action.’. (shrink)

Some philosophers argue that Hume, given his theory of causation, is committed to an implausibly thin account of what it is like to act voluntarily. Others suggest, on the basis of his argument against free will, that Hume takes no more than an illusory feature of action to distinguish the experience of performing an act from the experience of merely observing an act. In this paper, I argue that Hume is committed to neither an unduly parsimonious nor a sceptical account (...) of the phenomenology of agency. (shrink)

Given the many marvelous things animals can do and moreover the success we have in employing the intentional stance towards animals, it seems to be almost unthinkable to say that animals could not act at all. Nonetheless, this is exactly what I argue for. I claim that strictly speaking there is no animal action, only behaviour. I defend this claim in three steps. Firstly, I recapitulate some of the weighty grounds that speak in favour of animal agency. Secondly, I explain (...) why I still doubt that animals act. The argument is that the account of agency that I take to be the most attractive one entails that animals can't act. Since this account of agency is non-standard, I spend the bulk of the paper with providing a sketch of what, according to it, actions are. Finally, I explain why it is still so natural and promising to regard animals as agents, although in fact they aren't. As one might put it: of course they act, only strictly speaking they don't. (shrink)

Practical reasons figure in both the justification and the causal explanation of action. It is usually assumed that the agent’s state of believing rather than what they believe must figure in the causal explanation of action. But, that the agent believes something is not a reason in the sense of being part of the justification of what they do. So it is often concluded that the justifying reason is a different sort of thing from the causally motivating reason. But this (...) means that in a causal process of acting the justifying reasons have done their work by the time the agent has the appropriate beliefs and desires. Transforming these into behaviour is not guided by reason. This conception of action in which there is no role for reason in the part of the process where anything actually gets done is not acceptable. So the original assumption that beliefs rather than the believed facts figure in the casual explanation of action should be challenged. (shrink)

Depuis 1963, le causalisme a été l'approche dominante en théorie de l'action. Il est possible, cependant, de distinguer diverses sortes de causalisme. La version dominante, que j'appelle CTA, essaie de trouver une analyse causale de l'action. Une version plus restreinte — le causalismeR — se montre récalcitrante à ce genre d'entreprise et se contente d'essayer d'expliquer en quel sens on peut traiter comme causales les explications par les raisons. J'examine ici les motivations sous-jacentes à CTA, ainsi que plusieurs de ses (...) formulations les plus influentes, et je soutiens que cette approche n'a pas été très heureuse et que le projet, du reste, n'est pas au départ terriblement convaincant. Il y a beaucoup à attendre, en revanche, du causalismeR. (shrink)

Empirical evidence, it has often been argued, undermines our commonsense assumptions concerning the efficacy of conscious intentions. One of the most influential advocates of this challenge has been Daniel Wegner, who has presented an impressive amount of evidence in support of a model of "apparent mental causation". According to Wegner, this model provides the best explanation of numerous curious and pathological cases of behavior. Further, it seems that Benjamin Libet's classic experiment on the initiation of action and the empirical evidence (...) concerning the confabulation of reason explanations provide further support for this view. In response, I will propose an alternative model of "real mental causation" that can accommodate the empirical evidence just as well as Wegner's. Further, we will see that there is plenty of evidence in support of the assumption that intentions are causally efficacious. This will provide us with ample reason to endorse the model of real mental causation. (shrink)

Does Darwinism generally, and human sociobiology in particular, lead to an unwarranted (and possibly socially offensive) determinism? I argue that one must separate out different senses of determinism, and that once one has done this, a Darwinian approach to human nature can be seen to shed important light on our intuitions about free will, constraint, and control.

Traditional analytical philosophy of education assigns a peripheral place to physical education, partly because orthodox epistemology finds its cognitive claims implausible. An understandable but dubious response to this state of affairs is the attempt to relocate physical education within the academic curriculum, with its characteristic emphasis on theoretical knowledge and formal assessment. Dissatisfaction with this response suggests an analysis of physical activity in terms of practical knowledge or knowing how, but the results of this seem inconclusive. More recently, the development (...) of neurocomputational and embodied-cognition approaches in cognitive science appears to offer alternative ways of understanding motor skill and physical activity, and thus of rescuing physical education from its marginal status. But these strategies are not unproblematic, particularly where questions of personal agency and motor control are concerned. Examination of these issues prompts a radical reconsideration of the traditional problem of physical education, and consequently of some familiar assumptions in the philosophy of education. (shrink)

We can often explain a person's action by citing some fact which prompted him to do what he did. For example:Tom quit his job because he was offered more money elsewhere;Dick took his daughter to the dentist because she had a toothache;Harry rushed out of the theater because it was on fire.In each case there are four elements which fit together in a characteristic pattern. The first is the fact that Tom has been offered more money, that Dick's daughter has (...) a toothache, or that the theater in which Harry is sitting is on fire. If the theater were not on fire, for example, then we would have to give a different sort of explanation of why Harry rushed out: we would have to say that he left because he thought it was on fire, not because it was on fire. I shall have more to say about this point later. The second is their knowledge of these facts. If Dick is unaware of the girl's toothache, he can hardly do anything on account of it; and of course the same goes for the other cases. The third element is the attitude which each agent has toward the existing state-of-affairs. Tom wants to earn more money; Dick loves his daughter and doesn't want her to suffer; and Harry, like the rest of us, doesn't want to be burned. Finally, there is the action which is being explained: Tom quits his job, Dick takes the girl to the dentist, and Harry rushes from the theater. (shrink)

The logical connection argument claims that since the relation between a want and the supposedly resultant action is " logical " in nature, Whereas the relation between any cause and its effect must be contingent in nature, A want therefore cannot be the cause of an action. I consider four classical formulations of the lca, And review various objections that have been brought against them. Then I present my own formulation of the lca, Which is immune to such objections. I (...) conclude that we must abandon the idea that a person's wants cause his actions. (shrink)

How do reason explanations explain? One view is that they require the deployment of a tacit psychological theory; another is that even if no tacit theory is involved, we must still conceive of reasons as mental states. By focusing on the subjective nature of agency, and by casting explanations as responses to 'why' questions that assuage agents' puzzlement, reason explanations can be profitably understood as part of our traffic in first-order content amongst perspectival subjects. An outline is offered of such (...) an account of reason explanation, one that fully acknowledges the distinctive first-order first-person normative perspective of agency. (shrink)

In a paper entitled ‘Reviving the Logical Connection Argument,’ James Otten attempts to revive the Logical Connection Argument, which is intended to refute the causal thesis. Otten distinguishes two versions of the causal thesis. The general causal thesis: W1 … Wn are certain of S's wants, and W1 … Wn cause A,and the restricted causal thesis:: W is S's want to perform A, and W causes A.

La philosophie analytique de l'action se réclame du langage ordinaire de l'action comme une des sources de ses data philosophiques. Elle se propose d'en examiner le fonctionnement, d'en extraire les concepts clés, de caractériser les formes de propositions dans lesquelles s'expriment nos actions et notre façon spontanée de les comprendre, d'examiner l'articulation propre aux stratégies d'action et au discours qui les justifie, et de faire des « proposals » pour la construction d'une théorie de l'action. En somme, il s'agit d'ériger (...) le langage ordinaire en instance de contrôle aussi bien sur le plan du traitement de problèmes philosophiques que sur celui de la construction de méta-théories des sciences de l'homme. Ce travail sur le langage de l'action peut revêtir plusieurs fonctions: fonction de clarification ou de détection de confusions, fonction thérapeutique pour guérir le langage de maladies philosophiques, c'est-à-dire des pseudo-problèmes, fonction heuristique pour prescrire une diète appropriée au traitement des perplexités philosophiques qui surgissent « quand le langage tourne à vide, non quand il travaille », pour employer le mot de Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Recent work on dispositions offers a new solution to the long-running dispute about whether explanations of intentional action are causal explanations. The dispute seemed intractable because of a lack of percipience about dispositions and a commitment to Humean orthodoxies about causation on both sides.

How management philosophy is conceived depends on if pragmatism is acknowledged or not! After having been under the main domination of management science both research and education has until recently widened its scope from a decision-making to an action-perspective. It seems to be a recent reconnection to pragmatism that makes the 2011 Carnegie report propose to rethink management in liberal arts terms, whilst the vastly influential 1959 Carnegie Pierson report distanced itself from American pragmatism thus focusing on decisions and forgetting (...) actions. Actions may contain decisions and choices but contain more than that. A decision-perspective explains by causal inference modelling choices as calculated or programmed. The action-perspectives strive at understanding intentions of agents by philosophical interpretations of action stories. It is less limited to finding the logics for constructing worlds, to paraphrase Herbert Simon’s favorite philosopher Rudolf Carnap, than embarking on plausible, although not certain, reconstructions of intentions giving meaning to action stories. This can be illustrated by turning to Elizabeth Anscombe’s Wittgensteinian investigation of intentions as Aristotelian syllogistic reasoning. Her constant analytical care to defend a philosophy of action against metaphysical assumptions and taken-for-granted “psychologisms” shows that an action-perspective is as analytic as ever one of decision-making. What differs is that the latter seems constantly attracted by programming inquiry by “scientific methodology” whilst the latter is charmed by philosophical approaches to action welcoming fascinating conundrums, enigmas and human goofs in the reality of managerial practice. Management science wants to reduce management to logics, programs and models for formal decision making whereas management philosophy is closer to spotting the artfully entrepreneurial in actions. The latter points in the direction of engineering tools, the former to appreciate the toys of management as artwork. Finally the argument of Georg Henrik von Wright helps us see that the two are philosophically compatible; for in a pragmatically inspired management philosophy actions may well contain decisions. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that there is an important anomaly to the causalist/compatibilist paradigm in the philosophy of action and free will. This anomaly, which to my knowledge has gone unnoticed so far, can be found in the philosophy of Harry Frankfurt. Two of his most important contributions to the field – his influential counterexample to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities and his ‘guidance’ view of action – are incompatible. The importance of this inconsistency goes far beyond the issue (...) of coherence within Frankfurt’s philosophy. I shall argue that this inconsistency represents an important anomaly within the causalist/compatibilist framework; so that we should start to seriously consider having to move on from the established paradigm. (shrink)

I show that Pickard’s argument against the irresistibility of addiction fails because her proposed dilemma, according to which either drug-seeking does not count as action or addiction is resistible, is flawed; and that is the case whether or not one endorses Pickard’s controversial definition of action. Briefly, we can easily imagine cases in which drug-seeking meets Pickard’s conditions for agency without thereby implying that the addiction was not irresistible, as when the drug addict may take more than one route to (...) go meet her dealer. (shrink)

My paper reflects on the debate about reasons for action and action explanations between Wittgensteinian teleological approaches and causalist theories inspired by Davidson. After a brief discussion of similarities and differences in the philosophy of language, I sketch the prehistory and history of the controversy. I show that the conflict between Wittgenstein and Davidson revolves neither around revisionism nor around naturalism. Even in the philosophy of mind and action, Davidson is not as remote from Wittgenstein and his followers as is (...) commonly assumed: there are numerous points of contact of both a biographical and a substantive kind. The real conflict concerns the difference between Davidson’s official subjectivist approach to reasons for action, according to which they are mental states of believing and desiring (or their onsets) on the one hand, and an objectivist approach, according to which reasons for action are what is believed or desired, non-mental facts or states of affairs. (shrink)

An introductory survey of the contemporary philosophy of action.

Qual é a relação entre uma razão e uma ação quando a razão explica a ação, dando a razão do agente para fazer o que fez? Podemos chamar tais explicações de racionalizações, e dizer que a razão racionaliza a ação. Neste artigo quero defender a posição antiga — e de senso comum — de que a racionalização é uma espécie de explicação causal b. A defesa sem dúvida exige alguma reelaboração, mas não parece necessário abandonar a posição, como muitos autores (...) recentes insistem. (shrink)

This study investigates the composer-performer relationship in terms of the site of responsibility for the aesthetic features of the musical performance. It considers the extent to which the performer's view of that relationship affects the performance itself. This is accomplished by examining four focal points: the composer-performer relationship; composers' intentions; Nelson Goodman's account of notation, expression and style; and the work--including the writings--of Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. ;The composer is seen by some as predominantly responsible for the performance, with the (...) performer's role as that of fulfilling the composer's intentions. A contrasting perspective, cognizant of the significance of interpretive decisions, situates the performer as co-creator. ;Pivotal in this debate are the discrepancies surrounding the role of composers' intentions. Critical discussion of the Early Music Movement, considered here as a paradigm of historical authenticity, distinguishes between its proponents, for whom composers' intentions are authoritative, and its opponents, who perceive that historical authenticity, even if attainable, would be insufficient to ensure a work's aesthetic merit. ;This divergence derives from the fact that the musical performance is underdetermined by Western musical notation. Nelson Goodman addresses this by assigning to the musical score the function of identification: Any performance which complies with the score constitutes an instance of the work. Moreover, Goodman's account of expression and style recognizes the score's non-notational elements as instrumental to the aesthetic qualities of the performance. ;Goodman's theoretical account is then applied to the work of Glenn Gould. First, Gould's consideration of the performer as co-creator is identified as instrumental in determining the aesthetic features of his performances. The interpretive autonomy afforded by his perspective, it is argued, led to the development of a performance and compositional style characterized by a predilection for a manifestly contrapuntal rather than hierarchical structure. Gould's performances and compositions are shown to express views of an ethical as well as aesthetic nature, contributing to what Goodman terms "worldmaking," affirming the symbolic function of music. ;In conclusion, the performer's view of the performer-composer relationship is fundamental and determinant in defining the aesthetic features of the musical performance. (shrink)

Here I challenge the philosophical consensus that we use folk psychology for the purposes of metarepresentation. The paper intends to show that folk psychology should not be conceived on par with fact-stating discourses in spite of what its surface semantics may suggest. I argue that folk-psychological discourse is organised in a way and has conceptual characteristics such that it cannot fulfill a fact-stating function. To support this claim I develop an open question argument for psychological interpretations, and I draw attention (...) to the central role of rationality, the conceptual connections, and the essential evaluative content inherent in folk psychological ascriptions. As a conclusion I propose that a fictionalist account of the discourse would fit its characteristics better than a factualist-realist interpretation. (shrink)

This selective overview of the history of American Philosophy in the Twentieth Century begins with certain enduring themes that were developed by the two main founders of classical American pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839--1914) and William James. Against the background of the pervasive influence of Kantian and Hegelian idealism in America in the decades surrounding the turn of the century, pragmatism and related philosophical outlooks emphasizing naturalism and realism were dominant during the first three decades of the century. Beginning in (...) the 1930s and 1940s, however, the middle third of the century witnessed the rising influence in America of what would become known as “‘analytic philosophy’,” with its primary roots in Europe: in the Cambridge philosophical analysis of Moore, Russell, and Wittgenstein; logical empiricism and positivism on the continent; and linguistic analysis and ordinary- language philosophy at Oxford. This overview stresses the persistence of pragmatist themes throughout much of the century, while emphasizing the mid-century transformations that resulted from developments primarily in analytic philosophy. These combined influences resulted at the turn of the millennium in the flourishing, among other developments, of distinctively analytic styles of pragmatism and naturalism. (shrink)

Many issues at the heart of the philosophy of action and of philosophical work on free will are framed partly in terms of causation. The leading approach to understanding both the nature of action and the explanation or production of actions emphasizes causation. What may be termed standardcausalism is the conjunction of the following two theses: firstly, an event's being an action depends on how it was caused; and secondly, proper explanations of actions are causal explanations. Important questions debated in (...) the literature on free will include: is an action's being deterministically caused incompatible with its being freely performed? Are actions free only if they are indeterministically caused? Does the indeterministic causation of an action preclude its being freely performed? Does free action require agent causation? This article concentrates on issues about action and free will that centrally involve causation. (shrink)

I argue that we should give up the fight to rescue causal theories of action from fundamental challenges such as the problem of deviant causal chains; and that we should rather pursue an account of action based on the basic intuition that control identifies agency. In Section 1 I introduce causalism about action explanation. In Section 2 I present an alternative, Frankfurt’s idea of guidance. In Section 3 I argue that the problem of deviant causal chains challenges causalism in two (...) important respects: first, it emphasizes that causalism fails to do justice to our basic intuition that control is necessary for agency. Second, it provides countless counterexamples to causalism, which many recent firemen have failed to extinguish – as I argue in some detail. Finally, in Section 4 I argue, contra Al Mele, that control does not require the attribution of psychological states as causes. (shrink)

causal relevance, a three-place relation between event types, and circumstances, and argue for a logical independence condition on properties standing in the causal relevance relation relative to circumstances. In section 3, I apply these results to show that functionally defined states are not causally relevant to the output or state transitions in terms of which they are defined. In section 4, I extend this result to what that output in turn causes and to intervening mechanisms. In section 5, I examine (...) the implications of this result for functional theories of mental states. In section 6, I distinguish between functional descriptions of properties and functional definitions of properties, and argue the former present no obstacle to mental states being causally relevant to behavior, but that this is so because they do not treat mental states as functional states. In section 7, I examine the nature of explanations that appeal to functional states or properties. section 8 identifies some difficulties that arise in thinking about specifically conscious mental states as functional states. section 9 is a brief conclusion. (shrink)