Abstract
Aristotle’s account of action as kinesis, an intrinsically temporal process, posits that action is a kind of change over time, with parts or sub-actions that occupy distinct subordinate phases of a movement. This general idea has produced conflicting accounts of agency, however. Proponents of the causal theory of action ((CTA), causalism, or ‘the standard account’) have taken it as evidence of a reductionist or decompositional programme that supports the concept of basic action (Davidson, 1980; Coope, 2007). In contrast, recent critiques of causalism have relied explicitly on Aristotle’s idea of kinesis to defend an anti-decompositional approach, arguing that the sub-phases of an action must be known to its agent for such proceedings to qualify as agential (Thompson, Life and action: Elementary structures of practice and practical thought, Harvard University Press, 2008; Lavin, Noûs 00(0):1–32, 2012, 2016). This essay assesses these challenges to (CTA) as representing variations on the problem of disappearing or alienated agency, and argues that (CTA)‘s strongest critics fail to show that basic action indeed lacks temporal structure. Instead, we propose a revision in the conventional account of action as either complex or basic, as either taking much time or no time at all. On our account, the analysis of action as possessing temporal sub-phases is reconcilable with an anti-decompositional approach: the latter’s success depends on a proper assessment of the temporal structure of agency, not only in the so-called ‘complex’ actions which have an obvious means-end rational character, but also in the metaphysically simple and spontaneous movements that occur in the sub-phases of performance, which some identify as ‘basic’.
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Notes
- 1.
Translation by W.D. Ross, revised by J.O. Urmson.
- 2.
Davidson, for instance, seems to regard causalism as an extension of Aristotle’s approach to agency, writing: ‘[T]he best argument for a scheme like Aristotle’s is that it alone promises to give an account of the ‘mysterious connection’ between reasons and actions’ (Davidson, 1980: 11). On Davidson’s interpretation, the causal relation promised by Aristotle’s account specifically involves the concept of a reason which, as the cause of action, can be broken down into compound mental states, a belief and a desire (or, in lieu of ‘desire’, what Davidson calls a ‘pro-attitude’). Other causalist accounts, such as Smith (1987, 2004, 2012), approach the matter from a Humean perspective.
- 3.
The definition of action as change follows Coope (2007): the exercise of a certain kind of causal power of an agent, also understood as the partial fulfillment of that capacity (in Aristotelian terms, ‘the incomplete actuality of the moveable’). The present essay does not address the specific concerns Coope raises for Aristotle’s account, which she clarifies cannot be a conception of action that causes a change or a movement: instead, it is the change wherein the movements of one’s body are identified with the action itself. Action is the causing of the end state of affairs – it causes the end state to be – rather than of the changes that result in the end state.
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Relatedly, (CTA) raises the fundamental question of how a mental item can cause a physical event. This latter problem is understood by philosophers of mind as the problem of ‘causal exclusion’, not explored in this paper.
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Such use of the term ‘constituent’ expresses a logical relation between agent and event, comparable to the way that ‘the vase is on the table’ may be said to have the logical constituents of ‘the vase’, the ‘being on’ relation, and ‘the table’. Even if this is a loose way of describing the relation between agent and events (or states of affairs, or facts), but it should be clear that the constituent relation employed here bears no significant similarities (except analogously) to metaphysical parthood, e.g., as when the legs of the table are understood as its constituent parts, among others.
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On the other hand, perhaps Hornsby’s concept of ‘mediation’ is meant to play a role in our understanding of actions: i.e., that we can understand ‘S pushes or squashes o’ without our understanding being mediated by the assumption that the causal relata involved in the description of S and o are mental events and physical movements. It remains unclear which interpretation is implied by her concept. Either way, Hornsby’s remarks amount to little more than a rejection of (CTA). It may be that she simply wishes to remind us of the naturalness of thinking in agent causation terms, in which ‘the person does the thing’, rather than a causal relation between events.
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That is not to say, however, that Hornsby’s objection against event or state causation assumed by the causalist is of practical irrelevance: merely that her usage of the concept of ‘mediation’ is arguably too loose to correspond precisely to that objection.
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- 10.
Lavin, ‘Action as a Form of Temporal Unity: On Anscombe’s Intention’ (Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 2016), p. 623.
- 11.
It could be added that the kind of ‘intrinsic intentionality’ lacking in basic action (as Lavin wishes to conceive the latter) not only does not offer an answer to the question ‘Why?’ but also precludes the agent’s own question ‘How?’. For if an action is basic, according to Danto’s definition, then one does not need to ask ‘How?’ in doing it: there is no prior action that the agent must take in order to perform a basic action, that would necessitate the question ‘How?’.
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Lavin offers a substantial preliminary discussion in support of a weaker claim, that basic action need not exist in consequence of certain regress arguments that might variously be given by contemporary theorists (see Lavin, 2012: 9–17). These regress arguments may take different approaches, but for instance, one may believe that there must be simple skills if there are complex ones. Such belief may correspond to Hornsby’s argument, as cited by Lavin, that ‘[a]mong the things a person knows how to do, some of them he must know how to do “just like that”, on pain of needing to ascribe to him indefinitely many distinct pieces of knowledge to account for his ability’ (Hornsby, 1980: 88). Lavin’s discussion of the regress arguments is worth considering, but for present purposes I focus only on his stronger argument that basic action cannot exist and function as contemporary action theorists believe that it does.
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As also quoted at the beginning of this essay, Lavin cites Aristotle at Nic. Eth. 1174a 22–24: ‘In their parts and during the time they occupy, all movements are incomplete, and are different in kind from the whole movement and from each other’.
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‘And so, earlier when X was doing A*** and had not yet done it, other things had already happened in progress (X is doing A) is at once an ever increasing stack of have done’s and ever shrinking list of still to do’s’ (Lavin, 2012: 22).
- 16.
In another paper, Davidson considers a different situation in which his right arm is paralysed, but it is placed in a pulley system wherein he can raise it by pulling on a rope with his left arm. ‘Raising an arm is usually done without doing anything else, but not always’, he comments (Davidson, 2004: 103). In this case, Davidson claims that he has raised his paralysed right arm by pulling on the rope with the other. Although raising an arm is usually something that one can do ‘just like that’, he has accomplished it only by doing something else with his body, an extra causal intermediary. Having pulled on a rope in order to raise his other arm, however, Davidson denies that achieving this latter end is part of the action at all: ‘[T]he answer to Wittgenstein’s question for a case like this is that nothing is added to the rising of my arm that makes it a case of my raising my arm because the rising of my arm is not part of my action at all’ (Davidson, 2004: 104).
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See Enç (2006).
- 18.
By the same token, Lavin’s assumption that action is either ‘bound together by instrumental rationalisation’ or wholly lacking in rationality altogether, could be criticised on the grounds that he cannot conceive of rational action as ever falling in between these polar opposites (Lavin, 2012: 13). However, it may be that his conception of ‘instrumental rationalisation’ is sufficiently broad to admit actions done as a matter of habit, if not ‘just like that’. It is difficult to see the coherent application of ‘instrumental rationalisation’ to habitual actions if one assumes that ‘instrumental rationalisation’ involves cognitive control requiring means-end deliberation. A broad conception is conceivable only if the latter assumption is rejected.
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This sort of reply is not incompatible with Lavin’s account, since he countenances actions that are done unreflectively, as a matter of habit or a part of routine activity. His account, however, specifies that such actions must be ‘bound together by instrumental rationalisation’ (Lavin, 2012: 13).
- 20.
Aristotle offers a more extensive treatment of this topic in De Motu Animaliam, especially §7. Imagine the following syllogism that proceeds to an action: ‘I need a covering, a coat is a covering: I need a coat. What I need I ought to make, I need a coat: I make a coat. And the conclusion “I must make a coat” is an action’. Though this style of practical reasoning reveals a general structure, Aristotle argues that an agent need not dwell on such propositions, nor must they occur to him at all (701a6–701b1).
- 21.
Santiago Amaya (2016) proposes the paradigm of ‘slip-proof actions’ – bodily movements analogous to verbal slips that simply never happen, such as talk of ‘Sruedian slips’ – as a way of defining basic action. However, this definition seems to be an unnecessary implication of things we do ‘just like that’, without needing to do anything else. What seems undeniably simple or basic may not be absolutely fail-safe: even Heifetz can still make mistakes, or a single step towards the door can go awry.
- 22.
This account is sympathetic to a metaphysics of processes rather than events, as argued e.g. by Helen Steward (2016). Although not explored in this essay, it is possible to construe the account of action as agential change as a variant of Steward’s account of actions as processes ultimately alterable by the agent, a view that resists the event causation assumed by (CTA), as argued by Steward (2012).
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Chik, J. (2022). The Temporal Structure of Agency. In: Austin, C.J., Marmodoro, A., Roselli, A. (eds) Powers, Time and Free Will. Synthese Library, vol 451. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92486-7_6
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