Maria Alvarez

Agents and their Actions

There is no consensus about what events are. But it is generally agreed that, whatever events may prove to be, actions are a species or a class of events. We believe that the received view is mistaken: actions are not events. We concede that for most purposes, the kind of categorial refinement which is involved in either affirming or denying that actions are events is frankly otiose. Our common idiom does not

Actions, thought-experiments and the ‘Principle of alternate possibilities’

In 1969 Harry Frankfurt published his hugely influential paper ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility’ in which he claimed to present a counterexample to the so-called ‘Principle of Alternate Possibilities’ (‘a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise’). The success of Frankfurt-style cases as counterexamples to the Principle has been much debated since. I present an objection to these cases that, in questioning their conceptual cogency, undercuts many of those debates. Such cases all require a counterfactual mechanism that could cause an agent to perform an action that he cannot avoid performing. I argue that, given our concept of what it is for someone to act, this requirement is inconsistent. Frankfurt-style alleged counterexamples are cases where an agent is morally responsible for an action he performs even though, the claim goes, he could not have avoided performing that action. However, it has recently been argued, e.g. by John Fischer, that a counterexample to the Principle could be a ‘Fischer-style case’, i.e. a case where the agent can either perform the action or do nothing else. I argue that, although Fischer-style cases do not share the conceptual flaw common to all Frankfurt-style cases, they also fail as counterexamples to the Principle. The paper finishes with a brief discussion of the significance of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities.

Acting Intentionally and Acting for a Reason

Abstract This paper explores the question whether whatever is done intentionally is done for a reason. Apart from helping us to think about those concepts, the question is interesting because it affords an opportunity to identify a number of misconceptions about reasons. In the paper I argue that there are things that are done intentionally but not done for a reason. I examine two different kinds of example: things done “because one wants to” and “purely expressive actions”. Concerning the first, I argue that the tendency to think that things done because one wants to are things done for a reason derives from conflating the reason that explains why someone did something with their reason for doing it. While these sometimes coincide, they need not always do so. And although the fact that someone wanted to do something can contribute to explaining the persons action, it is not normally that persons reason for doing that thing. Purely expressive actions also provide examples of things done intentionally but not for a reason. I argue that, although those actions are spontaneous, they are nonetheless intentional and that, since they are mere expressions of emotions, they are not done for reasons – although there are reasons why we do them.

Actions and Events: Some Semantical Considerations

Since the publication of Davidson’s influential article ‘The Logical Form of Action Sentences’, semantical considerations are widely thought to support the doctrine that actions are events. I shall argue that the semantics of action sentences do not imply that actions are events. This will involve defending a negative claim and a positive claim, as well as a proposal for how to formalize action sentences. The negative claim is that the semantics of action sentences do not require that we think of actions as events, even if these sentences are best formalized in the manner that Davidson himself favours. The positive claim is that the simplest way of formalizing actions sentences which captures all and only licit inferences requires quantification only, over the results of actions. If this is right, then the argument from semantics evaporates, and the claim that actions are events needs to be freshly argued for – or against.

How Many Kinds of Reasons

Reasons can play a variety of roles in a variety of contexts. For instance, reasons can motivate and guide us in our actions (and omissions), in the sense that we often act in the light of reasons. And reasons can be grounds for beliefs, desires and emotions and can be used to evaluate, and sometimes to justify, all these. In addition, reasons are used in explanations: both in explanations of human actions, beliefs, desires, emotions, etc., and in explanations of a wide range of phenomena involving all sorts of animate and inanimate substances. This diversity has encouraged the thought that the term ‘reason’ is ambiguous or has different senses in different contexts. Moreover, this view often goes hand in hand with the claim that reasons of these different kinds belong to different ontological categories: to facts (or something similar) in the case of normative/justifying reasons, and to mental states in the case of motivating/explanatory reasons. In this paper I shall explore some of the main roles that reasons play and, on that basis, I shall offer a classification of kinds of reasons. As will become clear, my classification of reasons is at odds with much of the literature in several respects: first, because of my views about how we should understand the claim that reasons are classified into different kinds; second, because of the kinds into which I think reasons should be classified; and, finally, because of the consequences I think this view has for the ontology of reasons.

Reasons and the ambiguity of 'belief'

Two conceptions of motivating reasons, i.e. the reasons for which we act, can be found in the literature: (1) the dominant ‘psychological conception’, which says that motivating reasons are an agents believing something; and (2) the ‘non-psychological’ conception, the minority view, which says that they are what the agent believes, i.e. his beliefs. In this paper I outline a version of the minority view, and defend it against what have been thought to be insuperable difficulties – in particular, difficulties concerning ‘error cases’ (cases where what the agent believes is false); and difficulties concerning the explanation of action. Concerning error cases, I argue that if we are motivated by something believed that is true, what motivates us to act is a motivating reason. By contrast, if we are motivated by something believed that is false, then what motivates us to act is merely an apparent motivating reason. Either way, what motivates us is, as the non-psychological conception says, what we believe and not our believing it. I offer an account of the relation between motivating reasons and the explanation of action, and argue that this account helps bring out two important points. One is that the fact that we often do, and indeed sometimes must, use explanations such as ‘He did it because he believed that p’ does not vindicate the psychological conception of motivating reasons. The other is that endorsing the non-psychological conception of motivating reasons does not commit one to a non-factive view of explanations of action.

Reasons for action, acting for reasons, and rationality

What kind of thing is a reason for action? What is it to act for a reason? And what is the connection between acting for a reason and rationality? There is controversy about the many issues raised by these questions. In this paper I shall answer the first question with a conception of practical reasons that I call ‘Factualism’, which says that all reasons are facts. I defend this conception against its main rival, Psychologism, which says that practical reasons are mental states or mental facts, and also against a variant of Factualism that says that some practical reasons are facts and others are false beliefs. I argue that the conception of practical reasons defended here (i) provides plausible answers to the second and third questions above; and (ii) gives a more unified and satisfactory picture of practical reasons than those offered by its rivals.

Reasons, Desires and Intentional Actions

There are two fundamentally different ways of understanding the relation between desires and intentional actions. According to one, whenever someone does something for a reason, some desire of his (or ‘want’ — I use these terms interchangeably here) is always part of the reason for which he does it. Since this view is associated with Hume, I shall call this the ‘Humean’ view of reasons. Humeans argue that without desires there is no motivation in action and that, therefore, desires are an essential part of the reasons for which we act and of any explanation of an intentional action. There is an opposing view that says that desires are not, or not normally, part of someone’s reason for acting — call this the non-Humean view. Defenders of this alternative view maintain that the Humean position cannot be right, not least because beliefs can also motivate someone to act and, so, these philosophers play down, or even eliminate, the role of desires in motivation and in the explanation of action.

Ryle on Motives and Dispositions

In The Concept of Mind, Ryle discusses dispositions in some detail both in the chapter on emotions, especially in relation to the concept of motive, and, of course, in the chapter entitled ‘Dispositions and Occurrences’. These discussions show that he regarded dispositional concepts as central to a proper understanding of the mind and of behaviour. He held that ‘many of the cardinal concepts in terms of which we describe specifically human behaviour are dispositional concepts’ (1949, p. 117) and he also thought that ‘the vogue of the para-mechanical legend has led many people to ignore the ways in which these concepts actually behave and to construe them instead as items in the description of occult causes and effects’ (ibid.). In other words, Ryle thought that ‘the official doctrine’ about the mind (see his 1949, 11ff.) tends to treat these psychological terms as ‘episodic words’ denoting occurrences, or as terms used to report ‘particular but unwitnessable matters of fact’ (117),1 when in fact they express dispositional concepts. Moreover, according to the official doctrine, these occurrences are causes of behaviour, albeit ones that are not accessible for public inspection — hence the ‘para-mechanical’ label. Much of the discussion in the two chapters mentioned above is devoted to bringing out the logico-grammatical features of these mental dispositional concepts in order to show how ill-suited they are to play the role of cause in the production of behaviour that the official doctrine traditionally ascribes to them.

The concept of moral obligation: Anscombe contra Korsgaard

A number of recent writers have expressed scepticism about the viability of a specifically moral concept of obligation, and some of the considerations offered have been interesting and persuasive. This is a scepticism that has its roots in Nietzsche, even if he is mentioned only rather rarely in the debate. More proximately, the scepticism in question receives seminal expression in Elizabeth Anscombes 1958 essay, ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, a piece that is often paid lip-service to, but—like Nietzsches work—has only rarely been taken seriously by those wishing to defend the conception of obligation under attack. This is regrettable. Anscombes essay is powerful and direct, and it makes a forthright case for the claim that, in the absence of a divine law conception of ethics, any specifically moral concept of obligation must be redundant, and that the best that can be hoped for in a secular age is some sort of neo-Aristotelianism. Anscombe is right about this, we think. And, among those who disagree, one of the very few to have taken her on at all explicitly is Christine Korsgaard, whose Kantianism of course commits her to the view that the concept of moral obligation is central, with or without God. Here, we try to show that Korsgaard loses the argument.