Table Of Content

Time and the Philosophy of Action Although scholarship in philosophy of action has grown in recent years, there has been little work explicitly dealing with the role of time in agency—a role with great significance for the study of action theory. As the articles in this collection demonstrate, virtually every fundamental issue in the philosophy of action involves considerations of time. The four sections of this volume address the metaphysics of action, diachronic practical rationality, the relation between deliberation and action, and the phenomenology of agency, providing an overview of the central developments in each area with an emphasis on the role of temporality. Including contributions by established, rising, and new voices in the field, Time and the Philosophy of Action brings analytic work in philosophy of action together with contributions from continental philosophy and cognitive science to elaborate the central thesis that agency not only develops in time but is shaped by it at every level. Roman Altshuler is Assistant Professor at Kutztown University, USA Michael J. Sigrist is Professorial Lecturer at George Washington University, USA Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com 74 Reification and the Aesthetics of Music Jonathan Lewis 75 Intellectual Virtues and Education Essays in Applied Virtue Epistemology Edited by Jason Baehr 76 Embodied Emotions A Naturalist Approach to a Normative Phenomenon Rebekka Hufendiek 77 Normativity and Naturalism in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences Edited by Mark Risjord 78 The Concept of Violence Mark Vorobej 79 A Social Theory of Freedom Mariam Thalos 80 The Cognitive Basis of Aesthetics Cassirer, Crowther, and the Future Elena Fell and Ioanna Kopsiafti 81 Interactive Justice A Proceduralist Approach to Value Conflict in Politics Emanuela Ceva 82 The Epistemological Skyhook Determinism, Naturalism, and Self-Defeat Jim Slagle 83 Time and the Philosophy of Action Edited by Roman Altshuler and Michael J. Sigrist Time and the Philosophy of Action Edited by Roman Altshuler and Michael J. Sigrist First published 2016 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Taylor & Francis The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Altshuler, Roman, editor. Title: Time and the philosophy of action / edited by Roman Altshuler and Michael J. Sigrist. Description: 1 [edition]. | New York : Routledge, 2016. | Series: Routledge studies in contemporary philosophy ; 83 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016005447 | ISBN 9780415735247 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Act (Philosophy) | Time. Classification: LCC B105.A35 T56 2016 | DDC 128/.4—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016005447 ISBN: 978-0-415-73524-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-81930-3 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC Contents Acknowledgments vii 1 Introduction 1 ROMAN ALTSHULER AND MICHAEL J. SIGRIST PART I The Metaphysics of Action 19 2 Slip-Proof Actions 21 SANTIAGO AMAYA 3 The Antinomy of Basic Action 37 KIM FROST 4 Second Nature and Basic Action 52 BEN WOLFSON 5 Making the Agent Reappear: How Processes Might Help 67 HELEN STEWARD PART II Diachronic Practical Rationality 85 6 “What on Earth Was I Thinking?” How Anticipating Plan’s End Places an Intention in Time 87 EDWARD S. HINCHMAN 7 Pro-Tempore Disjunctive Intentions 108 LUCA FERRERO vi Contents 8 Evaluative Commitments: How They Guide Us over Time and Why 124 MONIKA BETZLER 9 Updating the Story of Mental Time Travel: Narrating and Engaging with Our Possible Pasts and Futures 141 DANIEL D. HUTTO AND PATRICK MCGIVERN PART III Deliberation, Motivation, and Agency 159 10 Time for Action 161 J. DAVID VELLEMAN 11 Time and the “Antinomies” of Deliberation 175 JOHN J. DRUMMOND 12 Habituation and First-Person Authority 189 JONATHAN WEBBER 13 Timing Is Not Everything: The Intrinsic Temporality of Action 205 SHAUN GALLAGHER PART IV Phenomenology and the Temporality of Agency 223 14 Care, Death, and Time in Heidegger and Frankfurt 225 B. SCOT ROUSSE 15 Merleau-Ponty on the Temporality of Practical Dispositions 242 DAVID CIAVATTA 16 Acts as Changes: A Metabolic Approach to the Philosophy of Action 257 MICAH D. TILLMAN 17 Hamlet and the Time of Action 272 HENRY SOMERS-HALL Contributors 285 Index 287 Acknowledgments Many of the papers collected in this volume were first presented at the Time and Agency conference at the George Washington University on Novem- ber 18–19, 2011, with the support of the George Washington University Department of Philosophy, the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, and the George Washington University Philosophy Club. The editors would like to thank those who helped make the conference a success, including several presenters whose work did not make it to this volume—Jennifer Morton, Chauncey Maher, Lynne Rudder Baker, and Patrick Fleming—as well as the philosophers whose comments at the conference helped initi- ate discussion and revision of the papers—Kyle Fruh, Michael Brownstein, Irene Bucelli, Lior Levy, Alex Madva, Steven Gross, C. Hans Pedersen, Carl Hammer, Michael Brent, and John Schwenkler. Gail Weiss, former chair of the Department of Philosophy, also deserves special mention for her efforts and assistance. The editors would also like to thank those who provided advice and support at various stages of this project, especially the editorial team at Routledge, as well as Andrei Buckareff, Patrick Stokes, Jonathan Webber, David Velleman, and three referees for Routledge. Roman would like especially to thank Lauren Trainor for her support, advice, and putting up with his perpetual late nights. And Michael would like to thank Clare Berke for her care and patience during this long process. This page intentionally left blank 1 Introduction Roman Altshuler and Michael J. Sigrist We do things in time. Philosophy of action can capture this phenomenon in at least two ways. On one hand, it might focus on the way that temporal preferences and long-term temporal horizons affect the rationality of deci- sions in the present (see, e.g., Parfit 1984; Rawls 1971). Such work may focus on the way we discount the distant future, for example, or prioritize the future over the past. Approaches of this kind treat time as, in a sense, something external to agency; they set various constraints on what we may rationally intend, for example. But if temporal considerations can constrain agency, it follows that they can also structure it internally, and if they can do so, it seems likely that this is possible because agency is already temporally structured. This volume focuses on the way that agency is temporally structured from within, such that time is an ineliminable constituent of agency. This approach is supported by reflection on some ordinary facts about action and agency. Since actions take time, we might wonder whether they have temporal parts and whether those parts must have the same temporal structure as the broader actions they constitute. Since actions undergo change as they unfold, we might wonder whether they are events or processes. Since actions often involve prior intentions, we might wonder how our acting selves are coordinated with our earlier intending selves, what content those intentions must have in order to avoid committing our later selves to courses of action that may become inadvisable, what psychologi- cal mechanisms we rely on in forming intentions for future actions, and how those intentions are shaped by long-term commitments. Since rational actions seem to require deliberation, we might wonder whether the deliberation must occur just prior to intention, or whether it may come long before, or even follow upon the action. Since we find ourselves acting out of a cer- tain background of habits and prior commitments, we might wonder how those temporal phenomena interact with the temporality of actions. Common to these questions is the idea that time structures agency from within. But the diversity of these questions gives rise to a further sugges- tion: that the various structures involved in agency—action, intention, deliberation, commitment—each operate along different timescales, which require both independent and joint elaboration. The chapters in this volume