ALTERNATIVE CANDIDATES FOR A CAUSAL PARTNERSHIP UNDERPINNING AGENCY

Final dismantling of event-causation of action

It will be obvious from the previous chapter that any “causes” I mobilize to bring about “effects” that count as the goal of my action will not be discrete spatio-temporal stretches of happening such as those who have a realist view of causes imagine are served up by the physical world innocent of the intentions of agents. Crucially, the goals of successful actions will not be defined in terms of their physical properties – which is the other side of the fact that intentions can be realized in a multitude of ways. There is no satisfactory physical description of the fulfilment of an intention to go to London to make the case for improving stroke services, let alone a unique or definitive one.

This is signalled from the beginning. In the initial conditions that we set off from to our goal, we exploit events and states of affairs that we single out in relation to a situation which demands something of us in order that we shall achieve what our interests require of us or (more tellingly) we require of ourselves. This situation transcends discrete, demarcated events that tradition and common sense classify as causes and even their surrounding conditions; indeed, what brings about our actions is not something that weaves itself out of material events. Where there is a so-called cause of our action, it figures as an opportunity which, notwithstanding its physical reality, is gathered up or unified by an idea, a unification that is delivered in part by a future possibility equally defined by an idea.

In short, nothing essential to voluntary activity is captured in the idea of material responses to material stimuli, in which the former are discrete physical effects of the latter understood as discrete physical causes. Replacing “material causes” by “mental causes” does not help in the slightest for reasons set out in our previous discussion of propositional attitudes.

Of course, there are some elements of human behaviour that seem to be mere responses to stimuli understood as biologically mediated causes – as when I withdraw my foot having stood on a sharp object, duck as a missile comes towards me, jump at a loud bang, or absent-mindedly scratch an itch.