Table Of Content

Action Central Problems of Philosophy Series Editor: John Shand This series of books presents concise, clear, and rigorous analyses of the core problems that preoccupy philosophers across all approaches to the discipline. Each book encapsulates the essential arguments and debates, providing an authoritative guide to the subject while also introducing original perspectives. This series of books by an international team of authors aims to cover those fundamental topics that, taken together, constitute the full breadth of philosophy. Published titles Action Ontology Rowland Stout Dale Jacquette Causation and Explanation Paradox Stathis Psillos Doris Olin Free Will Perception Graham McFee Barry Maund Knowledge Relativism Michael Welbourne Paul O’Grady Meaning Scepticism David E. Cooper Neil Gascoigne Mind and Body Truth Robert Kirk Pascal Engel Modality Universals Joseph Melia J. P. Moreland Forthcoming titles God Rights Jay Wood Duncan Ivison Death The Self Geoffrey Scarre Stephen Burwood Realism and Anti-Realism Value Stuart Brock & Edwin Mares Derek Matravers Action Rowland Stout © Rowland Stout, 2005 This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved. First published in 2005 by Acumen Acumen Publishing Limited 15a Lewins Yard East Street Chesham Bucks HP5 1HQ www.acumenpublishing.co.uk ISBN: 1-902683-97-8 (hardcover) ISBN: 1-902683-98-6 (paperback) British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Designed and typeset by Kate Williams, Swansea. Printed and bound by Cromwell Press, Trowbridge. Contents Acknowledgements vii 1 Introduction: inward-looking and outward-looking approaches to agency 1 2 Acting for a reason 15 3 Reasons and passions 33 4 Agent causation 53 5 Mental causation 69 6 Deviant causal chains and causal processes 83 7 Acting with an intention 99 8 Prior intention 119 9 The metaphysics of action 137 Conclusion 153 Notes 155 Suggestions for further reading 159 References 161 Index 163 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Al Mele and an anonymous referee for Acumen for very helpful comments on a penultimate draft. I also want to acknowledge the help provided by University College Dublin in providing me with a semester’s research leave at a crucial point in the process of writing the book. The book developed out of several years of teaching the philosophy of action at undergradu- ate and postgraduate levels as well as supervising research theses at the University of Oxford, , University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin. I am indebted to all my students on all these courses for their sceptical approach to every- thing I have had to say. I dedicate the book to Rebecca for freedom, causation and rationality. Introduction: inward-looking and outward-looking 1 approaches to agency Being an agent At the very heart of our conception of what it is to be a person is the idea that we (as people) are both subjects and agents. Being subjects of experience, we are conscious of ourselves and our world. We are receptive to the way things are, and have perceptual and emotional experiences as part of that receptivity. But we also act on our world. We change it in the light of our reasons. We are agents as well as subjects: active as well as passive. Action and experience, agency and consciousness, hand in hand make up our very nature. The properties of being an agent or a subject come in varying degrees. At the most minimal level we might think of the sun as an agent in the process of warming up a stone, or of a planet as subject to the force of gravity. And at the other extreme we have full-blown agency and consciousness. A person is the full-blown agent of an intentional achievement when they write a book. And they are the full-blown subject of conscious experience when they watch the sun set, attending to every shifting pattern of colour in the clouds. There are intermediate cases. A sunflower turns to face the rising sun. This is an action in some sense. And although the behaviour of the sunflower is not deliberate, it is not accidental either. It is directed to the goal of its bloom facing the rising sun.1 In some sense the sunflower registers the direction of the sun. But it is not consciously aware of the sun. So in a limited sense it is both subject and agent, but in a more full-blown sense it is neither. The same goes for simple animals. The snail acts when it pulls in its horns in response to some- one touching it; and it is in a way aware of the finger touching its