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Causal Theories of Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Michael J. Costa
Michael J. Costa*
Affiliation:
University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC29208, U.S.A.
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Extract

Causal theories of action are attempts to develop an account of actions in terms of events (typically bodily movements and their effects) which have the right kind of causal ancestry. The causal ancestry must be traced back to some kind of intentional state (or combination of intentional states) in the agent, such intentional state (or states) must have the right kind of content, and it must cause the bodily movement (or other effect) in the ‘right’ way. Causal accounts differ on the nature of the intentional state, the nature of the content it must have, and the specification of the ‘right’ kind of causal connection to bodily movements or other effects. Causal accounts also differ on the identification of the action itself. Some acounts say that the action is the bodily movement, provided that it was caused in the right way and had the right kind of effects. Others identify the action with the triggering intentional state (called a volition or trying), provided that it has the right kind of effects. Yet others identify the action with the composite event of the intentional state's causing the appropriate effects. Finally there are those which fail to identify the action with any of these events or combinations of them.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , December 1987 , pp. 831 - 854
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1987

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References

1 Davis, Cf. Lawrence A Theory of Action (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall 1979), 6Google Scholar.

2 Davidson has developed this account in a number of articles including ‘Actions, Reasons, and Causes,’ ‘Agency,’ ‘Freedom to Act,’ and ‘Intending,’ all reprinted in Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1980), 3-19, 43-61, 63-81, and 83-102, respectively. G.E.M. Anscombe advocates a similar account in Intention, 2nd ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1963) and ‘Under a Description,’ Noûs 13 (1979) 219-33; but my exposition concentrates on Davidson's account.

3 ‘Agency,’ 49-50

4 Ibid.

5 I am indebted here to Hornsby, Jennifer Actions (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1980), 22–3Google Scholar.

6 ‘Freedom to Act,’ 79

7 ‘Actions, Reasons, and Causes,’ 3-4

8 ‘Intending,’ 85

9 ‘The Logical Form of Action Sentences,’ in Essays

10 For a proposal for handling the causal and by-relation properties in this way see Castaneda, Hector-Neri ‘Intensionality and Identity in Human Action and Philosophical Method,’ Noûs 13 (1979) 235–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Anscombe, ‘Under a Description’ and Davis, Theory, 28–38Google Scholar, take this line.

12 Castaneda may have something like this in mind when he claims that action individuation is largely a verbal issue in Thinking and Doing (Dordrecht: D. Reidel 1975) and ‘Intensionality.’

13 Davidson, ‘The Individuation of Events,’ in Essays, 179Google Scholar. See also ‘Causal Relations,’ ‘Events as Particulars,’ and ‘Eternal Vs. Ephemeral Events,’ in Essays, 149-62, 181-7, and 189-203, respectively.

14 Davis, Theory and Hornsby, Actim1s. There are differences between the accounts. Hornsby, for example, eschews the label ‘volitions’ and sticks exclusively to ‘tryings.’ She denies that these are in themselves actions, though she is willing to call them ‘doings.’ My exposition draws mainly from Davis, but I think that Hornsby's account has basically the same difficulties (and advantages). For more on volitional accounts see Brand's, Myles extended discussion in Acting and Intending (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press 1984)Google Scholar.

15 Davis, Theory, 20Google Scholar

16 Goldman, A Theory of Human Action (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1970Google Scholar). For the development of Kim's theory of events see Kim, ‘Events and their Descriptions: Some Considerations’ in Rescher, Nicholas ed., Essays in Honor of Carl G. Hemple (Dordrecht: D. Reidel 1969CrossRefGoogle Scholar); ‘Causation, Nomic Subsumption and the Concept of Event,’ Journal of Philosophy 70 (1973) 217-36; and ‘Events as Property Exemplifications,’ in Brand, and Walton, eds., Action Theory (Dordrecht: D. Reidel 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 The exemplifier account tends not to make a sharp distinction between events and states of affairs. Far from this being a problem, it seems to me that this works very nicely for a theory of action. Actions involve both changes and states. For example, a volition is typically a condition that persists for some (perhaps very short) period of time. It must if it is to exert the kind of feedback control that is supposed to be characteristic of volitions. Also, not all actions are changes. Standing at attention is an action, but it is more appropriately thought of as a state or condition rather than a change. A notion of event that is broad enough to include both changes and states seems to prove its merit here.

18 Goldman subsequently seems to have given up reductionist claims. See ‘Action, Causation, and Unity,’ Noûs 13 (1979) 261-70.

19 See Castaneda's effective attack on level generation in ‘Intensionality,’ 246-51.

20 Thalberg, Perception, Emotion &Action (New Haven: Yale University Press 1977)Google Scholar and Thomson, Acts and Other Events (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1977)Google Scholar

21 Thalberg is strangely hesitant about saying that the prior actions are literally parts of the further actions. He says rather that the relation is like that of an ear lobe to the ear or of Greater Russia to the U.S.S.R. (Perception, 107-8). I am afraid that I don't understand the distinction Thalberg has in mind, so I shall present the account as making (as I think it should) the straightforward part claim.

22 A referee suggested to me that one may claim that x is reducible to y without making any identity claim. One may simply mean that x is fully explainable in terms of y. Now I am concerned here mainly with denying the identity claim. However, I think it is also doubtful whether the exemplifier account fully explains events in terms of other things. It is doubtful that the concept of exemplification is distinct from the concept of event. An exemplification is a kind of happening, something that takes place. (See Thalberg, ‘The Irreducibility of Events,’ Analysis 38,1 [1978] 7–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar) The exemplifier account doesn't explain the notion of event in terms of other things; rather it tells us something important about the nature of events in revealing the underlying structure that is common to all events.

23 The complex event theory is developed and defended in detail in Costa, ‘Seeing and Other Complex Events,’ Ph.D. Dissertation, The Ohio State University 1981.

24 John Searle draws a similar distinction between a prior intention and the ‘intention in action,’ Intentionality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1983), 84.

25 For an example of such a case see Michael Bratman, ‘Two Faces of Intention,’ Philosophical Review 93 (1984) 381-3. My discussion here was influenced by Bratman's article.

26 There is a serious question about whether the content of an intention (or volition, for that matter) is the same as that for a corresponding prediction, say, that I shall do A on the occurrence of X. Clearly the intention state differs from the prediction state; but is this because of a difference in content or merely a difference in psychological attitude toward the same content? Philosophers who maintain that there is a difference in content include Castaneda (Thinking) and Searle (Intentionality). I shall remain neutral on this question here, and my characterization of the content of intentions and volitions is not meant to exclude the possibility that something other than straightforward propositional content is involved.

27 My notion of b-volitions is indebted to Searle's discussion of ‘background abilities,’ Intentionality, ch. 5.

28 Many of the ideas expressed in this paper were developed and refined in a 1984 NEH Summer Seminar on Human Action. I am indebted to Hector Castaneda and the other participants in that seminar for their encouragement and for many helpful criticisms and suggestions. I would like to thank in particular Castaneda, Jim Kelly, Frank McGuinley, and Joe Losco for their detailed comments on an ancestor of this paper. I have also benefitted greatly from the advice of the referees of this Journal and my colleagues Barry Loewer and Ferdy Schoeman.