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The Representation of Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2017

Anton Ford
Anton Ford*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
*
antonford@uchicago.edu
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Abstract

From its inception, the philosophy of action has sought to account for action in terms of an associated kind of explanation. The alternative to this approach was noticed, but not adopted, by G.E.M. Anscombe. Anscombe observed that a series of answers to the reason-requesting question ‘Why?’ may be read in reverse order as a series of answers to the question ‘How?’ Unlike answers to the question ‘Why?’, answers to the question ‘How?’ are not explanatory of what they are about: they reveal, not reasons for doing something, but ways of doing something, and they have the form of what Aristotle called a practical syllogism. The alternative to theorizing action in terms of explanation, is, thus, to theorize it in terms calculation. In exploring this alternative, I argue for three main theses: first, that (pace Anscombe) it is not a matter of indifference whether we theorize action in terms of the question ‘Why?’ or in terms of the question ‘How?’; second, that the question ‘Why?’ is a question for an observer of action, whereas the question ‘How?’ is a question for the agent; and finally, that the standpoint of the agent, revealed by the question ‘How?’, is prior to that of an observer, revealed by the question ‘Why?’.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 80: Philosophy of Action , July 2017 , pp. 217 - 233
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2017 

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References

1 Anscombe, G.E.M., Intention, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 9 Google Scholar.

2 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, The Blue and Brown Books (London: Basil Blackwell, 1958), 1 Google Scholar. In the introduction to his Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980)Google ScholarPubMed, Donald Davidson identifies this text as the source of the view he opposes in ‘Actions, Reasons and Causes’, xii.

3 Ryle, Gilbert, The Concept of Mind (New York: Routledge, 2009), 74 Google Scholar.

4 See Carl Hempel, ‘Rational Action’, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association (1961), 5–23; and Davidson, Donald, ‘Actions, Reasons, and Causes’, The Journal of Philosophy 60 (1963), 685–700 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in Essays on Actions and Events, 3–19. For a precursor, see Ducasse, C.J., ‘Explanation, Mechanism and Teleology’, The Journal of Philosophy 22 (1925), 150–155 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events, xi.

6 Smith, Michael, ‘The Sturcture of Orthonomy’, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 55 (2004), 165–193 Google Scholar.

7 Strawson, P.F., Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (New York: Routledge, 1959), 9 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Strawson, Individuals, 9.

9 Ryle, The Concept of Mind, 14.

10 Ibid., 16–17.

11 Ryle maintained that these two perspectives were intimately related – ‘the rules which the agent observes and the criteria which he applies are one with those which govern the spectator's applause and jeers’ (op. cit., 53–54) – nevertheless, he chose to put the accent on the perspective of the spectator.

12 Anscombe, Intention, 80.

13 Ibid. 46–47, substituting my preferred variables for Anscombe's.

14 ‘The schema of the practical inference is that of a teleological explanation “turned upside down”. The starting point of a teleological explanation (of action) is that someone sets himself to do something or, more commonly, that someone does something. We ask “Why?” The answer often is simply: “In order to bring about p”.’ von Wright, Georg Henrik, Explanation and Understanding (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971), 96 Google Scholar.

15 For discussion of the parallels between Anscombe's account of action and Frege's account of number in The Foundations of Arithmetic, see Ford, Anton, ‘The Arithmetic of Intention ’, American Philosophical Quarterly 52 (2015), 129–143 Google Scholar.

16 For a fuller articulation and defense of this account of calculation, see Ford, Anton, ‘On What is in Front of Your Nose’, Philosophical Topics 44 (2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Thompson, Michael, ‘Anscombe's Intention and Practical Knowledge’, in Essays on Anscombe's Intention, ed. Ford, A., Hornsby, J., and Stoutland, F. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 2011), 206 Google Scholar.

18 Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books, 1; quoted above.

19 Dray, William, Laws and Explanation in History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1957), 122 Google Scholar; author's italics. Quoted in Carl Hempel, ‘Rational Action’, 11.

20 Davidson, ‘Problems in the Explanation of Action’, reprinted in Problems of Rationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2004), 107 Google ScholarPubMed.

21 Even when the agent explains her own action, she portrays herself as thinking a certain way. She may portray herself falsely – that is, she may give a false account of her own action, one that does not reflect the calculation that led her to act as she did.