Abstract
Carl Ginet has advanced an account of action explanation on which actions can be entirely uncaused and action explanations need not cite causal factors. Several objections have been raised against this view, and Ginet has recently defended the account. Here it is argued that Ginet’s defense fails to come to grips with the chief problems faced by his view.
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Notes
Davidson (1980) made this point in advancing a causal account of reason explanation. Some readers might chafe at the suggestion that a mental state, such as a desire to acquire a painting, can be a reason for action, preferring instead to count as reasons the considerations that might be the objects of such mental states. The author of the account of action explanation addressed here, Ginet, does not himself take this latter position. In any case, we sometimes correctly explain an action by saying that the agent wanted to do a certain thing. Whether or not the want counts as a reason, we can seek an account of such explanations.
One might think that remembering the desire requires that the desire cause that recollection. Even if that is so, it does not entail that the antecedent desire must cause either the concurrent intention or the action. Moreover, Ginet (1990, p. 144) denies that a memory must be caused by what is remembered.
McCann (1998, p. 163) raises a similar objection with regard to an account of decision explanation. I discuss this issue in Section Explaining a Decision. Note that while McCann finds fault with Ginet’s account, he advances an alternative noncausal theory of action explanation.
Ginet raised this objection in correspondence.
For a similar point, see Mele 1992, pp. 251–252.
It was suggested by a referee that Ginet might accept that nonactive acquisitions of concurrent intentions can be causally explained by citing antecedent desires that cause these events. As I observe in Section A Causal Condition, Ginet allows that an action might be explicable by citing a desire that caused it; he would presumably allow the same regarding the explanation of a nonactive intention-acquisition. However, there are two problems for the suggestion here. First, since the accompanying intentions are intentions that certain desires be satisfied, one might wonder about a case in which the intention refers to one desire but is caused by a different one. Second (as noted above), Ginet inclines to the view that free actions must be uncaused. It seems unlikely that he would accept that, in a case of free action, the acquisition of the accompanying intention that figures in explaining the action might itself be caused.
This second difficulty is raised by Clarke (2003, pp. 22–23).
Ginet (2008, p. 235) does subsequently acknowledge this point. He suggests that in such a case there will be an intention accompanying the deliberation-to-decision process, an intention that it contribute to satisfying one’s desire for preparation. The objection raised earlier concerning implementation applies to the suggestion here.
Further, Ginet acknowledges only that one can have a reason for making a decision at some particular time, not that one can have a reason for deciding on some specific action. But in fact one can have a reason for deciding on a specific action that is not a reason to perform that action, and one can make a decision for such a reason. For defense of these claims, see Clarke 2008.
About a similar case, Mele (2003, p. 43) objects that it is not plausible to think that all of the reasons for which a decision is made need be reflected in its content.
For helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper, I wish to thank Carl Ginet, Meghan Griffith, Al Mele, and an audience at the Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress, August 2009.
References
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Clarke, Randolph. 2008. Autonomous reasons for intending. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86: 191–212.
Davidson, Donald. 1980. “Actions, reasons, and causes”. In Essays on actions and events, 3–19. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Ginet, Carl. 1989. Reasons explanation of action: An incompatibilist account. Philosophical Perspectives 3: 17–46.
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Ginet, Carl. 2007. An action can be both uncaused and up to the agent. In Intentionality, deliberation, and autonomy: The action-theoretic basis of practical philosophy, ed. Christoph Lumer and Sandro Nannini, 243–255. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Ginet, Carl. 2008. In defense of a non-causal account of reasons explanations. The Journal of Ethics 12: 229–237.
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