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Philosophy of Action Philosophy of Action Palgrave Philosophy Today Series Editor: Vittorio Bufacchi, University College Cork, Ireland Th e Palgrave Philosophy Today series provides concise introductions to all the major areas of philosophy currently being taught in philosophy departments around the world. Each book gives a state-of-the-art informed assessment of a key area of philosophical study. In addition, each title in the series off ers a distinct interpretation from an outstanding scholar who is closely involved with current work in the fi eld. Books in the series provide students and teachers with not only a succinct introduction to the topic, with the essential information necessary to understand it and the literature being discussed, but also a demanding and engaging entry into the subject. Titles include Helen Beebee FREE WILL: An Introduction Shaun Gallagher PHENOMENOLOGY Simon Kirchin METAETHICS Lilian O’Brien PHILOSOPHY OF ACTION Duncan Pritchard KNOWLEDGE Mathias Risse GLOBAL POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY Don Ross PHILOSOPHY OF ECONOMICS Joel Walmsley MIND AND MACHINE Forthcoming Titles James Robert Brown PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Pascal Engel PHILOSOPHY OF PSYCHOLOGY Neil Manson ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY Chad Meister PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION Nancy Tuana FEMINISM AND PHILOSOPHY Palgrave Philosophy Today Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–230–00232–6 (hardcover) Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–230–00233–3 (paperback) ( outside North America only ) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of diffi culty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and one of the ISBNs quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England Philosophy of Action Lilian O’Brien University College Cork, Ireland © Lilian O’Brien 2015 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identifi ed as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First publ4ished 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-0-230-23281-5 ISBN 978-1-137-31748-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137317483 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data O’Brien, Lilian. Philosophy of action / Lilian O’Brien, University College Cork, Ireland. pages cm. — (Palgrave philosophy today) Includes index. 1. Act (Philosophy) I. Title. B105.A35O27 2014 1289.4—dc23 2014025917 For Barry Contents Preface viii Series Editor’s Preface xiii Acknowledgements xv 1 Introduction to Intentional Action 1 2 Causalism and Antireductionism 12 3 Volitionism and Trying Th eories 27 4 Reasons 43 5 From Mental to Motor Control 56 6 Action Explanation 77 7 Philosophical Psychology 101 8 Temptation, Control, and Autonomy 118 9 Agents 136 Bibliography 160 Index 169 vii Preface My siblings and I were often involved in confl ict resolution when I was young. To my mind, one of the main goals was to unearth what a defendant was “really doing” on a given occasion. Did the defendant bite the foot off the Sindy doll in an attempt to amputate or did they just mistake the doll for a piece of food, as alleged? Was I really “just humming”, or was I trying to annoy the plaintiff ? Th ese questions about what intentional action was being performed and which consequences were mere side eff ects raise philosophical questions: in general, what determines that one intentional action is being performed rather than another? What makes an action intentional? What is the diff erence between an intentional action and a side eff ect? When I grew up, philosophy of action was a natural home for me. It speaks to our needs, not only to understand our human agency, but also to rationally ground our practices of assigning praise and blame. Th inking about these questions has also allowed me to explore the rich literature, not only on intentional action, but also on action expla- nation – what exactly is going on when we try to explain one another’s intentional actions? When I explain, or to shift to a diff erent but related concept, when I understand your intentional action, what precisely have I grasped about you and your action? Have I “stood in your shoes” and seen the appeal of amputating Sindy with a bite? Or have I, scientist in the making, applied a theory that explains your behaviour, shows it to be inevitable, perhaps, given some law or generalization that you fall under? What would it be to explain or fully understand the actions of Stalin, or Mother Teresa, or Kim Kardashian? Th ese questions, if answered, promise to shed light on a phenomenon that greases the wheels of social life – mutual comprehension – but they also promise to shed light on a more academic question – what is the status of the expla- nations of action that we fi nd in scientifi c psychology and sociology? Th ese modern sciences have come to exert a profound infl uence on our viii Preface ix lives, our societies, our self-conception, and, therefore, are deserving of scrutiny. My main focus is on the nature of intentional action, or more broadly, as we will see, on intentional behaviour . Personal preoccupations aside, the question of what intentional action is, is not, I think, a core question in any other sub-discipline of philosophy, and for this reason alone, it earns its place at the centre of the book. But there are other reasons to focus on this issue – understanding intentional action allows us to better understand rational agency more generally, moral responsibility, (metaphysical) freedom, numerous ethical questions, questions in moral psychology, empirical investigation into action and agency, the nature of psychological and sociological explanation, to name but a few. Th e discussion in the book is structured so that the question of inten- tional action is at its centre and other questions that radiate from it are then treated – for example, what are reasons for intentional action, what is it to explain intentional actions, what mental states are necessary for intentional action, what characteristics must agents have if they are to be able to perform intentional actions, and hence, what kinds of thing count as intentional-action-performing agents. I regret that I say little or nothing about the history of the issues or how the issues are treated in traditions other than my own – analytic philosophy. And even within this tradition I focus less on certain strands than others – work that stems from Wittgenstein and fi nds expression in Elizabeth Anscombe, Peter Winch, Stuart Hampshire, Robert Brandom, Michael Th ompson, and others, is neglected for reasons of space. Other issues have been omitted because they are less directly connected to the thread of discussion that unfolds in the book. How do we know what we are doing and what is the nature of our knowledge of how to do things? Both issues enjoy lively current treatment, but the issues are only touched on here. Other issues that are touched on all too briefl y are issues of practical rationality, (metaphysical) freedom, and autonomy. Central to our understanding of the rational practical agent these may be, but the issues involved deserve book-length treatment of their own. Th e foregoing is a mea culpa . In the following paragraphs, I don’t so much apologize for omissions as off er a somewhat more principled explanation of one of the parameters of the discussion that follows: my discussion rarely touches on the cognitive neuroscience and empirical psychology of action. x Preface Why not science? Th e subject of this essay is the conceptual framework undergirding the commonsense descriptions and explanations of action that – day in, day out – we copiously supply. It is that commonsense framework that we are taught fi rst by Mom and Dad, and whose sometimes exquisite refi nement we learn later from Proust, Woolf, and Henry James. (Wilson 1989: 14) Philosophy of action is a sub-discipline in which our pre-scientifi c understanding of ourselves comes to the fore. But its status as pre-sci- entifi c does not, I believe, impugn it. In everyday settings human agents draw on a rich and diffi cult to articulate taxonomy of mental states, action, and agency. We rely on such distinctions as that between inten- tional actions and non- or unintentional actions, between ends and means, intentional actions and their consequences, intentional actions and attempts, intention and predictive belief, urges and intentions, etc.
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