Philosophical Theories of Action

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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.)

As I said, the challenge is to discover why people act, individually and jointly

challenge

Discover why people act,
individually and jointly.

We have to ask what actions are.

To see why problem is pressing, suppose we just replace `act` with `move`.

So many things move—rocks, people, plants, continental plates and bacteria—that it makes no sense to look for a general theory about why things move.

If we are to have a coherent research project, we need a principled way of limiting our enquiry to actions as opposed to movements more generally.

Bacteria turn out to behave in suprisingly sophisticated way, as do plants and, of course, machines.

We would ideally like a principled way of delimiting the things we are asking about so that we are not thinking above movement generally.

image source: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/939340

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?

Actions do have characteristic kinematics. BUT Keaton’s stunts are actions without those kinematics.

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?

Response to Keaton: it wasn’t an action because the outcome (falling off the side of the building) was undesired.

But of course lots of your actions have undesired consequences.

‘I didn’t mean to soak your trousers, I was only trying to fill your glass’ / ‘But you did soak my trousers’

- coordination of body parts?

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.

[This is an opportunity to talk about the method of contrast cases]

action

mere happening

intended fall

accidental fall

comparable kinematics

skillful execution

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

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

action

mere happening

intended fall

accidental fall

comparable kinematics

skillful execution

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?

- intention

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).

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

the question for the philosophers mainly in philosophy of action has been what are intentions and what is this appropriate causal relation. There has been little debate about whether the causal theory and the standard answer are actually correct

So this is the view I will be taking as a useful starting point for saying what actions are.

We did ask what actions are.

challenge

Discover why people act,
individually and jointly.

complication: ‘reflex’ behaviours

action

mere happening

intended fall

accidental fall

comparable kinematics

skillful execution

lucky accident

comparable outcomes

toddler walking

infant walking reflex

comparable coordination

Is it really not an action? Quite complex things can be genetically determined.

Metz, Bedford, Pan, & Hoekstra (2017, p. graphical abstract, part)

Source is Metz et al. (2017) but there is a useful simplified commentary and expansion in Sheehan, Miller, Vogt, & Ligon (2018) which I am also relying on.

Metz et al studied burrowing in two species of deer mouse. They found that the onset of the age at which the mice first burrow, and the template of the burrow they make, are both genetically determined. (Eg. if you have one species foster the other, it makes no difference to burrowing onset or burrow architecture; you can also do clever things like cross the two species.)

If we think that the deer mouse’s burrowing is an action, we have rejected a major tennet of philosophy of action.

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

- kinematic features?

- desired outcomes?

- coordination of body parts?

- intention

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).

It ain’t psychological in the case of the deer mice. (There will be psychological causes, of course; but these do not explain the template or the timing of the behaviours)

So taking genetically programmed behaviours as actions would create havoc with the basic assumptions of philosophy of action. (I’m not mentioning Anscombe but you would get a similar problem there.)

We might want to exclude these cases and say they are not part of what our theory is aiming to capture. Need to be careful just here tho—do not want to say that this is because they do not involve intentions, because then we’d be using the theory to identify its own explanandum.

action

mere happening

intended fall

accidental fall

comparable kinematics

skillful execution

lucky accident

comparable outcomes

toddler walking

infant walking reflex

comparable coordination

For the purpose of this course I’m going to assume that where genes are the dominant influence on the template and timing of a behaviour, it is not an action in the sense required.

However, I have no justification for this. I suspect that there are more tricky issues here, issues which may challenge the very idea that the Problem of Action is a good question. (More about this right at the end.)

But for most people, this is too complicated: better to stick to the mainstream.

We did ask what actions are.

challenge

Discover why people act,
individually and jointly.

[2023–24 PLAN TO BREAK FOR FIRST HALF OF LECTURE 01 AFTER THIS UNIT]

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Philosophical Theories of Action

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