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Ways and Means

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Annetie C. Baier
Annetie C. Baier*
Affiliation:
Carnegie-Mellon University
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Extract

In this paper I shall give reasons for rejecting one type of analysis of the basic constituents of action, and reasons for preferring an alternative approach. I shall discuss the concept of basic action recently presented by Alvin Goldman, who gives an interesting version of the sort of analysis I wish to reject. Goldman agrees with Danto that bodily movements are basic actions, and his definition of ‘basic’ resembles Danto's fairly closely. What is new is a useful concept of level-generation between actions, which Goldman uses both in his recursive definition of action (45) and in his definition of a basic action (67, 72), as one whose performance does not depend on level-generational knowledge. In brief, an action is an event which is level-generated by or capable of level-generating another action, and a basic action is one which is not level-generated by any other action. I shall examine this concept of level-generation, and point out incoherences I think endemic to views of this sort. In the last part of the paper I shall indicate the direction in which a more satisfactory account of basic action is to be sought. The criterion of basicness I shall sketch will select as basic actions not bodily movements, but a more interesting class of actions, and one whose demarcation can help us see the relation between actions and intentions, and the differences between intentions and other states of mind.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , March 1972 , pp. 275 - 293
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1972

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References

1 Goldman, Alvin I.—A Theory of Human Action (Prentice Hall, 1971).Google Scholar All page references in the text refer to this book.

2 Danto, A. C.—“Complex Events”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, XXX (1969-70), 66–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Causation and Basic Action,” Inquiry, 13 (1970), 109-125.

3 See Baier, A. C.—“Search for Basic Actions,” American Philosophical Quarterly, VIII (1971), 161–70.Google Scholar

4 Chisholm, Roderick M.—“Freedom and Forbearance,” in Freedom and Determinism, ed. Lehrer, Keith (New York: Random House, 1966)Google Scholar, and “Some Puzzles about Agency,” The Logical Way of Doing Things (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1969).

5 See Baier, A. C.— “Act and Intent,” Journal of Philosophy. LXVII (1970). 648–658.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Aristotle—Nich. Ethics, 1140a 1-24, 1174a 31, Metaphysics 1058a.

7 Kenny, Anthony—Action, Emotion and Will (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1963), 173.Google Scholar

8 Wright, G. H. Von in Norm and Action (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1963)Google Scholar, distinguishes several senses of ability, and calls the sense which I am stressing the “ability to perform a certain activity” (49) as distinct from the ability to do a certain act. It is the latter which he stresses. He refers to the “activity” ability as “mastership of a technique,” or “skill” but thinks that one is not said to “know how” to perform such activities, and he reserves “know how” for the ability to perform “an act.” Thus he would say that one knows how to open a complicated lock, but not that one knows how to speak. I think, on the contrary, that “know how” applies to techniques and skills mastered more naturally than it does to individual or repeated achievements such techniques make possible.

9 Davidson, Donald—“The Logic of Action Sentences,” in The Logic of Decision and Action, ed. Rescher, N. (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1966), 84, 119Google Scholar. Davidson's own solution is to create a cognate competence for every action description, but this is to replace pseudo-effects (‘he brought about a cough’) with pseudo-competences (‘there was a getting, and it was a getting of the feet wet ...’), where what is needed is a way of recognizing and distinguishing genuine effects and genuine competences.

10 G. H. Von Wright, in Norm and Action analyses action as effecting a transition from an initial state to an end state, although he implies (36) that there may be other sorts of action not covered by tis theory.

11 Perhaps this is what is meant by “verstehen,” which Danto, in “Causation and Basic Actions” (op. cit. 122,125) sees to be a valuable but misunderstood concept. He sees the norms involved as needed for the interpretation of norm-free basic actions, as adding the layers which make a complex action out of a basic one.

12 Simon, Herbert A.—“The logic of Heuristic Decision Making,” in The Logic of Decision and Action, 1–35.Google Scholar

13 Simon, op. cit. 10.Google Scholar

14 Anscombe, G. E. M.—Intentions (Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1957).Google Scholar Dennett, D. C. in Content and Consciousness (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1969). 165–69Google Scholar, suggests that “knowledge without observation” is a matter of knowledge which has an efferent ret her than an afferent source.

15 Danto, in “Complex Actions,” op. cit. 71Google Scholar, draws a parallel between basic beliefs and basic actions.

16 Brown, D. G. in his book Action (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1968)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed from which I have profited greatly, draws attention to this fact, but explains it differently.

17 It is worth pondering the fact that non-philosophers rarely use the verb ‘to act’ except in reference to what is done on a stage, or in a law court, two very script-directed or norm-dominated fields.

18 It will be obvious that there is nothing really original in this sketch, which is only an application, to the particular issue of basic actions, of an approach to action I find in the writings of Wittgenstein, and in books such as Ryle, Gilbert The Concept of Mind (London: Hutchinson, 1949)Google Scholar, Peters, R. S. The Concept of Motivation (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1960)Google Scholar, Melden, A. I. Free Action (London, Routledge Kegan Paul, 1961)Google Scholar, Winch, Peter The Idea of a Social Science (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1958).Google Scholar I have also been influenced by Znaniccki, Florian Cultural Sciences (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1955)Google Scholar, and Kovesi, Julius Moral Notions (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1967).Google Scholar