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An Ontological Objection to the Causal Theory of Action

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An Ontological Objection to the Causal Theory of Action University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 8-2018 Actions Are Not Events: An Ontological Objection to the Causal Theory of Action Jiajun Hu University of Tennessee, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Recommended Citation Hu, Jiajun, "Actions Are Not Events: An Ontological Objection to the Causal Theory of Action. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2018. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/5008 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Jiajun Hu entitled "Actions Are Not Events: An Ontological Objection to the Causal Theory of Action." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Philosophy. David W. Palmer, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Richard E. Aquila, Eldon F. Coffman Jr., Bruce J. MacLennan Accepted for the Council: Dixie L. Thompson Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) Actions Are Not Events: An Ontological Objection to the Causal Theory of Action A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Jiajun Hu August 2018 Copyright © 2018 by Jiajun Hu. All rights reserved. ii DEDICATION For my parents Derong Hu and Juxian Xia my wife Shen Qian iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Firstly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor Prof. David Palmer for the continuous support of my Ph.D study, for his patience, motivation, and immense knowledge. His guidance helped me in all the time of research and writing of this dissertation. Besides my advisor, I would like to thank the rest of my dissertation committee: Prof. Richard Aquila, Prof. E. J. Coffman, and Prof. Bruce MacLennan, for their insightful comments and encouragement. iv ABSTRACT One of the central puzzles in the philosophy of action is how to provide a coherent account of agency within a wholly natural worldview. More specifically, the challenge is to explain how a person’s performing actions – the essential means by which she gets things done – could be a part of the natural order. In contemporary philosophy, a prominent and perhaps the most influential answer to this challenge is the so-called “causal theory of action” (henceforth, the CTA). Proponents of the CTA believe that what makes it the case that behavioral events are actions is that they are caused by the person’s prior mental events or states (e.g., desire-belief pairs, or intentions), and, in addition, that the prior mental causes constitute her reasons for the action in question. The CTA is an event-causal theory of action that attempts to understand human agency in terms of event-causality and treat human actions as particular events in the network of event causation. In this dissertation, I raised an ontological objection to the CTA that actions are not events. Since actions are not events, any attempt to account for the notion of action by appealing to how actions enter into the event-causal relations necessarily fails. The ontological objection consists in three separate arguments sharing the same spirit, each of which gives the same conclusion: actions are not events. Near the end of the dissertation, I anticipate and reject a Davidsonian response that appears to neutralize the force of my ontological objection. The response is that the difference between followers of the CTA and me is just another manifestation of the perennial dispute between nominalists and realists. I argue it is not. I close the dissertation by briefly explaining what a non-causal account of agency might look like. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: Introduction .............................................................................................. 1 Some Objections to the CTA ...................................................................................................... 2 The Ontological Objection to the CTA ....................................................................................... 4 Kim versus Davidson .................................................................................................................. 9 Act-Universals .......................................................................................................................... 13 The Logical Form of Action Sentences .................................................................................... 20 A Summary of Chapters ........................................................................................................... 22 Chapter 2: The Intention-Based Argument ..............................................................23 Two Immediate Challenges to SV ............................................................................................ 24 Bratman’s Videogame Case ...................................................................................................... 28 Intentions and Events ................................................................................................................ 39 An Objection to Consider ......................................................................................................... 49 Chapter 3: The Ability-Based Argument .................................................................68 Ability to Act Intentionally ....................................................................................................... 68 Minimal Ability ........................................................................................................................ 75 A Revised Account of Minimal Ability .................................................................................... 79 A Timing Argument .................................................................................................................. 85 Chapter 4: The Responsibilty-Based Argument ......................................................95 Responsibility and Moral Quality ............................................................................................. 95 Moral Quality and Events ....................................................................................................... 108 An Objection: Two Faces of Moral Responsibility ................................................................ 120 Chapter 5: A Davidsonian Challenge ....................................................................126 Chapter 6: Conclusion ............................................................................................137 References ..............................................................................................................144 Vita .........................................................................................................................150 vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION One of the central puzzles in the philosophy of action is how to provide a coherent account of agency within a wholly natural worldview. More specifically, the challenge is to explain how a person’s performing actions – the essential means by which she gets things done – could be a part of the natural order. In contemporary philosophy, a prominent and perhaps the most influential answer to this puzzle of agency is the so-called “causal theory of action” (henceforth, the CTA). The CTA is first proposed and defended by Donald Davidson (1963). It is now the dominant view in philosophy of action, to such an extent that J. David Velleman (1992) calls it the “standard story” of action. While the CTA has various versions, philosophers who favor it all share a basic conviction about what makes something an action and what explains an action. That is, they believe that what makes it the case that behavioral events are actions is that they are caused by certain of the person’s prior mental events or states (e.g., desire-belief pairs, or intentions), and, in addition, that the prior mental causes constitute her reasons for the action in question. The CTA is an event-causal theory of action that attempts to understand human agency in terms of event-causality and treat human actions as particular events in the network of event causation. An important implication, and also a merit in my opinion, of the CTA is that it promises that human agency can fit nicely into the ontology of scientific naturalism. This is because events and event causality are usually taken to be respected “building blocks” of such a naturalistic ontology. If human agency consists in event causality and, let us assume with scientific naturalists, mental events are physical occurrences (which concerns a more fundamental question of philosophy of mind), then there is no obvious obstacle to locating and accommodating the common phenomenon of human actions in the natural causal network. The success of the CTA, 1 therefore, can be seen as a basis for reconciling the scientific perspective of the world with our idea of ourselves as agents who produce changes in the world. In
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