Philosophical Theories of Action

Click here and press the right key for the next slide.

(This may not work on mobile or ipad. You can try using chrome or firefox, but even that may fail. Sorry.)

also ...

Press the left key to go backwards (or swipe right)

Press n to toggle whether notes are shown (or add '?notes' to the url before the #)

Press m or double tap to slide thumbnails (menu)

Press ? at any time to show the keyboard shortcuts

Philosophical Theories of Action

We have been talking about action without saying anything about what that is.

(We characterised an instrumental action as an action that happens in order to bring about an outcome. This assumes a notion of action.)

What distinguishes your actions from things that merely happen to you? (‘The Problem of Action’)

What is a problem? A problem is a question that's difficult to answer.

What is the difficulty? You might think that this question is not difficult at all ...

- kinematic features?

you might think for example that we can answer this question by appeal to some kind of kinematic features of actions and indeed very often if you're observing people you can see the difference between things that are their actions and things that really happen to them just by looking at the kinematic features. You can see the carefully controlled way in which i reach for and grasp that coffee cup in front of you taking out of your way you can be sure that it's no accident that i've removed the coffee cup from you too much coffee for you this morning

Kinematic features? Coordination of body parts? Falling down stairs vs Buster Keaton stunt.

- desired outcomes?

another thought we might have is we can answer this question by saying that actions, and only actions, involve kind of coordination of body parts.

- coordination of body parts?

action

mere happening

intended fall

accidental fall

comparable kinematics

skillful pass

lucky accident

comparable outcomes

toddler walking

infant walking reflex

comparable coordination

What distinguishes your actions from things that merely happen to you? (‘The Problem of Action’)

- kinematic features?

- desired outcomes?

- coordination of body parts?

Standard Answer: actions are those events which stand in an appropriate causal relation to an intention.

i think it's fair to say that a great deal of philosophy is driven by the assumption that this answer is correct at core so it should be something of great interest to us

Causal Theory of Action: an event is action ‘just in case it has a certain sort of psychological cause’ (Bach, 1978, p. 361).

the other thing to note here is that it's an instance of something even more general and even more widely accepted this is the so-called causal theory of action according to which an action is event just in case it has certain sort of psychological cause

question for thein philosophy of action has beenare intentionswhat is this appropriate causalbeen little debate about whether thetheory and the standard answeractually correct

and the Standard answer does seem to fit out contrast cases ...

action

mere happening

intended fall

accidental fall

comparable kinematics

skillful pass

lucky accident

comparable outcomes

toddler walking

infant walking reflex

comparable coordination

What distinguishes your actions from things that merely happen to you? (‘The Problem of Action’)

- kinematic features?

- desired outcomes?

- coordination of body parts?

Standard Answer: actions are those events which stand in an appropriate causal relation to an intention.

Causal Theory of Action: an event is action ‘just in case it has a certain sort of psychological cause’ (Bach, 1978, p. 361).

How do we arrive at this?

so one thing we might wonder is well you know how did anybody arrive at the standard answer how did anybody arrive at the standard answer and i think the standard answer is most famously associated with a paper by donald davidson from 1971 called agency that you'll see cited below so let's just try to retrace the steps that davidson takes to reach the standard answer

Redescriptions of action need not relate to your intentions

the first thing that davidson notes is very interesting it's possible to describe an action in many different ways so to borrow his example you move your finger thereby pressing a light switch thereby turning some lights on thereby alerting a prowler right be more

these are of course four ways of describing a single action right i didn't do four different things there there was just one thing|

second thought is this the way that we describe an action can but need not relate to your intentions so in my case pressing the switch that's something that was definitely intended by me so if we describe the action steve pressed the switch that relates clearly to my intentions by contrast steve alerted the prowler i had no knowledge that the parallel was there so that was very far from anything i intended and i was quite surprised that i achieved that so we can describe the same action one of the same action in one way that relates to my intentions pressing the switch for example and in another way alerting the prowler doesn't relate to my intentions at all i'm sure that you can think of many similar examples here where you have one action that can be redescribed in many different ways some of which relate to your intentions and some of which are very far from your intentions

mind davidson goes on to give us a three-fold distinction among causes of uh an action in this case he's talking about spilling the coffee i don't know why he's spilling coffee but he is spilling coffee right so he's woken up he's not feeling very good he's reaching for a cup and he forms an intention to spill the coffee and indeed he does spill the coffee right perhaps he doesn't like it perhaps you've given him a you know not very nice cup of coffee and he wants to subtly get rid of the coffee without offending him

My spilling the coffee can be caused in at least three ways ...

where I mistakenly take the coffee to be tea and do not intend to spill coffee

	cause	is my action?
1	an intention of mine to spill the coffee	✔
2	an intention of mine to spill the tea	✔
3	you jiggling my hand	✘

Reflection on (1) and (2) rules out the view that my spilling the coffee is an action of mine only if I intend to spill the coffee.

‘What is the difference [between (2) and (3)]? The difference seems to lie in the fact that in one case, but not in the other, I am intentionally doing something. My spilling the contents of my cup was intentional; as it happens, this very same act can be redescribed as my spilling the coffee. Of course, thus redescribed the action is no longer intentional; but this fact is apparently irrelevant to the question of agency.

‘And so I think we have one correct answer to our problem: a man is the agent of an act if what he does can be described under an aspect that makes it intentional.’ (Davidson, 1971, p. 46)

Question 1

What is the relation between an instrumental action and an outcome to which it is directed?

Question 2

What distinguishes your actions from things that merely happen to you?

Standard Solution

Your actions are those events which stand in an appropriate causal relation to an intention of yours.

Keyboard Shortcuts?f

Philosophical Theories of Action

Keyboard Shortcuts`?f`