Action
Adrian Haddock

LAST REVIEWED: 17 MAY 2019

LAST MODIFIED: 25 MAY 2011
DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780195396577-0003

Introduction

The philosophy of action shares with its topic a certain uncertainty of location. Is action located inside the mind or outside the mind—or does it in some way
belong to both domains (thereby undermining a conception of these domains as sharply distinct)? Likewise, is the philosophy of action part of the philosophy
of mind or of moral philosophy—or does it in some way belong to both of these domains (thereby undermining a conception of these domains as sharply
distinct)? This entry attempts to treat the philosophy of action as a branch of philosophy in its own right.

Overviews and Anthologies

Moya 1991 and Stout 2005 are the only available introductions to the philosophy of action. Each offers a representative overview of the literature available
at the time of its publication. Mele 1997 is a collection of previously published essays, each representative of that branch of the philosophy of action that falls
squarely within the philosophy of mind. Hyman and Steward 2004 and Sandis 2009 each collects a diverse range of recent essays on the philosophy of
action, and each treats the subject as one of interest to moral philosophers as well as to philosophers of mind. Those seeking to explore current thinking on
the topic are advised to start here. Those seeking an overview of current thinking on the topic are advised to start with O’Connor and Sandis 2010, a
collection of short pieces on central issues. Wilson 2007 is a helpful, if partisan, summary. And Aguilar and Buckareff 2009, a series of short interviews with
a wide range of contemporary philosophers of action, provides a provocative and accessible overview of much of the current state of play.

Aguilar, Jesús H., and Andrei A. Buckareff, eds. Philosophy of Action: Five Questions. New York: Automatic, 2009.
This is a collection of short interviews in which prominent scholars in the field answer five questions about the philosophy of action; their answers shed light
not only on their own work, but also on the field as a whole.

Hyman, John, and Helen Steward, eds. Agency and Action. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements. Cambridge, UK, and New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2004.
This collection of essays emerged from a 2002 Royal Institute of Philosophy conference on the philosophy of action and discusses a wide range of issues.

Mele, Alfred R., ed. The Philosophy of Action. Oxford Readings in Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
This is a collection of essays on topics in the philosophy of action that will be of particular interest to philosophers of mind, such as the reasons explanation
of action, the standard causal story, intention, and mental causation.

Moya, Carlos J. The Philosophy of Action: An Introduction. London: Polity, 1991.

Even though this lively introductory text is now somewhat dated, it offers a fairly comprehensive overview of the literature available at the time of its
publication.

O’Connor, Timothy, and Constantine Sandis, eds. The Blackwell Companion to the Philosophy of Action. Blackwell Companions to Philosophy.
Oxford: Blackwell, 2010.
This is a comprehensive and up-to-date anthology of short essays on a large range of topics in the philosophy of action.

Sandis, Constantine, ed. New Essays on the Explanation of Action. Basingstoke, UK, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
This is an up-to-date collection of new essays that—despite the title—covers a wide range of issues in the epistemology and metaphysics of action.

Stout, Rowland. Action. Central Problems of Philosophy. Chesham, UK: Acumen, 2005.
This is the most up-to-date introduction available. It covers the central topics in a distinctive way: its intention is to show how reflection on action can
illuminate what it is to be a conscious subject.

Wilson, George. “Action.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edited by Edward N. Zalta, 2007.
This fine summary of thinking on the topic is marked by its author’s own concern with the question of how we should understand the explanation of action
and by his own distinctive, noncausal, answer to this question.
Historical Sources

One might say that the philosophy of action began with Anscombe 2000 and Davidson 2001, for it seems that only infrequently does contemporary
philosophical discussion of agency attend to works anterior to these seminal essays. But there are exceptions, most notably Charles 1984, Coope 2007, and
Yaffe 2004. The first offers a comprehensive discussion of Aristotle’s philosophy of action and the connections between it and central issues in the
contemporary literature. The second suggests that Aristotle endorses a certain distinctive and neglected view of the relation between actions of moving
one’s body and events of one’s body moving that stands opposed to most extant accounts of this relation. (Naturally De Anima [see Ross 1961] is an
important text here, but Coope bases her reading centrally on Aristotle’s Physics III [see Hussey 1983].) The third, on the other hand, offers a thoroughgoing
discussion of Reid’s philosophy of action that pays special attention to the famous conception of agents as causes of their actions of Reid 2010. (See also
Action and Irreducibility.)

Anscombe, G. E. M. Intention. 2d ed. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Originally published in 1957. In the blurb on the back of this Harvard reissue, David Velleman describes Anscombe’s classic essay as “the defining moment
in twentieth-century philosophy of action.”

Charles, David. Aristotle’s Philosophy of Action. London: Duckworth, 1984.

This fine book discusses, among other things, Aristotle’s views on the individuation of actions, the relation between actions and practical syllogisms, and the
weakness of the will.

Coope, Ursula. “Aristotle on Action.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 81 (2007): 109–138.
This essay combines detailed Aristotle exegesis with the presentation, and attribution to Aristotle, of a distinctive conception of bodily action.

Davidson, Donald. “Actions, Reasons, and Causes.” In Essays on Actions and Events. 2d ed. By Donald Davidson, 3–20. Oxford: Clarendon,
2001.
Davidson’s classic essay set, and continues to set, the agenda for much of the contemporary philosophy of action. Originally published in The Journal of
Philosophy 60: (1963): 685–700.

Hussey, Edward, ed. and trans. Aristotle: Physics: Books III and IV . Clarendon Aristotle series. Oxford: Clarendon, 1983.
This is an important and influential edition.

Reid, Thomas. Essays on the Active Powers of Man. Edited by Knud Haakonssen and James A. Harris. The Edinburgh Edition of Thomas Reid.
University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010.
The most recent edition of Reid’s work, published in association with Pennsylvania State University Press as part of a new series of editions of Reid’s
corpus. Originally published in 1785.

Ross, W. D., ed. De Anima: Aristotle. Oxford: Clarendon, 1961.

This is the classic edition of Aristotle’s text.

Yaffe, Gideon. Manifest Activity: Thomas Reid’s Theory of Action. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
This is the only available book-length study of Reid’s philosophy of action.

Reasons for Action

Davidson 2001 is famous for claiming that an agent may have reasons for acting that are not among the reasons for which the agent acts. There are various
ways of understanding the idea of an agent’s reason for acting. According to one dominant understanding, some of an agent’s reasons for acting are
reasons that motivate the agent to act (but that might not be reasons for which the agent acts—the agent need not do everything he or she is motivated to
do). The so-called Humean theory of motivation—defended by Smith 1987 and criticized by Schueler 2009—maintains that being motivated to act in a
certain way requires not merely a belief of some sort, but also a desire that is capable of explaining why one is so motivated (as opposed to being a mere
consequence of the fact that one is so motivated). A radical rejection of the Humean theory can be found in Dancy 2000, which seeks (among other things)
to combine Hyman’s claim that reasons for acting are facts that typically concern the agent’s extramental situation (Hyman 1999), with the claim—
associated primarily with McDowell 1998—that having a belief whose content corresponds to such a fact is sufficient to motivate one to action. An important
essay, Hornsby 2008 aspires to modify Dancy’s position in two directions: by allowing that some reasons are not facts and by insisting that for an action to
be explained by those reasons that are facts, its agent requires not just a belief with a suitable content but also knowledge of the facts at issue.

Dancy, Jonathan. Practical Reality. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Dancy’s book defends a provocative non-Humean, or cognitivist, account of reasons for acting; its conclusion bears on how we should understand not
merely reasons for action, but also the reasons explanation of action.

Davidson, Donald. “Actions, Reasons, and Causes.” In Essays on Actions and Events. 2d ed. By Donald Davidson, 3–20. Oxford: Clarendon,
2001.
This classic account of reasons for acting understands the agent’s “primary reason” as consisting in a suitable pro-attitude and a suitable belief. Originally
published in The Journal of Philosophy 60 (1963): 685–700.

Hornsby, Jennifer. “A Disjunctive Conception of Acting for Reasons.” In Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Edited by Adrian
Haddock and Fiona Macpherson, 244–261. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
This essay utilizes an insight of the disjunctive conception of perceptual experience to combine certain insights of Dancy 2000 and Hyman 1999.

Hyman, John. “How Knowledge Works.” Philosophical Quarterly 49 (1999): 433–451.

This essay is centrally concerned with knowledge; but it contains important suggestions about reasons for acting, which inspired Dancy 2000.

McDowell, John. “Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical Imperatives?” In Mind, Value, and Reality. By John McDowell, 77–94. Cambridge, MA,
and London: Harvard University Press, 1998.
This is a very influential statement of the non-Humean, or cognitivist, account of motivating reasons. Originally published in Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society Supplementary Volume 52 (1978): 13–29.

Schueler, G. F. “The Humean Theory of Motivation Rejected.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 78.1 (2009): 103–122.
This is a notable criticism of the theory advanced in Smith 1987.

Smith, Michael. “The Humean Theory of Motivation.” Mind 96.381 (1987): 36–61.
This is perhaps the most influential recent statement of a Humean, or noncognitivist, account of reasons for acting.

Reasons Explanation of Action

This debate concerns the nature of a particular kind of explanation of action, one that explains why people do things by citing their reasons for doing them.
The debate divides those who maintain, and those who deny, that this kind of explanation—reasons explanation—is a species of causal explanation. Most
contemporary philosophers simply take it for granted that reasons explanation is a species of causal explanation, in light of Davidson 2001, which is widely
taken not only to fix it that reasons explanation must be a species of causal explanation, but also to refute the so-called logical connection argument of
Melden 1961, which is thought to maintain that reasons explanation cannot be causal. However, despite widespread scepticism about the logical connection
argument, there are a number of recent attempts to show that Davidson has not fixed this—notably, Dancy 2000, Ginet 1990, Tanney 1995, and Wilson
1989, each of which raises numerous important questions. It is also worth noting that Davidson’s claim is that rationalizing explanation is a species of causal
explanation, where a rationalizing explanation is an explanation of why someone does something that cites his or her “primary reason,” which consists of a
suitable belief and a suitable pro-attitude. It is at least arguable that reasons explanations are not equivalent to rationalizing explanations; this is argued by,
for example, Dancy 2000. The question of how exactly we ought to understand reasons explanations is taken up by Roth 1999 and Schueler 2003.

Dancy, Jonathan. Practical Reality. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Dancy argues that reasons for acting are facts which—in the normal case—do not concern the agent’s mental situation; along the way it argues that action
explanations in terms of reasons for acting, so understood, cannot be causal.

Davidson, Donald. “Actions, Reasons, and Causes.” In Essays on Actions and Events. 2d ed. By Donald Davidson, 3–20. Oxford: Clarendon,
2001.
This contains the classic argument for the claim that rationalizing explanation is a species of causal explanation. Originally published in The Journal of
Philosophy 60 (1963): 685–700.

Ginet, Carl. On Action. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Ginet’s book is an extended defense of a libertarian position in the free will debate that along the way argues against Davidson 2001 by making use of the
interesting idea of a de re intention.

Melden, A. I. Free Action. London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961.
This book argues not just that reasons explanation is not a species of causal explanation, but also that actions are not susceptible to causal explanation at
all.
Roth, Abraham S. “Reasons Explanation of Actions: Causal, Singular, and Situational.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 59 (1999):
839–874.
Roth criticizes both standard noncausal and standard causal accounts of reasons explanation on the grounds that each neglects the integral role the
environment plays in the reasons explanation of particular acts.

Schueler, G. F. Reasons and Purposes: Human Rationality and the Teleological Explanation of Action. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Schueler’s book criticizes the claim that reasons explanations are causal explanations of a certain sort; namely, the sort that involves citing what Davidson
calls “primary reasons.”

Tanney, Julia. “Why Reasons May Not Be Causes.” Mind and Language 10.1–2 (1995): 103–126.
This essay argues, against Davidson, that some noncausal, justificatory considerations can be, as such, explanatory of actions.

Wilson, George. The Intentionality of Human Action Rev. ed. Stanford Series in Philosophy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989.
Originally published in 1980. Wilson’s argument lacks Ginet’s libertarian motivation but similarly attempts to undermine Davidson’s claim about rationalizing
explanation by means of the idea of a de re intention.

The Standard Causal Story

Davidson’s claim that rationalizing explanations are causal explanations inspired the standard causal story, a view about the nature of action according to
which actions are events that are caused by suitable beliefs and proattitudes; specifically, by those beliefs and proattitudes that make up what Davidson
2001a calls “primary reasons.” It seems to be possible to endorse Davidson’s claim about rationalizing explanation without endorsing the standard story.
This is the position of Hornsby 2004, which offers a radical criticism of the standard story. Bishop 1989, Goldman 1976, and Smith 1998 endorse the story
outright. Others, inspired by the arguments in Davidson 2001b, assert that the story must be supplemented by the claim that actions are caused by
intentions as well as by primary reasons. Velleman 1992 is one such; but the author maintains, in addition, that if the story is to capture what he terms “full-
blooded” agency, it needs to be supplemented by a further desire of a certain sort. Hursthouse 1991 raises an interesting problem for the standard story,
according to which even if the story is true of certain actions, it cannot be true of every action.

Bishop, John. Natural Agency: An Essay on the Causal Theory of Action. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
A detailed consideration of whether the standard causal story solves what the author calls “the problem of natural agency”–—the putative problem of
whether actions can fit into the natural world naturalistically conceived.

Davidson, Donald. “Actions, Reasons, and Causes.” In Essays on Actions and Events. 2d ed. By Donald Davidson, 3–20. Oxford: Clarendon,
2001a.
Davidson’s classic essay laid the basis for, and—in its final sentences—offered one of the first available statements of the standard causal story. Originally
published in The Journal of Philosophy 60 (1963): 685–700.

Davidson, Donald. “Intending.” In Essays on Actions and Events. 2d ed. By Donald Davidson, 83–102. Oxford: Clarendon, 2001b.
This classic essay argues that actions require the backing of intentions in addition to beliefs and desires and offers an account of what intentions are.
Originally published in Yirmiahu Yovel, ed., Philosophy of History and Action (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Reidel, 1978).

Goldman, Alvin I. A Theory of Human Action. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976.
This seminal presentation of the standard story builds on the account in Davidson 2001a but goes beyond, and dissents from, it in numerous respects.

Hornsby, Jennifer. “Agency and Actions.” In Agency and Action. Edited by John Hyman and Helen Steward, 1–23. Cambridge, UK, and New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2004.
This essay argues against the standard causal story on the grounds that it leaves out the agent and thereby fails to be an account of action at all.

Hursthouse, Rosalind. “Arational Actions.” Journal of Philosophy 88 (1991): 57–68.

Hursthouse argues, against the standard story, that there are intentional actions that are explained not by beliefs and desires, but by occurrent emotions.
These are the “arational actions” of her title.

Smith, Michael. “The Possibility of Philosophy of Action.” In Human Action, Deliberation and Causation. Edited by Jan Bransen and Stefaan E.
Cuypers, 17–42. Philosophical Studies series 77. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer, 1998.
This is a highly robust attempt to defend a relatively unadorned version of the standard causal story from criticisms.

Velleman, David J. “What Happens When Someone Acts?” Mind 101 (1992): 461–481.
This much-discussed essay argues that in order to capture what Velleman terms “full-blooded” agency, the standard causal story needs to be supplemented
with a further suitable desire. Reprinted in Velleman’s The Possibility of Practical Reason (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000).

Actions and Volitions

The idea of volitions is typically understood as the idea of episodes of trying to do things. Accounts that employ this idea provide an interesting alternative to
the standard causal story. Perhaps the central mark of the standard causal story is that it is reductive, in that it aspires to show how an item that is not
intrinsically an exercise of agency is constituted as an exercise of agency by being suitably caused by similarly not-intrinsically-agentive items. The account
of bodily action of Hornsby 1980, by contrast, attempts to explain how an item that is not intrinsically an exercise of bodily action—an episode of trying to do
something—is constituted as such an exercise in virtue of features of its causal progeny. In this way, it remains reductive; but it seems to violate some of the
reductive ambitions of the standard causal story, because the idea of an episode of trying seems to be the idea of an exercise of agency of some sort.
Whereas Hornsby identifies bodily actions with episodes of trying, other works—such as Ginet 1990 and O’Shaughnessy 1997—see bodily actions as
having episodes of trying among their significant parts. Ryle 1949 is widely believed to provide the classic argument against volition-based accounts of
agency; but, as Hornsby 2010 argues, it is not clear that its criticisms apply to some of the foregoing volition-based accounts. Steward 2000 offers an
excellent criticism of Hornsby 1980 that nevertheless continues to seek to preserve an essential place for the idea of trying in an account of bodily action.

Ginet, Carl. On Action. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
This statement of a volition-based view is perhaps best known for introducing the idea of an “actish” phenomenal quality into the literature.

Hornsby, Jennifer. Actions. International Library of Philosophy. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980.
This is a classic defense of a conception of bodily actions as episodes of trying with a suitable causal progeny.

Hornsby, Jennifer. “Trying to Act.” In The Blackwell Companion to the Philosophy of Action. Edited by Timothy O’Connor and Constantine
Sandis, 18–25. Blackwell Companions to Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell, 2010.
This short article distinguishes various different ways in which an account of action might appeal to the notion of trying and sketches an alternative to the
account developed in Hornsby 1980.

O’Shaughnessy, Brian. “Trying (as the Mental ‘Pineal Gland’).” In The Philosophy of Action. Edited by Alfred R. Mele, 53–74. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1997.
O’Shaughnessy’s essay provides the classic argument for the claim that whenever one does something intentionally one tries to do that thing; it inspired a
similar, and similarly influential, argument in Hornsby 1980. Originally published in The Journal of Philosophy 70 (1974): 365–386.

Ryle, Gilbert. The Concept of Mind. London and New York: Hutchinson’s University Library, 1949.
This book contains a seminal argument against volition-based accounts.

Steward, Helen. “Do Actions Occur inside the Body?” Mind and Society 1 (2000): 107–125.
This critical discussion of Hornsby’s view focuses on Hornsby’s claim that actions are episodes of trying that cause bodily movements (Hornsby 1980) and
ends up defending a position similar to that of Alvarez and Hyman 1998 (cited under Action and Irreducibility).

Action and Irreducibility

Since the late 1990s, an array of distinct positions in the philosophy of action have emerged that are united into a family by their rejection of the reductive
ambitions of both the standard causal story and volition-based accounts. O’Brien 2007 offers a clear and distinctive presentation of the nonreductive position
that bears comparison with Alvarez and Hyman 1998 and Hornsby 1997, not only in its denial that actions are events, but also in its refusal to assert that
bodily actions are cases of causing bodily movements. Alvarez and Hyman 1998 also denies the former but insists upon the latter; Hornsby 1997 seems to
insist upon both. Coope 2007 and Haddock 2005 accept that actions are events, but insist that some bodily movements are not caused by but rather are
intrinsically bodily actions. Ruben 2004 takes a similar view and (like Haddock 2005 but unlike Coope 2007) draws a parallel with the disjunctive conception
of perceptual experience to make this position clearer. Each of these accounts insists on a central role for the agent in accounts of action. However, they are
not to be assimilated to the agent-causal account associated with Taylor 1980, centrally because none claims that agents are themselves causes of actions.
Ford 2011 offers a distinctive and original criticism, of some fundamental—and, often, unnoticed—assumptions that underwrite reductive accounts of action.

Alvarez, Maria, and John Hyman. “Agents and Their Actions.” Philosophy 73.2 (1998): 219–245.
This important essay combines a sharply critical discussion of rival positions with a presentation of the authors’ own distinctive view.
Coope, Ursula. “Aristotle on Action.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 81 (2007): 109–138.
This fine essay combines Aristotle exegesis with a response to a famous argument in Alvarez and Hyman 1998 directed against those positions that seek to
identify bodily actions with bodily movements.

Ford, Anton. “Action and Generality.” In Essays on Anscombe’s Intention. Edited by Anton Ford, Jennifer Hornsby, and Frederick Stoutland.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Forthcoming.
This essay argues that reductive accounts of action rest upon an undefended and questionable assumption; namely, that the distinction between actions
and mere events (e.g., bodily movements) exemplifies a particular form of generality, one among others—what Ford calls accidental generality.

Haddock, Adrian. “At One with Our Actions, but at Two with Our Bodies: Hornsby’s Account of Action.” Philosophical Explorations 8.2 (2005):
157–172.
This essay fuses a sympathetic assessment of Hornsby’s account (Hornsby 1980, cited under Actions and Volitions) with a presentation of a rival view,
which nonreductively identifies bodily actions with bodily movements by means of a disjunctive conception of the latter.

Hornsby, Jennifer. “Agency and Causal Explanation.” In Simple Mindedness: In Defense of Naive Naturalism in the Philosophy of Mind. By
Jennifer Hornsby, 129–154. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
This discussion of the relationship between Davidson’s thesis about rationalizing explanation and the standard causal story argues for a nonreductive view
of agency. Originally published in John Heil and Alfred Mele, eds., Mental Causation (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

O’Brien, Lucy. Self-Knowing Agents. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
In chapter 8, O’Brien traces the contours of a distinctive, nonreductive view of action and raises questions about the ideal shape of any such account.

Ruben, David-Hillel. Action and Its Explanation. Oxford and New York: Clarendon, 2004.
In chapter 5, Ruben combines extensive criticism of rival accounts of bodily action with a presentation of his own disjunctive account.

Taylor, Richard. Action and Purpose. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1980.
This is perhaps the classic statement of an agent-causal account of action, advanced by the author centrally as a contribution to the free will debate. A
reprint of the original 1966 edition (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall).

Action-Individuation

Discussing the case of a man who moves his hand up and down, and thereby moves a pump handle up and down, and thereby pumps poison into the water
supply of a house, and thereby poisons its inhabitants, Anscombe 2000 asked if there are four actions in this case, or rather one action under four different
descriptions. This is typically understood as the question of whether there are four events in this case, one truly describable as an action of moving a hand
up and down, another truly describable as an action of moving the pump handle up and down, etc. (the so-called prolific theory of action, defended by
Goldman 1976) or, rather, one event in this case, describable as an action of moving a hand up and down and as an action of moving the pump handle up
and down, etc., in virtue of the further events that this event effects (the so-called austere theory of action, defended by Davidson 2001 and Hornsby 1980).
In the ensuing years, Ruben 2003 has defended the prolific theory, whereas Ginet 1990 has sought a via media between these two positions. More recently,
attention has come to focus on the putatively prior question of whether actions are best thought of as events at all; here, the discussion in Thompson 2008 is
especially relevant. But it seems that, even if actions are not thought of as events, there will be a debate with this structure so long as there are those who
think of actions as particulars (in the manner of Davidson and Hornsby) and others who think of them not as particulars but as things that one can do on
more than one occasion (in the manner of Kim 1976)—for it seems that whereas the former will not, the latter will be committed to claiming that there are
four actions in Anscombe’s case.

Anscombe, G. E. M. Intention. 2d ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Originally published in 1957. Anscombe’s classic example of the man pumping poison into the house water supply is usually thought of as initiating this
debate.

Davidson, Donald. “Agency.” Essays on Actions and Events. 2d ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 2001.
Davidson’s essay is perhaps the classic statement of the austere theory. Originally published in Robert Binkley, Richard Bronaugh, and Ausonio Marras,
eds., Agent, Action, and Reason (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971).

Ginet, Carl. On Action. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
In chapter 3, Ginet presents his interesting attempt to steer a middle course between the austere and the prolific theory.
Goldman, Alvin I. A Theory of Human Action. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976.
Goldman’s book contains perhaps the classic statement of the prolific theory.

Hornsby, Jennifer. Actions. International Library of Philosophy. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980.
Hornsby’s book offers its own distinctive defense of the austere theory.

Kim, Jaegwon. “Events as Property Exemplifications.” In Action Theory: Proceedings of the Winnipeg Conference on Human Action, Held at
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 9–11 May 1975. Edited by Myles Brand and Douglas Walton. Dordrecht, The Netherlands, and Boston: Reidel, 1976.
Kim’s essay outlines a conception of events that seems to entail the prolific theory, given the assumption that actions are events.

Ruben, David-Hillel. “More Theories.” In Action and Its Explanation. By David-Hillel Ruben, 155–184.Oxford: Clarendon, 2003.
Ruben offers an original defense of a version of the prolific theory, which he calls the “Cambridge Theory” (after the idea of a “Cambridge change”).

Thompson, Michael. “Naïve Action Theory.” In Life and Action: Elementary Structures of Practice and Practical Thought. By Michael Thompson,
85–146. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.
Thompson argues that many actions are not events of any kind, because they are not what he calls “perfective” items—items whose existence implies the
truth of descriptions with perfective aspect, of the form “I have done A.”

Intention and Intentional Action

Davidson 2001 helped to inspire a literature devoted to clarifying the nature of intentions. Whereas Davidson argues that intentions are judgments of a
certain sort (what he calls “all-out” in contrast to “prima facie” and “all-things-considered” judgments), Bratman 1987 argues that, in contrast, an intention is a
distinct attitude that should be conceived on the lines of a plan for the future. Bratman 1984 criticizes a simple supplementation of the standard story by an
intention, on the grounds that it is possible to be doing something intentionally in the absence of an intention to do this thing. Adams 1986 takes up the task
of defending this supplementation against Bratman 1984. The distinction between two kinds of intention, which Searle 1983 develops, might enable a
response to this criticism: an intention for the future need not be involved in every case of intentional action, but an intention in action must be. Thompson
2008 offers a radically new account of intentions. Whereas it is an assumption, not only of the standard story, but also of much of the philosophy of action,
that intentions and actions are distinct items, Thompson argues for a picture of a single item, an unfolding intentional action, that can be described in the
vocabulary of intention (e.g., by statements of the form “He intends to do that” or “He is going to do that”) and in the vocabulary of action (e.g., by statements
of the form “He is doing that” or “He is doing that intentionally”). Descriptions in the different vocabularies incur different commitments; as a rule of thumb,
the latter vocabulary is appropriate when the action is merrily on its way, whereas the former is appropriate when the action is in its early or more tentative
phases. McDowell 2010 draws on this picture, on the distinction between intentions for the future and intentions in action, and on some of the ideas in
Anscombe 2000, in order to argue for an alternative to the account of intention in Davidson 2001b.

Adams, Frederick. “Intention and Intentional Action: The Simple View.” Mind and Language 1 (1986): 281–301.
This essay seeks to defend the “simple view” of intentional action from Bratman’s influential counterargument.

Anscombe, G. E. M. Intention. 2d ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Originally published in 1957. This classic book is currently in the process of being rediscovered and reappraised, in part in light of the role it plays in
Thompson 2008.

Bratman, Michael. “Two Faces of Intention.” Philosophical Review 93.3 (1984): 375–405.
This is Bratman’s classic argument against what he terms the “simple view”: that doing something intentionally requires an intention to do this thing.

Bratman, Michael E. Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.
This book presents the author’s influential “planning theory” of intention.

Davidson, Donald. “Intending.” In Essays on Actions and Events. By Donald Davidson, 83–102. Oxford: Clarendon, 2001.
This classic essay argues for the centrality of intentions in an account of actions and offers an account of intentions as “all out” judgments. Originally
published in Yirmiahu Yovel, ed., Philosophy of History and Action (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Reidel, 1978).

McDowell, John. “What Is the Content of an Intention in Action?” Ratio 23 (2010): 415–432.
McDowell draws centrally on Anscombe 2000 in order to oppose the account of intention in Davidson 2001 with a view according to which the content of an
intention in action does not have an evaluative component.
Searle, John R. “Intention and Action.” In Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind. By John R. Searle, 79–111. Cambridge, UK, and New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
This chapter introduces and explains Searle’s distinction between intentions for the future and intentions in action.

Thompson, Michael. “Naïve Action Theory.” In Life and Action: Elementary Structures of Practice and Practical Thought. By Michael Thompson,
85–146. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.
Thompson’s essay takes the philosophical discussion of intention into unexpected new directions.

Knowledge of Action

Contemporary thinking about knowledge of action tends to be structured around the account offered by Anscombe 2000, according to which if one is doing
something intentionally, then one knows that one is doing this thing, and this knowledge is “practical” rather than “speculative” and acquired “in intention”
rather than “by observation.” Moran 2004 takes up the difficult task of exegesis and partial defense of Anscombe’s position. Other philosophers, notably
O’Shaughnessy (O’Shaughnessy 2003), agree with Anscombe that knowledge of action is not “by observation.” But many philosophers are suspicious of
what they take to be her principle that if one is doing something intentionally, then one knows that one is doing this thing, in light of the famous
counterexample to this principle in Davidson 2001. There are two main responses to this counterexample. One is to seek to hold on to Anscombe’s claim
that the knowledge we have of our intentional actions is “practical,” and “in intention” rather than “by observation,” but to detach this claim from the
contentious principle; Falvey 2000, Haddock 2010, and Setiya 2008 represent instances of this strategy. The other is to defend an account that does not
question the principle; this is the aim of Rödl 2007.

Anscombe, G. E. M. Intention. 2d ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Originally published in 1957. Anscombe’s account of knowledge of action continues to inspire discussion.

Davidson, Donald. “Intending.” In Essays on Actions and Events. By Donald Davidson, 83–102. Oxford: Clarendon, 2001.
This classic essay contains the classic counterexample to the principle that if I am doing something intentionally, then I know that I am doing that thing.
Originally published in Yirmiahu Yovel, ed., Philosophy of History and Action (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Reidel, 1978).

Falvey, Kevin. “Knowledge in Intention” Philosophical Studies 99.1 (2000): 21–44.

This essay attempts to rehabilitate some of Anscombe’s 2000 insights, while remaining neutral on her contentious principle.

Haddock, Adrian. “Knowledge and Action.” In The Nature and Value of Knowledge: Three Investigations. By Duncan Pritchard, Alan Millar, and
Adrian Haddock, 191–260. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
This study situates an account of knowledge of intentional action in the context of a more general account of knowledge and attempts to preserve some of
the insights of Anscombe 2000 while rejecting the principle.

Moran, Richard. “Anscombe on ‘Practical Knowledge.’” In Agency and Action. Edited by John Hyman and Helen Steward, 43–68. Royal Institute
of Philosophy Supplements. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
This sensitive but not uncritical exegetical piece has been influential in renewing philosophical interest in Anscombe 2000.

O’Shaughnessy, Brian. “The Epistemology of Physical Action.” In Agency and Self-Awareness: Issues in Philosophy and Psychology. Edited by
Johannes Roessler and Naomi Eilan, 345–357. Consciousness and Self-Consciousness series. Oxford: Clarendon, 2003.
This discussion builds on and usefully summarizes the views on knowledge of action contained in O’Shaughnessy’s The Will: A Dual Aspect Theory
(Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980).

Rödl, Sebastian. Self-Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.

In this book an Anscombean account of knowledge of action is a moment within a general account of self-consciousness that discerns numerous intriguing
affinities between Anscombe and the German Idealist tradition.

Setiya, Kieran. “Practical Knowledge.” Ethics 118 (2008): 388–409.

This essay seeks to preserve Anscombe’s claim that we have knowledge without observation of our intentional actions (Anscombe 2000) without accepting
her principle, but by defending the idea that this knowledge is grounded in knowledge how.

Mental Action
Mental actions are typically understood to be actions that not just are not movements of the body but that do not even involve movements of the body, for
example, imagining a scene “in one’s mind’s eye” or calculating something “in one’s head.” Mental actions raise a number of questions. One question,
examined in Mele 1997, is whether mental actions constitute a threat to the general applicability of the standard causal story. Another concerns which
mental goings-on deserve to count as mental actions; Dorsch 2009 considers the specific question of whether judging ought to count as a mental action (a
question he answers in the negative). And another concerns whether the possibility of engaging in mental actions is a necessary condition of a conscious
life. O’Shaughnessy 2000 asserts that it is; Strawson 2003 asserts that it is not. It is also possible to be interested in the phenomenon of mental action for
the light it can seem to shed on broader issues in the philosophy of mind and in moral philosophy. Soteriou 2009 argues that it tells us something important
about phenomenal consciousness, whereas Owens 2009 argues that it tells us something important about responsibility.

Dorsch, Fabian. “Judging and the Scope of Mental Agency.” In Mental Actions. Edited by Lucy O’Brien and Matthew Soteriou, 38–71. Oxford and
New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Dorsch’s paper offers an argument for the claim that judging is not a case of straightforward mental agency, which appeals not to the distinctive normative
content of judgment but to the distinctive phenomenology of judging.

Mele, Alfred R. “Agency and Mental Action.” Philosophical Perspectives 11 (1997): 231–249.
Mele’s essay asks whether mental actions pose a threat to the general applicability of the standard causal story and argues that they do not.

O’Shaughnessy, Brian. Consciousness and the World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
O’Shaughnessy’s book aims to shed light on hitherto neglected aspects of phenomenal consciousness by considering mental action.

Owens, David. “Freedom and Practical Judgement.” In Mental Actions. Edited by Lucy O’Brien and Matthew Soteriou, 121–137. Oxford and New
York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
This paper argues that there is a type of mental action that is under the agent’s control even though it is not subject to the will.

Soteriou, Matthew. “Mental Agency, Conscious Thinking, and Phenomenal Character.” In Mental Actions. Edited by Lucy O’Brien and Matthew
Soteriou, 231–252. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
This paper explores the idea of mental action, with a view to shedding light on phenomenal consciousness in the manner of O’Shaughnessy.

Strawson, Galen. “Mental Ballistics or the Involuntariness of Spontaneity.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 103 (2003): 227–256.
This influential paper argues that, even though there is such a thing as mental agency, its scope is far narrower than is sometimes assumed. And—contra
O’Shaughnessy 2000—it argues that there can be conscious subjects who are incapable of performing mental actions.

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