A dialectical approach to action theory1 (original) (raw)
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On the philosophy and logic of human action, 2017
Introduction In the last century, the philosophy and logic of human action received a lot of attention. Milestones in its development were Anscombe's Intention (1957), Davidson's 'Actions, reasons and causes' (1963) and von Wright's Explanation and understanding. Anscombe aimed at bringing out the subjective basis one must appeal to when ascribing an action to someone. Davidson defended the claim that action explanations are a sort of causal explanations. Von Wright pointed out that explanation in history and the social sciences proceeds in very different ways. Arguably, these studies formed the shape of the philosophical discipline now known as action theory. They sparked a host of philosophical contributions that eventually broadened the perspective on the philosophy and logic of human action so much as to include as diverse approaches as critical reviews of age-old problems (like the problem of weakness of the will) and present day concerns with normative aspects of reason-based approaches (like patient autonomy in medical ethics). So the stream became a river, and the river became a sea. Today there is no denying that action theory is in fairly good shape. Of course, like in all other scientific disciplines there are controversies and difficulties in action theory too. Yet there is a solid consensus as to the phenomena to be explained, there are paradigmatic theories constantly being made reference to, and there are classic contributions providing starting points for old insights and new debates. Although there are specialists in the field, philosophical action theory is not at all marginalised. Even theorists not specialising in action theory acknowledge its relevance for the practical disciplines without hesitation. Also, philosophers of every provenance generally have more than an inkling that the relevance of action theory must somehow extend further to the social sciences proper as well. Last, not least: Being a philosopher of action makes you neither left, centrist or right. It carries no hidden or overt implications as to your ideology, political and moral views, or creed. It is thus safe to conclude that as a scientific discipline action theory is a decent, well-established, and worthwhile field of study in its own right. How come all of this is immediately reversed once we shift focus and turn to economics? Apart from occasional fine words found in introductory chapters the study of human action in economics really has a bad reputation. It will be sketched what the study of human action in the way presented can contribute to the study of the social sciences (in general and economics in particular). From these discussions will emerge the outline of a systematic and integrated treatment making use of the well-estab- lished tools of action theory and some neighbouring disciplines and applying them in the field of the social sciences. It will be seen that the philosophy and logic of human action has quite a lot to contribute to economics and the social sciences. It will also be seen that it does so without compromising the rigour, richness and respectability it deserves as the decent, well- established and worthwhile field of study that it is.
Philosophical Books, 2005
The idea that there is a branch of philosophy called 'the philosophy of action' can be dated roughly to the second half of the twentieth century. But while the label is new, the subject matter is not. At least since Socrates, philosophers have concerned themselves with the themes and problems now gathered under that label. In essence, the philosophy of action seeks to offer an account of the behaviour that characterises humans as 'rational animals', to use Aristotle's phrase; behaviour that provides the grounds for judgements about people's goals, characters and values, and on account of which they are held to be causally, and sometimes morally, responsible for certain outcomes and situations. Anscombe's book Intention, which was strongly influenced by Aristotle's and Wittgenstein's views, is rightly regarded by many as the most important direct contribution to the philosophy of action in the twentieth century. 1 Intention set the agenda for subsequent work in the area by replacing questions about free will and the voluntary, which had occupied philosophers for centuries, with questions about intention and the intentional; in particular, with the question: "What distinguishes actions which are intentional from those which are not?" (Intention, §5). Anscombe's answer was that "they are actions to which a certain sense of the question 'Why?' is given application; the sense is of course that in which the answer, if positive, gives a reason for acting" (ibid.) Given this answer, the question about intentional actions, though not identical to, became synonymous with the question: 'What distinguishes actions done for a reason from those that are not?'. 2 In the process of clarifying both question and answer, Anscombe touched upon, or explored in some detail, most of the central issues in the theory of action; issues which might be gathered under three main headings: the nature of actions, the nature of reasons, and the relation between the two. In the years following the publication of Intention, and especially after the publication in 1963 of Davidson's paper 'Actions, Reasons and Causes', the theory of action concentrated mainly on
New Essays on the Explanation of Action
This collection of previously unpublished essays presents the newest developments in the thought of international scholars working on the explanation of action. The contributions focus on a wide range of interlocking issues relating to agency, deliberation, motivation, mental causation, teleology, interprative explanation and the ontology of actions and their reasons. Challenging numerous current orthodoxies, and offering positive suggestions from a variety of different perspectives, this book provides essential reading for anyone interested in the explanation of action. Contributors: Maria Alvarez - Annette Baier - Stephen Boulter - Jonathan Dancy - Fred Dretske - Stephen Everson - P.M.S. Hacker - Sean D. Kelly - Joshua Knobe – E. J. Lowe -Richard Moran - Charles Pigden - A.W. Price - Joseph Raz - David-Hillel Ruben - Constantine Sandis - G.F. Schueler - Helen Steward - Ralf Stoecker - Martin J. Stone - Rowland Stout - Frederick Stoutland - Julia Tanney - Nick Zangwill
WHAT A THEORY OF ACTIONS IS POSSIBLE?, 16 pp.
It is one of the new insights of the contemporary theory of social systems that they operate basically on their own level. They are constructed circularly. 1 The members of such systems ascribe attitudes and actions to themselves and others. Therefore self-reference and reference to others are their own operations to establish their self-selection from their environment. But ªHow the ascription of actions, attitudes, and motives works?º is not analyzed sufficiently enough in the theory of self-referential social systems. This is also a question of the ontological commitments of the theory of social systems and the social ontology. This leads us to the problem in principle that to ascribe an action, a failure (omission) or a prevention the interpreter applies act-constitutive principles. This problem is significant for the theory of social systems because they are reproduced by the basic operation of the ascription of actions and attitudes. There are reasonable doubts that the theory of action from M. Weber till T. Parsons has not given us a convincing answer about the connection between action and sociality. It is not disputed that a careful analysis of actions shows us a complex machinery including intelligence, appreciation of the situation, planning, decision, execution and so on. Teaching about what actions are basically the route of understanding not only what they are but also of features of our theoretical and practical thinking. Furthermore the analysis of intentions, motives, will ± if there is something like a ªwillº ± and the moral knowledge (commitments) is essential to understand agency. In particular exploring the relation among the mentioned concepts leads us to an unified theory of social systems and the ascription of attitudes and actions.
The Essentials of Action Theory: A Framework for Discussion
Human Development, 1984
Although there were several eady protagonists of an action-theoretical perspective in philosophy, sociology, and even psychology, it was not until the last decade that these approaches became more popular in different domains within psychology. And, in fact, today the danger may already exist that psychology is susceptible to the 'delusion of sufficiency' ganda, 19601, consisting in the error of being satisfied with a term or terminology, before its implications are suf{iciently clarified.
Reasons and Action Explanation
In providing an intentional explanation of action, we cite the reasons for actions. Since Davidson’s seminal “Action, Reasons, and Causes” (Davidson 1967) the relation between these reasons for action and the explanation of intentional action has been at the forefront of philosophy of action. Davidson’s answer to the question was, at least in broad outlines, widely embraced and it very quickly became the “mainstream” view in action theory. In a nutshell, according to Davidson, a reason for action both rationalizes and causes the action; this view has become known as the “standard account” or the “standard story” of action. Davidson immediately realized that such an account cannot easily become a reductive account of intentional action. Actions can be caused by beliefs and desires that rationalize the action while obviously failing to be a case of an intentional action done for that reason;in these cases the reasons that potentially rationalize action are said to cause the action in a “deviant” way. The problem of deviant causation has been one of the more serious obstacles for a proper causal theory of action. In this paper, we first examine the advantages and difficulties of the causal theory. Investigating the problem of deviant causal chains reveals that there are in fact two related problems faced by a causal theory of action. First, the problem of deviant causation shows that it is difficult to come up with a reductive account of intentional action that understands intentional actions as an action that is caused by mental states. Second there is the problem that such a theory seems to fail account for how the agent herself is guided by her reasons, what we call “the problem of guidance”. Solving the problem of guidance will not on its own resolve the problem of causal deviance. However, addressing this problem is a precondition for a solution to the problem of causal deviance, since part of what an account of the right kind of causal link between attitudes and action must do is show how this causal link ensures that the agent guides the resulting action. Furthermore, we argue that the problem of guidance is related to a number of other issues in the literature on action explanation and that it is much more general; it threatens not only causal theories but any theory of action. Finally, we try to suggest that a certain version of the view that acting has a constitutive or formal aim can overcome this problem.
Toward a general theory of action
Preface vii as humanly possible, the statement represents both a carefully considered and a collaborative product. To be sure that no member of the group was having views attributed to him which he did not really share, we agreed that each one should have the privilege of including over his own initials notes of explication or dissent on particular points. The fact that only two members have availed themselves of this privilege, one of them mainly for clarification, is, we feel, an index of the fullness of the measure of agreement we have been able to attain. This volume thus is the product of nine individual social scientists. The whole character of the enterprise, however, and the constitution of the group, which included four psychologists, three sociologists, and two anthropologists, make its relation to current movements of thought in the field of some interest. Many influences and sources are discernible in the material here set forth. Perhaps the two most important sources in the field of psychology are the study of human personality and the study of animal behavior. The former involves Freud, and the movements stemming from his work, perhaps more than any other influence, but this stream has flowed through several channelsand in its course has influenced the sociologists and anthropologists in the group as well as the psychologists. Other influences have also been important in their effect on personality theory, particularly those documented in Gordon AUport's book on that subject. The study of animal behavior is, we believe, relatively catholic in its influence upon us.
Explanation and Understanding: Action as “Historical Structure”
Philosophia, 2008
The first part of this essay is basically historical. It introduces the explanation-understanding divide, focusing in particular on the general-unique distinction. The second part is more philosophical and it presents two different claims on action. In the first place, I will try to say what it means to understand an action. Secondly, we will focus on the explanation of action as it is seen in some explanatory sciences. I will try to argue that in some cases these sciences commit what I call an "external contradiction".
Collective Actions, Individual Reasons and the Metaphysics of Consequence
I defend the view that individual agents have instrumental moral reasons for and against contributing to collective actions. I distinguish three versions of this view found in the literature and argue that only one withstands scrutiny: the version on which each individual contribution to a collective action is a cause of the latter's large-scale outcomes. The central difficulty with this view is its apparent incompatibility with leadings theories of causation. Against these theories I motivate a general structural principle about causation which enables instrumentalism to deliver the intuitively correct verdicts about individual agents' moral reasons in cases of collective action. * I am grateful to audiences at the CEPPA Conference in Moral and Political Philosophy at St. Andrews University and at the Higher Seminar at Linköping University for questions and comments on earlier versions of this paper. In particular I am grateful to Rowan Cruft, who was the commenter for my paper at the CEPPA conference, and to Fredrik Stjernberg, András Szigeti and Anton Skott. I would also like to thank Samuel Scheffler, Adam Lovett, Michael Strevens and Laura Franklin-Hall for their feedback on various drafts, and Mattias Gunnemyr for helpful discussion and written comments. Special thanks go to Caroline Torpe Touborg for both discussion and her incredibly helpful written feedback, and especially special thanks are owed to two anonymous referees for Ethics, the associate editors of the journal, and Victor Tadros, without whom this would have been a very different and far inferior paper. 1 I speak interchangeably of contributing to and participating in collective actions, and intend my use to correspond to ordinary usage. This contrasts with some philosophers, for whom participating in a collective action is a technical notion, such as Christopher Kutz, Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age
The Objects of Action Explanation
This paper distinguishes between various different conceptions of behaviour and action before exploring an accompanying variety of distinct things that „action explanation‟ may plausibly amount to viz. different objectives of action explanation. I argue that a large majority of philosophers are guilty of conflating many of these, consequently offering inadequate accounts of the relation between actions and our reasons for performing them. The paper ends with the suggestion that we would do well to opt for a pluralistic understanding of action and its explanations.