Essays on Actions and Events Other volumes of collected essays by Donald Davidson Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective Problems of Rationality (forthcoming) Truth, Language, and History (forthcoming) Essays on Actions and Events Second Edition DONALD DAVIDSON CLARENDON PRESS • OXFORD This book has been printed digitally and produced in a standard specification in order to ensure its continuing availability OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0X2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Sao Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto with an associated company in Berlin Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © in this collection Donald Davidson 2001 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) Reprinted 2002 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer ISBN 0-19-924626-2 In memory of Nancy Hirschberg This page intentionally left blank Contents Provenance of the Essays and Acknowledgements ix Preface to the Second Edition xiii Introduction xv Intention and Action 1 Essay 1. Actions, Reasons, and Causes (1963) 3 Essay 2. How is Weakness of the Will Possible? (1969) 21 Essay 3. Agency (1971) 43 Essay 4. Freedom to Act (1973) 63 Essay 5. Intending (1978) 83 Event and Cause 103 Essay 6. The Logical Form of Action Sentences (1967) 105 Criticism, Comment, and Defence 122 Essay 7. Causal Relations (1967) 149 Essay 8. The Individuation of Events (1969) 163 Essay 9. Events as Particulars (1970) 181 Essay 10. Eternal vs. Ephemeral Events (1971) 189 Philosophy of Psychology 205 Essay 11. Mental Events (1970) 207 Appendix: Emeroses by Other Names (1966) 225 Essay 12. Psychology as Philosophy (1974) 229 Comments and Replies 239 Essay 13. The Material Mind (1973) 245 Essay 14. Hempel on Explaining Action (1976) 261 Essay 15. Hume's Cognitive Theory of Pride (1976) 277 viii Contents Appendices A. Adverbs of Action (1985) 293 B. Reply to Quine on Events (1985) 305 Bibliographical References 313 Index 320 Provenance of the Essays and Acknowledgements Essay 1, 'Actions, Reasons, and Causes', was presented in a sympo- sium on 'Action' at the 1963 meeting of the American Philosophical Association and published in the Journal of Philosophy 60 (1963). It is reprinted by permission of the editors, Essay 2, 'How is Weakness of the Will Possible?', was first published in Moral Concepts, edited by Joel Feinberg, Oxford Read- ings in Philosophy, 1970. Drafts of the paper had been read at the 1967 Annual Oregon Colloquium in Philosophy, where I had the benefit of the careful comments of Donald G. Brown, and at the Chapel Hill Colloquium in Philosophy, where I heard Gilbert Harman's skilful criticisms. Essay 3, 'Agency', was presented at the fourth philosophy collo- quium held at the University of Western Ontario in November 1968, and was published in Agent, Action, and Reason, edited by Robert Binkley, Richard Bronaugh, and Ausonio Marras, University of Toronto Press, 1971. James Cornman commented on the paper at the colloquium, and the printed version gained by his advice. It is reprinted by permission of the University of Toronto Press. The fourth Essay, 'Freedom to Act', was first published in Essays on Freedom of Action, edited by Ted Honderich, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973 (reprinted as a paperback in 1978). Essay 5, 'Intending', was read at the first Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter, December 1974, where Stuart Hampshire made a spirited response. My paper and his response were printed in Philosophy of History and Action, edited by Yirmiaku Yovel, D. Reidel and The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, 1978. An earlier version was presented at the Chapel Hill Colloquium in Philosophy in October 1974, where it received a thorough going over by Paul Grice. x Provenance of the Essays 'The Logical Form of Action Sentences', Essay 6, was presented at a conference on The Logic of Decision and Action at the Univer- sity of Pittsburg in March 1966. Comments were made by E. J. Lemmon, H. N. Castaneda, and R. M. Chisholm, and my paper and their comments, along with replies by me, were published in The Logic of Decision and Action, edited by Nicholas Rescher, Univer- sity of Pittsburg Press, 1967. The sources of the further material at the end of Essay 6 are identified along with the material. Essay 7, 'Causal Relations', was presented in a symposium with that title at the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division meeting in December 1967; Zeno Vendler commented. Our two papers were published in the Journal of Philosophy 64 (1967), and my essay is reprinted by permission of the editors. The next Essay, number 8, 'The Individuation of Events', was published in Essays in Honor of Carl G. Hempel, edited by Nicholas Rescher, D. Reidel 1969, pp. 216-34. Copyright © 1969 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland. Reprinted by permission of D. Reidel Publishing Company. David Kaplan commented on an earlier draft read at a colloquium at the University of California at Irvine in April 1967. Some of his wisdom is incor- porated in the printed version. Essays 9 and 10, 'Events as Particulars' and 'Eternal vs. Ephemeral Events', were touched off by a symposium on events at the May 1970 meeting of the Western Division of the American Philosophical Assoication. Roderick Chisholm gave the first paper, 'Events and Propositions', and this paper and Essay 9 were first published in Nous 4 (1970), by Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan. Presently, Chisholm replied to me in 'States of Affairs Again', Nous 5 (1971), and I came back with Essay 10 in the same volume in Nous. Essay 11, 'Mental Events', was given as one of a series of lectures by various philosophers at the University of Massachusetts in 1968-9. These lecturers were published in Experience and Theory, edited by Lawrence Foster and J. W. Swanson, The University of Massachusetts Press and Duckworth, 1970, and are reprinted by permission of the publishers. Essay 12, 'Psychology as Philosophy', was delivered at a sympo- sium on the Philosophy of Psychology at the University of Kent in 1971. The paper was published, with comments and replies, in Philosophy of Psychology, edited by S. C. Brown, The Macmillan Provenance of the Essays xi Press and Barnes, Noble, Inc., 1974, and is reprinted by permission of Macmillan, London and Basingstoke, and Barnes & Noble Books, New York. Essay 13, 'The Material Mind', was written in a cafe in Vienna and delivered at Section 9, Methodology and Philosophy of Psycho- logical Sciences, at the Fourth International Congress for Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, Bucharest, 1971. The Proceedings, edited by P. Suppes, L. Henkin, G.C. Moisil, and A. Joja, were published by North-Holland Publishing Company in 1973, and my paper is reprinted by permission of the publishers. Essay 14, 'Hempel on Explaining Action', was read at a celebra- tion in honour of Professor Carl G. Hempel at Princeton University in Novmeber 1975, and published in Erkenntnis 10 (1976), pp. 239-53. Copyright © 1976 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland. Reprinted by permission of D. Reidel Publishing Company. 'Hume's Cognitive Theory of Pride', which is Essay 15, was presented at a symposium during the December 1976 meetings of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, and published in the Journal of Philosophy 73 (1976). It is reprinted by permission of the editors. Annette Baier and Keith Donnellan commented on my paper at the symposium, and Annette Baier sub- sequently expanded her remarks into a paper, 'Hume's Analysis of Pride', the Journal of Philosophy 75 (1978). Essays 1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 11, and 12 have been previously reprinted in various places and languages. 'Adverbs of Action' was published in Essays on Davidson: Actions and Events, edited by Bruce Vermazen and Merrill Hintikka (Oxford University Press, 1985). It is reprinted here by permisison of Oxford University Press. 'Reply to Quine on Events' was my response to Quine's 'Events and Reification'. Both Quine's paper and my response were read at a conference on my work organized by Ernie Lepore and held at Rutgers University in spring 1985. Two books of essays, almost all of them given at the conference, were soon published. One of them, Actions and Events: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, edited by Ernest Lepore and Brian McLaughlin (Blackwell, 1985), contains the exchange between Quine and me. This page intentionally left blank Preface to the Second Edition THE first fifteen essays of the first edition are reprinted here, unchanged except for misprints corrected and a very few cosmetic touches. This is not because my views have remained untouched by decades of comment, criticism, fresh thinking, helpful suggestion, and a torrent of new writings by others.