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1. Introduction
In a very broad sense, agency is virtually everywhere. Whenever entities
enter into causal relationships, they can be said to act on each other and
interact with each other, bringing about changes in each other. In this
There are two ways of spelling out the first claim (which correspond to
two different views on the individuation of actions; see section 3.4).
According to the first, one and the same event can be more than one
action under different descriptions, and an event is an action just in case
it is an intentional action under some description. An action, that is, may
be intentional under some description and unintentional under others
(Anscombe 1957; Davidson 1963). Suppose that you alert the burglar by
turning on the light, and suppose that this is one event that is intentional
under the description turning on the light, but not under alerting the
burglar. On this view, alerting the burglar is nevertheless something that
you do, given that the event is an intentional action under some
description. According to a second way of spelling out the first claim,
something is an action either if it is identical with or generated by an
intentional action (Goldman 1970; see also Ginet 1990).[4] On this view,
alerting the burglar is an action of yours either if it is an intentional
action or if it is generated by an intentional action (your turning on the
light, in this case). If it is merely generated by an intentional action, it is
an unintentional action of yours. On both views, intentional action is
more fundamental than action itself: action derives from and is
dependent on intentional action.[5]
According to the second claim of the standard conception, there is a
close connection between acting intentionally and acting for a reason.
According to Anscombe and Davidsons early view, this close
connection is identity. Following Aristotle, they both held the view that
to act intentionally is to act for a reason, and that to act for a reason is to
act in a way that can be rationalized by the premises of a sound practical
syllogism, which consists, typically, of a major premise that corresponds
to the agents goal and a minor premise that corresponds to the agents
take on how to attain the goal. Furthermore, Davidson held the view that
having an intention consists in having a desire and a belief that
correspond to the major and the minor premise of the relevant syllogism
(Davidson 1963, 1970; see also Goldman 1970; Audi 1986).[6]
One can still find a fairly widespread commitment to this desire-belief
version of the standard conception (in the philosophy of mind, the
because reasons are facts or states of affairs, not mental states or events
(Dancy 2000; Alvarez 2010). But the standard theory is not committed
to the claim that reasons are identical with mental entities. It is, in
particular, compatible with the view that reasons are the things that are
represented by the contents of the relevant mental states and events (see
Scanlon 1998: 5664; Mele 2003: 8284; Setiya 2007: 2831).
2.2 Agency as initiation by the agent
It has often been claimed, and it is widely agreed, that agency involves
the initiation of action by the agent.[7] But it has been controversial what
this consists in. The standard conception is compatible with the claim
that intentional actions are initiated by the agent, and proponents of the
standard theory have argued that initiation can be explained in terms of
causation by the agents mental states and events. According to desirebelief versions of the view, initiation by the agent consists in causation
by the relevant desire-belief pairs (Goldman 1970; Davidson 1971;
Dretske 1988). According to more recent versions, initiation consists in
causation by the relevant intentions (Brand 1984; Bratman 1987; Bishop
1989; Mele 1992, 2003; En 2003). Opponents of the standard
conception argue, however, that an agents power to initiate action
cannot be reduced to the capacity to act intentionally and for reasons.
They argue that the exercise of agency may be entirely spontaneous, in
the sense that an agent may initiate an action for no reason and without
prior intent. On this view, reasons and intentions may have a strong and
even a decisive influence on how an agent acts. But agency has its
source in the power to initiate, and the exercise of this power cannot be
reduced to the agents being moved by reasons or intentions. This is an
alternative conception of agency (Ginet 1990; OConnor 2000; Lowe
2008; see also McCann 1998; for critical discussion see Mele 2003: 38
51, 7176; Clarke 2003: 1724). Proponents of this alternative
conception reject the standard theory and they reject, more generally,
any account of agency in terms of causal relations between agentinvolving states and events. According to some, the initiation of action
consists in irreducible agent-causation, others appeal to uncaused mental
acts of the will. The main positions on this issue correspond to the main
positions in the metaphysics of agency, to which we turn insection 3.1.
2.3 Agency and distinctively human action
In an influential article, Frankfurt (1971) argued that the difference
between persons and other agents consists in the structure of their will.
Only persons reflect on and care about their motivations. According to
Frankfurt, this reflective evaluation of our motives usually results in the
formation of second-order desires: desires that are directed at first-order
desires (which are directed at goals and actions). When a person wants
to have a certain desire and wants to be moved by it, then he or she is
said to identify with the desire and its motivational efficacy. On this
hierarchical account of agency, the role of higher-order attitudes is
essential to the kind of agency that distinguishes persons from other
agents. Taylor (1977) took this as a starting point for an account of
distinctively human agency, under the assumption that the distinction
between persons and non-persons is, essentially, the distinction between
human and non-human agents. It is not entirely clear whether Frankfurt
and Taylor meant to provide an alternative to the standard theory of
agency or anextension of it.[8] On one reading, they accepted the account
of intentional agency provided by the standard theory, and they proposed
a hierarchical extension of the standard theory that captures the kind of
agency that is distinctive of persons or human agents. (For an influential
critique of such hierarchical accounts see Watson 1975.)
According to Velleman (1992), Frankfurts observation that an agent
may fail to identify with a particular motive points to a fundamental flaw
in the standard theory. As it seems always possible that an agent
disowns the mental attitudes that cause an action, those attitudes do
not add up to the agents being involved (1992: 463). This shows,
according to Velleman, that the standard theory captures, at best, actions
that are defective. It fails, in particular, to capture human actionpar
excellence, because it fails to account for the agents participation.
Velleman rejects the appeal to irreducible agent-causation (see section
3.1), and he argues that this leaves only one strategy for solving the
problem: we must find a mental attitude that the agent cannot disown
and that is, therefore, fit to play the role of the agent. We must, that is,
find a mental attitude that is the agent, functionally speaking. According
to Velleman, the desire to act in accordance with reasons is fit to play
this role.
Bratman (2000, 2001) agrees with Velleman that the standard theory
does not explain genuine self-governance. On his view, though, an
account of full-blown agency, as he calls it, does not require reference
to a mental attitude that the agent cannot disown. Building on his work
on temporally extended planning agency (Bratman 1987), he argues that
an agents self-governing policies have the authority to speak for the
agent, because they help to establish and support the agents identity
across time, and because they specify which desires are to be treated as
providing justifying reasons in practical deliberation. According to
Bratman, these self-governing policies explain what it is for an agent to
take a stand in favor of or against certain motivations, a stand that can
itself be subject to reexamination and revision (2000: 5051). (For a
critical discussion of Bratmans account see Hornsby 2004.)
In defense of the standard theory, Mele (2003: Ch. 10) has argued that
the search for a mental attitude that plays the role of the agent is
misguided and that Vellemans critique of the view is off target. As Mele
points out, it seems clear that a desire cannot possibly be the agent,
because agents deliberate, decide, and act. Desires do none of these
things. He suggests that any talk of a mental attitude as playing the role
of the agent can at best be metaphorical. Further, there is no obvious
reason why an agents failure to identify with a motive should be
diagnosed in terms of the agents failure to participate. It seems more
plausible to suggest that the agent does participate in such cases, but in a
defective manner. Once defective participation is distinguished from a
failure to participate, it is easy to avoid Vellemans conclusion that the
standard theory leaves out the agent. Moreover, one can then separate
the question of whether the standard theory accounts for the agents
participation from the question of whether it captures human action par
excellence. According to Mele, the human agent is simply a human
being who acts. On this view, the agent does play some role in all
instances of agency, no matter how deficient. The standard theory
provides, first and foremost, an account of what it is for an agent to
perform intentional actions. It does not claim that the capacity to
perform intentional actions is the capacity that separates human from
non-human agency, and it does not claim to give an account of more
refined or excellent kinds of human agency, such as self-controlled,
autonomous, wholehearted, or free agency. It is an interesting and
important task to investigate whether or not the standard theory can be
extended so as to account for the more refined or excellent kinds of
human agency (Mele 1995; Bratman 2007, for instance). But to reject
the view because it fails to do so is to misconstrue its aim and scope (see
also section 3.3).
2.4 Agency without mental representations
Arguments for the claim that the standard theory does not account for
important aspects of agency are usually driven by a focus on
distinctively human agency. Once we shift our focus to non-human
agents, and simpler organisms, a very different challenge emerges. When
we turn to such agents, it seems that the standard theory is clearly too
demanding. The view explains agency in terms of the agents desires,
beliefs, and intentions. Usually, it is assumed that this is an explanation
in terms of mental representations: in terms of intentional mental states
and events that have representational contents (typically, propositional
contents). It seems, however, that there are beings that are capable of
genuine agency and that do not possess representational mental states.
We can distinguish here between three claims (and three challenges).
According to the first, there are non-human beings that are capable of
agency and that do not possess representational mental states. Second,
there are many instances of human agency that can and should be
explained without the ascription of representational mental states. Third,
all instances of agency can and should be explained without the
ascription of representational mental states. We turn to each claim in
turn.
betweenbasic and non-basic actions. Very roughly, basic actions are the
things that one can do without doing something else (such as raising
ones hand), whereas the performance of non-basic actions requires that
one does something else (such as giving someone a signal by raising
ones hand).[16] In the consequential case, the nephew has an intention to
perform a non-basic action (to kill his uncle). He successfully performs
several basic actions, but it is a sheer coincidence that he brings about
the intended end. The climber, in contrast, does not perform any action
at all. The mental antecedent causes a movement that would have been a
basic action, had the causal chain not been deviant.
Any event-causal theory of agency must require that the relevant mental
attitudes cause the action in the right way. The right way of causation is
non-deviant causation. The challenge is to spell out what non-deviant
causation consists in within the event-causal framework; without, in
particular, any appeal to some unanalyzed notion of agent-causation or
control. Davidson (1974) was pessimistic about the prospects for finding
an event-causal account of non-deviant causation, and he suggested that
the standard theory is best understood as providing only necessary
conditions for agency. Goldman (1970) suggested that giving an account
of non-deviant causation is an empirical rather than a philosophical task.
Since then, however, most proponents of the event-causal approach have
acknowledged that the problem of deviant causal chains is a serious
philosophical problem, and various solutions have been proposed (see
Peacocke 1979; Brand 1984; Bishop 1989; Mele 2003; Schlosser 2007,
2011).[17]
3.3 Disappearing agents, naturalism, and dual standpoint
theory
Sometimes it is suggested that the problem of deviant causal chains is
merely a symptom of the deeper problem that event-causal theories
altogether fail to capture agency, because they reduce actions to things
that merely happen to us (Lowe 2008: 9, for instance). Put differently,
this challenge says that the event-causal framework is deficient because
it leaves out agents: all there is, on this view, is a nexus of causal pushes
and pulls in which no one does anything (Melden 1961; Nagel 1986; see
also Velleman 1992). This has been called the problem of the
disappearing agent (Mele 2003: Ch. 10; Lowe 2008: 159161;
Steward 2013).
According to Mele (2003: Ch. 10), some formulations of this
disappearing agent objection are easily dismissed. Some proponents of
this challenge use the terms event-causal order and natural order
interchangeably. This would seem to suggest that, on their view, agency
is a supernatural phenomenona view that most contemporary
philosophers find hard to take seriously. However, sometimes the
challenge is raised in order to motivate alternative agent-causal or
volitionist theories of agency, and the main proponents of agent-causal
and volitionist theories maintain that their views are compatible with
naturalism. They would argue that it is a mistake to presume that the
event-causal order exhausts the natural order of things.
Further, the disappearing agent objection is not always put forward as a
general objection to the event-causal framework. As we have seen
(section 2.3), Velleman (1992) argued that the standard theory leaves out
the agent, or the agents participation, and he proposed a solution to this
problemwithin the event-causal framework. In his reply, Mele (2003:
Ch. 10) suggested that it would be more appropriate to call this the
problem of the shrinking agent. According to Velleman, the standard
theory captures only deficient instances of agency, in which the agents
participation is unwitting or halfhearted. Instances of deficient
agency can be explained in terms of various capacities or properties that
the agent does not possess, exercise, or instantiate; capacities and
properties such as conscious awareness, reflective awareness, reasonresponsiveness, self-control, self-governance, and so on. Given this,
there is no need to conceptualize instances of deficient agency in terms
of the agents absence. Further, doing so creates a rather implausible
dichotomy between a kind of agency in which the agent does participate
and a kind of agency in which the agent does not participate (Schlosser
2010).
reply, Clarke (2010a) has argued that in cases of intentional omission the
agent usually does have an intention not to act that plays an important
causal role, and he has identified various parallels between intentional
actions and intentional omissions. On his view, there are no major
obstacles to an account of intentional omissions that is compatible and
continuous with the standard theory of intentional action. Further, he
argues that a failure to account for intentional omissions would not
obviously be a shortcoming of a theory of intentional action. There are,
after all, significant differences between actions and omissions, and so
we should not expect that a theory of action provides all the resources
that are required for an account of omissions. (For more on this see
Clarke 2014.)
4. The sense of agency
There has been some debate concerning the kind of knowledge we have
of our own actions. Most prominently, Anscombe (1957) argued that the
knowledge of our actions is direct, in the sense that it is not based on
observation or inference (see the entry on action). This section provides
an overview of the closely related debate on the so called sense of
agency. It seems that when we act, we have a sense of doing
something: a sense of control and of being the agent or owner of the
action. The debate about this has been driven largely by empirical
findings from psychology and cognitive science, and it has become
common to distinguish between the following three main positions.
The first is largely due to Wegners work on the model of apparent
mental causation (Wegner and Wheatley 1999; Wegner 2002).
According to this view, the sense of agency (or the experience of
conscious will, as Wegner called it) arises when we interpret a
conscious intention to perform a certain action as its cause. It says, in
particular, that an agent interprets an intention as the cause of an action
when the following conditions obtain: the intention proximately
precedes the action, the action is consistent with the intention, and the
agent is not aware of any factors that could provide an alternative
explanation. Wegners argument for the model of apparent mental
instance). It has been argued, however, that this evidence raises the
further question of whether we are genuinely reason-responsive. The
evidence suggests that our actions are, under certain conditions, driven
by situational and morally irrelevant factors even when there are salient
moral reasons to act otherwise. This suggests that we (or most of us) are
not as reason-responsive as we would like to think. But it is
controversial whether or not the evidence supports any stronger claims
than that (for more on this see Nelkin 2005; Schlosser 2013; Vargas
2013).