I will argue that a person is causally responsible for believing what she does. Through inference, she can sustain and change her perspective on the world. When she draws an inference, she causes herself to keep or to change her take on things. In a literal sense, she makes up her own mind as to how things are. And, I will suggest, she can do this voluntarily. It is in part because she is causally responsible for believing what she does (...) that there are things that she ought to believe, and that what she believes can be to her credit or discredit. I won’t pursue these ethical matters here, but will focus instead on the metaphysics that underpin them. (shrink)

This paper will first give an overview of the role of events in semantics against the background of Davidsonian semantics and its Neo-Davidsonian variant. Second, it will discuss some serious issues for standard views of events in contemporary semantics and present novel proposals of how to address them. These are [1] the semantic role of abstract (or Kimean) states, [2] wide scope adverbials, and [3] the status of verbs as event predicates with respect to the mass-count distinction. The paper will (...) show that abstract states as the entities described by (most) stative verbs are incompatible with Neo-Davidsonian event semantics and proposes a decompositional analysis of stative verbs that may be able to overcome the difficulty. The paper will argue that in addition to Davidsonian events, the semantics of adverbials requires events as truthmakers as well as actions as more complex entities sharply distinguished from events. The paper will also argue that the verbal domain of events sides with mass nouns rather than dividing into mass and count, unlike event nouns. (shrink)

Das Buch verschafft einen Überblick über die neuere Willensfreiheitsdebatte, wobei es auch die Konsequenzen der Hirnforschung für das Freiheitsproblem erörtert. Ferner entwickelt der Autor eine eigene Position, die er 'fähigkeitsbasierten Libertarismus' nennt. Er widerspricht dem breiten philosophischen Konsens, dass jedenfalls eine Art von Freiheit mit einem naturwissenschaftlichen Weltbild unverträglich sei, nämlich die Fähigkeit, sich unter gegebenen Bedingungen so oder anders zu entscheiden. Im Buch wird argumentiert, dass der libertarischen Freiheitsauffassung, die wir im Alltag alle teilen, bei näherer Betrachtung keine Tatschen (...) entgegenstehen, sondern nur philosophische Doktrinen. Zwar können wir durch unser Handeln keine Naturgesetze abändern und sind auch keine ersten Beweger, aber für ein So-oder-Anderskönnen bedarf es dessen nicht. (shrink)

The present article argues that the doctrine of the inseparable external operations of the Trinity is consistent with the doctrine of the incarnation of the Son alone. To demonstrate this, it will be shown, first, that the assumption of human nature can be ascribed to the Son alone when taken as a state, as opposed to an action. Secondly, I will defend John Owen’s claim that the Son is not the “immediate” agent of Christ’s actions. Finally, an appeal is made (...) to Trinitarian “missions” to show the coherence of OAE with our having communion with distinct divine persons. (shrink)

In ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,’ Harry Frankfurt introduces a scenario aimed at showing that the having of alternative possibilities is not required for moral responsibility. According to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP), an agent is morally responsible for her action only if she could have done otherwise; Frankfurt thinks his scenario shows that PAP is, in fact, false. Frankfurt thinks that the denial of PAP gives credence to compatibilism, the thesis that an agent could both be causally determined (...) in all her actions and yet be morally responsible.1 Since its introduction, Frankfurt’s original ex-. (shrink)

The widely agreed view that actions are events faces the problem of how to describe the “branches” in so-called action trees, i.e. actions which are done by doing other actions. Moreover, the view is also inconsistent with the existence of two familiar species of agency: omitting something and letting things happen. In this article, an alternative conception of action is proposed which takes letting happen as the paradigm of agency. Agency should be construed as an explanatory relation between agents and (...) things happening in the world. This relational view of agency can accommodate for all kinds of agency: doing, letting happen, omitting, prohibiting. And it also provides a satisfactory account of the ontological basis of action trees. We should at first say that to do something is to originate or to bring into existence, i.e., really, to cause, some not yet existing state either of ourselves or of someone else, or, again, of some body. (shrink)

We take ourselves to be able to omit to perform certain actions and to be at times responsible for these omissions. Moreover, omissions seem to have effects and to be manifestations of our agency. So, it is natural to think that omissions must be events. However, very few people writing on this topic have been willing to argue that omissions are events. Such a view is taken to face three significant challenges: (i) omissions are thought to be somehow problematically negative, (...) (ii) it is unclear where the event of an omission would be located, and (iii) if we accept any omissions as events, it seems like there would be far too much causation involving them. In this paper, I develop a novel view of omissions as events and as actions that provides answers to these challenges. (shrink)

Recent work in cognitive science suggests that conscious thought plays a much less central role in the production of human behavior than most think. Partially on the basis of this work, Peter Carruthers has advanced the claim that humans never consciously decide to act. This claim is of independent interest for action theory, and its potential truth poses a problem for theories of free will and autonomy, which often take our capacity to consciously decide to be of central importance. In (...) this article, I examine the nature of conscious deciding and I argue that Carruthers fails to establish the claim that humans never consciously decide to act. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that there is textual evidence that the chapter on Teleology in Hegel's Science of Logic, read under certain premises, also discusses something that in contemporary analytic philosophy is called a ‘basic action’. The three moments of Teleology—(a) ‘The Subjective Purpose’, (b) ‘The Means’ and (c) ‘The Realized Purpose’—can be interpreted as (a) a certain intentional content in the mind of a subject, which can be expressed in the form of an imperative, (b) the immediate taking (...) in possession of the body, which can be described as a basic action, and (c) the description of the relation of the event brought about by the basic action with other events in the world, which can be described in the terms of event-causality. This reading reveals an astonishing parallel to Donald Davidson's distinction between proper basic actions and their different descriptions in the form of events. In this way we can make Hegel's, at first glance, confusing identification of subjective purpose (intention), means (basic action) and realized purpose (event) comprehensible. Through that, the actual aim is to show that what I call basic actions are in fact an example of a more general thought that Hegel calls a teleological relation. (shrink)

The paper has two main objectives: first, it presents a new argument against the so-called Anscombe Thesis (if χ φ-s by ψ-ing, then χ's φ-ing = χ's ψ-ing). Second, it develops a proposal about the syntax and semantics of the 'by'-locution.

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. (shrink)

Two questions have been discussed within the context of the action individuation debate. First, the question of action individuation proper - how many actions have been performed when one kills someone by shooting, for example. Second, the question of action externalization - what are the spatial and temporal boundaries of the killing and of the shooting. The internalists (Davidson, Hornsby) argue that the boundaries of actions do not reach beyond the skin of the individual. The externalists (e.g. Ginet) argue that (...) the boundaries of actions do extend beyond the individual. The main problem for the externalists is to explain why so conceived actions are actions. In the paper I evaluate Ginet’s response to this question but find it ultimately unsatisfactory. (shrink)

The thesis that mental states are physical states enjoys widespread popularity. After the abandonment of typeidentity theories, however, this thesis has typically been framed in terms of state tokens. I argue that token states are a philosopher’s fiction, and that debates about the identity of mental and physical state tokens thus rest on a mistake.

In recent decades, a view of identity I call Sortalism has gained popularity. According to this view, if a is identical to b, then there is some sortal S such that a is the same S as b. Sortalism has typically been discussed with respect to the identity of objects. I argue that the motivations for Sortalism about object-identity apply equally well to event-identity. But Sortalism about event-identity poses a serious threat to the view that mental events are token identical (...) to physical events: A particular mental event m is identical with a particular physical event p only if there is a sortal S such that m and p are both Ss. If there is no such sortal, the doctrine of token-identity is not true. I argue here that we have no good reason for thinking that there is any such sortal. (shrink)

The paper proposes a novel solution to the problem of the time of a killing (ToK), which persistently besets theories of act-individuation. The solution proposed claims to expose a crucial wrong-headed assumption in the debate, according to which ToK is essentially a problem of locating some event that corresponds to the killing. The alternative proposal put forward here turns on recognizing a separate category of dynamic occurents, viz. processes. The paper does not aim to mount a comprehensive defense of process (...) ontology, relying instead on extant defenses. The primary aim is rather to put process ontology to work in diagnosing the current state of play over ToK, and indeed in solving it. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy of mind has tended to make the believer disappear. In response, Matt Boyle and Pamela Hieronymi have argued that believing is an act or activity, not a mental state. I argue that this response fails to fully critique contemporary accounts of believing. Such accounts assume that states of believing are particulars; with semantic properties; that we attend to in reflection and act on in inference; and with a rich causal life of their own. Together, these assumptions leave no (...) room for the believer in an account of believing. But these assumptions are not entailed by the idea that believing is a mental state. Careful reflection on other kinds of states helps us see how to put the believer back in the heart of our account of believing. (shrink)

This paper proposes a framework for formalising intuitions about the behaviour of imperative commands. It seeks to capture notions of satisfaction and coherence. Rules are proposed to express key aspects of the general logical behaviour of imperative constructions. A key objective is for the framework to allow patterns of behaviour to be described while avoiding making any commitments about how commands, and their satisfaction criteria, are to be interpreted. We consider the status of some conundrums of imperative logic in the (...) context of this proposal. (shrink)

When I raise my arm, what makes it the case that my arm's going up is an instance of my raising my arm? In this paper, I discuss Aristotle's answer to this question. His view, I argue, is that my arm's going up counts as my raising my arm just in case it is an exercise of a certain kind of causal power of mine. I show that this view differs in an interesting way both from the Davidsonian ‘standard causal (...) account’ of action and from accounts put forward by recent critics of Davidson, such as Hornsby, Alvarez and Hyman. (shrink)

When I raise my arm, what makes it the case that my arm's going up is an instance of my raising my arm? In this paper, I discuss Aristotle's answer to this question. His view, I argue, is that my arm's going up counts as my raising my arm just in case it is an exercise of a certain kind of causal power of mine. I show that this view differs in an interesting way both from the Davidsonian ‘standard causal (...) account’ of action and from accounts put forward by recent critics of Davidson, such as Hornsby, Alvarez and Hyman. (shrink)

Several philosophers claim that the phenomenology of one’s own agency conflicts with standard causal theories of action, couched in terms of causation by mental events or states. Others say that the phenomenology is prima facie incompatible with such a theory, even if in the end a reconciliation can be worked out. Here it is argued that the type of action theory in question is consistent with what can plausibly be said to be presented to us in our experience of our (...) agency. Several routes to a claim that there is nevertheless a prima facie incompatibility are examined, and all are found wanting. The phenomenology of agency, it is argued, is no threat to a standard causal theory of action. (shrink)

Sharon Ryan has recently argued that if one has compatibilist intuitions about free action, then one should reject the claim that agents cannot exercise direct voluntary control over coming to believe. In this paper I argue that the differences between beliefs and actions make the expectation of direct voluntary control over coming to believe unreasonable. So Ryan's theory of doxastic agency is untenable.

In this article, I examine recent debates concerning the existence and the nature of basic actions. The discussion is structured around four theses, with which Arthur Danto introduced basic actions to contemporary theorists. The theses concern (i) the relationship between agency and causality, (ii) the distinction between basic and complex actions, (iii) the regress argument for basic actions, and (iv) the structure of practical knowledge in the light of these actions.

Book synopsis: David-Hillel Ruben's new book pursues some novel and unusual standpoints in the philosophy of action. He rejects, for example, the most widely held view about how to count actions, and argues for what he calls a 'prolific theory' of act individuation. He also describes and argues against the two leading theories of the nature of action, the causal theory and the agent causal theory. The causal theory cannot account for skilled activity, nor for mental action. The agent causalist (...) theory unnecessarily reifies causings. He identifies an assumption that they share, and that most action theorists have assumed to be unproblematic and uncontroversial, that an action is, or entails the existence of, an event. Several different meanings to that claim are disentangled and in the most interesting sense of that claim, Ruben denies that it is true. His own alternative is simple and unpretentious: nothing informative can be said about the nature of action that explicates action in any other terms. Ruben sketches a theory of causal explanation of action that eschews the requirement for laws or generalisations, and this effectively quashes one argument for the oft-repeated view that no explanations of action can be causal, on the grounds that there are no convincing cases of laws of human action. He addresses a number of questions about the knowledge an agent has of his own actions, looking particularly at examples of pathological cases of action in which, for one reason or another, the agent does not know what he is doing. Inspiring and enlightening in its challenge to received wisdom, and in its convincing defence of some unfashionable positions, Action and its Explanation will be required reading for anyone working in this field. (shrink)

Is inner speech an intentional action, something we do, or a reaction, something that happens to us? This paper will argue that it can be both, (although not at the same time). Some inner speech utterances are reactive: they are spontaneous, they require no effort, and we are not in control of their occurring. These inner speech utterances fail to meet the traditional criteria for qualifying as intentional actions. But some inner speech ut- terances are intentional actions, performed deliberately, effortfully (...) and with as much control as any other intentional action. When we deliberate, for example, inner speech utterances are the basic actions by which we bring about the non-basic action of deliberating. (shrink)

A critical survey of the main philosophical theories about events and event talk, organized in three main sections: (i) Events and Other Categories (Events vs. Objects; Events vs. Facts; Events vs. Properties; Events vs. Times); (ii) Types of Events (Activities, Accomplishments, Achievements, and States; Static and Dynamic Events; Actions and Bodily Movements; Mental and Physical Events; Negative Events); (iii) Existence, Identity, and Indeterminacy.

This study develops conceptual means in philosophy of agency to better and more systematically address intentional omissions of agents, including those that are about resisting the action not done. I argue that even though philosophy of agency has largely concentrated on the actions of agents, when applying philosophy of action to the social sciences, a full-blown theoretical account of what agents do not do and a non-normative conceptual language of the phenomena in question is needed. Chapter 2 aims to find (...) out what kind of things intentional omissions are. I argue that although intentional omissions are part of our intentional behavior, they are not actions in the sense that the standard account of action assumes. Instead, because intentional omissions are homogenous, continuous, unbounded, indefinite and directly uncountable, they should be thought of as activities instead of performances. This view links the ontology of intentional omissions to the ontology of processes instead of to that of events, and I argue that this kind of ontology accounts for the fluid nature of the agency of alive agents not only instigating but controlling and sustaining their intentional omissions as well. Chapter 3 aims to find out on what conditions is an omission intentional. The aim is to find a naturalized explanation of them that would make it possible to combine psychological perspectives with philosophical ones so that intentional omissions could be treated as something that exist in the world, not just in our philosophical intuitions. I argue that intentional omissions necessarily require the agent’s procedural metacognition concerning the action not done. Based on this metacognition view, a non-normative conceptual typology of not doings is presented. Chapter 4 aims to find out on what conditions is an intentional omissions resistance toward something. The necessary elements of resistance are clarified and I argue that resistant intentional omissions in which the agent does not perform an action out of resistance toward something are a normal part of our everyday agency. The implications of the findings are considered for theories of action, especially when it comes to the belief-desire model that may not be able to fully account for resistant intentional omissions. Chapter 5 aims to find out what conceptual means do we have for talking about not doing something as a form of resistance. I argue that in the social sciences, bioethics and military ethics to not do something out of resistance is taken as something that exists, and as something that has causes and effects. However, concepts such as civil disobedience, conscientious refusing, exit and everyday resistance do not account for the ordinariness of this kind of not doings. Thus, I argue that such concepts are not able to fully cover resistant inaction and philosophy of intentional omissions can be of use not just in the social sciences. Finally, Chapter 6 considers the implications of these findings. The main implication of this study is that our view of social and ethical agency would need to better include intentional not doings, not just the sum of the intentional actions of agents. Another major implication is that agents themselves should be heard when analyzing their intentional omissions in society, because intentional omissions are phenomena that can easily be mixed with the passivities of agents from the perspective of an outside observer. (shrink)

The problem of act individuation is a debate about the identity conditions of human acts. The fundamental question about act individuation is: how do we distinguish between actions? Three views of act individuation have dominated the literature. First, Donald Davidson and G.E.M. Anscombe have argued that a number of different descriptions refer to a single act. Second, Alvin Goldman and Jaegwon Kim have argued that each description designates a distinct act. Finally, Irving Thalberg and Judith Jarvis Thomson have averred that (...) some acts are sequences of causally related events, which include both a primitive bodily action and some of its effects. All of these accounts have assumed that a simple invariantist account of act individuation captures how ordinary people distinguish between acts. For my dissertation, I devised an experiment to test the action theorists' assumptions. My data show that people's intuitions seem to depend on the valence of the consequences of the action under consideration. So, an invariantist account is not possible. In light of the empirical results, I argue that if we seek a folk account of act individuation, then that account should be able to explain the variability that seems to be present in people's intuitions about different cases. (shrink)

Plausibly, agents act freely iff their actions are responses to reasons. But what sort of relationship between reason and action is required for the action to count as a response? The overwhelmingly dominant answer to this question is modalist. It holds that responses are actions that share a modally robust or secure relationship with the relevant reasons. This thesis offers a new alternative answer. It argues that responses are actions that can be explained by reasons in the right way. This (...) explanationist answer comes apart from the modalist answer. For it holds that actions are responses to reasons if they are explained by those reasons even if they don’t share a modally robust relationship. Explanationism thus offers a novel way of vindicating the intuition that alternative possibilities don’t matter to responding to reasons and (consequently) free agency. The key dialectical position the thesis develops is that both modalism and explanationism constitute attempts to capture he core type of relationship encoded by the notion of a response. Responses to reasons, at core, involve a non-accidental relationship between reason and action. We can either understand non-accidentality as a modal phenomenon – as a modally robust tracking between two facts. Or we can understand non-accidentality as an explanatory phenomenon – as a special explanatory relationship between two facts. According to my rival explanationist proposal, two facts share a non-accidental relationship iff we can give a unified explanation of why both obtain. Unified explanations are explanations of why [p&q] that cannot be decomposed into two (or more) separate independent explanations of p and of q. Consequently, according to explanationism about responding to reasons, actions are responses to reasons iff those reasons offer a rational explanation of the action that cannot be decomposed into separate independent components. (shrink)