Introduction

In the introduction the book’s central themes are introduced. Agents are often considered special, in that agents actively do things. Non-agents, by contrast, are zones of mere passivity. The aim of this book is to offer a perspective on agency that allows agency to stand out as special when compared to non-agentive systems. This perspective will be developed by way of interlinked explanations of the basic building blocks of agency, as well as its exemplary instances. Novel accounts of several key phenomena are developed: control over behavior, non-deviant causation, intentional action, skill, and knowledgeable action. Along the way the role of planning, practical reasoning, belief, and knowledge receive thorough discussion.

Knowledgeable Action

This chapter develops an account of a different mode of agentive excellence. This one essentially involves knowledge of action and knowledge of how to act. Here we call it knowledgeable action. The aim of this chapter is two-fold. First, to explain the special epistemic features often thought to hold of knowledge of action. Second, to explain how this knowledge plays an important role in action execution. Along the way this chapter discusses various accounts of knowledge of action, which variously emphasize roles for intention, perception, and conscious awareness. Towards the end, the chapter compares and contrast the author’s account to nearby accounts that focus, not on knowledgeable action, but on knowledge how.

Intentional Action

The project of analyzing intentional action has been out of favor for some time. In part this is due to exhaustion over details—accounts are usually subject to very technical problems or elaborate counterexamples. This chapter builds build on the earlier accounts of control and non-deviance to offer a new account of intentional action. This account builds on Mele and Moser’s influential work, and goes beyond it in some ways. After offering the account, this chapter considers a range of ancillary issues and problem cases. It discusses, for example, side-effect cases, senseless movements, the role of belief and knowledge in intentional action, and action theoretic versions of systematic Gettier cases. Finally, it turns to issues of reductionism that motivate some rejections of causal theories of action. The upshot is that anti-causalists have a new account to contend with, and one that has answers to the problems often thought to be damning for causalism.

Varietals of Control’s Exercise

This chapter first offers a clear explication of control’s exercise. It then briefly discusses control over omissions, before turning to a discussion of different varietals of control. So, in particular, voluntary control is central to several debates in philosophy. No acceptable account exists. This chapter extends the account of control to offer an explication of voluntary control. It then discusses this account in light of Alfred Mele’s recent work on direct control. Finally, this chapter offers an explication of a notion that is important to many who think and write about free will. This is the notion of what is “up to” an agent. The explication turns on the notion of voluntary control.

Non-deviant Causation

The problem of deviant causation has long vexed causalist accounts of action. This chapter argues that an account of non-deviant causation can be developed by leveraging insights from the author’s account of control. In order to understand what happens when non-deviant causation happens, it develops the notion of a comprehensive set of circumstances. This is a set of circumstances that is derived by building a causal model that includes an agent, a plan, and the agent’s location in a particular situation. What is special about the model is that it gets the causal parameters of the particular situation right. Non-deviant causation then turns out to be the normal production of behavior that is, for the agent, normal given the plan and across the comprehensive set of circumstances. After developing this account, this chapter discusses a range of problem cases for it, examines an alternative account due to Wayne Wu, and discusses how the account fares against some complaints drawn from relevant literature.

The Shape of Agency

After offering accounts of basic building blocks of agency in chapters 2 through 5, this chapter serves as a hinge. Here, drawing on Tyler Burge’s work on primitive agency, this chapter discusses the most primitive features of agency, and considers what must be added to work towards more sophisticated kinds of agent. The main aim is to articulate a kind of (metaphorical) ladder that allows us to see, not only the shape of agency in relief, but also the place of key capacities like a capacity for representation of targets for behavior, and a capacity of practical reasoning. This leads, at the chapter’s very end, to a brief discussion of the role of mental action in an understanding of agency.

Control’s Possession

This chapter develops an account of control’s possession as it applies to agents. The basic idea is straightforward, but details require attention. Control’s possession has to do with the reliable patterns of behavior agents display. But in order to understand what reliability comes to, we have to understand the psychological states that guide agents. This chapter accordingly introduces the notion of plan-states. We also have to understand the ways that reliability varies depending upon the circumstances in which agents behave. After developing the form of an account of control’s possession, this chapter discusses possibilities for its metaphysical underpinnings. It rejects the idea that control is constituted by abilities, and suggests that dispositions may be able to do explanatory work for control.

Conclusion

This chapter concludes. Its aim is primarily summary and paraphrase, and placing the ideas developed in this book side by side. Cormac McCarthy is gratuitously quoted. And then the chapter brings reflection back to the metaphorical distinction between activity and passivity with which the book began. On the picture the book develops, agents become active by degree, in various ways. With the exercise of control, the passive becomes active, and plans give rise to intentional action. With the development of skill, capacities for planning and for exercising control and for executing intentional action begin to cover broad differences of circumstance. With the acquisition of knowledge, agents are able to impose their will on parts of the world that their practice may not have adequately prepared them for. In knowledgeable action, agents exert change in the world in part by figuring out the world they change.

Skill

In this chapter and chapter 8 we are concerned with modes of agentive excellence. These are ways that agents, qua agent, display excellence. This chapter develops a philosophical account of skill. This account offers clarity on the primary targets of skill. It argues that these are not necessarily particular actions, but often clusters of actions and behaviors—action domains. A part of this account is an explanation of the different ways skill varies—that is, of the different ways skill is gradable. After developing the account, this chapter brings it into contact with competitors that place greater emphasis on the role of knowledge in skill. This chapter argues that though knowledge is often important for skill, the account gets the basic contours of skill right in a way that knowledge-involving accounts do not.