Philosophy of Action: 5 Questions

Fellow Gardeners,

A volume is forthcoming (January 2009) in the Five Questions Series on the Philosophy of Action (including free will and moral responsibility) edited by Jesús Aguilar and me.  For those unfamiliar with the series, each volume in the series is "a collection of short interviews based on 5 questions presented to some of the most influential and prominent scholars in a particular field."  Some of the contributors to the forthcoming volume on action elected to write short essays where they addressed the issues raised by the questions.  Others responded directly to the questions.  Philosophy of Action: 5 Questions includes interviews with or short essays from the following luminaries in the field (including many Gardeners):  John Bishop, Michael E. Bratman, Randolph Clarke, John Martin Fischer, Stewart Goetz, Patricia Greenspan, Ishtiyaque Haji, Bennett Helm, Ted Honderich, Jennifer Hornsby, Joshua Knobe, Storrs McCall, Hugh J. McCann, Michael McKenna, Alfred R. Mele, Timothy O'Connor, Derk Pereboom, Thomas Pink, Joelle Proust, Abraham Roth, Galen Strawson, Raimo Tuomela, Manuel Vargas, and George Wilson.

For a taste of what is to come, with the blessing of the series executive editor, Vincent F. Hendricks (who deserves major kudos for his work on this series), I have made the interviews with Randy Clarke and Ish Haji available.

Jesús and I hope that this volume will serve to promote the field and perhaps ignite more interest in some areas that have received less attention in the recent literature.

Conference on Action at F&M

Below is a link and the schedule for a conference that should be of interest to gardeners that will be held at Franklin and Marshall College during spring 2008. 

http://www.fandm.edu/x11468.xml

Conference (March 28-29, 2008): Human Action and the Natural World

This conference will bring together philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive scientists to investigate the place human agency has in the natural world.

Friday, March 28

4:30-6:15: Jennifer Hornsby (Professor of Philosophy, University of London; co-director Rational Agency section, Center for the Study of Mind in Nature, Oslo), "The Nature of Actions"

7:00-9:00: Dinner

Saturday, March 29

9:45-11:30: Mark Bickhard (Henry R. Luce Professor in Cognitive Robotics and The Philosophy of Knowledge, Lehigh University), "From Agency to Social Agency"

12:00-1:30: Lunch

2:00-3:45: Carsten Hansen (Associate Professor of Philosophy, Oslo University), "Linguistic Agency and Understanding"

4:00-5:45: Alfred Mele (William H. and Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy, Florida State University), "Free Will and Neuroscience"

6:30-8:30: Dinner

Should we Care About The Individuation of Action?

I rarely post anything or even reply to the many interesting posts here at the GFP. So I reckoned it was time for me to post something. But this is not a gratuitous post. I'm wondering what folks think about current attitudes among philosophers of action regarding the value of work on action-individuation. These days folks seem inclined to either ignore the debate over action-individuation altogether (offering blank stares when you raise the topic in a discussion over some topic in action theory) or while they find the topic interesting, they claim that the issue, to quote Ginet, "though sufficiently interesting in its own right, is not one on which much else depends" (On Action, p. 70).

What I am most concerned about is whether anything else in the philosophy of action (including the free will debate) and related areas hangs on the conclusions we reach with respect to the debate over action individuation. I think it might make a difference both for what we count as an action-type as well as for what the proper objects of our reactive attitudes should be when we hold agents responsible for their actions and their outcomes (in fact, it might make a difference for whether or not we count an event as the proper part of actions or as the mere intentional outcome of an action). For example, some folks treat "thought" as an action-type. But as Al Mele and others have noted, it's not obvious that thinking is a type of action. However, if you accept a componential theory of action-individuation, couldn't thinking be an action-type all of the tokens of which are composed of more simple events (including actions and non-actional events)? So if you'd like, perhaps thinking is a "broad" type of action, all of the tokens of which are constituted by tokens of simple action-types. An interesting parallel is "driving". That is a fairly uncontroversial action-type. But when you drive to the store, you perform a fairly complex action that is constituted by a plethora of different events, including non-actional events. Driving like thought, again, assuming a componential theory of action individuation, is an action-type that is broad--i.e., such that all of its tokens are complex actions.

Why does any of the foregoing make a difference? Think about responsibility. You express disapproval of S's thinking about p or S's driving too fast. If we focus on driving, if you accept a fine-grained view, we have to ask when your driving occured among the myriad actions you performed (because there are numerous action-properties exemplified when you are "driving"); and if you accept a coarse-grained view then either your driving is one action that admits of a host of different descriptions or there are various actions you perform, but fewer than on the coarse-grained view because a number of them are really just the same action under different descriptions. Of course, if you accept a componential theory, then we can hold you responsible for performing the intentional action of driving fast, where your driving fast is composed of a bunch of more simple actions. I realize this is all quick. But I think that once we start thinking about it, the conclusions we reach about action-individuation might make more of a difference for some debates than some prominent action theorists have admitted. Does anyone have any thoughts about this? (Again, I'm acknowledging that this was all very quick and very sloppy.)

Discussion of Wegner's The Illusion of Conscious Will in the Latest BBS

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27 (2004), 649-92, contains a precis by Daniel Wegner of The Illusion of Conscious Will along with comments by neuroscientists, philosophers, and psychologists (and, of course, a reply by Wegner to his commentators).  Unfortunately, philosophers are underrepresented among the respondents to Wegner.  I believe this issue is currently only available online (at http://journals.cambridge.org/bin/bladerunner?REQUNIQ=1112884278&REQSESS=728392&117000REQEVENT=&REQINT1=287679&REQAUTH=0 ). My guess is that the print copy should be out soon. 

U of Florida Conference on Agency in Moral Philosophy

Jing Zhu brought this conference at the University of Florida to my attention. With all the activity related to the philosophy of action and moral psychology in Florida, I almost wish I weren't in Upstate New York.
Action and Agency 2005
"Action and Agency" (February 18th & 19th, 2005) is a conference on the notion of agency in moral philosophy. Invited speakers include Randolph Clarke (University of Georgia), Robert Kane (University of Texas, Austin), Jaegwon Kim (Brown University), Kirk Ludwig (University of Florida), Alfred Mele (Florida State University), Timothy O'Connor (University of Indiana, Bloomington), and Michael Zimmerman (University of North Carolina, Greensboro). The conference will focus on the notion of agency in the context of moral philosophy, but will almost certainly broach connected issues, e.g., in action theory and philosophy of mind, that arise in connection with the phenomenon of agency broadly conceived, and that may be relevant to understanding agency in moral philosophy. For more information, contact Dr. Oshana