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University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 481 OS A Xerox Education Company 73-1940 BEELICK, Donald James, 1941- CONTEXT AND HUMAN ACTIONS. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1972 Philosophy University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan © 1972 •Donald James Beelick ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. CONTEXT AND HUMAN ACTIONS DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School -of The Ohio State University By Donald James Beelick, B.A. ****** The Ohio State University 1972 Approved by Adviser fj Department of Philosophy PLEASE NOTE: Some pages may have indistinct print. Filmed as received. University Microfilms, A Xerox Education Company ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to acknowledge my deeply felt indebtedness to all the people who have been instrumental in the production of this philosophical enterprise. I owe much grati­ tude to the members of my reading committee; Professor Andrew G. Oldenguist, Professor Lee Brown, and Professor William Lycan, for their excellent criticisms and comments. Any errors to be discovered in this dissertation are solely my responsibility. I am expecially indebted to my adviser, Professor Andrew G. Oldenquist, for his patient and excellent guidance in seeing this essay through to its completion. I also wish to thank Misses Cecilia Staas and Molly Bordonaro, whose fine typing work was much appreciated. Finally I am grateful to my wife, Carol, for all the en­ couragement and sacrifices which made it all possible VITA March 16, 1941 . Born - Kalamazoo, Michigan 1964 ............... B.A., Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan 1963-1967 ......... Teaching Assistant, Department of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1967-1972 ......... Instructor, Department of Philosophy, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Philosophy Studies in Epistemology. Professor Richard Severens. Studies in Ethics. Professor Andrew G. Oldenquist. Studies in Logic. Professors Stephen F. Barker and Charles Kielkopf. Studies in Metaphysics. Professor Everett J. Nelson. Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Professor Virgil G. Hinshaw, Jr. Studies in Aristotle. Professor Robert G. Turnbull. Studies in Kant and Plato. Professor Marvin Fox. Studies in Wittgenstein. Professor Morris Weitz. PREFACE This essay is a discussion of the concept of human action against the background of two major questions: the question of what a human action is, and the question of whether reason explanations are a species of causal ex­ planations . With regard to the first of these issues it is argued that although there is no one all-inclusive definition of a human action, the notion of a basic bodily act can be adequately defined. It is also argued that human acts can be divided into two major classes: bodily acts and acts which are, in one way or another, generated from other acts. With regard to the second question, it is argued that explanations in terms of reasons are a species of scientific explanations, in that wants and beliefs cause basic human actions and hence indirectly cause all human actions. Chapter One is an initial examination of some of the major difficulties and ramifications associated with the philosophy of action. 'fc t Chapter Two deals primarily with a number of various attempts on the part of philosophers at analyzing the concept iv of a human action. First, a form of naive behaviorism is considered and rejected as inadequate. Next, the voli­ tional theory is examined. And while it is argued that many, of the stock objections fail to be conclusive, the theory is practically useless since no volitional theorist has succeeded in explaining what a volition is nor is there any independent evidence for the existence of such things as volitions. Ascripticism is then examined and it is argued both that it does not succeed in explaining what a human action is and it does not, as many of its proponents claim, rule out causal explanations of human actions. Next, Paul Ziff's version of contextualism is examined, and while it is admitted that some acts are distinguished from (mere) happenings on the basis of con­ text, the distinction between bodily acts and bodily movements in not entirely a contextual one, and Ziff's emphasis on the subsequent behavior of the agent is simply too vague and limiting to be of much real help in clari­ fying the contextual elements which are involved in some actions. Finally, A. L. Melden's and A. R. Louch's efforts at further elucidating these contextual elements is exposed. There it is claimed that the feature which seems to be central to these action theorists' attempts at elucidating the notion of a human action and a reason for acting seems to be the characteristic of consciousness, which makes the final resolution of the problem dependent on a satisfactory solution to the mind-body problem. It is also argued that although Melden and Louch are of the opinion that our everyday concepts of persons and human actions involve certain evaluative elements which consequently rule out the possibility of giving purely scientific accounts of them, their arguments are not sufficient to demonstrate this. In Chapter Three I deal with the supposed contrast between rational explanations and scientific explanations and the two major arguments used to show that reasons cannot be causes. The supposed contrast between rational explanations and scientific explanations is examined against the background of the debate between William Dray and Carl Hempel concerning the evaluative or empirical status of "principles of action" and it is claimed that such principles cannot be considered to be purely analytic since we sometimes abandon the hypothesis that the agent in question is rational. The appearance of analyticity attaches to Dray's "principles of action" only because of a certain epistemological interdependence of belief and goal ascription. Next, with regard to the two major arguments which have been presented to show that reasons canno.t be causes: the so-called "logical connection argument, and the argument that reasons cannot be causes because they are known in a radically different way than causes, I argue first that the supposed logical connection between reasons and actions is more grammatical than logi­ cal. Philosophers who have supposed that there is a logical connection between reasons and actions have merely confused the intentional object of a reason with some actual objects or acts. Concerning the second argument, it is argued that the notion of knowledge without ob­ servation is simply too vague and obtuse to establish that reasons are not causes, and even if reasons are known in a different way than causes, this is not suf­ ficient to show that reasons are not, in reality, causes. Finally, it is claimed that some philosophers have failed to see that the defining characteristic of all actions is not simply that they are bodily movements in certain cir­ cumstances, because they have failed to see that there are at least two distinct senses in which actions are contrasted with bodily movements. In Chapter Four, I argue that some philosophers have been committed to a number of incompatible theses con­ cerning human actions and how they may be correctly de­ scribed. The incompatible theses in question are these: (1) a set of act descriptions, e.g., "John flipped the switch," "John turned on the light," "John illuminated the room," etc., all describe one identical action; (2) a reason may succeed in explaining an action under one vii description but fail to explain it under some other description; (3) reason explanations are a species of causal explanations. Given this inconsistency X argue further that the first thesis is false and must be re­ jected. The rejection of this thesis consequently requires the formulation of more precise techniques for individuating actions, and the time-honored type-token distinction is suggested as a viable way of doing this. And finally, it is argued that this type-token distinction has the advantage of allowing us to explicate more fully the structural relationships between various acts con­ tained in our everyday use of the "by" and "in" locutions.