Philosophy of Action

Class Notes

Description

Philosophers of action have traditionally defined their topic by quoting Wittgenstein: "What is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?" Solving this equation is supposed reveal what makes the difference between a mere bodily movement and an action; and the difference between mere movements and actions is what the philosophy of action seeks to identify. The following remarks are designed to explain how I approach this problem, insofar as my approach is reflected in my plans for the course.

The Agent/Mind Problem

Bodily movements are typically explained in physical or physiological terms, whereas actions are explained in terms of motives, intentions, and reasons, which are mental phenomena. We may therefore suspect that the difference between my arm's going up and my raising it is just the difference between an event's being conceived as the result of brain states and its being conceived as the result of mental states. In short, we may suspect that the problem of action is just a special case of the mind/body problem.

Yet the problem of action would remain even if the mind/body problem were solved. For suppose that we understood how states of my brain could constitute (or coexist with) a desire to move my arm, and hence how the physical causes of my arm-movement could constitute (or coexist with) the appropriate mental causes. Even so, we would not yet understand how a desire's causing an arm-movement could constitute (or coexist with) my causing it, without which I could not be said to have raised my arm. So even if we understood how the workings of the body were related to the workings of the mind, we would not yet understand how the workings of the mind were related to the activity of the agent. Solving the mind/body problem would still leave us with an agent/mind problem.

Of course, the agent/mind problem and the mind/body problem combine to yield an agent/body problem—the problem of explaining how the workings of a body can constitute (or coexist with) the activity of an agent. But if we focus on the agent/body problem, we are likely to get stuck at the mind/body boundary and never get to that part of the problem which is peculiar to action. As philosophers of action, then, we should try, whenever possible, to leave mind/body worries to the philosophers of mind. Thus, for example, we should help ourselves to the notion of mental causation, without worrying how it can be reconciled with physical causation, so that we can concentrate instead on how it can be reconciled with agency.

Agent Causation vs. Freedom

In order for me to raise my arm, I must make my arm go up, and so I must be the cause of my arm's rising. How a person can be the cause of an event is the fundamental problem in the philosophy of action. This problem is sometimes called the problem of agent-causation, but that term is also associated with a particular solution (or, as I would claim, non-solution), and so the problem is more often described as the problem of autonomy.

How a person can be the cause of an event is a distinct problem from whether there are alternative events that he is capable of causing. Hence the problem of autonomy is distinct from the problem of free will. Some philosophers of action, including Davidson and Frankfurt, regard autonomy as a genuine problem but dismiss free will as a pseudo-problem. I share their sense that the traditional free-will debate is a dead end, but the reason is not, in my view, that there is no genuine problem of free will. Nevertheless, the problem of autonomy is in some sense prior to the problem of free will, and we will therefore devote most of the semester to autonomy. How much time we devote to free will, I will leave to be determined by the interests of the class.

Responsibility

The topic of moral responsibility is sometimes included in the philosophy of action, by those who believe that the term 'responsible' designates a kind of behavior (or behavior-under-a-description). These philosophers believe that whether a person is responsible for having done something depends on facts about how and why he did it, and hence that we should be able to state physical and psychological conditions that are necessary and sufficient for responsible action.

According to an alternative view, whether a person is responsible for having done something depends on whether it would be fair or reasonable to hold him responsible, and the norms of fairness governing our practice of holding-responsible are sensitive to more than the psycho-physical conditions of the action. For example, our norms of holding-responsible are sensitive to considerations of due care and negligence, which depend in turn on the values and obligations at stake in an action—matters which may not be reflected in the agent's physiology or psychology. Whether I am responsible for compressing objects underfoot as I walk may thus depend, not only on my state of mind as I tread on them, but also on how important it is for me to be mindful of them. On this view, responsibility is an irreducibly normative matter and is therefore a subject for ethics rather than the philosophy of action.

I favor this latter, normative view of moral responsibility—which means that I am not inclined to include the topic in the philosophy of action. But I tentatively included some readings in the bibliography, in case members of the class want to study the topic.

Syllabus

Five books have been ordered:

Written work: Four 4-6 page papers, deadlines to be announced.

Readings and topics: