scholarly journals Anti-intellectualism, instructive representations, and the intentional action argument

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Ann Springle ◽  
Justin Humphreys
Keyword(s):  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Propositional Knowledge ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Alternative Theory ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Causal Theory Of Action ◽  
Theoretical Support ◽  
The Right

AbstractIntellectualists hold that knowledge-how is a species of knowledge-that, and consequently that the knowledge involved in skill is propositional. In support of this view, the intentional action argument holds that since skills manifest in intentional action and since intentional action necessarily depends on propositional knowledge, skills necessarily depend on propositional knowledge. We challenge this argument, and suggest that instructive representations, as opposed to propositional attitudes, can better account for an agent’s reasons for action. While a propositional-causal theory of action, according to which intentional action must be causally produced “in the right way” by an agent’s proposition-involving reasons, has long held sway, we draw on Elizabeth Anscombe’s insights offer a path toward an alternative theory of action. In so doing, we reject the implicitly Cartesian conception of knowledge at the core of the intentional action argument, while hanging on to the idea that mental states are representations of a certain kind. Our argument provides theoretical support for anti-intellectualism by equipping philosophers with an account of non-propositional, practical content.

scholarly journals Pluralistic Attitude-Explanation and the Mechanisms of Intentional Action

2021 ◽  
pp. 130-153
Author(s):  
Daniel C. Burnston
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Causal Theory ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Causal Theory Of Action ◽  
Causal History ◽  
Causal Processes ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
The Mind

According to the Causal Theory of Action (CTA), genuine actions are individuated by their causal history. Actions are bodily movements that are causally explained by citing the agent’s reasons. Reasons are then explained as some combination of propositional attitudes—beliefs, desires, and/or intentions. The CTA is thus committed to realism about the attitudes. This chapter explores current models of decision-making from the mind sciences, and argues that it is far from obvious how to locate the propositional attitudes in the causal processes they describe. The outcome of the analysis is a proposal for pluralism: there are several ways one could attempt to map states like ‘intention’ onto decision-making processes, but none will fulfill all of the roles attributed to the attitudes by the CTA.

scholarly journals Deviant Formal Causation

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah K. Paul
Keyword(s):  
Side Effects ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Causal Theory ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Causal Theory Of Action ◽  
Causal Chains ◽  
The Right ◽  
Formal Causation

What is the role of practical thought in determining the intentional action that is performed? Donald Davidson’s influential answer to this question is that thought plays an efficient-causal role: intentional actions are those events that have the correct causal pedigree in the agent's beliefs and desires. But the Causal Theory of Action has always been plagued with the problem of “deviant causal chains,” in which the right action is caused by the right mental state but in the wrong way. This paper addresses an alternative approach to understanding intentional action inspired by G.E.M. Anscombe, interpreting that view as casting practical thought in the role of formal rather than efficient cause of action and thereby avoiding the problem of deviant (efficient) causal chains. Specifically, on the neo-Anscombean view, it is the agent’s “practical knowledge” – non-observational, non-inferential knowledge of what one is doing – that confers the form of intentional action on an event and is the contribution of thought to determining what is intentionally done. This paper argues that the Anscombean view is subject to its own problematic type of deviance: deviant formal causation. What we know non-observationally about what we are doing often includes more than what we intend to be doing; we also know that we are bringing about the foreseen side effects of acting in the intended way. It is argued that the neo-Anscombean view faces difficulty in excluding the expected side effects from the specification of what is intentionally done, whereas the Causal Theory has no such difficulty. Thus, the discussion amounts to an argument in favor of the Causal Theory of Action.

scholarly journals No facts without perspectives

Synthese ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramiro Glauer ◽  
Frauke Hildebrandt
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Causal Theory ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Basic Fact ◽  
Causal Theory Of Action ◽  
De Re ◽  
De Dicto ◽  
Conceptual Confusion

AbstractPerner and Roessler (in: Aguilar J, Buckareff A (eds) Causing human action: new perspectives on the causal theory of action, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 199–228, 2010) hold that children who do not yet have an understanding of subjective perspectives, i.e., mental states, explain actions by appealing to objective facts. In this paper, we criticize this view. We argue that in order to understand objective facts, subjects need to understand perspectives. By analysing basic fact-expressing assertions, we show that subjects cannot refer to facts if they do not understand two types of perspectivity, namely, spatial and doxastic perspectivity. To avoid conceptual confusion regarding different ways of referring to facts, we distinguish between reference to facts de re and de dicto.

On Intellectualism in the Theory of Action

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 284-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT AUDI
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Propositional Knowledge ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Theoretical Knowledge ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Distinctive Character ◽  
Knowing How

ABSTRACT:This paper examines intellectualism in the theory of action. Philosophers use ‘intellectualism’ variously, but few question its application to views on which knowledge of facts—expressible in that-clauses—is basic for understanding other kinds of knowledge, reasons for action, and practical reasoning. More broadly, for intellectualists, theoretical knowledge is more basic than practical knowledge; action, at least if rational, is knowledge-guided, and just as beliefs based on reasoning constitute knowledge only if its essential premises constitute knowledge, actions based on practical reasoning are rational only if any essential premise in it is known. Two major intellectualist claims are that practical knowledge, as knowing how, is reducible to propositional knowledge, a kind of knowing that, and that reasons for action must be (propositionally) known by the agent. This paper critically explores both claims by offering a broad though partial conception of practical knowledge and a pluralistic view of reasons for action. The aim is to sketch conceptions of knowing how and knowing that, and of the relation between knowledge and action, that avoid intellectualism but also do justice to both the importance of the intellect for human action and the distinctive character of practical reason.

scholarly journals Deviant causal chains and intentional action

KÜLÖNBSÉG ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Krisztián Nyárfádi
Keyword(s):  
Intentional Action ◽  
Causal Theory ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Causal Theory Of Action ◽  
Causal Chains

There is a classical argument against the the so called "causal theory of action": the argument from deviant causal chains. This essay tries to show that this argument is not so strong as it first might seem to be, essentialy because the are promising answers to the argument. I reconstruct a strategy (exemplified by Searle and Mele) that can alleviate that concern stems from the deviant examples.

scholarly journals THE AGENT'S ROLE IN THE CAUSATION OF ACTION: IS MICHAEL SMITH'S CAUSAL THEORY OF ACTION IN TROUBLE?

2019 ◽  
Vol 60 (142) ◽  
pp. 143-164
Author(s):  
Lucas Mateus Dalsotto
Keyword(s):  
Causal Explanation ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Causal Theory ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Causal Theory Of Action ◽  
Action Explanation ◽  
Proper Role

ABSTRACT The goal of this paper is to find out if Michael Smith's version of the causal theory of action is able to solve David Velleman's agency par excellence challenge. Smith (2012) has claimed that his theory can deal with the challenge insofar as the exercise of the capacity to be instrumentally rational plays the intermediating role which Velleman (1992a) thinks of the agent as playing in the causation of action. However, I argue Smith misunderstands the challenge at hand, thereby failing to find the agent's proper role in action explanation. Moreover, I claim Velleman's objection puts Smith's account of the causal theory in trouble by showing it cannot reconcile the causal explanation of intentional action with our ordinary conception of agency. If Smith intends to explain what a 'full-blooded' intentional action is, I then believe he needs to incorporate into his theory a more robust account of rational guidance.

Actions and accidents

2015 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 300-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Horst
Keyword(s):  
Special Kind ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Causal Theory ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Causal Theory Of Action ◽  
Prevailing View

In acting intentionally, it is no accident that one is doing what one intends to do. In this paper, I ask how to account for this non-accidentality requirement on intentional action. I argue that, for systematic reasons, the currently prevailing view of intentional action – the Causal Theory of Action – is ill-equipped to account for it. I end by proposing an alternative account, according to which an intention is a special kind of cause, one to which it is essential that it represents its effect.

scholarly journals The Problem of Deviant Casual Chains

2017 ◽  
pp. 271
Author(s):  
Miguel Amen
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Causal Theory ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Causal Theory Of Action

In the following article I identify the source of Davidson's failure to provide an analysis of intentional action. It is shown that this failure should be seen as an instance of consistency within his overall theory of mind and action.In Actions, Reason and Causes (1963) Davidson defended the causal theory of action, according to which the intentions for which a person acts are the reasons for which he acts and those reasons cause the action.According to Davidson, a reason for an action A consists in the agent having a pro-attitude toward actions of a certain kind along with a belief that Aing is an action of that kind. Pro-attitudes can be seen as desires and wantings, giving goals and motives for action.

Methodological solipsism considered as a research strategy in cognitive psychology

1980 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Fodor
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
Computational Theory Of Mind ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Computational Theory ◽  
Methodological Solipsism ◽  
Semantic Properties

AbstractThe paper explores the distinction between two doctrines, both of which inform theory construction in much of modern cognitive psychology: the representational theory of mind and the computational theory of mind. According to the former, propositional attitudes are to be construed as relations that organisms bear to mental representations. According to the latter, mental processes have access only to formal (nonsemantic) properties of the mental representations over which they are defined.The following claims are defended: (1) That the traditional dispute between “rational” and “naturalistic” psychology is plausibly viewed as an argument about the status of the computational theory of mind. Rational psychologists accept a formality condition on the specification of mental processes; naturalists do not. (2) That to accept the formality condition is to endorse a version of methodological solipsism. (3) That the acceptance of some such condition is warranted, at least for that part of psychology which concerns itself with theories of the mental causation of behavior. This is because: (4) such theories require nontransparent taxonomies of mental states; and (5) nontransparent taxonomies individuate mental states without reference to their semantic properties. Equivalently, (6) nontransparent taxonomies respect the way that the organism represents the object of its propositional attitudes to itself, and it is this representation which functions in the causation of behavior.The final section of the paper considers the prospect for a naturalistic psychology: one which defines its generalizations over relations between mental representations and their environmental causes, thus seeking to account for the semantic properties of propositional attitudes. Two related arguments are proposed, both leading to the conclusion that no such research strategy is likely to prove fruitful.

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