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Reasons for Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

James Rachels
James Rachels*
Affiliation:
New York University
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Extract

We can often explain a person's action by citing some fact which prompted him to do what he did. For example:

Tom quit his job because he was offered more money elsewhere;

Dick took his daughter to the dentist because she had a toothache;

Harry rushed out of the theater because it was on fire.

In each case there are four elements which fit together in a characteristic pattern. (1) The first is the fact that Tom has been offered more money, that Dick's daughter has a toothache, or that the theater in which Harry is sitting is on fire. If the theater were not on fire, for example, then we would have to give a different sort of explanation of why Harry rushed out: we would have to say that he left because he thought it was on fire, not because it was on fire. I shall have more to say about this point later. (2) The second is their knowledge of these facts. If Dick is unaware of the girl's toothache, he can hardly do anything on account of it; and of course the same goes for the other cases. (3) The third element is the attitude which each agent has toward the existing state-of-affairs. Tom wants to earn more money; Dick loves his daughter and doesn't want her to suffer; and Harry, like the rest of us, doesn't want to be burned. (4) Finally, there is the action which is being explained: Tom quits his job, Dick takes the girl to the dentist, and Harry rushes from the theater.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , December 1971 , pp. 173 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1971

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References

1 Among those who argue that reasons are causes are Davidson, Donald “Actions, Reasons, and Causes,” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 60 (1963), pp. 685–700CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Macintyre, Alasdair “The Antecedents of Adion,” British Analytical Philosophy, edited by Williams, Bernard and Montefiore, Alan (London, 1966), pp. 205–225Google Scholar; Brandt, Richard and Kim, Jaegwon “Wants as Explanations of Actions,” The Journal of Philosophy. vol. 60 (1963), pp. 425–435CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gean, W. D. “Reasons and Causes,” The Review of Metaphysics, vol. 29 (1966), pp. 667–688Google Scholar. Among those who argue that reasons cannot be causes are Melden, A. I. Free Action (London, 1961)Google Scholar; Kenny, Anthony Action, Emotion, and Will (London, 1963)Google Scholar; Taylor, Richard Action and Purpose (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1966)Google Scholar; and Abelson, Raziel “Doing Causing, and Causing to Do,” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 66 (1969), p. 178–192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Davidson, for example, defines a reason as a combination of a belief and an attitude (“Actions, Reasons, and Causes,” p. 687); others usually just assume that they are attitudes, such as wants or desires.

3 “Doing, Causing, and Causing to Do,” p. 184.

4 I have argued the view that attitudes are not reasons at greater length in “Wants, Reasons, and Justifications,” The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 18 (1968), pp. 299-309.

5 There is one other view about the nature of reasons which it may be well to mention. It is sometimes suggested that evaluations like ‘So-and-so is the best thing to do’ or ‘We ought to do so-and-so’ constitute reasons for doing the act in question. (See, for example, Searle, John “Reply to ‘The Promising Game’,” Readings in Contemporary Ethical Theory, edited by Pahel, Kenneth and Schiller, Marvin (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1970), p. 180.)Google Scholar This is implausible since these evaluations are more naturally regarded as conclusions drawn from reasons rather than as reasons themselves. Thus ‘We ought to vote for Smith’ is a conclusion drawn from the fact that Smith is an intelligent, experienced candidate of sound character, and it is this fact that is the reason for voting for him. To say simply that we ought to vote for Smith contextually implies that there are reasons for voting for him, but it doesn't yet tell us what those reasons are.

6 On this point I am following Davidson. I shall also adopt Davidson's broad use of the term ‘pro attitude': by this he means “desires, wantings. urges, promptings, and a great variety of moral views, aesthetic principles, economic prejudices, social conventions, and public and private goals in so far as these can be interpreted as attitudes of an agent directed toward actions of a certain kind.” (“Actions, Reasons, and Causes,” p. 686.)

7 E.g. by Abelson, Raziel “Doing, Causing, and Causing to Do,” p. 184.Google Scholar

8 Hobbes, Thomas Leviathan (Oxford, 1960), p. 31.Google Scholar

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid., p. 38.

11 Davidson, “Actions, Reasons, and Causes,” p. 693.Google Scholar

12 Davidson, in defending the causal theory from this argument seems to shift from (7’) to something like (7), although his official version of the theory is (7’). (“Actions, Reasons, and Causes,” p. 694.)

13 Abelson, “Doing, Causing, and Causing to Do,” p. 184.Google Scholar

14 All the critics of the causal theory mentioned in the first footnote above rely on some version of the logical-connection argument. The version I give here is Abelson's, which seems to me both the clearest and the most persuasive.

15 Alfred F. MacKay and Mats Furberg both read an earlier draft of this paper and made several helpful suggestions, for which I am grateful.