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Desires, Dispositions and Deviant Causal Chains

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 September 2013

John Hyman
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Abstract

Recent work on dispositions offers a new solution to the long-running dispute about whether explanations of intentional action are causal explanations. The dispute seemed intractable because of a lack of percipience about dispositions and a commitment to Humean orthodoxies about causation on both sides.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 89 , Issue 1 , January 2014 , pp. 83 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2013 

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References

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3 It is controversial whether one can do something, say, take one's keys out of one's pocket, intentionally or with the intention of opening the door without also intending to take one's keys out of one's pocket. The argument in this article is consistent with both views.

4 A dispositional conception of desires differing in significant ways from the one set out here is proposed in Smith, Michael, The Moral Problem (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 4.6Google Scholar.

5 Empiricists from Locke to Mill insist on the intrinsic relation between desire, pleasure and pain. For example, Mill writes, ‘desiring a thing and finding it pleasant, aversion to it and thinking of it as painful, are phenomena entirely inseparable or, rather, two parts of the phenomenon.’ (Mill, J.S., Utilitarianism (New York: Macmillan, 1957), 49.Google Scholar)

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11 The Analysis of Mind, 32.

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22 Davidson, Donald, ‘Problems in the Explanation of Action’, repr. in Problems of Rationality (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 106CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Davidson moves some way towards acknowledging this in ‘Problems in the Explanation of Action’. See also Stoecker, Ralf, ‘Climbers, Pigs and Wiggled Ears: The Problem of Waywardness in Action Theory’, in Walter, S. & Heckmann, D. (eds), Physicalism and Mental Causation (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2003)Google Scholar. Others have argued that the idea of causation by dispositions should play a key role in solving the problem of deviant causation by desires (e.g. Setiya, Kieran, Reasons without Rationalism (Princeton NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2007), 32Google Scholar), or pointed out that deviant causation by desires is a special case of deviant causation by dispositions in general (e.g. Armstrong, David, ‘Beliefs and Desires as Causes of Actions: A Reply to Donald Davidson’, Philosophical Papers 4 (1975), 4CrossRefGoogle Scholarf; Arpaly, Nomy, Merit, Meaning and Human Bondage (Princeton NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2006), 47 & 71Google Scholar).

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26 Intention, 10.

27 This is how I interpret her remark about Hume's theory of causation quoted below in §7. Her doubts about the Humean theory of causation bore fruit, more than a decade later, in Anscombe, G.E.M., ‘Causality and Determination. An Inaugural Lecture’, repr. in Sosa, E.Causation and Conditionals (Oxford: OUP, 1975)Google Scholar.

28 Anscombe contrasts mental causes with reasons on p.10 of Intention, with motives on p.16, and with intentions on page 17.

29 Intention, 17f.

30 Ibid., 18f & 24.

31 2 Henry VI, III.i; Hebrews 18.2.

32 Intention, 21.

33 For a detailed discussion of the causal relevance of dispositions, see MacKitrick, J., ‘Are Dispositions Causally Relevant’, Synthese 144 (2005)Google Scholar.

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36 A Treatise of Human Nature, 1.3.14.

37 Armstrong, D.M., A World of States of Affairs (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), 79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Ryle, Gilbert, The Concept of Mind (London: Hutchinson, 1949), 107Google Scholarf.

39 See especially Molnar, George, Powers (Oxford: OUP, 2003), ch.4Google Scholar; Bird, Alexander, Nature's Metaphysics (Oxford: OUP, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch.2. Cross, Troy, ‘Recent Work on Dispositions’, Analysis 72 (2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar is a good survey.

40 Powers, 86. Both examples are due to Molnar.

41 Strawson, P.F., Analysis and Metaphysics (Oxford: OUP, 1992), 120CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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44 This example is adapted from one described in Bird, Nature's Metaphysics, 29.

45 See Molnar, Powers, 91.

46 Bishop, John claims that we need to show how to eliminate deviant causal chains in order to defend the idea that intentional acts ‘consist in behaviour that is caused by appropriate mental states’ (Natural Agency (Cambridge: CUP, 1989), 2 & 148Google Scholar). By contrast, Mayr, Erasmus claims only that we would need to show how to eliminate them in order to defend an ‘event-causal’ theory of intentional action (Understanding Human Agency (Oxford: OUP, 2011), ch.5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, espec. 104. The argument here supports Mayr's view and opposes Bishop's.

47 The basic point is anticipated by Passmore: ‘explanation by reference to a “principle of action” or “a good reason” is not, by itself, explanation at all. […] For a reason may be a “good reason” – in the sense of being a principle to which one could appeal in justification of one's action – without having in fact the slightest influence on us.’ (Passmore, J., ‘Law and Explanation in History’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 4 (1958), 275Google Scholar.

48 ‘Actions, Reasons, and Causes’, 10f.

49 See Sehon, Scott, ‘Teleology and the Nature of Mental States’, American Philosophical Quarterly 31 (1994), 64Google Scholar; Wilson, George, ‘Reasons as Causes for Action’, in Holmström-Hintikka, G. & Tuomela, R., Contemporary Action Theory I: Individual Action (Dordrecht: Kluwer 1997), 68Google Scholar.

50 Anscombe's solution is defended in Stout, Rowland, Things That Happen Because They Should (Oxford: OUP, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sehon, Scott, Teleological Realism (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Hacker, P.M.S., Human Nature: The Categorial Framework (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 See Anscombe, Intention, 18; Davidson, ‘Actions, Reasons, and Causes’, 7f.

52 See Ginet, Carl, On Action (Cambridge: CUP, 1990), ch.6CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Ginet, Carl, ‘Reasons Explanations of Action: Causalist versus Noncausalist Accounts’, in Kane, Robert (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Free Will (Oxford: OUP, 2002)Google Scholar. A similar view is defended in Wilson, George, The Intentionality of Human Action (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

53 Ginet, ‘Reasons Explanations of Action: Causalist versus Noncausalist Accounts’, 166.

54 Intention, 16.

55 I am grateful to a number of friends and colleagues who were kind enough to comment on a draft of this article, especially Maria Alvarez, Alexander Bird, Jennifer Hornsby, Anthony Kenny, Erasmus Mayr and Kieran Setiya.