Action (philosophy)

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Philosophy of action is chiefly concerned with human action, intending to distinguish between activity and passivity, voluntary, intentional, culpable and involuntary actions, and related questions. Though these issues have been discussed in nearly every era of philosophy, the topic of action began to receive special attention in the 1960's, and is becoming one of the major sub-disciplines in contemporary philosophy. Given the vastness of the body of relevant literature (both historical and contemporary), this article primarily aims to to set out the fundamental issues and the most influential positions from the current standpoint.

Action in the History of Philosophy

Since action has ties to central human concerns such as responsibility and autonomy, it has been discussed in nearly every philosophical tradition. Furthermore, most metaphysical, epistemological and ethical views carry implications for our understanding of action (and vice-versa). A survey of philosophical discussions of action would therefore amount to a survey of nearly all of philosophy. A brief note must therefore suffice.

Action has been of concern to Western philosophers at least since Aristotle, who wrote about the subject in his Nicomachean Ethics. It is the theme of the Hindu epic Bhagavad Gita, in which the Sanskrit word karma epitomizes personal action. It has nearly always been bound up with Ethics, the study of what actions one ought to perform.

Many branches of Buddhism reject the notion of agency in varying degrees. In these schools of thought there is action, but no agent. Taoism has famously championed "inaction" as an ideal.

Action vs. Mere Behavior

In §621 of the Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein poses a question: "What is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?" What Wittgenstein is pointing to is the fact that we understand there to be more involved in a person's doing something than merely the fact that her body moves in a certain way. But what is this something more?

In fact, there appear to be a number of distinctions needed. A convulsion of one's leg doesn't appear to be an action in any sense, but what about nervously tapping one's foot? Such tapping is not as obviously an action as plunging into traffic to save a child, but it is still something the person does. This is why we might reasonably ask someone to stop tapping his foot, while it would be unreasonable to ask someone to suppress a convulsion. Philosophers have proposed a host of terms for capturing such distinctions ('mere behavior', 'activity', 'action', 'full-blooded action', 'intentional action', intentional movement' and so on). In what follows, I'll simply use 'action' to designate the clearest cases of action, since it has been with such cases that the majority of philosophical discussions have circled.

In her work Intention (published in 1957), which is often seen as the beginning of contemporary philosophy of action, G. E. M. Anscombe argued that intentional actions are those "to which a certain sense of the question 'Why?' is given application" (§5), where the answer to this question gives the person's reason for acting. Though Anscombe's account has received mixed reactions, her basic idea of invoking reasons has proved extremely influential.

In the decades since Intention, a host of different accounts have arisen on the question of what distinguishes action from mere behavior. Perhaps the most important of these is that of Donald Davidson. In a series of important essays beginning in 1963, Davidson elaborated on Anscombe's notion of 'done for a reason,' reaching very different results from hers. According to Davidson, some piece of behavior counts as an action if it is 'intentional under some description,' where the description in question is provided by the agent's beliefs, desires and intentions. For instance, a given motion my arm makes might be described either as 'brushing away a fly' or 'briefly shortening the distance between my left hand and the lamp.' Since I wanted (and intended) to brush away the fly, the first description is one under which the action is intentional, whereas, since I neither wanted nor intended to shorten the distance between my left hand and the lamp, the second description is not one under which this action is intentional. One can then say that if there is no description under which some behavior is intententional, then that behavior is not intentional simpliciter.

The Metaphysics of Action

Say that someone sees a stray dog wander into his yard and wants to scare the dog away. He yells, and scares the dog off. Whatever else is going on, such a story surely involves some amount of causation. But what causes what? Is the person's desire to scare the dog away the cause of his action of scaring the dog away? Is his action of yelling the cause of his action of scaring the dog (or are they just one action, or is one a part of the other)? What about the person himself - was he caused to do what he did? Questions such as these have motivated inquiries into the metaphysics of action.

Causalism vs. Non-causalism

In the case of the man yelling at the dog, one might naturally explain his action of yelling by pointing to certain mental states he had. That is, one might say that he yelled because he had a desire to scare the dog away and a belief that yelling would do the trick. Or one might say that he had an intention to get rid of the dog. Such desires, beliefs and intentions certainly provide some explanation of the action, but there is a question as to whether that is a causal explanation. To illustrate this, consider the following two explanations:

1. The bell rang because someone pushed the button.
2. The bell rang because it was time to eat.
3. This book is worth reading because the descriptions are so vivid.

In 1, it is quite clear that one is explaining the bell's ringing by pointing to the cause of that event (someone pushing some button). In 2, by contrast, one is explaining the bell's ringing by pointing to something which cannot have been its cause (though it might have some connection to the cause). Further, in 3, the explanation appears to have nothing to do with causation.

Given then that not all explanation involves citing causes, what should be said explanations such as the one given above for the man's yelling? G. E. M. Anscombe, in Intention, denied that the explanation was causal. Part of her motivation appears to be that the cause of some action would be what a person would cite if asked, "What produced that action of yours?" (§11). In response to such a question, such a person might answer "a burning irritation," or "the sight of that mangy dog," but he would hardly cite a mental state such as an intention. Such a "non-causalist" view has been upheld since Anscombe by a number of philosophers, including George Wilson.

Donald Davidson, in a series of articles beginning with "Actions, Reasons and Causes," argued for the opposite, "causalist" position. According to his original argument, if we were to say that the man yelled at the dog, desired to get rid of the dog and believed that by yelling he would get rid of the dog, there would remain the further question of whether he yelled at the dog because of his belief and desire. Davidson then asks what more needs to be said in order to have the complete explanation, and finds no better candidate than the claim that the belief and desire caused the action. Davidson's arguments proved influential, and causalism is currently the dominant position.

The Epistemology of Action

In Intention, G. E. M. Anscombe claimed that we have knowledge of our own actions "without observation."

Philosophers concerned with action

• G. E. M. Anscombe
• Michael Bratman
• John Broome
• August Cieszkowski
• Donald Davidson
• Harry Frankfurt
• David Hume
• Aristotle

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Action, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/action/
• Mele, Alfred (ed.): The Philosophy of Action, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997

See also

• social action

External links

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry

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