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THEORY OF ACTION Lawrence H. Davis UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-ST. LOUIS PRENTICE-HALL, INC. Englewood CliJjs, New Jersey 07632 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Davis, Lawrence Howard, date Theory of action. (Prentice-Hall foundations of philosophy series) Jlibliography: p_ Includes index. L Act (Philosophy) 2_ Events (Philosophy) 3_ Free will and determinism_ L Title_ B105_A35D38 123 78-9542 ISJlN 0-13-913152-3 ISBN 0-13-913145-0 pbk_ In gratitude to the Agent whose activity is with us continually, and upon whose will all human agency depends V"~7tv'n © 1979 by PRENTICE-HALL, INC_ Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey 07632 All rights reserved_ No part of this book may be reproduced in any fO)"1/! or by (I"y 1//('(111-, without permission ill writing from the jmblisher_ Printed in the United States of A merica_ 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 PRENTICE-HALL INTERNATIONAL, INC_. London PRENTICE-HALL OF AUSTRALIA PTY_ LIMITED. Sydney PRENTICE-HALL OF CANADA. LTD_. Toronto PRENTICE-HALL OF INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED. New Delhi PRENTICE-HALL OF JAPAN. ING.. Tokyo PRENTICE-HALL OF SOUTHEAST ASIA PTE. LTD., Singapore WHITEHALL BOOKS LIMITED. Wellington, New Zealand PRENTICE-HALL FOUNDA110NS OF PHILOSOPHY SERIES Virgil Aldrich Philosophy of Art William Alston Philosophy of Language Roderick M. Chisholm Theory of Knowledge Lawrence H. Davis Theory of Action William Dray Philosophy of History Joel Feinberg Social Philosophy William K. Frankena Ethics Martin P. Golding Philosophy of Law Carl Hempel Philosophy of Natural Science John H. Hick Philosophy of Religion David L. Hull Philosophy of Biological Science James E. McClellan Philosophy of Education Willard Van Orman Quine Philosophy of Logic Richard Rudner Philosophy of Social Science Wesley C. Salmon Logic Jerome ShaDer Philosophy of Mind Richard Taylor Metaphysics Elizabeth and Monroe Beardsley, editors Contents 3 ABILITY, 42 Ability, Possibility, and Luck, 43 Developing a Conditional Analysis, 44 An Objection to Conditional Analyses, 48 Repertoires, 50 Ability Now to Act Later, 53 4 INTENTION, 57 Acting Intentionally and Intending, 59 Acting Intentionally, 60 "Knowingly" versus "Intentionally," 62 "Aiming At," 64 "Because He Believed . .. ," 67 Is Knowledge Necessary to Acting Intentionally? 69 Theories of Intending, 72 Knowledge of One's Future Actions, 74 Intending and Doing, 77 Intentional Omissions, 81 5 EXPLANATIONS ExjJlaining Actions and Explaining Events, 84 OF ACTIONS, 83 Reasons-Explanations as Causal, 86 Deterministic and Nondderministic Explanations, 90 Reasons-Explanations as Simply Nondeterministic, 93 Reasons-Explanations as Interpretive, 96 Purely Interpretive Explanations, 98 Teleological Explanations, 102 Conclusion, 106 6 AUTONOMY The Standard Positions, 109 AND Arguments for Incompatibilism, 110 RESPONSIBILITY, 107 Autonomy and Freedom, 112 Autonomy and Time, 119 Autonomy, Manipulation, and Determinism, 120 The Attractions of Indeterminism, 123 Responsibility, 133 BIBLIOGRAPHY, 142 INDEX, 148 PREFACE This book is intended as an introduction to contemporary philosophi cal discussions of human action. For each of the topics selected for chapter-length treatment, I have tried to present all the rival views which seem to be current as thoroughly and sympathetically as space and my own understanding have allowed. I also develop and defend my own position on each of the topics, subject to the same limitations, so this book presents my theory of action as well as a survey of the field known as "theory of action." General readers with little or no previous exposure to contemporary philosophy may find the topics of the last chapters-the explanation of human actions, and free will-of greatest initial interest. But I believe these topics are best dealt with after one has achieved some clarity on what actions and related phenomena are. And I believe that puzzles and problems arising in the effort to do this are of great interest in them selves, as I have tried to indicate briefly in the Introduction and in the course of the chapters which follow. Perhaps the hottest topic in the field at present is one considered in Chapter 2, how actions are to be in dividuated, i.e., told apart, from one another. This may surprise the general reader. But I believe many will find (as I have) that one can get very caught up in the issue and the rival arguments long before coming to understand why (or if) it matters which position is correct. The "action" in "theory of action" is limited to what single human beings do, and most of my examples are trivial: moving an arm, saying "Very good!" watering flowers, and the like. This procedure is typical of the field, and has its merits. When we agree about the explanation and freedom of trivial actions, we can then apply our results to actions of types arousing more emotion. And when we understand the nature of an vii Preface viii individual's actions, we can ask if cooperative actions and actions of such "agents" as corporations, nations, and social classes are similar in any significant ways. My effort to keep this book to a reasonable length has led to some concentration of arguments. For a general orientation, some readers may benefit from looking first at Jerome Shaffer's fine one-chapter treatment of the field in his Philosophy of Mind, in this same Prentice-Hall series. The influence of my teachers Arthur C. Danto and Alvin 1. Goldman will be evident to readers acquainted with their work, despite my fre quent dissent from their views, and it is a pleasure to acknowledge my intellectual and personal debt to them. Special thanks are due to Hugh McCann for advice and constructive criticism at all stages of the research leading to this book, and to Robert Audi, who on very short notice sup plied me with extensive comments on the penultimate draft. Many others gave similar aid on portions of the text and assorted precursors, includ ing Michael Bratman, Robert C. Cummins, Dale Gottlieb, James W. Hall, Daniel L. Lehocky, and Ronald Munson. Collectively they saved me from many errors; I bear sole responsibility for those remaining. The editors of this series, Elizabeth and Monroe Beardsley, gave me helpful criticisms, welcome encouragement, and the very gentlest of prodding when my progress lagged. I began thinking seriously about writing this book while on the faculty of the Johns Hopkins University, and did further research while a Visiting Fellow in the Humanities, Science, and Technology Unit of the Cornell University Program on Science, Technology, and Society, headed by Max Black. The book was completed with the help of a Summer Re search Fellowship from the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where I now teach. I am indebted to Janiece Fister, Rita Larkin, and Kathleen Morris for typing the final drafts. Finally, I wish to record my gratitude to my wife, Sonya Meyers Davis, and my daughters Rena Freda and Miriam Shlomit, for bearing with me through the times when I ne glected them in order to work on this book. Lawrence H. Davis Introduction What is "free will"? Do we have it? Theory of action is a relatively young branch of philosophy which has grown from attempts to clarify and answer these ancient questions. The answers are important. We value the freedom we think we have, and tend to think it confers a certain dignity on us and makes us into responsible beings. In the final chapter of this book, I will point toward what I think are the correct answers by defending an answer to a subsidiary question, whether our having "free will" is threatened by the doctrine of "deter minism," the view that all we do happens by causal necessity. But there are other questions, other problems. In the last few centuries, there have emerged psychology and other sciences which deal with the behavior of human beings and other crea tures. Historians have been writing for many more centuries, but it has never been clear whether they did so as scientists or as something else, perhaps humanists. It is often argued that even practitioners of the "hu man sciences" must be doing something very different than are their col leagues in physics and chemistry, since their subject matter-human action-is so different from what happens in the inanimate world. We 1 Introduction 2 will (in Chapter 5) address the specific question of whether human actions are explained in the same way that a physicist, say, might explain the collapse of a dam or the motion of a falling raindrop. The first four chapters may be regarded simply as developing materials needed for discussing the topics of the last two chapters thoroughly and precisely. But the questions that will arise are of considerable interest in themselves. Some, like that of the difference between succeeding by "luck" and succeeding because one has the ability, are pretty much in ternal to theory of action. Others reflect broader issues in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and ethics. "Abraham Lincoln died several days after being shot. When did the murder take place?"l "In accepting a job, I may know that I am preventing another applicant from taking it. Am I intentionally keeping him or her unemployed?" We will try to make clear on what the answers to questions like these depend. The first main question before us is the one which really sparked the development of contemporary theory of action: what are actions? What are these things which manifest our hopefully free wills, are the chief interests of psychologists and historians, may be done intentionally or unwittingly, skillfully or by luck, and on some views may continue being done while their agents have gone elsewhere, as in the case of Lincoln's assassin? Or as Ludwig Wittgenstein phrased it, setting over two decades of philosophers busily to work: Let us not forget this: when "I raise my arm," my arm goes up. And the prob lem arises: what is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?2 For another person might have lifted my arm, or I might have suffered a nervous spasm. In neither case is my "free will" manifested, nor would what happens be explained in the ways allegedly special to human action. I have performed no action at all. There is more to my raising my arm than my arm's rising. This state ment refutes the view once popular among psychologists that actions are just "colorless movements," bare motions of parts of the agent's body. But recognizing the problem is no more than half of the solution, and students of the problem have not yet agreed on the remainder. One promising way of inquiring further begins by noticing that agents have a special awareness of their actions which distinguishes these actions from mere motions of parts of their bodies. If someone lifts my arm, or it moves as the result of a nervous spasm, I will be aware that it is mov- 1 This example is discussed in John R. Silber, "Human Action and the Language of Volitions," Proceedings 01 the Aristotelian Society, LXIV (1964), 199-220. 2 Ludwig Wittgenstcin, PhilO.lophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1953), sec. 621. Introduction 3 ing. But I will also be aware that I am not moving it. The "feeling"-this is perhaps not the right word for it-is entirely different when I move my arm and my doing so is an action. I am aware then that I am moving it, it is not simply moving. This special awareness cannot itself be what must be added to the motion to get an action. Perhaps the missing ingredient is like the aware ness, however, in being mental,_ or at least "inner" in some sense. In Chapter I we will look at more than one suggestion along these lines. CHAPTER ONE The Nature of Action ACTIONS, DOINGS, Moving my arm is something I do; my doings are AND DOING-RELATED to be contrasted with my states, things that I am. I EVENTS may be frightened or excited, tall or fat, hungry, clumsy, watchful, tired, ill, or in good health. None of these are things that I do, and so none is my action. But what is the difference? In English and some other languages, doings are marked roughly by the possibility of using continuous tenses in the active voice. We can say "Sam is moving his arm," but we cannot say "Sam is being tall" except in special situations-for example, where Sam is a small boy pretending to be tall. But we can say "Sam is hoping for success" and "Sam is standing still," and here we seem to have states rather than doings. Since we are interested in actions, we can use the grammatical test as a definition of "doing," and concentrate on the question "What subclass of people's doings are their actions?" To regard hoping and standing still as things we "do" will then be harmless. Even apart from things like hoping and standing still, actions are only a subclass of doings. People hiccup, bleed, tremble, shudder, stumble, and 4