lntroduction I intend to use this introduction as a vehicle for situating the topics discussed in this book within a wider philosophical contexc, and to describe the main ideas in each chapter. This inroducrion contairu no arguments defending or justifying that context or the presuppositions of my.liscussion (there will be arguments aplenty about other matters in the following chapters). ln theolory, a distinction is sometimes drawn between apologetic and confessional theological literature. Apologetic literature seeks to defend a point ofview to an audience that is outside the circle of believers; it attempts to convince them of something. Confessional theological literature accepts a point of view as given, but then explains and develops it for those inside the tradition, those who have already'bought in to the basic assumptions. This Introduction might be thought of as a piece of confessional philosophy, making explicit some of the doxological presuppositions of the book to the already-believers. Here is that to which I conGss: there is somerhing cdled analydc meaphysics, a philosophical projeo of establishing both what exists and what it is like. Further, my confession includes the belief that there is a significant role for analytic meaphysics to play in its application to the theory of action (and to the philosophy of social science more generally). I have @ TheAudrods) 2018 D.-H. Rubcn, Tbe Meaplrys;a ofAnUn, hcps://doi.odl o.r007 I 97 8-T319-90347 -7 -r D.-H. Ruben long held this belief about analpic metaphysics and its applications to other areas of philosophy, a belief evidenced by my first book" Mauirm and Materialism (1977, 1979), by Tbe Metapbysics of the Social Vorld (1985) and finally by * earlier book in action .h*ry Action and hs Erplanation (2003). Not all philosophers think that there is such a project. I r}rink that there is such a philosophicel projecr and that it is, in the main, an a priori exercise. I m hardly alone in the belief that it can be applied in action.h*ry. There are many examples of other philosophers who have worked similarly in a more metaphpical tradition in the philosophy of action.r 'S7'hether 1^gu with their views or not, I recognise tiat they are doin6 in whole or in part, what I am also trying to do in this book I admire much of their work I can identify at least nnro stands to the project of analytic metaphysics; the dividing line between them is not sharp. (I m a big fan of both strands.) The first suand is'ontological': are there objects independent of minds, simples, complex objects, mereological sums, tropes, universals, sense data, abstract objects, or four-dimensional objects? The main tool of this strand is what we might call 'ratiocinatiori. Typically, such items are shown to exist or not to exist by a priori argument. It makes no difference that The Man on the Clapham Omnibus has never heard of such things, and so doesnt talk or think thoughts about them. That bus-rider will have heard of tables, chairs, and the like, but a trope, or the mereological sum of two arbitrary objects, will come as news. By that, it might be meant that they do not accord with pre-analydc ontology. If so, the criticism does not move me much. I suppose that other things being equal, such accord would be desirable. But things are never equal, or anyway hardly everI believe that philosophy often comes to truths about what exists that are strange to the ears of the uninitiated. A second strand (.rll it 'metaphysics proped) affempts to uncover what the entities that we admit into our ontology are like. The aforementioned bus-rider will certainly have heard of action, but he wont necessarily have a view about what an action ar. He will also have heard that people try to do various things, and that agents cause things to happen, but he wont necessarily have a view about what is involved by what he hears. One reaction that I have encountered to the three main theses of the book, lntroduction one on trying, one on the narure of action, and one on causing, is that they are 'implausibld. Again, the criticism does not move me much, unless that charge can be suppomed by arguments that show that the views are either internally inconsistent or have consequences that are patendy false. I cant help but think of Hamlet to Horatio: 'There are more things in heaven and earrh, Horatio, than are &eamt of in your philosophy' (Hamlet, 1.5.167-165). That may be true of poor Horatio's philosophy, but evidendy not of Hamlett, nor of mine. I also intend my discussion in the book to be metaphysical in the following serue. I want to know about actions, causing and trying not about the concepts ofacdon, causing, and trying or about action-, causing-, and tr)rlngsentences, although of course access to knowledge about them must corlrnence with language, corunence with thinking about those sentences and concepts, knowing what we say, when and why. I want to explain what I am dorng in a somewhat minimalist way in this Introduction, since this question raises profound questions about philosophical method, analysis, logical form, and how analysis and logical form relate. That would be the subject of another book, one that I am not capable ofwriting. If one looLs at earlier examples of metaphysical analysis-say, what a physical object is or what a social whole is-it is true that philosophers, especially those writing in the middle of the last century, often wrote as if the object of interest is language or conc€pts. Two striking examples of this are the Appendix to Roderick Chishokn's 1957 Perceiuing, in which he undertakes to refute phenomenalism, and awell-known article on the relation bet'reen the social and the individual by Maurice Mandelbaum (1955). Chisholmt discussion is framed in terms of the logical relations between appearance statements on the one hand and our'ordinary statements about physical things' on the other (190). Mandelbaumt discussion is framed as being about the reducibiliry of socieal conc€pts to individual concepts'without remaindei (223). Mandelbaum speaks interchangeably about concepts and facts. It may be *rat such writers were influenced by the doctrine of semantic ascent, and that this is refeced by their choice of method and the terms in which they set their metaphysical discussion, but it certainly should not have changed their objectives. After all, there could be two sets of statements, 51 and 52, D.-H. Ruben such that, although there were no 'translations' of any statement from one set into statements solely from the other set, Sl and 52 were still about the same things. And drere can surely be two distinct concepts, Cl and C2, with the same extension or wen necessarily with the same extension (the concepts of trilaterality and uiangularity are such an example). So irreducibility of concepts and untranslatability of discourses do not tell us all that we want to know about the metaphysical nature of the world. But what was really of interest to these and other philosophers who discussed ontological issues, rtghtly or wrong|y, in terms of statements or sentences or concepts, was t}re question of whether there are such things as, e.g., mind-independent physical objects or social wholes, in addition to appearances or individual entities, and their choice of terminolory, in terms of statements and conceprs, was only the vehicle with which they thought best to get at those ontological issues. It was perhaps part of the philosophical method of that era to pose such questions in the formd rather than in the material mode, as an accompaniment to the idea of semantic ascent. That is speculation on my part. But whether my speculation is sound or not, I have posed the questions as far as I could in the material mode. So, since this book is about the METAPHYSICS of acdon (and NOT about the SEMANTICS of action sentences or the CONCEPT of action), I intend rhat what I am doing to be about trying acting, and causing not about the concepts of trying, acring and causi.g. nor about any discourse about them. My goal is to reach results about trying and causing (the phenomena) and about acting (the real-lG occurrences), about what these 'things' really are. It is important to stress this, because the extent to which I do discuss issues about sentences, language, grammar, and so on might strike the reader as somehow at odds with what I have just said. It is part of the tradition in which I work to approach metaphysical and ontological questions often by looking at language, but the goal is not the analysis of the assertions or sentences or concepts, but an understanding of the metaphysics and ontology of the human world to which sugtr discourse commits us. In spite of his talking about 'definitions' of knowledge, Gettier (1963) wasrt't interested in knowledge-talk or even the concept lntroduction of knowledge; he wanted to describe what has to be the case in order for someone to know some proposition p. Th. objective of the analyses in the book (in Chaps. 4,5 and 6, for example) are not sentences or statements or discourse or concepts, but what these things are about or true of, even though such discovery typically comes through a careful consideration of the ontic comrniunents embedded in the sentence. For instance, in Chap. 4,I argue that P tries to F iff (if a cerrain set of conditions are fulfilled, P acs). (Note that one can say this without switching away from the material to the formal mode.) I have ceftainly adopted the method of looking at language as a way to uncovering metaphysical tru*x; two good examples are the attention I have paid to questions about imperfective aspect and to the topic of causative alternation. But method is one thing, but goal is another. I spend a fair arnount of space and energy thinking about imperfectiviry but my interesrs are nor narrowly linguistic insofar as I do this. Behind the contrast of perfective and imperfective verb aspect lies a distinction between actions-in-progress and acdons-as-completed, and that later contrast is a metaphysicd one. The metaphysics or ontology of action (including try'tr,g and agent causirg) is a very large area. There are many issues with which I do not deal, so I make no claim about the book's completeness and comprehensiveness. For example, I have only a litde to say about intentions, and nothing to say about beliefr, dqsires, and reasons, topics that are mainstays in ttreories of action. Instead I have selected tlrree ideas on which to focus: trying doing, and causing, and the metaphysics needed to explain them. 'Why these three? The three ideas seem to me to form a natural trinity. One mighr rhinlc first, one tries to do something, then, if ludcy, one does that thing and finally as a result of what one did, the doer causes some things to happen. In the main, Chaps. 2, 3 and 4 (on trying) are well integrated as a unit, and Chaps. 5, 6 and.7 (on acting and causing) are well integrated as another unit, with Chap. 8 serving as a further bridge by dealing with themes that are treated in both sections. All of the chapters state the main ideas of that chapter and how those ideas relate within one or the other of the naro units. But what of the integration benveen these two units? D.-H. Ruben M*y philosophers think that one of these ideas can be explained in terrns of the other. The most salient enample is the explanation of the second member of the trinity, doing, in terms of dre third, agent causing; it has been argued t}rat to act is for the agent ro cause something to happen. Even the first member, rrpng, has not escaped the same type of explanation, but this time in terms of the second member, dorng. No one of course disputes that you cen try to do somedring and fail, so the explanation of the one in terms of the other must be qualified: '...an acrion (very nearly alwap) ,r [Ht italics] an eyent of the agenrt trynng to do something...' (Hornsby 1997, 85). One of the central features of my own accor,mt of trying is the way in which I explain trying by a subjunctive conditional whose consequence is about acting. One of the threads that unite the bookt two units is an anti-clutter message: 'dont clutter onet ontology with a kind of thing unless it is really necessery to do so'. Causings and tryings as parriculars are clufter. The one-particular view of acdon, dweloped in Chaps. 5,6 and 8, in its own way, dso has an anti-clumer message ('one is bemer than two'). I count myself a great friend of the mind. I think rhere are such things as token sensations, pains, tickles, itches, afterimages, dreams, and hallucinatiorx. These may or rury not be identical to physical particulars (for the record, I do not think that they are but I do not rely on that view anywhere in this book). Still, whatever the metaphysical category into which one places those things, tlere are such ,hir5. Howeyer, I have argued elsewhere that even friends of the mind should practice some form of limited binh control (Ruben 1995). Being a friend of the mind does aot require complicity in population explosion. In this way, I am a semiRylean of sorts. A Rylean approach is justified in some cases but most certainly not in others, not for example in the ones listed in the fifth sentence of this paragraph. But I do doubt whether rhere are such things as tryings or volitions or causings, for example. Of course I think that it is true that agents want certain .hir5 and, try to do certain things and qluse certain thi"p to happen. So the rick is to give an accounr of sentences with those verbs that do not require quantifying over tryings or acts of the will or events of causing something to occur. I offer such an account for trying-sentences in Chap. 4, and for causing-sentences in lntroduction Chap. 7- (l leave volitions, if .hry differ from trying, as another proreo, not to be dealt with here.) But in the end of the day, the book does have these nvo diferent foci: trying to act and acting. I dlink it is fair to say that the two topics are visibly and clearly related. I have in all cases let the argumenr take me wherever it seemed to me to go. I feel somewhat diffident, because both the th*ry of trying and the theory of action that I develop are so non-standard and question so many onhodoxies all ar once. I confess to finding rhis a litde strange. But there it is: I believe they are in the main corrar (after all, otherwise I would not publish the book). The truth is, as I explained above, sometimes strange, especially in philosophy. But for those readers who cannot quite swallow it whole, perhaps the argumenrs will at least get tlem to see things in a different light, and will raise legitimare issues thar were nor salient on other theories. One reader of the draft mamxcript commented that the text seerns to meander. That may be true, but if it does, it arises, I think, from the way in which philosophy of action, on my conception, is so closely internarined wirfi metaphysics and epistemology (epistemology comes into play 'n the 6nal chapter). In many cases, I felt I had to say something about the metaphysical and epistemological issues that my views presuppose or entail: supervenience, multiple realisabiliry existential dependence, and certain issues that arise on Davidsont analysis of action sentences, are cases of rhis. I can only defend myself by r"yrrg that the meandering could have been worse; there are times when I felt that I should have had more to say about something bur managed to restrain mysel{ Examples of this would include my use of Moore's open question argument, the distinction between mass nonns and count nouns, the issue ofwhether properties are abundant, and the nature of observabiliry about all ofwhich there is more that I could have said but have not said. No book in philosophy can do everything. I use, in an absolutely essential way, the idea of a particular, without elaborating on it furcher. I set out some'marks' of particularir)4 counabiliry, pluralisation, individuation, identity, and quantification. Other than that, I rely on the idea of a particular ttrat I think is fairly sandard in contemporary philosophy. (Does it help if I say that I was trained at Harvard when Quine was D.-H. Ruben there?) Of course, everFthing in philosophy is controversial, including the claim that everyrhing in philosophy is controversial. There are unclear cases of particularity: states of a$airs and facs, to name but two. Alvarez has spoken (to me, anywa, of semi-particulars, and the idea is certainly an intriguing one. But, all things considered, I guess that the otherwise unexamined idea of a particular offers as a good place as any atwhich to start this book In Chap. 2, I examine what one might consider the most plausible account of trying at least most plausible from a naturalistic perspective. That account is the PhysicalAcdon TheoryofTry'ng, accnrdtngto which trying is to be identified with a physical action. In Chap. 2Iargae against that account of trying. I put a lot of weight on the cases of so-called naked trying, cases in which an agent uies but there is no physical acdon as a result. I stress that I think that the existence of naked trying is an empirically established fact, not based on 'inruitions' about such cases that philosophers might dispute. I identify an assumption that I fiink underlies not only the Physicd Action Th*ry ofTrying but also its main competitors: that the expression 'person P't tt,ri"g to do such-and-sucli refers to some particular, irz., an act of trying or to a trying (I dont distinguish these last ttro), something that can be quantified over, pluralised, and that can be preceded by a definite or indefinite article. I call any account that makes this assumption 'a particularist tleory of trying'. In Chap. 3 as a preliminary to offering my or rn a@ount, I examine the way in which adverbial modification works in sentences about trying, as a way of undercutting that assumption. In Chap. 4 I present a general argument against any particularist account of trying and most importandy, I offer my own account of trying a conditional &*ry of trying which does not make that same particularist assumption. I think a novel account of trying is needed, that describes in a new way the relation between trying and doing. In sum, I motivate my account of trying: (1) by arguing that its most promising competitor account is faulty (Ch"p. 2); (2) by arguing that one argument that might be thought to offer support for a particularist account of trying fails (Ch"p. 3); (3) by producing a general argument against any particularist account of trying (the first part of Chap. 4); and t4) W offering lntroduction and developirg * altemative, which I defend from various objections (the second and longer yart of Chap. 4). The identification of doing with causiog is widespread and I describe in some detail and argue against that misidentfication in Chaps. 5 and6. I discuss two views: first, in Chap. 5, whether if one causes something to h"pp.rr, it follows that one acts, and second, in Chap. 6, whether, if oae acts, it follows that the agent has caused someching to happen. Chapter 6 develops what I think is a novel account of acdon, which builds on, but substantially changes, one I have prwiously defended (Ruben 2003). I call the view of action that I develop bne-particularisrn . Anot-her name for the view could be 'the actions-in-the-wodd view'. But that is rather a mouthfirl. Chapter 5 has an appendix, in which I describe the 'derivation thesis' (DT). The DT is not a philosophical thesis at all and it is easy (it was for me, at any rate) to confuse it with the substantive philosophical analysis *rat is the subject matter of Chaps. 5 and, 6; hence, my justification for including something about ir In Chap. 7, I ask the question: are there any causing particulars? I am sceptical of there berng any, and some of my arguments I use in Chap.7 parallel the ones I made in Chap. 3 about tryingpariculars. In the course of Chap. 7,1exarr.ine a view of Maria Nvxez.I describe and amplify some criticisms of her view made by Erasmus Mayr. I claim little originality in this section of Chap.7. Chapter 8 is composed of two, only loosely conneced, sections. Each section spells out a firmher cons€quence of one-particularism. In the first section, I raise the question of whether *re conjunction of oneparticularism and the thought that if an agent act, he causes an event intrinsic to his action, generates a regress. One rnight think that some regress is brought about by that conjunction. I show why that is not so, in tQht of my argument in Chap. 7 .In the second section, I discuss some epistemological issues about onet knowledge of the actions of others. I ask whether one qrn raise a sceptical question about onet knowledge of the actions of others, in the sense of Cartesian hyperbolic doubt. I think one srn. I also suggest, .very briefly, two philosophiol moves that might be made, in order to reply to that sceptical position, and (regrettably) conclude that no compelling reply is forthcoming. But I tiink we will have learned something about the epistemology of acdon along the way. D.-H. Ruben M*y philosophen have rejected tlre austere ,h*ry of act individuation as I do in CLap. 5; I am riot yery ang*al in that regard. I think a natural progression ofthought ruru like thir (I arrr rlot clalming that these are entailments): if non-basic actions are not just basic actions under non-basic descriptions, but actions in their own right, then where and when do they occru? If they do not occur when and where the basic actions on which they depend orcur (a view for which I argue at some Iength), then there are r€asolrs to place them where and when the elrents intrinsic to them occur (a lot more on intrirxic eyents in the book). For example, a person's opening a door occurs where and when the door opens. So iet readers be forewarned: roy view is that many actions are out in the world, far removed &om an agent's body. I think that the idea that all acdons occur at or within the surface of the agent's body is a presumption that does not sustain close scrutiny. Now, it is possible to hold thag in t}is ca*e for instance, even though both the persont opening of the door and the door's opening occur at the same time and same place, perhaps far remoyed from the agentt body and long after his body has moved, the person's opening of the doorlthe door's opening. Flowever, such a view does seem rather ontologically ertra*{agarrt even by my liberal sandards. Better to identify them, letring actions be identical to their so-called inrinsic eyents. This idendfication will have many implications, ald so, in order not to spoil ycur fun, I wont spell them out here. But what I think unites Chaps. 5, 6,7, and I is just thar drawing the conclusioas, both logical ones and plausible ones, from that identification. I use throughout the book the subscripts 'C and 'i' to mark the traruitive and intransitive use of t}re same verb respectively. I am not wholly consistent in this. The subscripts are ugly and clutter the text, so I have used them only when I thought that drey were necessary to aclttane clarlty (perhaps my own clariry). 'When that wasnt the case, I omitted them, al*rough I suspect I have erred on the side of overuse. Unless I am using another authort formulations, I often use 'U as the direct object of the transitive verb and the subject of the corresponding intransitive verb. 'P' is, as I said in the Preface, rny nameless and genderle.ss agent. Throughout the booh I use 'LHS' and 'RHS' to refer to the left hand side and the right hand side respectively of an entailment or biconditional. lntroduction 11 A caveat: often, when I produce a sentence on which to refect, I refer to P as an agent. I mean by thar 'at least a potential or alleged actor with regard to some specific actiori. Perhaps 'parricipant in an actiori would have been a better choice, but since I hold that drere are more ways in which to participate in an action than by being the actor who is the agent of that action, that choice was not really available to me. On some occasions, 'P' is the subjecr of a sentence that mighr not show him expressing or demonstrating any activity or agency relative to rhat parricular acrion at all. ('The agent P tried to F but was so constrained that he did nothing, might count as an extreme example of this 6age.) So designating P as an agent in a discussion of some action of type F is not intended to beg any questions about whether P is actually expressing his agency with regard to any token action ofthat type. Finally, many who have read the manuscript of the book, or various portions thereof,, have commented on my nqlect of the neo-Anscombian, neo-Aristotelian, and other similar, contributions to action theory in the past decade or so. Names like Michael Thompson, Doug Lavin, Eric Marcus, Rowland Stout, Sebastian Roedl, and, ofcourse, John McDowell, come to mind. I have no particular criticisms to make of these authors, but I simply dont find the traditions within which they are working sufficiendy illuminating. That's how it is with philosophy: one has a methodology and chooses philosophical interlocutors as irnportant reference points in order to enter into the dialect of argumentation. I have chosen what I tlink is most worthwhile and interesting. Even if you dont think that my approach in the th*ry of action is the mostworthwhile, I hope you will think it worthwhile enough to justify my having wriuen this book and your having read at least some part of ir I was trained in philosophy to strive for the highest degree ofprecision, rigour, and clarity. That is always my aim; it is not for me to say, of course, to what I ortent I have been able to achieve that standard. I don't think that precision, rigour, and clarity are by themselves suficient for success in philosophy; they are, after all, only method, not content. There is also a need for imagination, insight, and creative thought. But those first three goals are certainly a necessary way to begin doing any philosophy *rat is worthwhile and that is able to make any real progress. They are cenainly three goals at which I have aimed *uoughout. 12 D.-H. Ruben Notes 1. Much of Donald Davidsont work, and the ercensive cofirment on it, are in this tradition. John Bishop's Nataral Agmry 0989), Helen Steward's The Onnlogjr of Mind (1997), Anton Ford's splendid Action and Generality' (2011) and ',{ction and Passiori (2014), Maria Alvare/ 'Acrions and Events: Some Semantical Considerationi (1999), and EJ. Lowe's Personal Agency: The M*aphysics of Mind ard Action (2010), are six further excellent o<amples that spring rc mind. There ale, of coulse, many, many orhers. Bibliography Alvarez, Matia1999. Actions and Events: Some Semandcal Considerations. Rdtio, new series XII (3): 2L3-239. Bishop, J. 1989. Natural Agmcy, ll7-120. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ford, Anton. 2011. Action and Generality.In Bsay on Anscornbis Intention, ed. Anton Ford, Jennifer Hornsby, and Frederick Stoudand. Cambridge, MA Haryard Universiry Press. 2014. Asion and Passion. Phibsophical Tbpics 42 {l): 1342. Gemier, Edmund. 1963. k Justified Tiue Belief Knowledgei Atabsis Z3 (6): t2l-t23. Iowe, EJ. 2010. PersonalAgenqr: 7he Meaplrysics of Mind and Anion. Oford: Orf,ord University Press. Mandehaum, Maurice. 1955. Societd Facts. ln Modes of Indiaidualism and Collcoiuism, ed. John O'Neill, 22L-234. London: Heinemann Educationd Books. Ruben, Davi&Hillel . 1977, second edition 1979. Marxism and Materialism. Hassocks, Susserc Harvester Press. 1985. Tlte Meupbysics of the Social'W'orU. London: Roudedge & Kegan Paul. 1995. Mental Overpopulation and the Problem of Action. Joumal of Philosop hical fusearch 2O: 5 Ll-524. 2003. Action {r Ix kphnation. Mord: O:rford University Press. Steward, Helen. 1997 . 7h e Onto logt of Mlnd. Oxford: Oxford University Press.