The problem of actionH.G. Frankfurt

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Purpose of the paper

To defend a non-causal, non-reductionist, view of what distinguishes actions from mere happenings. (see p. 1)

= the guidance conception of action.

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Dialectical structure

Objections (2 interrelated) to the causal conception of what distinguishes actions from mere happenings;

Presentation of the guidance conception of action;

Clarification as regards guidance.

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Objections

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Objection 1 Assumption of the causal theorists: Actions and mere

happenings do not differ in themselves. They differ in virtue of what causally precedes them;

Assumption commits to thesis T: we know that we are performing an action from our knowledge of its causal source;

Thesis T is implausible since a person is in some particular relation to the movement of his body during the period of time in which he is presumed to be performing an action.

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Objection II

The objection of deviant causal chain.

To which a philosopher who locates agency in the cause of the happening is always susceptible to fall prey.

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Lesson

The most salient differentiating feature of action: the person who performs action A is in touch with the movements of his body that constitute her performing A.

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Positive view

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Against the assumption of the causal theories

There is no intrinsic characteristic of actions that allows differentiating them from mere happenings.

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Against the assumption of the causal theories There is no intrinsic characteristic of actions

that allows differentiating them from mere happenings (=reductionist assumption);

It is not because the same movement can be an action or a mere happening that the difference between the two has to be found in extrinsic features;

The difference is that the movements in question occur under the persons guidance.

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Intuitive argument in favour of guidance

When do we clearly take something to be an action? When it is clearly under the persons guidance! E.g. complex actions vs. simple actions.

Complex actions create a pattern that strikes us as meaningful. This is the mark of guidance.

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Positive view

Definition of what is an action according to Frankfurt: page 159.

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More on the positive view

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Purposive and intentional

A movement M is under xs guidance=M is purposive.

X is a person: M is intentional.

X is not a person: M is not intentional. It is simply purposive.

Action is intentional movement.

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Purposive and intentional

Intentional action might be a pleonastic expression but is not necessarily so.

There are intentional actions in the non-pleonastic sense of intentional but actions are not necessarily intentional in this sense.

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More on guidance

Two further clarifications:

explain the notion of guided behaviour;

tell under which conditions is the guidance to be attributed to a person.

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Guided behaviour

We do not guide our movements as we guide our car: guiding our movements does not require that we perform various actions.

Purposive movements are not purposive in virtue of being the causal result of something that we do (another action).

Why? because, this would imply an infinite regress.

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Guided behaviour: negative conclusion

Purposiveness: is not the effect of something we do. It is a characteristic of the operation at that time of the systems we are.

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Guided behaviour: positive conclusion

Behaviour is purposive when its course is subject to adjustments which compensate for the effects of forces which would otherwise interfere with the course of the behaviour, and when the occurrence of these adjustments is not explainable by what explains the state of affairs that elicit them.

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Under the persons guidance

When we act, the operation of the purposive mechanism is guided by us.

Implication for the sense of our own agency: it is nothing more than the way it feels to us when we are somehow in touch with the operation of mechanisms of this kind, by which our movements are guided and their course guaranteed.

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Vs. causal theories

Differences:

Causal mechanisms are not prior to the action.

They do not always take place actually.

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Vs. Davidson

There are actions that are intentional and not-free, e.g. the drug addict.

Are there actions that are caused by alien forces only?

Crucially: what turns a mere happening into an action is not its specific cause.

THEREFORE : Yes.

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Vs. Davidson

Important for Frankfurt because his theory of responsibility denies the truth of the principle of alternate possibilities.

And his objection says that one and the same action can be caused by alien forces only.

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Acting does not require high-level capacities

(Some) animal do perform actions.

They perform purposive movement that are attributable to them.

Human action is a special case of another concept whose range is wider.

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