because she wanted to
TRANSCRIPT
Because She Wanted To
Randolph Clarke
Received: 17 February 2009 / Accepted: 29 September 2009 / Published online: 24 November 2009
� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009
Abstract Carl Ginet has advanced an account of action explanation on which
actions can be entirely uncaused and action explanations need not cite causal fac-
tors. Several objections have been raised against this view, and Ginet has recently
defended the account. Here it is argued that Ginet’s defense fails to come to grips
with the chief problems faced by his view.
Keywords Action � Decision � Desire � Explanation � Intention � Reason
Suppose that Laura wanted to acquire a certain painting at an auction and believed
that by raising her arm at the appropriate time she might enter a successful bid.
Suppose that she raised her arm at the proper moment. It is widely recognized that
despite having raised her arm when she had this reason to do so, Laura might not
have raised her arm for this reason; she might have done it for some other reason.1
What more is needed, then, for it to be the case that Laura raised her arm because
she wanted to acquire the painting?
Carl Ginet (1989, 1990, ch. 6, and 2002) has offered an answer to this question
that does not require that the action in question be caused by anything, and not, in
R. Clarke (&)
Department of Philosophy, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
1 Davidson (1980) made this point in advancing a causal account of reason explanation. Some readers
might chafe at the suggestion that a mental state, such as a desire to acquire a painting, can be a reason for
action, preferring instead to count as reasons the considerations that might be the objects of such mental
states. The author of the account of action explanation addressed here, Ginet, does not himself take this
latter position. In any case, we sometimes correctly explain an action by saying that the agent wanted to
do a certain thing. Whether or not the want counts as a reason, we can seek an account of such
explanations.
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J Ethics (2010) 14:27–35
DOI 10.1007/s10892-009-9060-4
particular, by the agent’s wanting to do a certain thing. Ginet’s account of action
explanation is advanced in support of his view that actions need not have any
causes; indeed, he (2007) favors the view that free actions must be uncaused.
Ginet’s noncausal account of action explanation has been criticized (Clarke 2003,
pp. 21–23; McCann 1998, pp. 162–63; Mele 1992, pp. 250–55 and 2003, pp. 39–
42), and Ginet (2008) has defended his account from objections raised against it.
Here it will be argued that his defense fails to come to grips with the chief problems
for his view. He has not provided the account of action explanation that a noncausal
theory of either action or free action would need.
Ginet’s Account
Sometimes an action can be correctly explained by citing an antecedent desire, a
desire the agent came to have prior to performing the action in question. If Laura
raised her arm because she wanted to acquire the painting, her case is one of this
sort.
Ginet’s account of action explanation implies that the following conditions
suffice for the truth of such an explanation of Laura’s action:
(a) prior to raising her arm, Laura acquired a desire to obtain the painting; and
(b) concurrently with raising her arm, Laura remembered that desire and intended
of her arm-raising that it contribute to satisfying that desire. (1990, p. 143)
The intention that is appealed to here is said to be a state of the agent that
accompanies (is concurrent with) the action and refers to it directly or demonstra-
tively. The antecedent desire in question is said to explain the action in virtue of
being referred to by this accompanying intention. No causal connection is said to be
needed between the state of desire and the action, any part of the action, or the
accompanying intention,2 nor is this intention required to cause anything.
Implementing an Intention
One objection against this view is that an agent might intend to do something, she
might do what she intends, and yet she might not carry out that intention. Her
intention will then not contribute to an explanation of what the agent does (Clarke
2003, p. 22; McCann 1998, p. 163; Mele 1992, pp. 250–55).3 If Laura had both the
indicated desire and the indicated intention, but she failed to implement that
intention, then she might not have raised her arm because she wanted to acquire the
2 One might think that remembering the desire requires that the desire cause that recollection. Even if
that is so, it does not entail that the antecedent desire must cause either the concurrent intention or the
action. Moreover, Ginet (1990, p. 144) denies that a memory must be caused by what is remembered.3 McCann (1998, p. 163) raises a similar objection with regard to an account of decision explanation.
I discuss this issue in Section Explaining a Decision. Note that while McCann finds fault with Ginet’s
account, he advances an alternative noncausal theory of action explanation.
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painting. Ginet’s account, then, fails to provide sufficient conditions for the truth of
the sort of explanatory claim in question.
Ginet finds this objection puzzling. He asks, ‘‘How could the situation where the
agent intends of her current action that it do so-and-so not be one where the agent is
carrying out that intention or at least trying to carry it out?’’ (2008, p. 231).
Suppose that Laura arrives at the auction with an intention (formed earlier) to
raise her arm and thereby enter a bid when the painting is offered. As that moment
approaches, there is a disturbance in the room: Gael enters loudly through a service
door, stumbling over electrical wiring that runs along the floor. Turning to see what
is happening, Laura recognizes Gael and raises her arm to get his attention. The
painting that she wants has just been announced, and by the rules of the auction,
Laura is counted as having entered the opening bid on it.
Suppose that, throughout this episode, Laura retains the intention she formed
earlier to raise her arm when bidding on the painting begins. She does raise her arm
then, but in so doing she does not carry out that intention. Instead, she implements a
different intention, one that she came to have when she recognized Gael (This latter
intention differs in content from the one that she arrived at the auction with.). Thus,
one can intend something, one can do what one intends, and yet one might fail to
carry out that intention.
Of course, the intention that is unimplemented in this case is not the sort to which
Ginet’s account appeals. The intention that Laura formed prior to arriving at the auction
does not refer demonstratively to her action of raising her arm. Its content is, rather, that
she perform an action of a certain kind: raising her arm and thereby entering a bid.
A different case, however, illustrates that an agent might intend (demonstra-
tively) of some particular movement of her body that it satisfy a certain desire of
hers, the movement might do so, and yet the agent might not be carrying out that
intention. Imagine that prior to the auction, Damien implanted a chip in Laura’s
brain that allows him to take control of the motions of her limbs, without her
performing any action and independently of what she wants or intends to do.
Unaware that Laura herself wants the painting and intends to bid on it, Damien
wants her to be recognized as entering the highest bid (he seeks thus to prevent Luis
from acquiring the painting). When Damien notices that the bidding has begun, he
activates the chip, thereby causing Laura’s arm to rise. As her arm rises, Laura
believes (falsely) that she is raising it (after all, she has been intending to raise it),
and concurrently with its rising she intends of that movement that it contribute to
satisfying her desire to acquire the painting. This concurrent intention, however, is
explanatorily idle. It is unimplemented, and neither it nor the antecedent desire to
which it refers contributes anything to an explanation of the movement of Laura’s
arm. Her arm does not rise because she wants to acquire the painting; Damien’s
intervention is what explains that movement.
Ginet can accept that Laura does not perform any action in this case, provided
there occurs no instance of what he calls willing or volition on her part. Any action
of raising one’s arm, he [1990, ch. 1] maintains, begins with a mental act of this sort,
which possesses a certain intrinsic phenomenal quality, its seeming to the agent as if
she is directly producing that mental event. Take it as stipulated that, in the case
here, Laura is not the subject of any mental event with such a quality.
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I say, nevertheless, that Laura believes that she is raising her arm. I submit that
her so believing does not require the occurrence of any mental event matching
Ginet’s characterization of a volition. It is, in the first place, questionable whether
overt bodily actions always begin with mental events of this sort. And even if they
do, I see no reason to think that an individual could not believe she was acting in a
case in which, in fact, no such mental event occurred.
Although in this most recent case Laura does not perform an action of raising her
arm, we can easily imagine a similar case in which she does. Suppose that Damien,
wanting to implicate Laura further, causes not the mere rising of her arm but her
actively raising it: he causes her to intend (or, as Ginet would have it, to will) to
raise her arm and makes sure that her so intending (or so willing) causes—in the
way characteristic of action-production—her arm to rise. Then Laura does perform
an action of a kind she earlier intended to perform, but the intention that she had
formed earlier is not implemented when she performs that action. It is a distinct
intention, one generated by Damien, that is carried out (The latter intention is
simply an intention to raise her arm, and thus differs in content from the intention
formed earlier.).
We can now put together all that is needed for a case of action accompanied by a
concurrent, directly referential intention that is nevertheless unimplemented. Add to
our current case the supposition that Laura, unaware of what Damien is doing,
intends of her act of arm-raising (and while that action occurs) that it contribute to
satisfying her antecedent desire to acquire the painting. This concurrent intention is
explanatorily idle—as idle as is the one in the earlier case in which the rising of
Laura’s arm does not constitute an action of hers. In the present case, the desire to
which this accompanying intention refers has nothing to do with why Laura raises
her arm. She does not raise it because she wants to acquire the painting; she raises it
because Damien causes her to raise it. Ginet’s conditions are insufficient because,
consistently with their satisfaction, the accompanying intention to which he appeals
might remain unimplemented.
About a similar case, Ginet (1990, p. 144) claims that the agent performs the
action both because of the manipulation and because she wanted to. About this last
case involving Laura, such a claim just seems mistaken. In the case (call it the
‘‘rising case’’) in which the rising of Laura’s arm does not constitute an action, it
seems clear that despite her accompanying intention, her antecedent desire does not
explain that motion. In the last case, unlike the rising one, the event to which
Laura’s concurrent intention directly refers is an action. But that intention is no
more connected to the explanandum event in this last case than it is in the rising one.
The change in the character of the explanandum event cannot itself make the
difference in whether the intention that refers demonstratively to that event figures
in an explanation of it.
Consider the objection that there is some further difference between the two
cases that accounts for a difference in explanatory relevance of the accompanying
intention. In the rising case, it might be said, the concurrent intention fails to refer to
the motion of Laura’s arm precisely because that event is not an action. In contrast,
in the last case, the accompanying intention does refer, and it refers to Laura’s
action of raising her arm. This difference in whether, with the accompanying
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intention, Laura succeeds in referring to something accounts for the difference,
between the two cases, in whether her intention is explanatorily relevant.4
The objection is in tension with Ginet’s characterization of the accompanying
intentions to which he appeals as referring directly or demonstratively. Reference
that is entirely demonstrative relies on no descriptive content; it cannot fail, then,
due to one’s misconception of the object of reference. One might, for example,
mistake a sculpture of a car for a car, and believe of it that it is Al’s car. Despite the
misconception, one’s belief refers to the sculpture. An intention that some ongoing
event satisfy a certain desire might likewise refer to that event despite the agent’s
misconceiving of that event as an action. This attempt to draw a distinction between
the rising and the final case thus fails.
(It should not be thought that simply because the accompanying attitude in
question is an intention it cannot directly refer to anything but an action. One might
intend of some particular painting that by giving it to one’s mother one will
contribute to satisfying one of her desires. The intention would refer to the painting.).
To strengthen the argument against the sufficiency of Ginet’s conditions,
consider the following variation of the final case: suppose that instead of having a
directly referring intention that accompanies her action, Laura has a concurrent
desire that refers demonstratively to her action, a desire that this arm-raising
contribute to satisfying her antecedent desire to get the painting. When Damien
causes Laura to raise her arm and the auctioneer recognizes her bid, this concurrent
desire might well be satisfied. But if it is, it is only accidentally so. The concurrent
desire has nothing to do with why Laura raises her arm; it is explanatorily idle.
Similarly, in the original version of the final case, what Laura intends of
her action might come to pass—that action might contribute to the satisfaction of
her antecedent desire to get the painting. But if so, it is only accidentally that what
comes to pass is what she intends. Neither her concurrent intention nor the
antecedent desire to which it refers has anything to do with why Laura raises her
arm.
Such a concurrent intention differs from the imagined concurrent desire only with
respect to its constituting attitude toward a common content. This difference in
attitude cannot suffice to give the intention a role in explaining Laura’s action when
a concurrent desire with the same content would have no such role.5 To believe
otherwise would be, it seems, to attribute a kind of magical power to the attitude of
intending.
One might expect something further by way of argument against the sufficiency
of Ginet’s conditions: a case in which an agent performs an uncaused action, she has
the required accompanying intention, but that intention is unimplemented, and
hence citing the antecedent desire to which it refers fails to explain the action.
However, it cannot fairly be expected that certain critics of Ginet’s account—and I
count myself among them—produce this kind of case. One thing that we reject is the
notion that an uncaused change involving a person can be an action. Ginet’s view of
action explanation is designed to support such a theory of action; but with at least
4 Ginet raised this objection in correspondence.5 For a similar point, see Mele 1992, pp. 251–252.
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some critics, that theory of action is what, fundamentally, is in dispute. Such a critic
will regard the demanded case as impossible for a reason more basic than any
having to do with explanation.
Explaining an Intention
An action such as raising one’s arm is an event. In contrast, an intention is a state.
But the onset of an intention, one’s coming to have it, one’s acquiring it, is an event.
The acquisition of an intention to act need not itself be an action. When one acts
spontaneously, or out of habit, the intention that one carries out can be one that one
came to have without actively forming it; it can be nonactively acquired. This can
happen, for example, when, walking in the woods, one sees a sprig of red berries
and impulsively reaches out to pick them (Audi 1993, p. 64), or when, arriving at
the door of one’s office in the morning, one reaches into one’s pocket for one’s keys
(Mele 1992, p. 231).
The event of acquiring an intention can nevertheless be explicable. And like an
action, it can be explained by giving the person’s reasons for coming to have the
intention in question. When, on arriving at my office door in the morning, I reach
into my pocket for my keys, I have acquired the intention to get my keys out
because I want to unlock the door.
Ginet’s account of action explanation appeals to the possession of a certain
intention that accompanies the action. That intention will be one that is acquired at a
certain moment. Even if it is not actively formed, it will be explicable, and
explicable by giving the person’s reasons for coming to have that intention.
Plainly, to model an account of the onset of the concurrent intention after Ginet’s
theory of action explanation would generate a regress. But what alternative account
is available, if the account must be noncausal?6 Ginet does not directly address this
question, though what he says about the explanation of decisions might be taken to
apply here.
Explaining a Decision
Suppose that it was on Sunday, the day before the auction, that Laura decided to bid
on the painting. She deliberated about whether to do so, considering the pros and
cons of purchasing the painting, and made up her mind to try to acquire it. She
thereby settled the question of what to do. Her decision was itself an action, and one
6 It was suggested by a referee that Ginet might accept that nonactive acquisitions of concurrent
intentions can be causally explained by citing antecedent desires that cause these events. As I observe in
Section A Causal Condition, Ginet allows that an action might be explicable by citing a desire that caused
it; he would presumably allow the same regarding the explanation of a nonactive intention-acquisition.
However, there are two problems for the suggestion here. First, since the accompanying intentions are
intentions that certain desires be satisfied, one might wonder about a case in which the intention refers to
one desire but is caused by a different one. Second (as noted above), Ginet inclines to the view that free
actions must be uncaused. It seems unlikely that he would accept that, in a case of free action, the
acquisition of the accompanying intention that figures in explaining the action might itself be caused.
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distinct from Laura’s entering the bid. It was the active formation, on Sunday, of an
intention to do a certain thing on Monday. Such a decision would typically itself be
made for reasons. What noncausal account of action explanation might be provided
when the action to be explained is a decision to act?
One option would follow the model we have just examined. Along these lines, it
might be said that the following conditions suffice for the truth of a claim that Laura
made the decision because (for example) she wanted to give the painting to her
mother:
(a) prior to making that decision, Laura acquired a desire to give the painting to
her mother; and
(b) concurrently with making the decision, Laura remembered that desire and
intended of her decision that it contribute to satisfying that desire.
But it is apparent that the proposal would face two difficulties. For one, it would be
as vulnerable to the objection concerning implementation as is the account on which
it is modeled. For another, it would threaten the regress that we have just noted in
considering the explanation of intention-acquisitions.7
In fact Ginet eschews this sort of theory of decision explanation. He expresses
doubt that decisions are themselves typically made for reasons, countering that
‘‘What we typically mean by ‘the reason for which S decided to A’ is the reason for
which, according to the intention formed in the decision, S will do A when and if she
carries out the decision’’ (2008, p. 233).
While reasons for which one decides to A are commonly reasons one has for
A-ing, such reasons do not exhaust those for which one might make a decision.
Sometimes one has a reason to decide a certain matter ahead of time, so that one can
make necessary preparations. Making the decision can serve that purpose, while
carrying out the action decided upon plainly cannot.8
Even when a reason for deciding is also a reason for doing what one decides to
do, making the decision for that reason is distinct from performing the decided-upon
action for that reason. Ginet suggests that one makes a decision for a certain reason
if that reason enters into the content of that decision. When Laura decides on
Sunday to bid on the painting the next day, she makes that decision because she
wants to give the painting to her mother if what she decides is to enter the bid so that
she can give the painting to her mother.
Suppose that while deliberating about whether to bid on the painting, Laura
considers a host of pros and cons: the painting is lovely, but it is overpriced; it
would please her mother, but her mother expects too much of her; acquiring the
7 This second difficulty is raised by Clarke (2003, pp. 22–23).8 Ginet (2008, p. 235) does subsequently acknowledge this point. He suggests that in such a case there
will be an intention accompanying the deliberation-to-decision process, an intention that it contribute to
satisfying one’s desire for preparation. The objection raised earlier concerning implementation applies to
the suggestion here.
Further, Ginet acknowledges only that one can have a reason for making a decision at some particular
time, not that one can have a reason for deciding on some specific action. But in fact one can have a
reason for deciding on a specific action that is not a reason to perform that action, and one can make a
decision for such a reason. For defense of these claims, see Clarke 2008.
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painting would prevent a hated rival from getting it, but spite is reprehensible; and
so on. Suppose that Laura makes her decision for many of these reasons. Is it
plausible that all of the reasons for which she makes it enter into its content?9
Ginet acknowledges that not every reason for which a decision is made need be
consciously entertained by the agent at the moment of deciding. Nevertheless, he
suggests, the agent ‘‘might be disposed to supply all of those reasons should the
question arise as to why she has decided as she has’’ (2008, p. 234). On a liberal
understanding of the content of a decision, that content might be taken to include all
the reasons that, at the moment of deciding, the agent is disposed to supply if asked.
Laura might be more strongly disposed, when she makes her decision, to deny
that she is deciding out of spite than she is to acknowledge this fact; and yet she
might make the decision out of spite. And she might be disposed to say that she is
deciding for certain reasons when she in fact is not. She might think that she is
moved in part by concern for her mother, when in fact her decision is entirely self-
interested. Such mistakes about why we do what we do are common.
One might propose some other way in which reasons not consciously entertained
when deciding nevertheless figure in the decision’s content. Absent a defensible
proposal of this sort, the account of decision explanation advanced by Ginet fails to
offer either necessary or sufficient conditions for such explanations.
A Causal Condition
Suppose that Laura raises her arm and thus bids on the painting, without any
intervention by Damien. Imagine that she intends of her action that it contribute to
satisfying her desire to give the painting to her mother, and she does not intend of
that action that it contribute to satisfying her desire to thwart her rival. But suppose
that in fact the latter desire is a cause of her raising her arm. Might it be the case that
Laura raises her arm because, among other things, she wants to thwart her rival’s
aim of acquiring the painting?
Ginet (2008, p. 236) appears willing to concede that this might be so. In order for
it to be true that an agent performs a certain action because she has a certain desire,
it is not necessary that she intend of her action that it contribute to satisfying that
desire. It can suffice that the desire play a certain role in bringing about—in
causing—her action.
The concession is a damaging one. If in some cases a desire’s causal role can
suffice to make a certain action explanation true, we might reasonably doubt that, in
other cases, the very same type of explanatory claim can be made true by very
different, noncausal conditions. We need not think that all explanation is causal in
order to favor a relatively uniform account of reason explanations of action. It is
enough to find it implausible that radically disparate conditions—some causal, some
noncausal—can, on different occasions, ground the truth of explanations of this
kind.
9 About a similar case, Mele (2003, p. 43) objects that it is not plausible to think that all of the reasons for
which a decision is made need be reflected in its content.
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The failure of attempts such as Ginet’s to provide satisfactory noncausal accounts
of action explanation is one key factor that recommends a causal approach to
theorizing about agency. Of course, one reason why this alternative is sometimes
resisted is concern for free will. But the shortcomings of noncausal theories indicate
that we will do well to consider what type of freedom we might account for within a
causal model. It might not be what we would like, but it is, I think, the best
possible.10
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10 For helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper, I wish to thank Carl Ginet, Meghan Griffith, Al
Mele, and an audience at the Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress, August 2009.
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