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Filice, Carlo

AGENCY AND THE SELF

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign PH.D. 1983

University
Microfilms
I n t e r n S l t i O n E l l 300N Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106
 AGENCY AND THE SELF

BY
CARLO FILICE
B.A., Western Illinois University, 1977
A.M., University of Illinois, 1981

THESIS
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy
in the Graduate College of the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1983

Urbana, Illinois
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

THE GRADUATE COLLEGE

JULY 1983

W E HEREBY RECOMMEND T H A T T H E T H E S I S BY

CARLO FILICE

AGENCY AND THE SELF

ENTITLED.

BE ACCEPTED IN PARTIAL F U L F I L L M E N T O F T H E REQUIREMENTS FOR

T H E DEGREE O F . DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

irector of Thesis Research

yd/
Head of Department

Committee on Final Examination^

2 Chairman

t Required for doctor's degree but not for master's

 iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER
ONE: THE PHENOMENON OF ACTIVENESS 13
TWO: THE EVENT-CAUSAL THEORY 42
THREE: THE AGENT-CAUSAL THEORY 108
FOUR: THE SELF AND MOTIVATION 186
FIVE: TWO CONTRASTING MODELS OF THE SELF 204
SIX: FREEDOM-QUA-AUTONOMY 211
BIBLIOGRAPHY 235
VITA 237
 1

INTRODUCTION

It is not uncommon for thinkers of a philosophical

bent, as well as for less contemplative mortals, to operate
with a certain Platonic conception of persons. Persons —
or, in particular, their most essential component, namely,
their psyche — are conceived as complexes of various
elements or aspects or faculties. Plato, of course, viewed
the psyche as a discordant tripartite system. Its consti-
tuents — reason, appetite, and spiritedness (or perhaps
will) — were portrayed as regularly engaged in internal
strife. Amongst these, reason was seen as the element most
near to one's center or to one's genuine nature. This
peculiar proximity endowed reason with the right and the
duty to attempt to reign over the other two elements.
Plato's language often invites the personification of these
psychic elements. Lured by this invitation, perhaps, sub-
sequent thinkers have failed to press an obvious question
regarding this Platonic model. How is it that reason is
supposed to rule? For if it is a faculty, must it not be
exercized by something else? Or does it exercize itself?
That is, the Platonic picture should give rise to a dilem-
ma. Either reason is a passive computing device — no
doubt programmed with various cognitions and moral impera-
 2

tives — and as such requiring an independent operator; or

it is its own operator thereby becoming, in effect, a
homunculus within the person. Each alternative should
occasion philosophical headaches for the Platonist.
Naturally, some such headaches must have been felt.
However the talk of faculties, of aspects, or of principles
survived. We find it even in recent naturalistic thinkers
like Freud. Freud's model of the psyche, in fact, curi-
ously resembles Plato's. The Freudian version also hypo-
thesizes a tripartite psychic division with the Id replac-
ing the appetitive part, and the Ego and Superego replacing
(respectively?) will and reason. Consequently if we take
this model seriously and if we assume it to capture real
distinctions, should we not be perplexed by dilemmas simi-
lar to the one evoked by the Platonic model? For instance,
does the Ego mediate between the blind urges of the Id and
the dictates of the Superego in the way a complete person
arbitrates between two parties? If, absurdly, we say yes,
then we produce a psychic homunculus. If we say no, then
would the psychic mediation be conducted mechanically? And
if machanically, why is the Ego needed at all?

A variation on this multi-aspect theme is manifest in

the Buddhist doctrine of the 'I' as a complex of Skandhas.
On this doctrine, the person as a whole is a composite not
unlike a jigsaw puzzle. That is, the person is seen as an
 3

assemblage of physical and psychic parts. Specifically,

the Buddhist insists that nowhere in this assemblage —
neither in some individual part nor in the whole — is
there a single individual 'I' or self. There is, alleged-
ly, no thinker or doer. In fact, it is maintained that our
delusory conception of ourselves as individual egos is the
root of our existential grief. As is well known, the Bud-
dhist's central concern is not theory but living practice.
Our focus is, however, philosophical; and from that view-
point — though not only from that viewpoint — questions
like "Who is it that is supposed to overcome egocentric
delusions?" and "What is the force that sustains concen-
tration during spiritual-meditational exercises?" are bound
to perplex the unenlightened amongst us.

These three conceptions are meant only to exemplify a

multitude of views according to which the person is a com-
plex of psychic (and non-psychic) components. Let us call
such views the complex views of the person. Complex views
can be construed as holding either or both of the
following:

(1) the person narrowly construed — i.e., the

person as a psychic unitary item — does not
real3y exist (this may be false in the case of
Plato). The 'psychic' person is actually a
 4

complex of various sub-personal aspects,

states, forces, or faculties.

(2) the person broadly construed — i.e., the

person as that to which we ordinarily ascribe
consciousness, agency, character, knowledge,
responsibility, guilt — is simply the entire
psycho-physical organism.

The position advanced in this essay is consistent with

(2) , at least so long as (2) is taken merely as a neutral
description of non-reflective practices. However, our
chief concern will be (1). In particular, this essay em-
phatically denies (1). I will attempt to show that the
person — narrowly construed as the 'I' or as the self —
is in fact a kind of psychic unitary center around which
other psychic phenomena gravitate. I will attempt to show
that the proper relation holding between psychic dwellers
like passion and intellect — or between the more subord-
inate constituents like beliefs, desires, emotions, feel-
ings, etc. — and the person is not that of parts-to-whole.

It is rather much more like the venerable old relation

connecting substance and attributes. We will, in short,
conceive of the person as the bearer of psychic faculties,
properties, forces, aspects, and what not. This will mean
 5

that although inseparable from some or all of these mental

consituents, the person is seen as ontologically distinct
and independent of them. This person is a kind of sub-
stratum in which mental elements inhere.
More importantly, however, it will be argued that the
person is not merely an inert substratum whose only func-
tion is that of 'bearing' attributes. Instead we shall
stress the dynamic role played by this odd substratum. The
person here hypothesized will be characterized as essenti-
ally active. Put differently, this person has assimilated
what used to be thought of as the will. It is thus trans-
formed into an essentially will-like substance.

Let us elaborate on this a little. On the complex

view of the person the predominant psychic elements of
reason, cognition, passion, will — to name a few — are on
an ontologically equal level. That is, none of them is
especially 'close' to the person; for the person either
does not exist, or if it exists it is simply a composite of
these elements. Indeed these psychic elements may be con-
ceived as hierarchically arranged; and one may certainly
desire some specific arrangment to be realized in oneself
and in others. However, on the complex view it remains
illegitimate to speak of one element, say, reason, as being
more of the person than another, say, passion. For what-
ever the relative significance of elements like reason and
 6

passion with respect to matters of psychic health or hap-

piness, none of them can be said to constitute the core of
the person. None of them is ontologically privileged.
We shall reject the kind of ontological egalitarianism
implicit in the complex view. We shall propose that at
least one of the classical consituents of the psyche —
namely, will — stands in a more privileged ontological
relation vis-a-vis the person, than other elements. We
shall propose that the person is essentially will-like.
On this picture the person may have or feel emotions,
desires, passions, beliefs, and so on. But volition will
not be treated as something a person has, feels, or exper-
iences; nor as something a person sometimes engages in.
Volition will be presented as a manifestation of the per-
son's essence. Thus, we shall not treat the will as an
organ possessed and operated by the person-substance. In
contrast, the view advanced here can be construed as coa-
lescing person and will. The substance in question will be
characterized as intrinsically active, or as essentially
dynamic, or, in short, as volitional — as will-like. The
person will be the principle of pure activity. Volitional
phenomena like rational calculations, decisions, and in-
tentional acts will be seen as the only phenomena — aside
from consciousness of things — with which the person must
identify. In contrast, phenomena like bodily movements,
 7

passions, desires, thoughts, and even beliefs will be seen

as subject to a peculiar externality vis-a-vis the sub-
ject-person. This is manifest in cases where the person is
victimized by the latter phenomena. It is further manifest
in the person's capacity to take actions towards these
phenomena, as in attempting to resist, change, repress, and
expel them. This externalization cannot occur vis-a-vis
one's decisions, efforts, concentrations. It cannot occur,
in short, in the case of one's acts, however much one might
want to strip oneself of one's acts or to dissociate one-
self from them (in bad faith).

Put differently, will is not seen as an instrument —

executive or otherwise — of either the person, of rea-
son/intellect, or of the passions. The person is the force
that at times directs physical and mental behavior — the
person is will. Thus, we will argue that the person-qua-
will is the ultimate moving force in intentional actions,
though indeed it moves in light of cognitive information,
passions, and feelings.

In effect, our conception, in rejecting the complex

view, rejects the classical identification of the person
with the mind as a whole — whatever that is. This re-
jection rests in part on the premise that only some mental
phenomena display a peculiar 'closeness' to oneself; and
that others, in contrast, exhibit an odd 'externality'.
 8

Philosophers like Prithjof Bergmann and Herbert Fingarette

have tried to account for this experiential distinction by
hypothesizing the respective processes of 'identification'
and 'avowal', both of which are as intriguing as they are
mysterious. Others like Harry Frankfurt and Wright Neely
have tried to explain the same distinction by appealing to
the presence and participation of higher-order states.
Both types of approaches try to account for this mental
closeness/externality polarity from within the framework of
complex theories — without, that is, relying on the notion
of a core-person. For reasons connected with certain
peculiar features of action — and in particular in light
of the first-person phenomenon of sustained activity — we
shall reject these approaches.

Recapitulating, then, in rejecting the complex view of

person, we shall reject both the identification of the
person with the mind and the egalitarian ontological status
of mental constituents. Put affirmatively, we shall adopt
and defend a substantial conception of the person which
stresses the intimacy between person and will, or between
person and active/voluntary phenomena.

This, of course, will be the result of this study.

Our starting point will be the investigation of action.
Action will be the ingress by which we hope to penetrate
the mystery of the self. It is a major premise of this
 9

project that no serious investigation of action can be

accomplished independently of a study of the person-agent.
Obvious as this principle might seem, it has not been
observed with sufficient care by many recent theorists of
action. Human action has predominantly been approached as
if the nature of the person-qua-agent were substantially
clear or as if the study of its nature were a separate
issue altogether. As a result one often gets the impres-
sion that phenomena like volitions, intentions, and deci-
sions are no more than appendages of persons; that they are
mere episodes in the history of person; and that their only
connection to persons is their necessary inherence in
something (i.e., in the person qua psycho-physical organ-
ism) . This may well be a remnant of classical empiricism
which conceived the mind as a succession of (passive)
states. Whatever the source of this tendency, we will
firmly resist it. Thus, our overall argument will attempt
to establish that active phenomena are temporally-specific
manifestations of the person-qua-dynamic-enduring-entity.

We will begin our analysis by introducing the phenom-

enon of action. In particular, we will argue that the
active/passive distinction constitutes a distinction of
fact and not of theory. Then we will conduct a detailed
study of various event-causal theories of action. This
study is motivated by two outstanding considerations. The
 10

first is that theories of this type are the dominant con-

temporary theories of action. The second more philosophi-
cal consideration is that they are derived from what are at
least initially very plausible assumptions. One such as-
sumption is the undeniable fact that there is something ir-
reducibly causal about the nature of action. Thus any
theory of action must account for this feature. Now, the
predominant conception of causation proposes events as the
causal relata. Consequently, event-causal theories seem
the most fit to provide an account of the essential causal
element in action. Any dissenting theory must, therefore,
contend with them. Our strategy will thus be to begin by
exposing the serious flaws inherent in event-causal theor-
ies; and then to construct an alternative causal theory.
Our alternative will be an expanded version of the agent-
causal theory.

More specifically, we shall find that event-causal

accounts fall into two general sorts: those of the first
sort will be called theories, those of the second will be
termed analyses. Theories are accounts which take the
active episodic element in action to be irreducible and
unanalyzable (O'Shaughnessy's view, as formulated in his
recent The Will, is the main example that will be investi-
gated) . Analyses, in contrast, are attempts to show that
action is merely a complex of non-active elements suitable
 11

causally related (Goldman's and Davidson's views will be

especially investigated). Both event-causal types of ac-
counts of action are shown to be inadequate. Specifically,
in the case of analyses it is found that adherence to the
use of non-active elements alone cannot yield an account
that is exclusive of actions. Theories, on the other hand,
are found to depend upon the rather incoherent notion of an
event that is intrinsically active and yet event-causally
necessitated.

In light of such failures various agent-causal theor-

ies will be investigated. We will then use the results of
this investigation to construct and defend a comprehensive
agent-causal theory. The heart of this theory will be the
conception of the self as a dynamic substance. This notion
will be found useful — and indeed necessary — in ex-
plaining the non-deterministic yet not random character of
actions. Its defense will rest, in particular, upon the
experiential phenomenon of one's causally sustaining and
guiding a lasting event (or series of events). Special
emphasis will here be placed on the phenonenon of control-
led attention.

Objections to this type of theory (notably Thalberg's

and Davidson's) will then be addressed. There follows an
account of how the postulated self is related to its states
in general, and to its motives (desires, principles, etc.)
 12

in particular.
The final chapter will be devoted to freedom-qua-au-
tonomy. It will be argued that activeness is only a ne-
cessary condition for autonomy. A further condition will
turn out to be the agent-self's 'appropriation' of the
motives operative in the act. 'Appropriation' of a motive
will be construed as resulting from the agent's active,
self-conscious participation in the genesis and/or
retainment of the motive in question.
 13

CHAPTER ONE:
THE PHENOMENON OF ACTIVENESS

This present chapter is meant to introduce the phe-

nomenon of activity or 'actlvenes3' or 'voluntariness*. It
will be argued that active phenomena form an unquestionable
phenomenological category, and that, consequently, genuine
activity is first and foremost a first-person phenomenon.
This will be followed by an attempt to show that activity
is also a factual or ontological classification. Finally,
various prima facie plausible necessary/sufficient condi-
tions for action will be discussed. This discussion will
discourage efforts to provide a neat demarcation between
acts and non-acts. Despite this, the important difference
between full-blooded intentional actions and 'mere events'
will still be affirmed.

I
Activity or activeness or voluntariness is an undeni-
able component of our experience. It is first and foremost
a pervasive feature of countless conscious occurrences. It
is manifest, for example, in one's attempt to recall a name
or the line of a poem. And it is present in one's under-
taking a somersault or in pushing a heavy object. It can
be purely 'mental', or it can involve the physical.
 14

It has been argued that success in recalling a name or

a poetic line means only that the name or the line simply
'comes' to us, and that whatever active process takes place
does so unconsciously (and hence could be reproduced by a
non-conscious machine). From this it is concluded that we
do not produce or experience activity; we are merely con-
scious of the result of whatever process or activity does
take place (D. Dennett argues for this is Brainstorms, p.
165) .

But while it is the case that often (or always?) that

which is mentally sought makes its conscious appearance on
its own — as when I finally remember that the name I am
trying to recall is Epictetus — it does so at our conjur-
ation and summoning; it responds to our groping and scan-
ning. Consequently, the undeniable active element under
consideration is that groping, that reaching out, that
scanning and summoning. This same dynamic element is sim-
ilarly present in the course of many physical movements, as
when one whistles or undertakes a somersault. As in cases
of 'mental' doing, here too it might be pointed out that it
is unconscious neural and muscular motions that immediately
produce the intended result. And, again, the truth of this
claim does not affect the plain fact that the phenomenon of
one's striving to whistle or somersault is undeniably act-
ive. Focus on the non-voluntary aspects of attempts to
 15

retrieve a lost word, or of attempting to whistle, shows at

most that success in these attempts is mediated by uncon-
scious, involuntary processes. But this result is merely
an illustration of the more general point that most (or
all) human acts incorporate aspects that are involuntary (a
thesis argued at length by P. Ricoeur in Freedom and Na-
ture: The Voluntary and the Involuntary). There is nothing
in this claim that would undermine the pre-analytical phe-
nomenological reality of 'activeness'.
II
Is activeness available for public or scientific
scrutiny? Can one, in other words, detect the presence of
this feature in things other than oneself? The obvious
pre-theoretical answer is "Yes!" But to offer a more pre-
cise and revealing answer we would have to specify what we
mean by 'know' and by 'activeness'. If we take 'active-
ness' to refer to a phenomenological feature, and if we
take 'know' very stringently, then our knowledge regarding
the presence of activeness in things other than oneself is
open to serious doubt. Specifically, if strict knowledge
requires direct apprehension, and if activeness is a
first-person phenomenon, then obviously we do not know that
others are active. In any case, to avoid getting mired in
epistemological issues, let us simply say that, given our
assumption about activeness, our apprehension of others'
 16

activeness is more indirect, more inferential, and hence

less reliable, than is the apprehension of our own active-
ness.
For example, there are plenty of things that while
able to 'retrieve information' out of some 'memory bank',
or able to produce whistling sounds indistinguishable from
ours, are nonetheless strictly speaking inactive because
clearly non-conscious. Hence, that other creatures parti-
cipate in types of movements which in one's own case are
accompanied by, or are expressions of, some active process,
is not a guarantee that there is activity outside oneself
(Cf. knowing another's pains). Naturally one is willing to
bet one's life that one's friends are not completely pro-
grammed robots displaying no consciousness and no real
activity whatever. But what does that prove? That one
feels certain of it — yes. That it is nothing short of
ludicrous to assume otherwise — yes. But not that one is
as immune from making an enormous mistake in believing so
as one is in one's own case. This commits me to the un-
popular view that the other-minds problem is more than a
relic of past mistakes. If that is the case, so be it.

This also commits me to the position that we each

possess some kind of privileged access to many of our own
states. But that we have some form of privileged access,
at least vis-a-vis our occurrent conscious states, seems to
 17

me to be indisuputable, and I will not argue for it.

Of course, there is a wider sense of 'active' or
•activity' (hereafter called 'w-activity') in accordance
with which the sun, the heart, and other non-persons are
ordinarily described as active. For the sake of distin-
guishing strict genuine personal activity from w-activity I
suggest the following rough definition of being w-active:
Particular P is w-active vis-a-vis some event/
state S iff S issues forth causally out of some
force/event/state internal to P.
A few comments about this definition are necessary. (1) It
is assumed that the predicate 'w-active' picks out primar-
ily a relational property, and only secondarily a monadic
property. (2) The definition has some historical rele-
vance. It recalls Aristotle's definition of 'voluntary',
according to which an act is voluntary when its "moving
principle is in the agent" (Nichomachean Ethics, Book III,
1110a and 1110b). (3) 'Internal' should be taken to mean
'physically within* or, alternatively, 'mentally within',
depending on one's ontology and on the metaphysical stuff
constituting the individual in question. (4) Finally, the
•internality' of a force/event/state vis-a-vis P is not
precluded by this force/event/state being itself the causal
product of events, etc. external to p.

In accord with this definition, then, the sun is

 18

w-active vis-a-vis the earth (the earth's temperature) by

virtue of the fact that events within the sun (producing
radiation) cause the earth's temperature to be warm. And
the sun is w-active vis-a-vis the earth's temperature
despite the fact that these motive-events internal to the
sun are themselves ultimately caused by events external to
the sun.

This wider sense of activity will not be the focus of

our quest. We shall not focus on it for three main rea-
sons: first, because the legitimate range of application of
•w-active' is insensitive to the very first-person dis-
tinction we want to draw; second, because given a certain
unclarity as to the boundaries of the referent of 'I',
correctly applying 'w-active* to persons presents serious
difficulties; the third reason has to do with the heart of
my thesis and will have to be postponed.

First, then, 'w-active' fails to pick out just those

events (I speak only of events for simplicity's sake, not
from any ontological preference of events over states,
processes, or what have you) towards which a person (say,
me) is active in a strict sense, because of its indiffer-
ence to the various ways through which I can cause some
events to happen. Even if we take some event that is
clearly 'internal' to me, like the conscious occurrent
belief that my (dead) grandfather stands in front of me, as
 19

the cause of a further extra-bodily event, there is no

guarantee that I was active vis-a-vis this second event.
It may happen that the sudden occurrence of the above
belief causes my dropping a glass of wine, without my
having actively participated in the latter occurrence.
This is enough to show that the range of application of
'w-active' does not coincide with that of 'active' in the
more narrow and interesting sense.

Further, what perhaps comes to the same thing, the

contemplated application of 'w-active' presupposes prior
knowledge of the agent-entity. Only so can the speaker
distinguish the forces that are internal from those that
are external to the agent-entity. But this strategy is
problematic because, while in principle we do possess such
knowledge with regard to ordinary objects, we often lack it
with regard to persons. For instance, in the case of pre-
dicating 'w-active' of the sun it is clear what object is
being referred to by 'sun'. But in the case of my being
w-active vis-a-vis the above dropping of the glass of wine
the referent of 'my' or of *I' is not so clear. Does *I*
refer to this whole body? And if so, does its reference
include every aspect of this mental life — even, say, some
set of artificially induced desires? The point is that
what falls within the sun's confines is, in principle, a
publicly ascertainable fact. What falls within the con-
 20

fines of a person not only is not always publicly ascer-

tainable; it is often not introspectively ascertainable
aside from prior intuitive determination of when one plays
an active role and when one does not. I might after all
share this body with some other 'I', as sometimes happens
in genuine cases of multiple-personality. Were it so, this
body's genuine actions would not all be my actions. And,
therefore, in such unhappy circumstances, the reflexive use
of 'I', by me, would refer to something less than, or dif-
ferent from, this body. The point is that what is me and
what is not-me is in part a function of discriminating
between the behavior that is attributable to me as my acts,
and that behavior not so attributable.
So, perhaps when the behavior of persons is concerned,
it may be appropriate to change, or even reverse, the
strategy used in the application of 'w-activity'. Instead
of identifying a person's acts by first settling the per-
son's confines, we might fix the latter, in part, by sort-
ing out what the person does from what the person under-
goes. Naturally, what does and what does not fall within a
person involves phenomena other than actions. But it also
involves actions. Indeed, if Frankfurt is correct, an
unmistakable sign of a phenomenon's externality to the
person is its being suffered, undergone by the person (H.
Frankfurt argues for this in "Identification and Extern-
 21

ality" included in A. 0 Rorty's The Identities of Persons).

For, what is suffered by a person presumably comes at the
person from some 'outside* force; whereas what is done by
the person originates from within and goes away from the
person (more on this will be said in subsequent chapters).
The obvious objection to this is that ignorance of
the boundaries of the person would preclude knowledge of
whether the person is acting or being acted upon. The
answer to this is that we simply do know in most cases
whether we are acting or not. We do have a first-person
pre-theoretical intuition of the act/event distinction,
though it is subject to some blurriness. This intuition is
based on a certain paradigmatic phenomenological feel of
agency. This 'feel' is, for example, instantiated in my
blowing out the birthday candles, as well as in my trying
to recall a name; it is absent in my difficult breathing
during a surgical operation when I am totally anaesthetiz-
ed, as well as in my snoring while asleep. It is an ex-
perience typically characterized by concentrated attention
and effort. It is that experience that has prompted
countless thinkers to speak of the will, of volition, of
conative faculties, etc. It is that experience that
grounds our sense of power, or accomplishment, and of re-
sponsibility.

Finally, by way of introducing the third and most

 22

fundamental reason against a 'w-active' type of analysis of

a person's active episodes, the following bald statement

will have to suffice for now. W-active accounts are inev-

itably of the event-causal type, and event-causal accounts

of personal activity are, as we will see, inadequate.

Ill

In rejecting a broad third person 'w-active' type of

approach it has been established that:

(1) the action-event distinction is phenomen-

ologically legitimate;

(2) it manifests itself most directly within a

first person context;

(3) it may be epistemically concurrent with, or

even prior to, the establishment of a person's

boundaries.

These conclusions, however, do not take us outside the

phenomenological and epistemic level. We now want to

attempt to advance to the ontological level. That is, we

want to show that the distinction between actions and 'mere

events' is factual or ontological. To do this we must

establish that this distinction is essentially neither

pragmatic, nor epistemic, nor conventional, nor otherwise

'non-realistic'.

Interpreting some phenomenon *non-realistically'

implies the denial that such a phenomenon refers to some

 23

hard 'fact of the matter'. In the case at hand, for exam-

ple, it might be held that while it is practically or
theoretically useful to distinguish acts from 'mere
events', one ought not to infer that acts and mere events
form two species of entities or two 'natural kinds'. Simi-
larly, it might be held that acts are simply ordinary
events peculiarly cognized — seen, as it were, from the
inside. Or it might be held that some events appear as
actions only when considered from within a certain overall
theoretical/practical approach (Cf. Sellars' Manifest
versus Scientific image).

Such 'non-realistic' readings of the distinction at

issue are nothing short of misguided, in the face of the
distinctive phenomenological reality of actions. Let us
look more closely at one hypothetical non-realistic account
of the action/event distinction.
Davidson holds, famously, that no event is intentional
simpliciter, but that only events-under-a-certain-de-
scription can be intentional. Such a thesis could be
amplified (though Davidson does not do so) into the thesis
that no event is an action simpliciter. On this new the-
sis, actions would simply be events described a certain
way, namely, as it were, from the point of view of the
•agent'. For example, an agent A's drinking of some cof-
fee, say, might turn out to be an action under that de-
 24

scription, but not under the description 'A's absorbing

some of America's favorite liquid drug'.
While Davidson might not accept this hypothesized
extension, such an extension might, nonetheless, be tempt-
ing. It, therefore, deserves some comments. According to
it, the proper object being qualified by (or referred to
by) 'activeness', or 'being active', or 'being done',... is
not some event but some event-description. That is why
'A's absorbing some of America's favorite drug' (an event-
description) while referring to the same event referred to
by 'A's drinking of some coffee', fails to suggest refer-
ence to an action. On this view, there are no actions to
be found in the world alongside 'mere events'. All there
are are 'mere events' some of which are 'actively-describ-
ed' .

This view must be rejected. There seem to be no

grounds for it independent of a radical rejection of the
whole first-person realm. Indeed 'A's absorbing some of
America's...' does not suggest reference to an action. But
that is consistent with the referred-event being an action.
Thus, if this is the only argument for such an implausible
view, then we can easily dismiss this view. In the appar-
ent absence of other arguments for it, I will simply beg
the question. If an event, variously referred to, is an
act, what endows it with activeness is not its permitting
 25

an 'active-description'. Surely the reverse is true.

Likewise, activeness-conferral cannot be merely the result
of the social practice of referring to some event in some
action-suggestive manner. Some given 'active description',
and the social practices of using them, must be legitimated
and made accurate, when accurate, by a real 'fact of the
matter'. For example, the events connected with A above
would not be actions were A to be an unconscious automaton,
no matter how such events are actually described either by
A or by anyone else (contra Dennett). And, conversely, my
drinking coffee now is an action regardless of how anyone
around me describes it (I am not sure it would be an action
if I were to sincerely describe it in the same manner I
describe my heart-beatings, but that is a different mat-
ter) . It may be that if x is an action, then the agent
involved in X (A) may be disposed to prefer some descript-
ion of X over others. But the reverse is not true. It is
not sufficient for some event to be an action that there be
some preferred descriptions of it. After all, a non-con-
scious automaton may be programmed to be disposed to de-
scribe its motions a certain way, and to be disposed to
reject other equally correct descriptions of these motions,
without such motions thereby being genuine actions.

If, however, it is a hard fact of the matter that

determines whether an event (however described) is an act-
 26

ion, it must also be granted that this fact is rather

peculiar. It is similar to being in pain. It is epistem-
ically available, in its most vivid, authentic, and direct
form, to the agent alone. Public ascertainment of this
fact depends upon private ascertainment. For an act to be
present, the agent must experience himself/herself propel-
ling and/or sustaining the event in question.

This ushers in a further point. Actions are not

experienced merely as events peculiarly open to the sub-
ject's privileged inspection. They do not constitute an
epistemic category. Indeed, the agent does possess privi-
leged access to his/her actions. But this is true of other
phenomena Ike pains and conscious wants. Thus, the act-
iveness of an act is not exhausted by this privileged
access. What one has access to, when one acts, is not any
ordinary event, but an event that in some sense one exper-
iences as jat least partly produced and/or sustained by
oneself.

What are the grounds for such claims? What could one
say to a skeptic who seriously called both the first-person
reality and the peculiar character of actions into ques-
tion? If the person has already inspected his/her own
experience and finds there no basis for firmly rejecting
any 'non-realistic' construal of the action/event dis-
tinction, then undoubtedly no theoretical considerations
 27

will upset this position. For, this experiential dis-

tinction is as vivid and as fundamental as that holding
between, say, pains and pleasures or between sights and
sound. As such it is not based on grounds. It is felt.

If one were indeed a Humean mind characterized by a

mere succession of impressions and ideas (of passive 'ex-
periences'), then one might legitimately demote acts to,
say, a type of 'impression' like color or pain, but one is
not such a mind. One does not experience 'the doing of
one's deed'; one does them. Even the person who, like
Dostoyevsky's Underground Man, feels somehow totally dis-
sociated from his deeds, does hot experience these latter
as simply happening. His dissociation is based on his
rejection of the motives behind his acts. He would like to
act from no motive whatever. But this kind of motivational
dissociation is quite different from that manifest, for
example, in multiple-personality cases. In the latter
cases one feels that something foreign is performing some
of the deeds associated with one's body/mind. These pro-
cesses, in such cases, constitute someone else's actions.
Hence, cases of this sort are not counterexamples to the
thesis that one cannot experience one's own acts as mere
occurrences.

In most cases, then, one's relationship with the world

is only partly observational and receptive. It is also
 28

creative, energetic, vigorous, strenuous, and, in short,

causal. The changes one directly encounters fall into two
rough categories: those that occur independently of one,
and those that one partly or wholly produces. It is per-
haps logically possible that our experienced activity is
epiphenomenal, and that we are victims of a cosmic joke.
Perhaps activeness is merely a supererogatory, non-essen-
tial feature of some events. But if we are mistaken about
this datum, our faith in anything other than the general
belief that something exists will be seriously undermined.

It is, moreover, important to realize that if we were

to seriously deny the reality of our acts (of events pro-
duced by us) we would also have to relinquish various dear
attitudes and concepts, among which are the sense of self-
worlh, or pride/shame; and the concepts of credit/blame, of
backward-looking responsibility, and of retributive
punishment.

IV
So far the attempt has been to show that the action/-
event distinction is real. But this distinction strikes us
as more impressive than ordinary factual distinctions.
Acts seem to differ from 'mere events' in a more profound
way than, say, tables differ from mountains — though in
each case the difference is real. And this greater depth
does not seem to be merely a function of the greater
 29

generality of the sorts of entities involved in the former

(namely, changes) vis-a-vis those involved in the latter
(namely Aristotelian substances). The difference between
acts and events seems to be of a different order altogeth-
er, and not one of greater generality. The suggestion that
will be advanced here is that this sensed depth of the
act-event distinction is due to its constituting an im-
portant instance of a more general contrast: that of the
Personal versus the non-Personal.

We can bring this out as follows. Tables and mount-

ains, while different sorts of things, are characterized by
common types of features, viz. weight, duration, color,
size, temperature, etc. They are both members of the phy-
sical dimension. Their difference may be termed 'rntra-
dimensional', For it is contained within a set of shared
features. Events and actions, on the other hand, span over
two separate dimensions: the physical and the 'personal'.
Actions are existents that perhaps cannot inhabit the
purely physical realm, for they are characterized essenti-
ally by such properties as consciousness and intentionali-
ty; and perhaps the latter are non-reducible to physical
phenomena. Actions are changes involving persons-in-
their-essentiality, as opposed to changes of person-qua-
physical-beings (or even as opposed to changes of person-
qua-mental-beings, since not all mental events are acts of
 30

the person). While acts and events are both species of the
genus changes, only the former are exclusively person-
changes.
The following diagram may tentatively illustrate how
•dimensions' are related to traditional categories like
substance, property, change, etc.:
Personal ? Non-personal/
Dimension Physical Dimension
.
; »
» ., I, •••— ,._-.
' r—
i —

Substance Persons Sentient non- Physical objects

intentional

creatures
Relation Intention- Causal, spatial,...

al ity,. . .

State Conscious/ Sentient,... Rest, motion,...

intentional

reflexive,.. •

Change Action Sub-intention- •Mere events'

al acts

Property Being respori - Having x mass,...

f
lble for z,. • • •

This diagram is not meant to argue for the reality of 'di-

mensions'. The proposition that there is an ontological
gap between person and objects will be assumed to be true.
Recent support for this proposition can be found in the
 31

works of numerous philosophers among whom figure Nagel,

Strawson, and Frankfurt. Naturally, despite this illus-
trious support this metaphysical thesis remains controver-
sial. However, any serious attempt at defending, say, the
irreducibility of intentionality or of self-consciousness
would require a treatement too extensive to be appropriate
in this project.
At any rate, whether or not the 'Personal' is sui
generis — whether or not it is an independent ontological
dimension — it does seem that it is this kind of picture
that lies at the root of the perceived depth of the gap
between actions and events.

V
Which events are those towards/in which a person is
active? Which events are, for example, my active events?
Certainly not those that involve body-changes directly
provoked by external physical forces over which one neither
has nor has had any control. A simple example of one such
change is my body's forward-fall due to a push from behind.
Similarly, one is not active vis-a-vis psychological
changes directly provoked by external and uncontrolled
physical (or psychological) forces, as in the hypothetical
situation of my feeling a sudden urge to yell-for-help as a
result of artificial brain-stimulation. It would seem,
therefore, that the first defeating condition of a person-
 32

event being active is its being irresistibly caused by some

uncontrolled force (some event) spatially external to one's
body (or, in some different sense, external to one's mind).
An event is not, however, an act simply by virtue of the
absence of this defeating condition. That is, not being
caused by an 'external' force is not sufficient for a
person-event to be active. Plenty of events arising caus-
ally from within one's body are not actions. Heartbeats,
spasms and ordinary dreams are examples of such events.
Indeed, plenty of events surfacing to consciousness 'from
within one's mind' are also not active. One can be perse-
cuted by thoughts, images, desires, etc. Consequently, the
bodily or 'mental' origin of an occurrence is also insuf-
ficient for the occurrence to be an act. Nor is an event's
accessibility to consciousness sufficient for action; for a
spasm as well as an obsessional image obviously satisfy
this requirement without being acts.
Let us abandon the search for the sufficient condi-
tions for action. This will be the focus of the following
chapters. Let us instead investigate the possibility of
some necessary conditions. Is consciousness of an event
necessary for an event's being active? It seems so, at
least if one takes consciousness-of-x as inclusive of non-
focal peripheral awareness. So, for example, cases of my
peripheral awareness of my tapping while I listen to music,
 33

or my breathing heavily while I deliver a speech, will

count as events of which I am conscious, and thus ones
towards which I may be active.
One might propose some counterexamples. What if I
kill X, whom I hate, while sleep-walking, and later have no
recollection of it, but I experience great pleasure in
apprehending of X's death? This killing would certainly be
considered an expression of my desires (my nature), and
hence a kind of self-expression. But would it be an act?
I think not. As evidence for this we might consider your
attitudes toward me, supposing you had all the relevant
knowledge. You would probably not punish me for this kil-
ling. You would, no doubt, dislike me or even blame me,
for being the kind of person I was, namely, one endowed
with such hatred. And if you would blame and punish me, it
would be for my having been responsible for my present
state of hatred. This blame would be based on indirect
responsibility, and not on the killing being a act. And I
too, if free from self-deception, might consider myself
implicated in, and indirectly responsible for, the killing.
Consequently, I might feel remorse. But I would not in-
dict myself for not having refrained from the actual kil-
ling. I would not say "I should have resisted the tempta-
tion to pull the trigger 1", for I would have no co-temporal
control over the killing-process.
 34

Indeed, the killing would not be a random, accidental

occurrence. It would certainly be charged with meaning;
and would, hence, reveal something important about me
(i.e., about my desires). But being expressive of one's
desiring-nature does not suffice to constitute action.
Dreams ordinarily are not acts. They reveal precisely
because they are uncontrolled expressions. Perhaps if one
could control one's dreams, as some claim to be capable of
doing, one would undermine their revealing function. Even
more decisive than dreams are the phenomena of obsessional
thoughts and images. As things one often fights to ex-
punge, these latter are paradigms of mental non-acts. Yet
they are obvious indicators of important concerns.

We must conclude, then, that being self-expressive in

the above sense is not equatable with being an act. Hence,
the thesis that at least peripheral co-temporal conscious-
ness of an event is necessary for the latter's being an
act, still stands. The attempted counterexample of the
somnambulist-killer fails. And it would appear that others
like it will also fail, so long as we focus only on activ-
ity in the narrow sense.

Consciousness might thus constitute the closest thing

to an absolute precondition for action that we are likely
to get. At any rate, we will tentatively proceed on this
assumption. Naturally, saying that conscious apprehension
 35

is necessary for action is rather vague, given the many

senses and degrees of consciousness. Were we to try to
precisely specify its content we should first have to un-
dertake a careful and elaborate discussion of conscious-
ness. Such a discussion falls outside the intention of
this chapter. So, we will have to content ourselves with
the vague, and hence relatively safe, claim that one must
in some sense be aware of a given event, for the event to
be an act. It should be noticed that, in light of the
vagueness of this prerequisite, we are left unable to say
conclusively whether things like ordinary breathing are
active processes.

Let us try to improve our condition by considering a

second possible necessary condition for action: namely,
Davidson's criterion of action. According to Davidson,
every active event is 'intentional under some description'.
Let us cut right to the issue. Are there active events
that are intentional under no description? Consider, for
example, my breathing while I was writing a minute ago.
0'Shaughnessy, for one, argues at length that there are
sub-intentional events of this sort that are acts (The
Will, Vol. 2, ch. 10). He argues that events like idle
tongue-movings, and idle table-tappings, are sub-inten-
tional in that they involve beliefs (and desires) that are
subconceptual, non-propositional, and completely practical.
 36

As such, these latter states cannot give birth to any

intention (why not to some sub-conceptual intention?).
More importantly, he argues that such events are active
because when we turn to attend, then we notice, such ton-
gue-movings, we notice not only that our tongue was moving,
but "we also notice more, viz. the act of moving it and the
fact that were are moving it. ...For one reports that one
became aware, not merely of 'the movement of my tongue',
but also of 'moving my tongue'; and it would be a rare
event, a most unusual though entirely possible event, to
notice that one's tongue was moving of its own accord!"
(The Will, Vol. 2, p. 66).

Now, it is not at all obvious that when I notice that

my tongue is moving, or that my hand is tapping the table
(when, say, these are pointed out to me), I notice that I
was moving my tongue or tapping the table. At least this
is not obvious if we are considering our interesting sense
of 'I'. It is true that I report that I was tapping the
table, whereas I do not report that I was, say, digesting
food or heartbeating. But the attribution of such motions
to me, in my report, is not a sure indication that what I
am reporting is an act. For I also report that I was vo-
miting or that I fell asleep in circumstances when these
latter are not acts, it sounds, indeed, inaccurate to say
that the hand's tapping the table occurred 'of its own
 37

accord'. But it sounds similarly iinaccurate to say that

the vomiting occured 'of its own accord'. For 'of its own
accord' suggests my total non-involvment. Its use creates
the impression that one was merely observing the occurrence
from outside. And, thus, it seems inappropriate to so
describe the relevant breathings and vomitings, for in
neither case is one a mere observer.
We should not conclude that tongue-movings, foot-tap-
pings, and breathings — when non-deliberate and non-at-
tended — are mere occurrences. But there appears to be a
vast difference (in degree of active participation?) be-
tween the non-conscious semi-automatic foot-tapping accom-
panying my listening to music, and the deliberate, con-
scious foot-tapping involved in my trying to disrupt a
musical performance. And, similarly, my breathing a minute
ago is very different from the concentrated Zen-breathing I
sometimes engage in. I do my deliberate breathings and
foot-tappings, and I am fully responsible for them. They
are intended, meant, significant, and memorable. None of
these things apply to their non-conscious counterparts.

Hence, even if we should go along with O'Shaughnessy

and against Davidson in granting that events like non-con-
scious breathings are active phenomena, the activeness of
these events would be of a very primitive sort. These
events are not like full-blown intentional actions, in any
case, in view of these complications we will not adopt
Davidson's criterion to pick out actions. Moreover, I am
not aware of any other plausible necessary condition for
action that is not subject to similar doubts and object-
ions. Let us therefore halt the quest for any other such
conditions.
One result of this investigation is that the active/
passive realm, relative to events arising from within the
body or mind, does not display clear cut borders. It man-
ifests at least the following classes:
Full-blown Possible Internally
intentional sub-intentional caused
actions acts mere events
(1) My trying to My breathing My snoring whi
recall what I had heavily when asleep
for lunch two speaking before
days ago a group

(2) My raising My tapping the My vomiting

my arm to wave table while
goodbye reading in the 1
library
However, even if necessary, the postulation of some hybrid
middle class(es) does not require us to deny the vast on-
tological (and dimensional) difference between the types o
 39

phenomena falling on the left and those types falling on

the right side of the above continuum. After all, an ana-

logous difference obtains between humans and crabs. It

obtains partly in virtue of the fact that (most) humans are

endowed v/ith full-blooded consciousness, whereas crabs

presumably lack all consciousness. And it obtains despite

the fact that there may be species of animals that can be

treated neither as fully conscious nor as utterly non-con-

scious.

While, therefore, we may not be able to neatly separ-

ate active from 'mere' events, action can still be held to

represent a distinctive ontological category.

VI

Where within an active episode is activity or active-

ness located? For instance, given an episode of a person's

occurrent attempt to remember an old acquaintances's name,

where exactly in this episode lies the activeness? What is

the active element in such an episode? Philosophers, when

concerned with action, have generally offered three types

of answers:

(1) the active element is an event-type (or tokens

of that type) always present as a constituent

in every action (e.g., o'Shaughnessy's 'striv-

ing') .

(2) the active element is some event-token couched

 40

in a certain peculiar causal nexus — i.e., any

event caused in a certain specific way by
certain specific psychological occurrences (or
states). (Some form of this view is held by
Goldman, and perhaps by Davidson).
(3) the active element is the person whose states,
in the process of action, undergo some change.
In the next chapters different versions of these answers
will be discussed in detail. For now I want to offer some
comments by way of preface.

Answer-type (2) may be read in a number of ways:

(a) any token-event caused in a 'proper manner' by
a certain appropriate psychological complex
state/event (e.g., a set of beliefs and
desires) will acquire the property of 'active-
ness' .
(b) any causal chain of events including a set of
(occurent?) beliefs and desires, and some
resulting change in the person, will simply
constitute as a whole an action, without
any of its members being active by themselves
or in themselves.
(c) any causal chain of the type outlined in (b)
will be conventionally defined as an action.
That is, a compound of this sort takes the
 41

name of 'action* with no implication as to the

emergence of a new ontological property (the
property of activeness).
For reasons allready mentioned, the (c)-version of (2) will
be disregarded. Both the remaining versions propose that
activeness is a sort of emergent property created by a
peculiar causal interaction of some specific occurrences.
That is, no type of event is treated such that every token
of it displays intrinsic activeness. Finally, answer-type
(3) — the one that will ultimately be defended — proposes
that activeness is an intrinsic, irreducible property. But
is it not fundamentally an event-property, it is, rather,
a property of a substantial entity: of a self or person.
This answer rejects the premise that activity is located
within some event-causal context involving certain states
of a person and certain resulting object-events, instead,
the activeness of an active episode is seen to reside
within the person, or in direct personal causation — in
short, it lies in a person's agent-causing the event in
question.
 42

CHAPTER TWO:
THE EVENT-CAUSAL THEORY

I
The most widely accepted theory or analysis of inten-
tional (and sub-intentional) action is the event-causal
theory. In this chapter this theory (or cluster of theor-
ies) will be closely scrutinized in an attempt to disclose
some of its serious shortcomings. If this attempt suc-
ceeds, it will constitute indirect support for our subse-
quent 'person-causal' view of action.

On event-causal accounts, a physical or psychological

movement/change of a person P will count as one of p's
actions only upon its being caused 'in the right way' by a
set of P's beliefs/desires. This analysis is meant to
apply to both basic and non-basic actions (if this dis-
tinction has any merit). Versions of this view are en-
dorsed by Donald Davidson, Brian O'Shaughnessy, and Alvin
Goldman, among others. Its various exponents disagree on
many of the details. For example, there is disagreement as
to whether the causal connection between belief/desire
clusters and their object-event is mediated by some other
type of event (an intention or a volition/striving).
Moreover, at least one theorist (O'Shaughnessy) does not
really mean to offer an analysis of the active element in
 43

actions, since he thinks that a series of events can form

an action only through an essentially active striving-event
linking desires and intended changes. Other points of
disagreement will surface in the subsequent examination.
Nonetheless, despite internal squabbles, proponents of this
view agree that to offer an adequate philosophical account
of the phenomenon of intentional action, only two elements
are ultimately needed: (1) events (types or tokens) occur-
ring within, or to, a person; and (2) event-causation. Not
much may rest on the notion of events. But these theorists
prefer to have events as the purported causes of action so
as to be able to explain the temporal specificity of
actions. In any case, each theory in this cluster purports
to offer a sub-personal — though not sub-intentional in
Dennett's sense — analysis of action. That is, no person
simpliciter — as opposed to person-events or person states
— is mentioned in these analyses. Moreover, the propo-
nents of this type of theory are not seriously disturbed by
the determinism presupposed, I think, by their accounts.
It is assumed that somehow, despite such determinism, human
free actions abound. This chapter attempts to show that
this type of position has many difficulties.

II
First of all, event-causal accounts seem to be of two
general sorts: analyses and theories. Analyses are event-
 44

causal explanations of action that profess to appeal ex-

clusively to non-active elements. Desire, belief, intent-
ion, event-causation are the favored examples of non-active
elements. Analyses attempt to show that the active or
voluntary aspect of action (its essential feature) emerges
from, and may reduce to, certain types of non-active events
causally related in a suitable manner. Theories, on the
other hand, are event-causal explanations that take the
active component of action to be primitive and unanalyz-
able. Because they are event-causal explanations, they
must attribute this primitive property to some event —
type or token. Both analyses and theories will be found
implausible. In particular, analyses will be found to be
either question-begging or impossible. Theories will be
found either to be non-explanatory or to appeal to seem-
ingly contradictory notions.

Ill
Let us begin by examining the proposed elements con-
stituting an intentional action according to any event-
causal account. This examination will be conducted with an
eye toward the plausibility of the presumed relations
amongst these elements. The following diagram should cap-
ture the causal arrangement of the principal elements as
conceived by event-causal views:
 45

Proper causal path

Events- ( ) > Intended
(occurrent beliefs/ action/event
desires of a person)
If correct, this diagram suggests that at least three com-
ponents are involved in the emergence or production of an
action, according to the view in question. One is the
motivational component, sometimes described as the rational
cause, or as the primary reasons. It basically involves
some cognitive/attitudinal, or simply some belief/desire,
cluster. The second component is the causation itself;
that is, the correct causal path linking the 'primary
reasons' with the intended event. The third component is
the causal consequent, i.e., the event that is supposed to
be both the effect and the intentional object of the moti-
vational cluster.

If one's model of the motives-to-action process is

that of an Aristotelian piece of practical reasoning, say,
then the intended event will be that which is the object of
the 'conclusion' of this reasoning. Consider this example:
(1) I want to humiliate Q.

(2) I believe that by spilling coffee on his new

suit I will humiliate Q.

(3) Therefore, I should/shall spill coffee on his

suit.
 46

The 'conclusion' of this primitive reasoning is (3); and

the object-event of this conclusion is my spilling coffee

on his suit.

We will now examine each of the three proposed ele-

ments in turn. Each element will be studied in light of

the needs of both analyses (principally) and theories. We

will discover that what is required of each of these ele-

ments by event-causal accounts is subject to powerful ob-

jections.

IV

Let us begin by focusing on the third element of the

above tripartite division — namely, that at which desires

and beliefs (and intentions) aim and, if successful, pro-

duce. The candidates that come to mind for this double

role of intentional object and causal product of the ap-

propriate belief/desire set-type are the following:

(A) An action of a certain type.

(B) An event of a certain type.

(C) Both an action and an event of corresponding

types.

Let us briefly consider each of these alternatives.

***

(A): If (A) is chosen, the resulting account cannot be

an analysis. It can however be a theory. But if a theory,

it will not be one that will shed much light on action

 47

itself.
Let us consider what might be theoretically accom-
plished by choosing (A) as the object and product of a
relevant belief/desire set. One might, in choosing (A),
offer a successful analysis of the intentional component of
an intentional action. One might for example, succeed in
articulating what it takes for some belief/desire cluster
to rationalize an action. Or, alternatively, one's choice
of (A) may occur in the course of theorizing about what it
takes for some causal consequence of one's basic action to
be itself one's action.

Davidson seems to offer an account aimed in part at

answering these kinds of questions. He thinks that no
ontological distinction exists between basic and non-basic
actions. For him every action is basic, though any such
action can be described in various ways. One such mode of
description involves mention of some of its consequences.
That is, he thinks philosophers confuse non-basic acts with
non-basic descriptions of acts (Davidson, "Agency", esp.
pp. 60-61 in his Essays on Actions and Events). He states:
"We never do more than move our bodies: the rest is up to
nature" (Essays..., p. 59). Thus for Davidson there is no
project of explaining the relation between those actions P
does primitively, and those p does by doing something else.
One of his central projects, however, is the attempt to
 48

explain how an action, as the causal product of a relevant

belief/desire cluster, can be intentional and caused. This
approach presupposes that the causal product of belief/
desire clusters, in the right circumstances, is an action,
and not some mere event. That is, he treats action as a
primitive unanalyzable phenomenon (as we whall see, he
rejects agent-causality). He seems, thus, to choose option
(A) above.

As stated before, an event-causal account that appeals

to some active basic element is a theory. Clearly, then,
Davidson's account is a theory. Note, however, that for
our purposes it is an explanatorily vacuous kind of theory.
For, if one of the terms used to explain the complex of
action is action itself, then nothing interesting has been
said regarding the make-up of action. This is not neces-
sarily a criticism of Davidson, since his main interest
does not lie on action itself but on the intentionality of
action. Intentionality might, of course, be essential to
action. But even so, this would explain action only if it
were made clear in the explicans that something other than
action (e.g., a mere event) emerges as the action through
intentional causation. More will be said on this ahead.

The overall point to be made here is, again, that if

one takes (A) as the object and product of the proper
belnef/desire set, then one can at most offer an event-
 49

causal theory. And Davidson's is one such theory. One

cannot, in choosing (A) , offer an analysis of action.
***

Let us now turn to a proponent of option (B): namely,

Goldman. Goldman, a firm believer in basic acts, seems to
think that the object of the belief/desire causation, in
the context of a basic action, is an event. He states.
When shall we say that a person has exemplified the
property of raising his hand, rather than merely having
it rise?... in order for S's raising his hand to be a
basic act-token, his raising his hand must be caused by
wants and beliefs of the agent. (A. Goldman, A Theory of
Action, p. 71).
and again,
If S's coughing (at t) is to be a basic act-token, as
opposed to something S merely undergoes... S's coughing
(at t) must be caused...by an appropriate set of wants
and beliefs. (Ibid., p. 71)
These passages indicate that some peculiar types of move-
ments (namely, those that fall within the reach of a per-
son's will) can as tokens be either acts or mere events.
That is, a movement-token of such a type does not in itself
possess a different character when it is an act-token as
opposed to when it is not. What makes it an act-token,
what endows it with its active status, is a distinctive
mode of origin. Only within the appropriate causal-inten-
tional nexus does a property-exemplification by/in a person
count as an act. It seems that Goldman, therefore, offers
this part of his account as an analysis of action (though
 50

in other contexts he seems to transgress this analysis, as

when he speaks of desires as causing actions).

Here we must pause a moment. It should have been

noticed that ascribing on the one hand an analysis to
Goldman, and on the other a theory to Davidson, is somewhat
vague. This vagueness can be exposed through the following
questions: "What prevents the intentional object and causal
product of an appropriate belief/desire cluster from being
both an event and an action? Why can the event not be an
act simply in virtue of being caused in a certain way by
such an intentional cluster?"

These questions need closer scrutiny. First, it

should be clear that when we talk of an event's being an
act by virtue of a specific causal genesis, we cannot be
saying merely that it is a conventional linguistic practice
to call such an event an act. Rather, as has already been
argued in the last chapter, if the event in question is
truly an act, its 'activeness* must be a real property; and
the person involved may/must experience this property. So,
the key question above now becomes: "Why can the activeness
of that event caused and 'intended* by the appropriate
belief/desire set not be an emergent property triggered by
this intentional causation?" If it can, then the resulting
act will be an event, since every act is an event. More-
over, the property 'activeness* characterizing this event
 51

will itself be triggered via its peculiar causation.

If such were the case, Goldman, for example, could say
that a token-event of an appropriate type will be 'active'
just in case its causal antecedents satisfy certain re-
quirements. This, however, will not do. On this view the
causal antecedents above-mentioned would not cause or 'in-
tend' a mere event; and they certainly would not cause a
mere event which subsequently becomes invested with the
property of activeness. These antecedents would instead
cause an act — for an act simply is an active event.
Consequently, Goldman's position so interpreted would take
on Davidsonian features. As such, his view would no longer
be an analysis of action. It would become a t h e o r y — and
a non-explanatory one at that.
On this would-be theory, the appropriate belief/desire
cluster could cause an act (i.e., an event endowed with an
active-property). If so, the act would become logically
divorced form beliefs and desires. It would turn into an
entity complete unto itself. That is, beliefs and desires
would no longer be necessary for an event to be_ an act.
Consequently, whether every act is caused and intended in
the way this event-causal theory affirms would become an
empirical question. Once an act is advanced as an event
endowed with a special non-relational property, then it
must be shown that every act is caused in a certain char-
 52

acteristic way. This is important because the sort of

Davidsonian theory now considered would no longer be of-
fering a logical or ontological explanation of action. It
would at most offer a causal explanation of acts. But even
this it can do only if it can show that acts must be caused
by certain peculiar intentional clusters. What precludes
acts being caused by other sorts of things? What precludes
their being altogether non-caused? Clearly if this
Davidsonian theory explains action at all, it must justify
the claim that belief-desire causation is necessary for the
emergence of action.

Suppose one objects that on the view under consider-

ation an act simply is [an-event-plus-an-emergent-active-
event-property caused and intended by a specific belief/
desire cluster]. To this we should reply, first, that this
identity-claim has not been substantiated. More import-
antly, we should point out that the causal and 'intention-
al' clause of this attempted identity-claim is superfluous.
Saying that an act is an event-plus-an-emergent-active-
event-property is all that is necessary for the identifi-
cation.

Finally, this Davidsonian theory presumes that the

active event-property is an emergent property caused by
beliefs and desires, or clusters thereof. However, simply
put for now, the active property of the act-events we
 53

experience does not feel like a passive (caused) emergent

property. By its very nature, qua active, it seems not to
be a caused emergence. More will be said on this ahead.
The upshot of these remarks is that although we might
interpret Goldman's view in a Davidsonian way, we should
not do so. Were we to do so, his view would turn into a
theory according to which the intentional and causal object
of belief/desire sets is the act itself; and such a theory
would leave action unanalyzed. We will, therefore, assume
henceforth that Goldman's view is indeed an analysis. We
will, that is, assume that for Goldman the intentional and
the causal object of the appropriate belief/desire clusters
is a mere event. This might imply that the active property
of acts is not real; or it may imply that it supervenes
upon the entire causal chain; or it may imply something
else. In any case, we will now attempt to expose other
difficulties one encounters if one takes this analytic
route.

Let us suppose, then, that on Goldman's view the

intentional object of a belief/desire action-cluster is a
'mere event'. The chief difficulty with this supposition
is obvious. It contradicts our normal and, it would seem,
correct intuition that act-desires are desires-to-do some-
thing. In fact, they are normally desires to do something
in order to achieve some goal not attainable at will. One
 54

does not desire, say, that one's arm go up. One does not

desire that a signaling event involving oneself happen.

One wants to raise one's hand, or to signal, or to signal

by raising one's hand. Likewise, the beliefs involved in

action-circumstances are of the type 'belief-that-if-l-do-x

y will occur*, or 'belief that I can do y by doing x'.

This is even more so for intentions. So it would seem that

in action contexts one desires, believes, and intends some

act (type or token) and not some bodily (or extra-bodily)

event. This would explain the tendency on the part of

Goldman, and of others in this area, seemingly to violate

the canons of their official analyses and to speak in the

more natural mode of desiring and intending to do x or y.

There is, or course, nothing objectionable about taking

actions as the objects of beliefs/desires if one's project

is explaining how basic actions are related to non-basic

actions, or how actions can be intentional, or even how

reasons can be causes. But if one hopes to elucidate what

it takes for an event to be a basic act, then one cannot do

both of the following:

(1) rest such an elucidation on the person-event

being allegedly caused by a belief/desire set,

and

(2) retain the act as the object of the same

beliefs and desires.

 55

To do so would be to drive a wedge between what beliefs/

desires aim at in action contexts, and what they actually
cause. It would be to view the final basic-act-desire (or
intention) in a piece of practical reasoning as intention-
ally reaching out to an act (e.g., wanting to pick up a
book to read it), while actually causing an occurrence
(e.g., the book's being grasped...). This would not be an
instance of the ordinary descrepancy between the relatively
remote object of one's original desire (wanting to become
cultured) and the immediately attainable object of the
desire resulting from practical reasoning (wanting to read
this book). Rather, the discrepancy implied by the Goldman
analysis would be more radical. It would involve one's
misconstruing the proper object of so-called 'act-desires'
(or of intentions). Consequently, such mediating desires
(intentions) would never hit their target.

Taking acts as being simply ordinary events endowed

with a special causal history is, therefore, incompatible
with the natural intuition that the desires (and beliefs
and intentions) resulting from practical reasoning aim at
actions. But such desires do aim at actions. When, say,
on the basis of some (possibly implicit) piece of practical
reasoning one decides that leaving an irritating conversa-
tion is desirable, one does not merely want one's body to
move miraculously away from the scene. One does not merely
 56

want this event to occur. One wants to author this exit.

And this consideration seems to me to be decisive. There-
fore, analyses face a real problem. We will discover that
this is not an isolated problem. But let us for now
briefly focus on alternative (C) above regarding the causal
and intentional object of belief/desire sets.
***

(C): this, let us recall, is the view that the inten-

tional object and causal product of the relevant belief/
desire cluster is both an event and an act. We have seen
that Davidson's view could be taken as an example of (C).
But we also found that particular view to be non-explana-
tory. Let us, therefore, consider another type of theory
that seems to embrace (C): O'Shaughnessy's dual-aspect
theory of action. In his recent monumental work, The Will,
he argues elaborately and forcefully for the thesis that
the immediate object of the motivating factors in action
(beliefs/desires) is both a (basic) act and the mere event
with which part of this act is identical (The Will, Vol. 2,
pp. 278-280). His very interesting view is that in the
unique phenomenon of physical action the mental and the
physical come into contact. They come into a focal union.
On his view, the single event aimed at and causally pro-
duced by, say, a desire to raise one's arm to signal (via
intention and striving-events), is both a psychological
 57

raising of one's arm, and (in part) a physical arm rise.

This view obviously is not an analysis of action. His
account is distinguished precisely by explicit ontological
commitment to an element, an event, purported to be essen-
tially active, despite its purported causal necessitation.
For O'Shaughnessy, whenever tokens of those problematic
event-types that can be either acts or mere events are in
fact acts, they will be acts by virtue of some 'hidden'
features. A hand-rise will be an act because of its sur-
prising identity with part of a special mental change of
state (viz., a striving event).

This theory will be discussed in more detail later.

For now let us simply note a possible significant similar-
ity between it and Davidson's view. The latter was found
non-explanatory because it proposed that the action itself
was ontologically distinct from the elements that could
possibly do the explaining — beliefs, desires, intentions.
On O'Shaughnessy's more complex view, in contrast, the
central explanatory element — the striving — is presumed
to be internally related to the action. Indeed it is not
made altogether clear whether the striving is the action.
In this case the 'internal' relation would simply be iden-
tity, and if so, the view would collapse into a Davidsonian
type. But the action might be interpreted, with some
plausibility, as that part of the striving that is ident-
 58

ical with the physical 'mere event*. If this is the case,

then it is conceivable that this theory is somehow explan-
atory of action. At any rate, we will not speculate on how
it might be, for we will find that the theory is subject to
more obvious objections. With this in mind we whall simply
concede that this view is not explanatorily vacuous.
In general, theories that embrace option (C) must deal
with the charge that they say nothing about the nature of
action itself, as opposed to its causes. It is not clear
how they can answer this charge. Naturally, the task such
theories pose for themselves might make such a charge
irrelevant. Thus, if the task is to explain what makes an
action intentional, then it might be unnecessary to explore
the prior issue of what makes an event an action. But this
latter issue is our issue, and it is unlikely that theories
embracing (C) will say anything interesting on it.

The overall conclusion of this examination of the

third component of our initial tripartite division of an
action — the intended and consequent event — is that
virtually every alternative construal of this component
lands one in difficulties.
V
Let us now turn to the requirements of event-causal
views in regard to the first component of the above divi-
sion — namely, the motivating element. This is the key
 59

element on event-causal accounts. A thorough examination

of it would, naturally, constitute an immense enterprise.
Our concern will be rather restricted. We will be guided
by a specific critical purpose. We will first attempt to
specify the character of the motivating element required by
event-causal views in general, and by a Goldman-type ana-
lysis in particular; and then we will assess whether the
facts correspond to such theoretical requirements.

What, then, must be the nature of this motivating

element according to event-causal accounts of action? The
first obvious constraint on the character of these causal
progenitors of act-events is that they must not involve, or
be, elements that are in themselves active. This is re-
quired for at least two reasons. One reason is that a
causal account of action appealing to active causal pro-
genitors of the intended event could not be an analysis of
action, as we have already seen. A second likely reason is
that if these causal antecedents were active, one could not
offer an analysis of 'being free to do x' in terms of some
causal conditional of the form 'A would do x, if A V'd so
and so', where 'V' by hypothesis stands for some activity-
verb (e.g., to will, to judge). For, such an analysis
would be open to the damaging regress-generating question
'Is A free to V?', and hence the problem of freedom would
simply be relocated at a lower level. (Cf. Davidson's
 60

Essays..., p. 68). Yet such a causal-conditional analysis

of freedom is dearly desired by event-causal theorists, for
it promises to make freedom compatible with event-causal
deterministic explanations of actions. Hence the need for
causal antecedents of act-events that are non-active, it
would seem that by having belief/desire sets as the causal
generators of act-events, one satisfies both of the above
requirements. One is enabled to offer both an analysis of
basic action, and a non-question begging analysis of free-
dom. After all, it would seem that desires (taken ex-
tremely broadly to incorporate values, goals, attitudes,
emotions) and beliefs (taken to embrace both practical and
theoretical or propositional knowledge), are not things of
a sort that can be actively and directly generated. How-
ever, as we will see, the matter is not so simple and clear
cut.

The causal theorist must start by sorting out differ-

ent types of desires and beliefs, for not every type of
desire/belief can play the causal role required by the
event-causal account. The very title assigned to this
theory indicates that the producers of action must be
event-like. The causation involved in action occurs among
individual events. We are, however, accustomed to think of
desires and beliefs as attitudes or dispositions. Goldman
for one, therefore, draws a distinction between standing
 61

and occurrent wants and beliefs (A Theory of Action, pp.

86-91). Standing wants/beliefs are propensities to have
occurrent wants/beliefs. Occurrent wants/beliefs are
datable conscious events. Having an occurrent want is, for
Goldman, having "an occurrent thought of x as attractive,
nice, good, etc., a favorable regarding, viewing, or taking
of the prospect of x" (Goldman, p. 94). And similarly,
Goldman thinks, having an occurrent belief is consciously
assenting or affirming some proposition or thought, as in
assenting to the proposition that 7+4=11 (Goldman, p. 87).

Example: I have — and have had for a considerable

period of time — a want to take a trip to some exotic
place. Moreover, I have this desire despite the fact that
I have not been aware of, and that I have not felt, such a
desire for many days. But I have been aware of, and felt,
it on many occasions in the past, and no doubt will do so
again in the future. Such a want is a standing want. As
such it is in no position, or so it seems, to really cause
(in the ordinary non-Freudian way) a token action-movement
of mine. The latter is a singular occurrence and as such
can only be caused by other singular occurrences. On the
other hand, a thought-like episodic expression of this
standing want initially would seem to be able to cause the
movements involved in, say, my calling a friend on whom to
vent my frustration (at being unable to afford such a
 62

trip). It might, that is, do so in partnership with vari-

ous beliefs.
That such episodic desires and/or beliefs are neces-
sary for any event-causal view would seem very plausible.
But before we can treat event-causal views as committed to
this thesis we must deal with a possible objection. It
might be thought that mental episodes of the type illus-
trated by the above 'episodic' want should not be called
wants and beliefs. With respect to beliefs, at least, the
objection might be made plausible. For, it may be claimed
that beliefs are essentially dispositional states. One can
entertain thoughts or propositions at specific times. But
these episodes do not as such constitute 'having beliefs'
of any kind. One can both entertain a proposition and
assent to it. Such an episode, however, might be taken to
consitute at most the acquiring of, or the coming to have,
a belief. Thus here instead of speaking of an occurrent
belief it might seem more felicitous to speak of a belief-
acquisition. In other cases where no new beliefs is
acquired one might, on this alternative conception, speak
of belief-manifestations. That is, the occurrence of a
thought that p, originating causally from the appropriate
underlying dispositional belief that p (and thus perhaps
accompanied by some assent-indicator) might be thought of
as a case of belief-manifestation. On this view, admit-
 63

tedly, the underlying disposition cannot be treated as the

direct event-cause of the occurrent thought. But, con-
ceivably, while the thought that p needs to be triggered
off by some other mental event m, such a triggering might
be possible only because the person involved in m already
has the relevant underlying dispositional belief that p.
That is, m would be a change of state of a person who
believes dispositionally that p. Believing dispositional^
that p would thus be a kind of necessary condition for the
thought that p to occur. Had the person not had this
belief, everything else about him/her remaining constant,
the occurrence of m would not have triggered off the oc-
currence of the thought that p, because m itself would have
been different (in a causally relevant way).

Here is an analogy: the event of this wine glass fal-

ling on the floor (from such and such a height, in such and
such an atmosphere, ...) may cause the shattering of the
glass; but only by virtue of the fact that (among others,
such as that the glass was distant from the floor; that the
gravitational pull...) the glass was highly brittle. Thus,
the glass being brittle does not as such cause its shat-
tering. Rather, it is the fall of the (brittle) glass that
causes its shattering. The brittleness of the glass was a
necessary condition for the fall to cause the glass-shat-
tering only in the sense that the fall of this glass would
 64

have been different (would have been another event) had the
glass not been brittle. So, just as the glass being brit-
tle is one, among many, causally relevant features (vis-a-
vis the glass-breaking event) of this particular glass-
falling event, by being a feature of the particular whose
states or properties change; so too the person's disposi-
tional belief that p is a causally relevant feature of the
particular m-event in question, by being a feature of the
person-particular whose states change. It too is one among
many other features of the event m (e.g., other beliefs
perhaps) that are causally relevant vis-a-vis the occur-
rence of the subsequent thinking-that-p event. To speak of
causally relevant properties (as opposed to causes which
can only be events) is to speak of features that go into,
or are used in, predictive explanatory laws — explanatory
in the sense that they permit us to fit particular events
into familiar regular patterns. At any rate, the upshot of
this view is the claim that dispositional beliefs can play
a causal role without being causes — without being events.
Such a view, if correct, would preempt the need for oc-
current beliefs. And perhaps a similar account would
render otiose the conception of occurrent desires.

Without going into numerous complications, let us

briefly notice two decisive objections against this account
of the causal role of beliefs (and desires) in action.
 65

Suppose that person P notices at t that it is 2:00 P.M..

Upon the occurrence of this noticing-event P leaves every-
thing and runs out because of his dispositional belief that
every afternoon at 2:30 P.M. he is supposed to be at the
gym, and because of his dispositional desire to fulfill his
commitments. Compare this to the glass-shattering case.
The direct cause of the glass shattering is its falling
down. The direct cause of P's running out is some non-
belief non-desire event m — namely a noticing-event. The
fall of the glass 'activates' its brittleness without the
latter disposition manifesting itself in an event-form.
And, similarly, the noticing-event 'activates' P's relevant
beliefs and desires without the latter, by hypothesis,
turning event-like. But, then, whatever the merit in aid-
ing understanding and what not possessed by appeals to
specific belief/desire complexes, on the ontological level
beliefs and desires do not cause actions. Only events
cause other events, and actions are a species of events.
Therefore, actions are not caused by belief/desire com-
plexes. The latter are only necessary conditions for the
action. Interpreting occurrent beliefs and desires as
belief/desire manifestations seems thus to undermine
event-causal accounts of action. For a belief/desire com-
plex will never be sufficient (given a person in a condi-
tion otherwise favorable toward satisfying the various
 66

intended acts of that complex) to prompt such an act. As

Davidson recognizes, such a complex will always need a
thought, or some other triggering mental occurrence
(Davidson, Essays..., pp. 11-14). Moreover, this belief/
desire complex will be unable on its own to cause this
prior mental occurrence. So, on this theory of the causal
role of (dispositional) beliefs and desires, one's inten-
tional actions turn out to be more accidental and haphazard
than is often the case. For on this theory intentional
acts always depend on non-desire/belief mental triggers (we
are assuming things like noticings to constitute mental
triggerings). One would always be called to characterize
one's intentional actions in the following formulation: "I
did x because it occurred to me that p...".

Now, it is clear that at least some of our actions do

not depend upon such episodic realizations. One does not
in many cases have to take measures to ensure that a cer-
tain thought, or any other mental occurrence, occur at t
for an intentional action (one 'caused' by some belief/
desire complex) to be carried out at t+1. Doing what we
want to do, etc., when we do jjt is sometimes 'within our
direct control'. On the event-causal model an act's 'being
within one's control' translates into its resulting di-
rectly from one's beliefs and desires. In such cases,
then, we would not have to await further mental stirrings.
 67

If I lie sun-bathing on a beach invested with be-

liefs/desires sufficient for me to have the temporally in-
definite intention to eventually enter the water, it is not
necessary that at some particular time t I be called by a
friend, or that the heat just then reach some oppressive
threshold, or that I realize at t that it is getting late,
or that any other triggering mental event occur, for me to
get up at t and jump in the water (i.e., for my getting-
up-event to be 'caused' by some belief/desire set).

A Davidsonian will no doubt reply that without a

trigger of some sort I would never intentionally get up.
Perhaps we would reach a stalemate here. At any rate I
will not press this point because there is a more direct
and decisive consideration weighing against the disposi-
tional account of beliefs and desires. This latter con-
sists of the fact that we often experience occurrent be-
liefs and desires. That is, we often experience beliefs
and desires that are occurrent in the sense that they oc-
cupy our consciousness for a brief period of time (as op-
posed to being occurrent in the sense of necessarily in-
volving internal changes). For example, many perceptual
beliefs and many biological need-desires are experienced or
felt during a short and specific span of time; and they are
not usually manifestations of any underlying disposition or
attitude. One may resist calling my present awareness that
 68

there is a coin on the table a 'belief — one may insist

that it is merely a noticing-event, and that 'belief ought
to be applied to the state this event results in (even if a
short-duration). But this seems no more than verbal quib-
bling. What counts for us is that only such short-duration
states are in fact, even for Davidson, the causes of our
'acts'. So, we shall go along with Goldman's conception of
occurrent beliefs and desires as the direct causes of act-
events.
***

The first requirement of the event-causal theory (ig-

noring for the moment the problems connected with the ap-
parent discrepancy between 'intended object' and caused
result of belief/desire clusters) is, thus, the supposition
that some forms of beliefs and desires (pro-attitudes) are
event-like. Indeed, many rather abstract beliefs (e.g.,
that there is a God) and desires (e.g., to find happiness)
may play an important role in a person' behavior without
ever being felt or given assent to at specific times. But,
then, these 'overarching' desires and beliefs are only
indirectly efficacious. That is, they influence or produce
specific action only through more focused 'subsidiary'
beliefs and desires. Thus, for example, the belief in God
may result in, or may involve, the belief that God ordains
certain rules and that one should not violate such God-
 69

ordained rules. And these latter subsidiary beliefs may

indeed find occurrent manifestations that may contribute to
the causation of certain actions (or abstentions). Like-
wise with abstract desires (long range goals and life-com-
mitments) .
***

The next issue is whether the conscious occurrent

desires and beliefs involved in actions must be expressly
propositional — must have as content (in more than a
purely practical sense) some proposition that is endorsed
(in beliefs) or some proposition whose object-event is
judged and considered attractive/desirable (in desires).
If so, express possession and use of (often) theoretical
concepts is required. One cannot desire to go to the bank
if one does not possess the concept 'bank'. It will be
assumed that while for many desires and beliefs the pos-
session of theoretical concepts (requiring linguistic
mastery) is necessary, this is not so for every belief and
desire. Young infants and many animals have various be-
liefs and desires, that may jointly produce various behav-
ior, despite their subject's lacking mastery of a language.
Therefore, beliefs and desires need not be expressly pro-
positional .
***

Let us consider a third possible requirement. Daniel

 70

Dennett and others (Baier, de Sousa) distinguish between

'beliefs' and 'opinions'. The distinction rests on the
supposed claim that 'opinions' alone originate out of some
prior affirmation, assent, or endorsement by their bearer-
person (D. Dennett, Brainstorms, pp. 304-309). 'Opin-
ions' , that is, are said to originate out of an act of
making up one's mind or of changing one's mind. Goldman
himself, as we have seen, goes even further and states that
every occurrent belief is accompanied by, and indeed es-
sentially characterized by, such an assent.

If these philosophers are correct, a number of things

follow. The first, and for us somewhat incidental, impli-
cation would be that 'opinions' are the exclusive property
of adult, linguistically able persons. 'Opinions' are,
allegedly, those beliefs to which, via one's assent, one
becomes committed, and for which one becomes responsible
(Cf. Heidegger and Sartre). And, clearly, one basis for
our being reponsible for a belief is its having been in-
vited in our collection through our assent or endorsement.
In any case, 'Opinions' must be beliefs of which we are in
some sense conscious. This higher-order consciousness,
however, may be sufficient to distinguish adult persons
from infants and animals. Perhaps Frankfurt and others are
right in not relying upon the notion of assent to validate
the person/animal distinction.
 71

The second, more disturbing implication of the above

thesis regarding 'opinions' is this: if, as seems plaus-
ible, some of our beliefs (of the more intellectual sort)
are acquired and/or maintained via a conscious measuring
and balancing of alternatives and, hence, via a kind of
occurrent endorsement (hence via a decision and an act),
then event-causal analyses of action face a major logical
difficulty. Before this difficulty is displayed let us
consider the staus of the antecedent of the conditional
just mentioned.
Are any of our beliefs acquired/maintained through a
conscious decision/endorsement? It seems so. It seems to
happen, for example, in the case of a wealthy man who con-
cludes, after some painful deliberation, that his wealth is
undeserved (a conclusion that may directly lead to taking
the first steps towards giving away his property). More-
over, this affirming, endorsing process is generally mani-
fest in Cartesian-type projects where one tests one's un-
examined beliefs so as to genuinely 'take control' and
become committed to some of them. On a more 'existential'
scale, the reality of this phenomenon finds confirmation in
Heidegger's notion of 'authenticity'. According to
Heidegger, in fact, a truly authentic person makes his/her
choice-guiding values and motives (beliefs/desires) his/her
own by a deliberate assessment and endorsement of them.
 72

Suppose, then, that some of our beliefs are acquired

and perhaps maintained through either a one-time act or
through repeated, if more implicit, assenting acts. This
in itself would not create problems for the belief/desire
analysis of action. Indeed if these sophisticated beliefs
themselves involve an active component, then they cannot be
used to provide an analysis of activity. However, this
higher-order assenting activity might itself be analyzed in
terms of causation by beliefs and desires, one problem
with this suggestion is that it seems to lead to a vicious
infinite regress. Consider, for example, the first-order
belief in the above illustration, that one's wealth is
undeserved. By hypothesis this belief involves more than a
neutral (dispositional and occurrent) thought-component —
it does so by virtue of its origin, abstractness, and
intellectuality. It involves, in addition, an active
affirming/endorsing/assenting component. It would be, in
short an 'opinion'. If so, it would seem that the higher-
order belief involved (with some desire) in the proposed
analysis of this assention would also have to be highly
intellectual — e.g., it might be the belief that the
thought that one's wealth is undeserved is true/justified.
As such, this reflective belief, say, in its occurrent
expressions, would seem more than simply the occurrent
thought that the thought that one's wealth is undeserved is
 73

true. It would appear to require an assenting component

also, which in turn needs to be analyzed in terms of fur-
ther higher-order beliefs and desires.... The regress is
vicious because at no point has the account succeeded in
doing what it proposed to do: present an analysis of the
active component of the original belief. At every level in
the attempted analysis there remains an active left-over.
This, if sound, shows that some acts resist any sub-active
belief/desire analysis. And if this attempted analysis
fails in some cases, then it follows that acts as such
cannot be so analyzed.

It might, of course, be objected that this peculiar

mental assent is not an act. But on what grounds could
this objection be based? Certainly it cannot be based on
the premise that there can be no mental acts. For, if
anything counts as an act, then some mental processes will
have to be acts. Naturally, if the mind is identical with
some part of the body, then there may not be any non-phy-
sical acts. But that is a different matter.

It might, with more plausibility, be held that while

there are mental acts, assentings are not among them. The
wealthy man who 'arrives' at the opinion that his wealth is
undeserved, through deliberation and meditation, in fact
does not come to actively endorse the relevant proposition.
Perhaps all that happens is that he puts himself in a
 74

position that permits the emergence of this endorsement.

But even this might be troublesome in that it suggests that
the person actively exposes himself to this eventuality.
So we have to say that the wealthy man simply undergoes a
change of views as a result of certain ratiocinative pro-
cesses; and that these processes themselves occur without
the agent's direction. But surely some elements in ratio-
cination — like drawing non-trivial logical implications
— are mental acts. This proposal, therefore, remains in
want of justification.
***

There is a further requirement that the causal ante-

cedents of action, on the event-causal model, may have to
satisfy, even if the model has so far escaped the charge
that activity is presupposed in the account of the alleg-
edly passive causes of the act-event. This requirement can
be gotten at by considering what, if anything, must be
added to some conscious occurrent belief/desire complex
aimed at x, for this complex to form an intention to do x.
Take, for example, the complex of my now wanting to call z
by phone, and my believing that he is now at home, etc..
It is clear that a belief/desire set of this exact type
does not always produce an attempt at a phone-call. It
does not even on every occasion turn into an intention to
call z. (That an intention is a state separate from a
 75

belief/desire set has been convincingly argued for by

Davidson — cf. his "Intention" — and by O'Shaughnessy —
cf. The Will, Vol. 2, pp. 306-309). Why not? Simply be-
cause I may have any number of other beliefs and desires
that are incompatible with those constituting this set. It
may, for instance, be the case that I also believe that
were I to call z, I would cause z to be annoyed, given that
the present hour is 1:00 A.M.; and I may desire not to
cause z any annoyance, obviously not both desires can now
be satisfied. Two possible stories may explain how this
conflict gets resolved. One says that one desire (or a set
of belief/desire) overpowers the other because of its
greater strength or intensity. The other says that a
choice or a judgment is made as to which desire takes pri-
ority, or simply as to which desire will be satisfied.

I think the former way leads to a dead end. There is,

it would seem, no way of assessing the relative strength of
desires in many cases other than by seeing what happens in
cases of conflicts amongst them. Obviously my desire to
avoid serious injury will win out against (and can, there-
fore, be described in advance as being stronger than) my
desire to scratch my back, if I am driving on a perilous
road and believe that unless I guide the steering wheel
with both hands I could loose control of the vehicle. Is
this because the first desire is stronger or is it because
 76

I endow it with higher significance and priority? And is

there any difference between the two? Whatever the answer,
it still remains possible in some cases to assign different
degrees of strength to distinct conflicting desires (ig-
noring, for simplicity's sake, the possible degree of
strength of beliefs, as well as the role played in deci-
sion-making by one's beliefs as to the degree of probabil-
ity different desires have of being satisfied).

But this disparate strength-assignment obviously will

not be possible in many other cases, as when one must de-
cide whether to go to see a basketball game or to see a
movie (and one believes that each can be done with ease,
but that both cannot be done). We are to assume that both
prospects are highly attractive. Sartre is famous for
having pointed out that in cases such as this (though his
examples concern dilemmas of considerably higher signifi-
cance for the one involved) it is question-begging and in
bad faith to attribute resolution of the conflict to the
greater strength of one desire. It might be rejoined that
Sartre is certainly not an event-causal theorist. Even
Davidson, however, recognizes that the gap between a simple
belief/desire set — prima facie reason — and an intention
can only be filled by a judgment. Indeed this gap, ac-
cording to Davidson, can only be filled by an 'all out
judgment1. An intention is

a judgment that [a specific act is J something I think I

 77

can do, and that I think I see my way clear to doing,

fit] is a judgment that such an action is desirable not
only for one or another reason but in the light of all
of my reasons. (Essays..., p. 101).

Here we have a major exponent of the event-causal theory

seemingly forced to embrace a view that at least suggests
(if it does not imply) that a belief/desire set's rational
causation or 'rationalization' of an act-event succeeds
only through the person's judgment. And, at least prima
facie, a judgment is a basic active phenomenon. It is one
of the fundamental things persons do.
Goldman, on the other hand, thinks that desires (and
beliefs) come with various degrees of intensity, even
though
it cannot be assumed that the agent has a fixed
intensity of desire for a given act throughout the
course of a decision. In deciding whether to extend his
arm out the car window, the agent may have several
occurrent aversons for getting his hand wet, but the
intensities of these may be different. (Goldman, p.
107) .

This characterization seems a bit too convenient. An

event-causal theory of action incorporating such a view of
desire-types possibly varying in degree of intensity with
their every token occurrent expression, would virtually
immunize itself against Sartrean counter-examples. What
more would be packed in the notion of the higher intensity
of a person's token occurrent desire than the brute fact
that the person has sought to (or would seek to) satisfy it
and not some other conflicting desire? And how would one
 78

show that more is involved without appealing to the theory

this claim is intended to support?
That a judgment (a choice) seems to be required at
least in cases of evenly matched desires, and probably in
all cases of conflict, is further testified by the need to
pair up beliefs and desires intelligently. It is otherwise
an astonishing phenomenon that blind forces like desire can
make use of one's complex belief-system without the guid-
ance manifest in an active judgment. Even Freud, a con-
vinced determinist, had to posit an intelligent ego to
function as a mediator between blind desire and the re-
straints upon desire-expression required by one's knowledge
of one's natural and social context. It would seem,
therefore, that there is a gap in the proposed chain of
events beginning with desire and leading to intention-
formation; and that this gap can best be filled by the
person's active intervention (i.e., by an apparently active
event — a judgment).

Again, as with assents, it might be objected that the

judgments involved to fill this gap are not acts. And
again such an objection would require substantiation. This
requirement is indeed more obvious in the case of judgments
occurring in choice-making. After all, countless thinkers
have considered judgments to be the essential cornerstones
of the voluntary. To consider them non-active or non-vol-
 79

untary is tantamount to questioning the very existence of

genuine activity.
VI
So far we have considered the step traveling from
belief/desire to intention. The next step to consider is
that going from intention to act-event. In the former step
the contested issue had to do with whether there is a
problematic gap between belief/desire sets and an inten-
tion-formation. Similarly, in the latter step the key
issue concerns the possibility of a gap between an inten-
tion to do x and an occurrence of x (as an act or as an
event). Is it the case, for example, that once I have come
to have the intention of telephoning z, my calling z auto-
matically follows (assuming conditions are favorable); or
must a further event intervene to 'carry out' the inten-
tion? This, as we will see, is O'Shaughnessy's way of
approaching the issue. Davidson instead approaches the
same issue by asking "What must the correct causal path
linking present-intention and act-event be like, for the
latter to be an intentional act, or even for it to be an
act at all?". Whatever the approach, the following exam-
ination will show that event-causal accounts — and analy-
ses in particular — need further supplementation.

***

Let us first consider O'Shaughnessy's question. Must

 80

there be an intervening event linking the intention-to-x

and the x-ing event? O'Shaughnessy thinks so. He argues
that even if the following are the case: (1) the inten-
tion-to-do-x has independent status (that is, is not re-
ducible to some belief/desire set); and (2) whenever this
intention turns into action it is first mutated from its
initial intention-to-do-x-here-now-state/event, through
some triggering event, such as an oncoming indexical belief
(a belief involving a 'here', 'now', 'this', etc.); even if
all this were to obtain, the intended act-event still would
not materialize without a further peculiar event. His
central argument makes use of the following illustration:
A photographer asks an actor to lift his arm at t,
precisely (when the bell rings), and the 'take' is
vital. At t-sub-1 the actor hears the bell; at
t-sub-l+.001 sec. an impulse starts down that arm; by
t-sub-l+.01001 a special apparatus that is being worked
at a distance by a gang of anti-social scientists
destroys the neural impulse. Accordingly, the muscle
fails to contract, the arm fails to move, the
photographer swears at the 'star'. The empirical but
vitally important question is: did the 'star' try to
move his arm? (From B. O'Shaughnessy's The Will, Vol.
2, p. 265).

O'Shaughnessy thinks that something else must have seemed

to the actor to have happened within him, other than his
intention mutating to an intention-to-act-now. For if his
failure to lift his arm were somehow to result in someone's
death, the actor would defend himself not merely by saying
any of the following: "My arm did not move at t-sub-1";
"Had I tried to move it at that instant, I would have
 81

failed"; "At that instant t-sub-1 I both meant to move it

and knew I did; I made absolutely no attempt to move it;
the arm did not move; before my God I swear to all this; my
conscience is clear!". He would instead surely defend
himself by saying "I tried to lift it, but my arm would not
workl". And, O'Shaughnessy asks, 'Does the actor know that
his arm did not work simply because he knows that he in-
tended to lift it at t-sub-1 and that the act of lifting
his arm did not occur?' No, he answers. He knows of it
because he also (seemed to himself as having) tried to lift
it (The Will, Vol. 2, pp. 65-66). Moreover, quoting
O'Shaughnessy at length again,
Might he say: 'I know I tried because I meant to do x
the act of arm-lifting at t-sub-1 and nothing
happened'? Could a man say 'I know I just now tried to
open the door at t-sub-1 because at t-sub-1 I knew I
intended doing so and yet did not do it'? Here, too, we
find the same distancing of the self from the self.
These utterances are ridiculous. This man knows of his
trying as we know of our sensations: that is, with
absolute and non-inferential immediacy. Were it
otherwise he would, as he does not, say: 'Since I meant
to do x, and x did not occur, I must have tried'. No,
it is certain that his trying is given both immediately
and experientially. And certain also that he has simple
memory of this experienced event. Nothing short of
gross self-deception could impede his awareness of this
psychologistically given event. Thus he relates
epistemologically to that event precisely as he relates
to such a psychological item as a sensation. Then how
can we fail to conclude that that event was itself
psychological. In short, at t-sub-1 there occured a
psychological event, viz. a trying. (The Will, Vol. 2
p. 266) .

And, he concludes, since this event was obviously not

caused by the non-occurrence of the arm-lifting, and is not
thereby merely a peculiarity of this special hypothetical
situation, a trying event must cap every intention-to-do-
x-now-here type of event, in order for the latter to yield
the intended x-event — and do so intentionally (i.e., in
correct causal manner).

Significantly, O'Shaughnessy goes on to characterize

this trying-event as being both causally produced by the
intention — and thus by desire, etc. — and as being in-
trinsically and essentially active or voluntary, in con-
trast to desires, beliefs, and even present-intentions.

I find this dual characterization to be highly prob-

lematic. I will show why below. However, of present in-
terest is the purported need for this peculiar type of
event — one not available to event-causal analyses. I
find his argument for the necessity of such an 'intrinsic-
ally active' event absolutely compelling (even while I
disagree with him regarding its origin and regarding the
source of its active-character). And if such an event is
necessary, event-causal analyses must fail.
***

This same necessity can be exhibited by adopting

Davidson's approach. Davidson believes that what is re-
quired for action to occur is some belief/desire set, some
intention (an all-out unconditional judgment), some trig-
gering indexical-event (i.e., a recognition that the
 83

spatio-temporal condition, often implicit, of the intention

is here-now satisfied), and that is all. Consequently he
must show how the intention-to-do-x-now must causally pro-
duce the intended event x in order for an intentional act-
ion (or an action simpliciter) to emerge.
The problem is that there are various 'wayward' causal
paths through which the intended event can emerge from the
intention. These wayward causal chains can be of two
types: 'internal' and 'external'. I will discuss both of
these, beginning with the latter.

It is commonly admitted, for example, that if A in-

tends (and even tries?) to kill B by shooting B and if A
misses B but instead causes an avalanche which in turn
kills B, A has not intentionally killed B. This is because
B's being killed resulted from A's mtention-to-kill-B-now
through an external wayward causal chain. This particular
problem, naturally, applies to O'Shaughnessy's theory as
well. It is a problem because this type of example seems
to satisfy the conditions in both theories for intentional
action, namely, being aimed at by the intention, (and by
the trying), and being causally produced by the same in-
tention/trying.

Goldman thinks he has an answer. He maintains that

act-events are the causal products of desires and of be-
liefs of a certain sort — namely, beliefs the object of
 84

which includes the manner or the steps through which the

desired event-result is to occur. We can, he argues, re-
present the agent's act-beliefs in terms of a proiected
act-tree. A projected act-tree represents "hypothetical
acts the agent[sj... believes would be performed if S were
to perform a certain basic act" (Goldman, A Theory of
Action, p. 56). Such a projected act-tree in conjunction
with an agent's act-event he calls an action-plan. As he
puts it,
... an action-plan consists of a desire... to do some
act A' and a set of beliefs... to the effect that, if
one were to perform basic act A-sub-one, this would
generate... various other acts, including the desired
act A'. (Goldman, p. 56).
He holds, as one would expect, that an act-event a_ caused
by a basic act — itself caused 'in a certain characteris-
tic way' by the action-plan — is intentional only if a_ is
either represented in the action-plan or is performed in
the way conceived in the action-plan (Goldman, p.a 57).
It turns out, on this view, that the reason A, in my
example, did not intentionally kill B, is that the killing
of B was accomplished through an avalanche; that is,
through an event not included in A's action-plan. The
killing was not performed 'in the way conceived in the
action-plan*.
Whatever the merits of this answer — and it seems
rather plausible — it, so far, deals only with cases of
 85

'external' wayward causal paths. That is, it handles way-

ward causal paths posterior to the so-called basic act.
More difficult to handle are 'internal' wayward causal
chains, namely, those which link one's intention or one's
action-plan to one's basic act (or to the event that is to
count, on Goldman's view, as a basic act by virtue of hav-
ing the action-plan as a cause). Can the action-plan route
exclude wayward causal chains occurring before a basic act
has been formed? If it cannot, then it cannot help us to
discriminate between an intention-caused-event of the
'basic act type1 that is an intentional act, and one that
is instead a mere accidental (intended) occurrence. In-
deed, once we have a basic act, Goldman's account may put
us in a position to tell whether given consequences of it
are or are not in turn intentional action. But what must
now be explicated is getting to the 'basic act' from an
intention or an action-plan, in the right causal way.

Many wayward or 'lunatic' chains can relate an act-

ion-plan or, more plausibly, an intention-to-do-x-now with
the x-event. Consider this example:
A very shy and normally quiet student has lost a
bet to some friends, and now is required to drop
and cause to break a large and very brittle glassy
object at the time when the lecture of his austere
old professor, whom the student highly respects,
 86

reaches its most concentrated peak. The high point

of the lecture comes; the student holds a large
glass jar in his hand and is ready to drop it; he
intends to drop it at that instant; simultaneously
this now-intention gives rise to, or perhaps
features (possibly through self-intimation), his
awareness that he is now going to drop it. Such an
awareness at the very instant he is about to drop
the jar, so unnerves him that he... loosens his
hold and drops it! The glass shatters on the hard
floor causing a noisy disturbance. The student
later explains: "I did mean to do it just then, but
it was an accident! You laugh if you will, but it's
true!
This event (the student's dropping the jar) is (a) within
the immediate reach of the person's will (an event of the
type Goldman calls 'basic-act'); (b) of a type which is the
object of a here-now intention; (c) caused by the here-
now-intention; and yet (d) it hardly amounts to an inten-
tional act. Presumably the reason that the student's
loosening his hold on (and the dropping of) the jar fails
to be an act, on the event-causal analysis, is that it is
not caused by the here-now-intention, of which it is the
object, in the 'right way'. And which way is that?
O'Shaughnessy has an answer: through a peculiar trying-
 87

event. Davidson claims not to be concerned with act-ana-

lysis, but if he were so concerned, he hints, he would
"despair of spelling out" such a way (Essays..., p. 79).
Thus, he points out that
not any causal relation,,. ([rationalizes an actionj,
since an agent might have attitudes and beliefs that
would rationalize an action, and they might cause him to
perform it, and yet because of some anomaly in the
causal chain, the action would not be intentional in the
expected sense, or perhaps in any sense (my emphasis).
(Essays..., p. 87).

Recall that for Davidson an event intentional under no

sense (under no description) is not an action at all. So
here it seems that Davidson suggests the presence of a
stumbling block for any event-causal analysis of action,
and not merely for any account of the intentionality of an
action.

Goldman also admits that he does not have a fully

detailed answer to the above question regarding the 'pro-
per* causal path (Goldman, p. 62). However, I suspect he
might maintain that the causal connection between a now-
intention (though he does not talk this way, for he does
not recognize intentions as states/events in their own
right, separate from action-plans, i.e., from belief/desire
sets) and an act-type event, such that the former is to
confer on the latter its act-status, must be a 'direct' one
(Goldman, p. 62). But if so, the question then becomes
"What makes a causal chain connecting intentions-here-now
 88

with intended-event direct?"

Is it the non-mediation by any other event? But
surely there are various events coming between one's now-
intention and, say, the loosening of one's grip, such as
neural firings, muscle contractions, etc..
Is it the non-mediation by any other mental event of
the person (such as an unnerving, a hesitation, a doubt)?
This seems too strong, for it excludes the possibility of
volition/trying playing a role of mediator.
Is it the non-mediation by any non-'intentional' (in
Brentano's sense of being directed at some object) mental
event? This would seem to exclude the right things —
namely, unnervings, pains, itches, etc.. But what could be
the justification for the claim that no non-intentional
mental event may come between a now-intention and its ob-
ject-event, on pain of precluding the emergence of an act?
Surely it cannot be that such intrusive mental events are
or would be of the non-active sort. For, on event-causal
analyses, every 'isolated' type of event, including inten-
tion-now, is non-active. Nor can it be because such in-
trusive events do not involve the person, for they do —
they are changes of state of the person. Finally, it can-
not be because such 'contentless' mental events disrupt the
intentional 'flow' traveling from the intention-now toward
the intended-event. For, if only 'intentional' mental
 89

events can preserve such 'flow', every chain involving

neural and musculatory events would fail to yield an act-
ion. And no causal analyst could accept such a restric-
tion .
Given the premise that action emerges from a causal
process initially involving only non-active 'mere' events,
it is hard to see how there could be any non-question beg-
ging basis for distinguishing what legitimately 'belongs'
and what is 'intrusive' within this causal process.
Here is one final heroic attempt at resolving this
problem. It might be held that what 'belongs' in the
causal chain is determined by how the object-event has been
intended to happen? Thus the student in my example may
explain the accidental non-active status of the loosening
of his grip by saying that it did not occur as intended or
as planned; that he had not counted on some unnerving-event
to interpose itself between the intention and the grip-
loosening. This harks back to Goldman's action-plans; or,
more precisely, to some action-plan analogue that applies
only within the sphere of 'basic acts', and not between the
basic act and its causal consequences. Such an analogue we
should call an 'event-plan', since its components are sup-
posedly events that are not yet actions. But this terri-
torial confinement of the event-plan carries the seeds of
the plan's self-destruction.
 90

It makes sense for one to reason (possibly implicitly

or tacitly) that, e.g., "I will break the jar by dropping
it, and I will drop it by loosening my grip on it, and I
will loosen my grip on it by relaxing my fingers". This is
a genuine, if infantile, plan involving an agent and vari-
ous actions the first of which is basic. But is this
reasoning similarly sensible: "I will cause my grip to be
loosened by mtending-to-loosen-my-grip-at-t, and I will
intend-to... by wanting to break the jar and by believ-
ing/knowing that I can break the jar by loosening my grip
on it..."? I think not, because these latter events are
each supposed to be sub-active, i.e., they are supposed to
be events the person does not do; they are supposed to be
the building blocks, the atoms, of action. Action, plan-
ning, agency, are all supposed to be absent at, and are
supposed to surface from, this more primitive level. At
this level desires interact with beliefs; intentions form;
further indexical beliefs appear; beliefs about inten-
tions-now also appear; and, say, physical events (objects
of mtentions-now?) are caused. The alleged now-intention
present at this level (operating, that is, within the
sphere of an action) can at best be an lntention-to-have-
event-x-happen. It cannot be an intention-to-do-x, despite
the fact that, I suggest, the latter alone may be legiti-
mate — indicating thereby that genuine intentions belong
 91

to the level that includes action, and thus reasoning and

planning.
But there is more: supposedly we must also believe
that the encoded object of this 'sub-active* intention
encompasses both an event (of a certain type) and a manner
in which this event is to be causally produced. That is
asking for too much from a passive sub-intelligent event.
It would be, for example, very strange if such intention-
now finds 'satisfaction' only if its object-event is
reached causally through one, among many, possible series
of neural firings (through one causal path among many).
That shows that intention at this level (in contrast with
intention-to-do-y by doing x) should be indifferent to
various distinctive causal paths leading to the production
of the aimed-at-event. Hence, one cannot depend on it,
this now-intention, to provide one with a way of excluding
illicit causal paths connecting beliefs/desires and act-
event. This is what one would expect, for how can, and why
should, e.g., the (sub-active) mtention-to-have-the-jar-
dropping-event-happs be selective in 'picking out' a spe-
cific one from among various causal chains, each of which
successfully leads to the happening of the jar-dropping-
event? Why should it prefer any method of satisfaction?
Why, therefore, exclude, because illicit, the causal path
that includes an unnerving-event? Why is it that a causal
 92

chain constituted by, and linking, various 'mere events',

'blooms* into an action when, say, events, a, b, d, are
included; but fails to do so when an additional 'mere
event' c joins the set — without disrupting the end re-
sult? We must conclude that even appeals to event-plans
cannot resolve the problem of 'internal' wayward causal
chains.
Event-causal analysts have no right to characterize
some causal chains as 'wayward' or 'illicit'. For, one of
their central theses is that desire, belief, and even in-
tention and trying, are sub-active. If one demotes these
phenomena to the level of 'mere events', or things that
simply happen, one, in effect, throws away the ladder on
which to climb back to the level of activity. For, then,
on what grounds can one outlaw, say, unnervmgs from in-
clusion within intention-to-intended event causal chains?
Some of us might respond that such an inclusion ruins the
action-potentiality of the causal chain because one does
not do unnervings. They simply happen. In contrast, one
forms intentions, or at least one carries them out (via
tryings). But if intentions and their causal expressions
are assumed to be non-active, such responses are no longer
available. On such an assumption, intentions or their
expressions are no more done by the agent than are unnerv-
ings.
 93

VII
We have reached, perhaps, the very core of the problem
facing any event-causal analysis of action. This problem-
atic core is the endeavor to use purely neutral non-evalua-
tive (non-active) causal phenomena in constructing a pro-
duct that somehow inhabits a different, a higher, richer,
more personal (one is tempted to say 'evaluative') sphere
— that of action. What results is a naturalistic falla-
cy-analogue. Thus, we would like to say that what turns a
belief/desire set into an intention is the presence of some
(all-out) judgment, decision choice (further non-causal
terms), otherwise the causal process leading to the satis-
faction of this belief/desire complex is blind and hardly
counts as an action (viz. dreaming; infant or animal be-
havior — behavior which is locked into the present, hence
not susceptible to 'in order to' explanation). We would
like to say that some causal paths connecting intention and
basic act-event are wayward or illicit (evaluative terms),
and that is why they do not yield action (or intentional
action). We might even like to say that what transforms
ordinary beliefs into truly one's own beliefs ('opinions')
is an assent, an affirmation, an endorsement. But we have
found that on a causal analysis it may be impossible, and
certainly problematic, to legitimately say these things,
without going into long and desperate analyses of assents,
 94

judgments, and 'right causal chains', that, I think, at

some point cannot help but slip in illicit terms, and
thereby beg the question.
Naturally, the causal analyst will respond that he/she
is perfectly aware that this bridging of levels represents
the central task before an event-causal analysis of action.
But, he/she will note, it has to be shown that this task
cannot be accomplished. Perhaps we have not shown that
this bridging of levels is impossible to accomplish. But,
hopefully, we have shown that given the legitimate material
an event-causal analyst has to work with, the attempted
analysis is fraught with problems. At the least, there-
fore, before committing ourselves to this theory we ought
to take a closer look at the alternatives. The alterna-
tives that most readily come to mind are of two types. One
is the agent-causal type. The other is the event-causal
type we have called theory, an instance of which is
O'Shaughnessy•s. We shall first take a close examination
of this latter theory. In the course of doing so we shall
attempt to further undermine both event-causal theories and
analyses.

VIII
Event-causal analyses of action are versions, refine-
ments, of event-causal theories. The former share with the
latter the view that an action is a series of events caus-
 95

ally connected. Analyses differ from theories in that they

treat the active or voluntary aspect of action (their
essential feature) as emerging from (and as possibly re-
ducible to) certain types of non-active, suitably causally
related events. In opposing such analytic accounts we have
thus far joined forces with O'Shaughnessy. Now we must
part company. For it seems that O'Shaughnessy wants to
have it both ways. He wants to preserve the event-causal
aspect of analyses. But he also wants to preserve the
intrinsicality, the non-reducibility, the primiteveness, of
the active aspect of actions. However these two ends are
incompatible. Either an event e is caused by some other
event e', thereby precluding the essentially active status
of e; or e is an essentially active event, thereby pre-
cluding its causation by any other event, and thus by e'.
O'Shaughnessy denies any incompatibility between being
event-caused (and, hence, externally-caused), and being
essentially active. He resolutely maintains that, sur-
prising as it may be, there is a peculiar event that is
both event-caused and intrinsically active — namely, the
striving or trying or volition. In the course of what
follows we will not address O'Shaughnessy's further claim
that when a striving is successful, a 'non-autonomous part
of it' — that is yet a striving part-event — causes the
aimed-at-event; event though this claim seems highly dubi-
 96

ous as well. (Cf. The Will, Vol. 2, p. 259).

A word first about event-causation (and, for that
matter, about all causation, whether it involves states,
particulars, or what have you). I have assumed throughout,
and will continue to so assume, that 'causes' or 'caused'
refers to that extensional real relation that obtains be-
tween pairs of singular individuals (be they events,
states, or particulars), such that the first member simply
makes the second happen or be (on the billiard-balls
model) . A refined version of this view of causation — but
one that takes events as the relata — has been articulated
and defended by Davidson. Exactly what the nature and role
of causal laws are in the Davidsonian account will be left
to Davidson and others to specify. Perhaps Davidson is
correct in claiming (a) that whenever a singular causal
relation obtains among two events, some law must subsume
these events at some level of description of these latter;
and, consequently, (b) that causal laws relate only event-
descriptions and are therefore conceptual devices. But in
any case we need not commit ourselves to any theory of
causal laws and of nomic subsumption. All we need claim is
that the relata of causation are individuals (of whatever
sort), and that the temporally prior (or possibly simul-
taneous, but then only if ontologically prior) individual
forces the coming into being or the happening of the tern-
 97

porally (or otherwise) posterior individual.

The principal alternative to this theory of causation
is the type of theory that maintains that causation holds
between event-types (or state-types or particular-types).
Such a theory would imply that causation cannot really be
instantiated by one singular interaction amongst, say, two
events. On such a Humean 'regularity* view it takes at
least two tokens of the same type of interaction (where two
interactions are of the same type if each involves indivi-
duals of the same type in the same order) for the idea of
causation to begin to get a foothold (in the observer?).
Quite obviously this theory locates causation in the con-
ceptual realm (perhaps in the realm of epistemology), not
in the real world. Sheer observation of physical processes
should convince us that this theory must be false. If that
puts us amongst the philosophically naive majority that
think they can observe causation, then so be it. It seems
that it we can 'observe' that, say, an object is larger
than another, we can also 'observe' that, say, an event
causes another (though, no doubt, there are many cases
where observation is insufficient to ascertain if two
events are causally related). At any rate, relying upon
Davidson's arguments and upon common sense, we shall assume
in what follows that causal relations are both real and
'coercive' or'necessitating'.
 98

Brandishing this view of causation, let us now return

to, or rather begin, the critique of O'Shaughnessy*s act-
ion-theory. The key to his non-analytic theory is the
postulation of an event which is in itself, or intrinsic-
ally, active despite being causally necessitated by desires
and intention — the latter being 'mere' non-active events.
O'Shaughnessy recalls a well-known flaw of traditional
volition theories. The latter attempted to explain the
voluntariness (the 'activeness') of, say, a physical move-
ment by reference to the latter's causal prompting by a
volition. They ran into difficulties when questioned as to
whether the volition itself was voluntary (or active). For
it seemed that the only way it could be voluntary was
through causation by a further volition — and away on a
regress. O'Shaughnessy suggests that the reason we find
ourselves slipping in this regress is because we naturally
assume that any event that 'crops up' in us — and a voli-
tion is one such event — necessarily 'happens to' us. But
we ought to resist this natural tendency. We ought to
split apart 'cropping up' and 'happening to'.
Accordingly we... interpose an event of such a
distinctive character that its 'cropping up1 or
happening in one is never its happening to_one. Now
such an event the volition is supposed" to be. And such
an event, I submit, the event of striving actually is.
Striving... never happens to. one. Hence its
voluntariness looks to be intrinsic and derivative from
nothing else. (The Will, Vol. 2, pp. 259-260).
This is, as far as I can tell, the closest thing to a
 99

positive account in O'Shaughnessy of how a caused event can

be intrinsically active or voluntary. Normally we do not
think of events as the sort of things that can non-deriva-
tively exhibit activeness. We are told by O'Shaughnessy
that a psychological event-type involved, among others
(viz. intention-now, occurrent desire, occurrent belief),
in producing the phenomenon of action, does have this pro-
perty. It comes with this property despite 'cropping up'
in us. And the (only?) explanation offered for such a
claim is that this event is unique in that it does not
'happen to' us. But this explanation seems hardly suffic-
ient. A lot of questions come to mind. Why, for in-
stance, is the striving-event the one singled out as crop-
ping up but not happening to us? Do intentions-now happen
to us? That seems false, on Davidsonian grounds. Why,
then, not take the latter event-type as the intrinsically
active one? Or, better yet, why not take both types as
intrinsically active?

We should agree that something present in my trying,

say, to remember a name, or in whistling a tune, feels
definitely active. This much is unassailable. Moreover,
as we have argued, this something cannot be 'composed of*
sub-active elements. Hence, something in the above phen-
omenon must be intrinsically active. Thus far we should
agree with O'Shaughnessy. But his account of the intrin-
 100

sically active something is clearly counterintuitive. How

can an event occurring within us, and involving us, be
active if it crops up in us, and if it is caused to so crop
up by other events/states that allegedly merely happen to
us? How can one avoid concluding that the occurrence of
this event is a matter entirely out of my hands? If an
event is caused to — made to — occur, how can it be an
active phenomenon? What could be the source of its activ-
ity? Again, being caused and being active seem mutually
exclusive. In ordinary contexts whenever something is said
to be caused (to undergo some change) by something else,
the former something is precluded from being characterized
as having been active (in undergoing that change). Indeed,
our focus o£ interest is rather special, and ordinary in-
tuitions perhaps do not get a firm hold here. Nonetheless,
what could it possibly mean for an event causally necessi-
tated by passive events to be in itself active?

Here is a possible large-scale analogy: a banker is

made to hand over the money at gun point; nonetheless he
actively turns it over. Here we have an event — the
handing over of the money — which while causally necessi-
tated by another event — the robber's gun-point-demand —
yet constitutes an action. The analogy, naturally, fails
on two accounts. The first is the sense of 'causation'
operating in this analogy. Let us bypass that. The se-
 101

cond, and even more important, disanalogous feature lies in

the fact that the banker's handing over the money can
hardly be characterized as an event that merely crops up
within or without anybody.
O'Shaughnessy is certainly aware of this type of ob-
jection to his account. He expressly rejects the principle
"that if some event is caused by another that is non-vol-
untary, then the effect event must likewise be non-volun-
tary." (The Will, Vol. 2, p. 282). He contends that his
proposed theory "finds no difficulty in accepting that an
event that does not 'happen to one' should owe its exist-
ence to one that does (albeit of required type, viz. de-
sire) . ...Acts spring into being out of non-acts." (Vol. 2,
p. 283) .

But how could a voluntary/active event be caused by a

non-voluntary/non-active one, without the former simply
happening to one? Must not the trait of voluntariness or
activeness be somehow intrinsic to the event in question,
since it is not transmitted by its cause-event? True, in
other contexts something F can be caused by something
not-F. For example, something moving circularly can be
caused by something moving non-circularly. But in our case
there appears to be an incompatibility between the event-
property 'being-active-intrinsically' (versus derivatively,
viz. active-by-virtue-of-being-caused-by-some-active-event)
 102

and •being-externally-caused' .
Might the intrinsically active event be caused to
happen, without its key feature of activeness being also
caused? No, because we are taking 'cause' to refer to an
extensional real relation. Thus, if an event e is caused
by another event e', then e is caused by e' in all of its
features. For example, if the dying of Socrates is caused
by the drinking of the hemlock, then the dying of Socrates
in prison, before noon, amongst friends, painlessly..., is
caused by the drinking of the hemlock. True, there is no
causal law linking together features such as hemlock-
d r m k m g and others such as occurring-in-prison. But that
simply means that the presence of the latter property is
not explained by mention of the former property. That does
not mean, however, that this singular exemplification of
the latter as 'attached' to the event of Socrates' dying is
not necessitated by Socrates' drinking the hemlock.

Therefore, if an intrinsically active e is caused by

e'', then e is in all its character caused by e''. It is
qua intrinsically active and qua occurring at t and qua
occurring at place p, caused by e 1 '. This despite the fact
that e's being intrinsically active might not be explained
by reference to e'* and its features.
At this stage our opponent might alter his/her appro-
ach. He might advance a reductio argument. If it is the
 103

case that for an event to be intrinsically active it cannot

be causally necessitated by anything external to it, like
another event, then how could intrinsic activeness ever be
brought into being? To this we should answer by first
pointing out that activeness cannot exist on its own — it
is always 'something's activeness*. Thus an 'intrinsically
active event' should be analyzed as the active state-change
of some individual/particular. Suppose now, as will be
argued, that this requires an intrinsically active partic-
ular. It would follow that activeness would come into
being via a particular with a very special capacity, name-
ly, the capacity for activeness. With this in mind, we can
now address the above question directly, by separating the
issue of whether activeness can come into being through
external causation, from the issue of whether an active
particular can come into being through external causation.
With respect to the first issue we seem compelled to answer
no. With respect to the second issue we could answer yes.
A simple, if far fetched example might suffice to make the
point here. The notion of a God-created yet free-willed
soul is not prima facie paradoxical; and it certainly is
not as paradoxical as a caused yet intrinsically active
event. We can make the same point a different way. It is
surely legitimate to distinguish between possessing a ca-
pacity, and exercising that capacity. Hence, what is true
 104

of one need not be true of the other. In the case of the

capacity for intrinsic activity, its possession — but not
its exercize — could, I believe, be due to external fact-
ors. In light of this possibility, we can consistently
reject the notion of active yet externally caused events,
without being stuck with the consequence that activeness-
qua-capacity cannot be externally generated.
Therefore, it remains possible for us to take active-
ness as a basic unanalyzable feature of the world, and yet
recognize, for example, that the entities 'endowed' with
this feature came into being through non-voluntary non-
active forces. We are certainly not responsible for our
being active, just as we are not responsible for our coming
into being. But that leaves open the question of our ul-
timate ontological responsibility for the exercize of our
activeness.

But let us return to O'Shaughnessy. Ultimately it

would seem that what lies at the heart of his clearly un-
intuitive position vis-a-vis the voluntariness of the
strivmg-event is the seeming lack of plausible alternat-
ives. How else can one construe the activeness of the
trying or, alternatively, of a basic act? Once one em-
braces an event-causal view of action, how else can one
explain the unassailable insight that we play an active
role with respect to many events other than by opting for
 105

some link-event in the psychological-physical causal chain,

and attributing activeness to it? And, moreover, what is
the alternative to some event-causal view? Surely actions
are episodic events, and what else can cause occurrences if
not other occurrences? Moreover, once one rejects a causal
view, how is one to account for the obvious fact that one's
desires, beliefs, etc., do explain one's actions? Must not
an alternative theory view action as proceeding "motive-
lessly out of psychic thin air", on the model of "a Saul
Stemgerg figure engaged in drawing itself"? (The Will,
Vol. 2, p. 283). It will be incumbent upon us, in the
next chapter, to formulate and defend precisely an altern-
ative which while preserving the merits of event-causal
theories, avoids their drawbacks; an alternative that
eludes the pitfall of motiveless self-determination.

Meantime, before event-causal accounts are left be-

hind, let us quickly consider some of their 'non-internal'
difficulties. Let us, that is, step away from questions
regarding their internal structure, and consider instead
some of their dubious implications.
The first such implication is that human activity
acquires unavoidably a very mechanistic and deterministic
look. An action, on these theories, is the irresistible
product of states of processes that are ultimately not
themselves the result of other action of the person.
 106

Moreover, the person itself gets construed in either of two

ways. The person might turn into the mere holder of such
states or the fulcrum of such processes — in itself an
entirely passive entity. For, these states/events are the
actual movers. The person becomes a kind of bare partic-
ular that simply... bears! Alternatively, the person might
turn into a Humean event-sequence. Either way to say that
actions are done by the person is to speak either meta-
phorically or elliptically. Quite clearly, attributing to
either of these persons responsibility for its actions and
their consequences is either to add insult to injury or to
be suspiciously generous. As for freedom, compatibilist
causal theorists can, no doubt, offer analyses of it that
are consistent with event-causal determinism. It has
often, in fact, been proposed that an action is 'done'
freely by person P, if (a) this action is caused by some
belief/desire/intention of P, and (b) if this action would
not have been 'done' had P not been in that belief/de-
sire/intention state. It is, however, another question
whether these purported analyses succeed in capturing the
very essence of freedom. The kind of freedom a causal
analyses will not — cannot — faithfully account for, is,
of course, not the freedom philosophers like Frithjof
Bergmann are concerned to explicate (namely, self-express-
ion) . Necessitation need not undercut the self-expressive-
 107

ness of an act. It is, rather, the sort of freedom that

goes hand in hand with moral (or otherwise) responsibility,
retributive punishment, etc., that causal analyses must
fail to capture. Some will say "Well, so much the worse
for this type of freedom and this type of responsibility...
and, yes this type of action!" But it would seem that we
cannot say so without doing away with what is, along with
self-conscious awareness, distinctively precious — and
indeed Godlike — about us, namely, autonomy and original-
ity. It is in part out of reverence to these ancient
notions of autonomy, responsibility, and human dignity that
I now attempt an alternative theory of action.
 108

CHAPTER THREE:
THE AGENT-CAUSAL THEORY

We have seen, then, how event-causal theories and

analyses of action are afflicted with various handicaps
that make it very difficult, if not impossible, for them to
provide adequate accounts of action. Let us, therefore,
turn to examine the agent-causal theory (or cluster of
theories) to see if it fares any better. Agent-causal
theories are just that — theories. They do not attempt to
analyze 'activity' or 'activeness'. That is, like event-
causal theories (like O'Shaughnessy's), they take for
granted that there is some element in action that is ln-
trinsically active. This primitive element, however, is
not presumed to be one of the link-events in the event-
chain involved in an action. Rather, what is taken as
irreducibly active is the particular, or substance, or
person, or self, or consciousness involved in the action.
It will be argued that having a substance be the source of
'activeness' is more in line with certain basic, important,
experiential phenomena. And it will be maintained that
only through appeal to this odd substance can a theory of
action avoid the opposite pitfalls of determinism and ran-
 109

domness.
The chapter will be divided into four sections. The
first section will offer a sketch of various well-known
formulations of the agent-causal theory. Concomitantly, an
attempt will be made to (a) identify the essential data
being used to justify the particular theory; and (b) offer
some very general critical remarks. The second section
will discuss the generally overlooked phenomena of contin-
uous causation and of controlled attention. These will be
advanced as the most trenchant pro-agent-causality data.
The third will defend agent-causality against some critical
assaults. Finally, in the last section a few words will be
said about the ontological model of action that, I believe,
best explains the data yielded by the preceding discus-
sions. How the self relates to the motives that 'ration-
alize' our acts will be addressed in a separate chapter.

Before all else, though, some general remarks on

agent-causality. Like event-causal views, the agent-causal
theories also form a cluster. As the term will be used
here, any causally non-deterministic theory that makes use
of an agent or of an agent-analogue (e.g., consciousness)
as the cause or the source of act-events will count as
agent-causal theory. Among the various proponents of this
type of theory are Chisholm, Richard Taylor, C. A.
Campbell, Sartre, and (perhaps) Nozick. Their theories
 110

share a central feature: the postulation of an intrinsic-

ally active (spontaneous, voluntary, free, etc.) agency —
a self-moving substance (or substance-analogue). That is,
the agency postulated is treated as at least the non-de-
termined originator of a causal chain of events resulting
in, or constituting, the act-event.
This type of theory denies that the closest we come in
contact with (at least some of) our actions is through our
beliefs and desires. It denies that our actions connect
with us merely by virtue of the fact that it is our beliefs
and desires that actually cause them. Somehow, these
theories want to claim that the authorship of (at least
some of) our actions by us is more immediate, more direct
and more real than would be the case if it were accomp-
lished through our beliefs and desires (vicariously, as it
were). The underlying intuition is, of course, that there
is more to me qua agent than can be captured through talk
of 'my' events or states causing certain internal or ex-
ternal changes. Taking this intuition seriously implies
that I am somehow metaphysically distinct from my beliefs,
desires, intentions, etc.: that is, that I am not reducible
to (any set of, or totality of) such beliefs, desires,
etc.. And it suggests that this metphysically distinct
entity cannot be causally determined when it acts.

The diagrammatic structure of an action according to

 Ill

this type of theory is as follows:

~ "i
Agent , Strongest < Act/event
Self 9 i desire '• >
Person ' (or brain ,
Consciousness ', event) •
(Explanation of signs: — ?„ . = 'causes';
f j = 'possibly')
Virtually every agent-causal theorist that will be
considered maintains that for an event to be my act, two
conditions must be satisfied: (a) causal determinism must
be false (that is, not every event may be causally neces-
sitated by some prior event); and (b) 'simple' causal in-
determinism must be supplemented by something else to avoid
the result that actions are simply uncaused random occur-
rences. About (a) little will be said, except that its
truth will be assumed. Certainly the possibility of it is
no longer in question. (b) will be, instead, the focus of
our concern. The main task before us will be to find an
appropriate middle ground between determinism and random-
ness.
I
Naturally, there are some important differences be-
tween the individual theories lumped in the agent-causality
class. Those that will be briefly characterized and dis-
cussed are the following: Campbell's, Chisholm's, Taylor's,
Sartre's, and Nozick's. The point of discussing these
theories is threefold. Doing so will, firstly, provide a
 112

context for the subsequent discussion and elaboration of my

own theory. It will do so by acquainting us with closely
related theories. Secondly, it will serve to identify some
basic data that will be incorporated in the defence of the
new theory. And, finally, it will attempt to expose, in
most cases, some central flaws or inadequacies of these
theories. And this will, hopefully, suggest avenues of

concern and improvement.

***

Campbell.
On this theory the self's (person's) originative in-
fusion in the otherwise regular deterministic causal pro-
cess occurs only in situations of choices where there is a
felt conflict between the strongest inclination 'expressive
of our character so far formed' (purely a causal product,
that is) and the call of duty. What gets done in such a
situation is within the self's control in the sense that
he/she is completely free "to put forth or refrain from
putting forth the moral effort required to resist the
pressure of desire to do what he thinks he ought to do" (On
Selfhood and Godhood, p. 173) . Such a free and unpredict-
able intervention by the self in the moral decision-process
renders people morally responsible, according to Campbell.
One rather incredible implication of Campbell's view is
that the morally irrelevant decisions and actions issue
 113

forth deterministically and hence predictably. That is,

all other non-moral actions are caused by beliefs, desires,
etc. — and as such ought not to count as action by the
self. Campbell does not say very much about this so far as
I know. Perhaps he thinks that such non-moral behavior
still counts as active (and as the self's activity) by
virtue of the fact that interventions by the self (in moral
decision-contexts) have helped to shape the person's char-
acter — which character now finds causal expression (via
the person's strongest desire) in the present non-moral
behavior. At any rate, the picture one is left with is
that of a mainly impotent observer-self allowing most de-
sires to find expression unobstructed; but intervening in a
timely manner (or at least springing to attention, as it
were, and becoming able to intervene) if such desires in-
cline one toward the wrong moral path. Consequently, most
actions, on this view, are not treated as free, agent-
originated, agent-caused, events. Campbell has a reason
for this surprising confinement of free agency — namely,
preempting the charge that on his libertarian view human
voluntary behavior turns out to be unpredictable, which
seems contrary to our experience. But while this concern
is, no doubt, legitimate, his solution strikes one as ad
hoc. For, it would seem that if there is an agent-self
'behind' actions, this agent should be 'behind* all genuine
 114

actions.
***

Chisholm and Taylor.

Taylor's basic concern, in offering his theory, also
focuses on moral responsibility. Taylor is concerned with
explaining two common sense phenomena: the sense that our
actions (which action we do) are up to us; and the intui-
tion that there must be a point to deliberation, which
requires that our acts be not determined in advance of the
deliberative process.
Chisholm's basic motivation turns out to coincide with
Taylor's first concern, because for Chisholm
If a man is responsible for a certain event or a certain
state of affairs..., then that event or state of affairs
was brought about by some act of his, and the act was
something that was in his power to perform or not to
perform. ("Freedom and Action", in Freedom and
Determinism, ed. by Keith Lehrer, p. 12).
And, again, for Chisholm in order for an act to be in the
person's power to either perform or not to perform, it
cannot be the case that such an act was caused by either
external or internal (beliefs/desires) events. For, if it
were so caused — and if such causes were events and states
for which the agent was not responsible — then the agent
would have been "unable to do other than he did do"
(Lehrer, ed"., p. 13). Even if the agent were responsible
for his/her present beliefs and desires (which could only
be if at some point in the past "They were within his power
 115

to acquire or not to acquire" (Lehrer, ed., p. 13)), re-

sponsibility for his/her present acts would depend indi-
rectly upon acts that could not have been caused merely by
prior events or states of affairs. The upshot is that, for
Chisholm, the behavior for which a person is responsible
must have involved events caused non-deterministically by
the agent or person.

Essentially this same reasoning is advanced by Richard

Taylor in going from the common sense assumption that act-
ions are up to us to the conclusion that actions must in-
volve events that are simply caused by the agent, i.e., by
a self-moving entity (R. Taylor, Metaphysics, pp. 54-55).
The second datum which, according to Taylor, calls for the
postulation of a self-moving agent is deliberation. He
argues that for deliberation to be meaningful it must be
the case that the options being considered are all avail-
able to one. But, of course, if causal determinism is
true, then, given one's actual situation — given the
course of events and states of affairs that have causally
snowballed to produce one's present states, etc. — only
one course of behavior can (causally) result. So, what is
the point of deliberation? Taylor does not seem to con-
sider the obvious retort that deliberation though causally
necessitated may still be the necessary vehicle for the one
and o)nly causally possible behavior to occur. This would
 116

make it possible for the deliberative process to play a

causal role — albeit instrumental — in producing the
admittedly causally determined outcome-behavior. And thus
it need not be meaningless in the sense of being epiphen-
omenal.

One suspects, however, that Taylor would not be sat-

isfied with this account of the causal input of genuine
deliberation. It is true, he would probably respond, that
the process of deliberating cannot be epiphenomenal if it
is to be meaningful and genuine. But on the same grounds
it cannot be causally necessitated in such a way that the
outcome of such deliberation is already determined. It is
irrelevant whether this determination occurs through the
fact that a set of desires comes equipped with more
strength than the alternative conflicting sets; or whether
it occurs through the fact that deliberation is a causally
necessitated process which alters the weights of the pre-
sently relevant desires. Deliberation, to be genuine on
his view, has to be somehow originative and creative. It
may not, for instance, be merely the mechanical self-bal-
ancing of forces preexistingly equipped with definite
weights or strength — for the latter process can, as it
were, take place on its own, without the participation of
any selecting, deciding judge.

So, it seems that if this second mode of justifying

 117

the postulation of an agent-self is to be philosophically

compelling, it must finally come down to the claim that
some of our behavior (our choices) is, again, up to us, in
the sense already specified in Taylor's other argument, as
well as in Chisholm. It would seem, therefore, that
Chisholm and Taylor offer one fundamental basis for postu-
lating a substantial self: namely, the powerful and unde-
niable experience that which action we do, in various cir-
cumstances, is in our power in a way not capturable by
deterministic (event-causal) models. This experiential
datum will be closely scrutinized ahead; and it will form
part of the basis on which a comprehensive agent-causal
theory will be built.
***

Sartre.
Sartre's conception of action is tied intimately to
his peculiar ontological theory of consciousness (Cf. Being
qndftpthingness, especially part IV, ch. 1, on Freedom,
etc). The connection can be explained as follows. All
action is intentional, that is, every action involves, and
is an expression of, an intention to bring about a certain
not-yet-existing state of affairs. Every such intention is
formed through the realization that something is missing in
some actual state of the world (in some particular situa-
tion that is itself circumscribed and defined by consci-
 118

ousness) — that there is a deficiency in actuality. But

such perceived deficiency or lack is not a positive feature
of the world that consciousness simply discovers. Rather,
it is ultimately created by consciousness through its un-
caused 'projections' of non-existent possibilities. It is
only relative to these projected possibilities that the
actual situation being apprehended reveals shortcomings
that call for rectification. So, intentional action de-
pends upon the 'projections' of possibilities (ultimately
various values and ends) by consciousness. The crucial
point of interest to us is that these projections are pur-
portedly not dictated or determined by any fact or state of
the world or of oneself (or one's past or present). They
are free, spontaneous 'upsurges' (Being and Nothingness,
pp. 564-565). Therefore, for Sartre, all actions are ul-
timately free and uncaused in so far as they result from
the prior spontaneous, imaginative activity of conscious-
ness. Actions, in short, are made possible by the trans-
cending and negating activity of consciousness, which act-
ivity is uncaused and free.

This sketchy account of Sartre's position makes it

seem that consciousness is somewhat of an analogue to the
self or person postulated by Campbell, Chisholm, and
Taylor. And, undoubtedly, there is something to this way
of thinking of Sartre's 'consciousness*. This can be re-
 119

inforced by considering how the person as conceived by

Sartre can be (and hence, derivatively, can be held) re-
sponsible — something that is of paramount importance to
Sartre. Let's ask the question this way. If consciousness
projects possibilities, thereby producing experienced de-
ficiencies in the world (or in oneself), and hence giving
rise to an experienced need for action (or at least for
change)..., to whom, or to what, is the strict Sartrian
responsibility for what is attempted to be ascribed?

(a) To (embodied) consciousness who projects x

(when it could project y_) , hence causing the
world to be experienced as lacking F (as
opposed to lacking G, or nothing at all), and
hence causing 'my' (or its) being motivated
to attempt to achieve F.

(b) To I? No! Because I (the sense of 'I-ness') is

a passive product of reflective consciousness
(Cf. The Transcendence of the Ego).
(c) To this person-qua-consciousness? If so, then
see (a) .
(d) ... I am at loss to find other plausible candi-
dates.
If, as it seems it must be, it is consciousness that is to
be held responsible, because it could have projected any
number of possible states or ends or projects..., then
 120

consciousness would seem to function as a free, active,

agent-like entity, despite allegedly being only a dependent
pole in the consciousness-world (subject-object) polarity.
Can such a 'thing' be a 'nothingness' (a window open to
some facet of the world; or a wind blowing in a certain
direction)? How can a nothingness possess that active
power that constitutes the basis of one's Sartrean self-
creation through action? If it is not itself some kind of
entity, whence its free, uncaused activity? That it is
necessarily directed upon an already given world (including
one's past) may explain the intelligence or rationality of
its projection — for they issue forth in light of facts
and limitations characterizing its 'embodiment', its past,
and its future. But since it is not caused to yield the
negatites, the nihilations, it does yield, its created
motives for action are either random results of random
projections, however much the 'situation' sets limits and
determinants; or they are somehow self-caused projections.
The former alternative is inconsistent with the Sartrean
responsibility each of us is said to bear for our acts.
The latter must, therefore, be the case. Actions, it would
seem, must somehow proceed from an agent-like conscious-
ness. And this seems to imply that consciousness is an
entity — though indeed very special, and not to be clas-
sified along with 'full' objects. It lacks any definite
 121

nature; its being is pure potentiality or possibility ; it

is, in short, pure agency; and its main task is self-def-
inition.
Of course, the problem with this 'entitative' reading
of Sartre's 'consciousness* is that it is in direct con-
flict with some of Sartre's further ontological conten-
tions. He claims that consciousness is not a continuous
substratum 'having' its states. He adds that each 'moment'
of consciousness is ontologically discrete and causally de-
tached from preceding 'moments'. And it is this independ-
ence that permits the permanent possibility that at any
moment a consciousness/person will do something totally new
and unpredictable (Cf. Sartre's "...the permanent possi-
bility of... a nihilating rupture with the world and with
himself is the same as freeom", Being and Nothingness, p.
567; and again "We are perpetually threatened by the ni-
hilation of our actual choice and perpetually threatened
with choosing ourselves — and consequently with becoming
other than we are. By the very fact that our choice is
absolute, it is fragile", p. 598). But if this is true,
Sartre faces a problematic dichotomy:

(a) A person consists of discrete conscious inten-

tional states. But 'behind' each one of them there is a
new, virgin, fleeting, consciouness-entity that elects to
'project' one way rather than another. The possibility of
 122

a succession of entities is, I think, too proposterous to

be taken seriously.
(b) All that there is to a person are, ultimately,
discrete individual conscious states, exhibiting a consci-
ousness-world polarity, as Hume might have believed. What
holds these states together is simply an overall fundamen-
tal project that individual states presumably express and
reaffirm, if only because each 'moment' can radically
overthrow such a project.

On this model (even with the introduction of the fun-

damental project) there seems to be no room for the power
of active spontaneous projections of a type presupposed by
the ascription of resonsibility, A discrete moment of
consciousness cannot, as it were, deliberate as to what to
focus upon or what to project. The 'moment' of conscious-
ness is simply an indeterministic and inexplicable upsurge.
It can at most be an expression of spontaneity. It cannot
itself be spontaneous. As a moment of consciousness it is
as such already intentionally directed at some 'object'.
Indeed the ends it finds itself projecting help to define
such an 'object' — be this latter a 'real' object or a
possibility. But the point is that if this 'object' is
expressive of a 'radical choice', this is simply a brute
fact about that moment of consciousness. It is an occur-
ence not an act. A new 'moment' may manifest a rupture
 123

with 'its' past — but that is all that can be said.

To what are we to ascribe the power of possibly, as it
were, turning the lens of projection toward something else
(or of a radical rejection of one's fundamental project)?
This is crucial because one's alleged choice of, and re-
sponsibility for, one's values, ends, and hence for one's
actual motives, rests upon such power. On this reading
this essential question regarding the bearer of responsi-
bility seems unanswerable. If so, Sartre's position on
responsibility becomes unintelligible.
This objection can take another form. For Sartre the
choice, and perpetual reaffirmation, of one's fundamental
project — in the face of the constant threat of nihilation
— is umustifiable (Being and Nothingness, p. 598). He
insists that "The absolute change which threatens us from
our birth until our death remains perpetually unpredictable
and incomprehensible" (Being and Nothingness, p. 599).
Explanation via ends and 'choice' of fundamental project
has application only within the present fundamental pro-
ject. Thus, the basic potentiality for shifts of funda-
mental projects — and hence for actual shifts or actual
non-shifts i.e., for all acts — remains incomprehensible.
That means that this potentiality is either simply a ran-
dom, indetermistic, perpetual possibility; or that it de-
rives from consciousness-qua-transcending-the-present-fun-
 124

damental-project (and, hence, transcending the present

'moment'). If the former, the responsibility for one's
•choice' of fundamental project — and for all the motives,
causes, and acts derived from it — is out of the question.
If the latter, consciousness (and hence self) at any de-
terminate time must transcend the present ('choice' of)
fundamental project. It must transcend the present 'mo-
ment '. It must be something that endures through shifts in
fundamental projects.
There is an unlikely way out for Sartre. He may, in
fact, utilize an unusually loose notion of responsibility.
Perhaps Sartre sees mere random indeterministic behavior as
sufficient to engender responsibility. However, this no-
tion of responsibility has little or no merit. And,
therefore, a reading of Sartre that appeals to it is not
really worth considering.
The conclusion one feels drawn towards is that if
Sartre proposes a quasi-Humean picture of consciousness
(Hume, of course, talked of the mind or of the self) , the
most this will yield will be indeterministic randomness.
And this result would make his much vaunted talk of re-
sponsibility (for self-creation, etc.) unintelligible. He
may, on the other hand, take seriously the notion of re-
sponsibility. But this would make his calim that consci-
ousness is a construct of discrete conscious, intentional
 125

states itself difficult to understand.

At any rate, the primary concern here is not Sartrean
exegesis. Instead, what must be noted is that if one
stresses the aspect of Sartre dealing with responsibility,
self-creation, the spontaneity of consciousness, and free-
dom — an aspect that looms extremely large in Being and
Nothingness— in such a way as to endorse an 'entitative'
view of consciousness, then one finds in Sartre a further
proponent of a kind of agent-causal theory of action. One
finds in Sartre a proponent who, instead of a self or per-
son, offers consciousness as the intrinsically active
source of those movements termed actions. To note that
Sartre's further talk of consciousness as remaining ever
pure and pristine, unqualified, undeformed, and unfettered
by its dispositions or 'qualities' (by its character
traits), seems to heighten its resemblance to a self that
stands 'behind or above' its various dispositional states
(and is not reducible to them, or to their totality).
Insofar as this critique of Sartre rests upon the
notion of responsibility, a word about this latter may be
appropriate at this point. The kind of responsibility at
issue is not of some teleological ameliorative sort. It
is, rather, of the strong retrospective type most of us
operate with in our ordinary dealings with others and with
ourselves. It is the kind bound up with justified guilt,
 126

remorse, pride, blame, credit, desert, and retributive

punishment. It is the kind that presupposes some measure
of autonomy. It is, in short, the sort based on our per-
ception of ourselves as the authors of our acts.

***

Nozick.
Nozick presents — in the form of a half-hearted sug-
gestion — a Sartrean account of action. In particular, he
offers an account of that aspect of action dealing with
decision and choice (Robert Nozick, philosophical Explana-
tions, p. 294). On his view, in choice situations where we
find ourselves under the influence of conflicting reasons,
the resulting action is not caused (causally determined) by
antecedent states or events. Rather, the decision itself
bestows different and unequal 'weights' on these conflict-
ing sets of reasons and then, and only then, does the
strongest reason (the strongest and weightier desire) cause
the behavior constituting the action. But how the decision
bestows weights is causally undetermined. Moreover the
bestowal of weights on reasons avoids randomness through
what Nozick calls a process of reflexive self-subsumption.

... The weights... [the decision] bestows may fix

general principles that mandate not only the relevant
act but also the bestowal of those (or similar) weights.
The bestowal of weights yields both the action and (as
a subsumption not a repetition) that very bestowal.
(Philosophical Explanations, p. 300).
 127

Again,
... A self-subsuming decision... bestows weights to
reasons on the basis of a then chosen conception of
oneself and one's appropriate life, a conception that
includes bestowing those weights and choosing that
conception (where the weights also yield choosing that
self-conception). Such a self-subsuming decision will
not be random brute fact; it will be explained as an
instance of the very conception and weights chosen.
(Philosophical Explanation, pp. 300-301).
The view is, then, that decisions are free — and hence the
resulting actions count as being free — because (a) they
are non-causally determined by prior events and states
involving the person; and (b) because they result from
non-random bestowals of weights on initially indefinitely
weighted reasons (or even on reasons that do carry speci-
fied, though revokable, weights acquired in past decisions,
or in some other way). And this latter bestowal is not
random because the very 'act', or rather process, of be-
stowing weights a specific way X is an instance of a larger
principle of action/behavior (of a 'self-conception'; of
certain fundamental goals or values) that one embraces
through bestowing weights X-ly. This decision, in other
words, is the person's decision — as opposed to a random
occurrence — because its formation gives birth and ex-
pression to a larger principle (the 'choice' of a way of
life, of certain fundamental values and goals), which
principle then (concurrently) comes back to make of the
decision itself a manifestation of its operation. It is,
 128

in short, the person's decision because it contributes to

shaping and creating or defining the person (qua 'funda-
mental project'). This implies that if the person — or
simply a new decision process — in the future opts for,
and gives birth and expression to, a radically different
life-guiding principle (a new self-conception), then the
old person ceases to be.
This closely resembles the quasi-Humean version of
Sartre's theory, where the only source of coherence and
continuity of a person over time rests with continued
(though ever revokable) allegiance to a 'fundamental pro-
ject*. And for the kind of reasons already mentioned in
connection with Sartre, this account of a person's free
decision is at best unconvincing — at worst unintellig-
ible. The problematic jump is that going from a deci-
sions' s being reflexively self-subsuming (even granting the
reality of this phenomenon), to its being free, i.e., non-
random and self-caused. Now, it is true that if the de-
cision process, that is, the process of bestowing weights
X-ly, were subsumable to a principle or a self-conception
produced through the very decision process, the decision
would acquire a kind of intelligibility, or self-explana-
toriness. It would become self-explanatory in the sense of
turning into a manifestation of a larger regular pattern
(it would become the expression of a type of character, an
 129

expression of the person's 'essence'). On a theory of

explanation according to which a phenomenon is explained
only when it is subsumable to a general law or pattern,
this type of decision-occurrence would become explicable
and intelligible.
But this sense of randomness overcome through appeal
to self-subsumption is not the only, or even the central,
sense haunting theorists of freedom and action. What re-
mains random in Nozick's account of free decision is the
distribution or bestowal of weights X-ly, as opposed to any
number of possible ways. Why does a specific self-con-
ception take form and get embraced, instead of any other?
Does this simply happen? Nozick's answer is, yes! (Phil-
osophical Explanation, pp. 303-307). And he seems to say
that we should not demand more from an account of free
decision than this happening being reflexively self-sub-
suming. He states:

Maybe it is possible for weights somehow to just happen

to get bestowed on reasons; however, when the bestowal
is anchored and tied in the way we have described, to a
formed self-conception (even if formed just then), if it
is self-subsuming and reflexive, leading to later
(revokable) commitment, then it is a doing, not a
happening merely. If all that context and stage setting
(compare Wittgenstein) does not make it an action, what
alternative conception of action is being presupposed?
(Philosophical Explanations, p. 307) .

What indeed! How about the conception of action as a

self-caused or person-caused or agent-caused event? The
most we can get from Nozick is the notion of a self-ex-
 130

planatory event. But this is rushing ahead.

What should be noticed is that Nozick's difficulties
mirror Sartre's. In the Humean Sartre we found no room
within a discrete 'moment* of consciousness for the pres-
ence of some power to opt for either a formation, or a
renewal, or an overthrow of the pre-existing fundamental
project. Sartre's account, so construed, could only yield
the mere happening of the opting either way (since consci-
ousness, on this reading, is not some substratum separable
from its discrete intentional moments, each of which simply
happens to be directed toward some actual or possible
•object*). Likewise, in Nozick there is no possibility for
a specific self-conception (a specific decision) to be
actively chosen or undertaken by the 'person* — as con-
trasted with the decision to do x rather than y simply
happening. In neither case does it make much sense to
attribute the decision to the person. The problematic jump
is that going from indeterminacy, bolstered by self-ex-
planatoriness, to self-direction and self-causation.

It is suggestive, on this point, that Nozick downplays

the role of responsibility and its demands. In fact re-
sponsibility is hardly ever mentioned in his discussion of
freedom. And in a subsequent chapter when he does talk of
responsibility it is of the 'ameliorative' or teleological
type, which is not the interesting and disturbing sort. It
 131

may, of course, be objected that this concern is besides

the point, since the Sartrean or Nozickean 'person' is not

meant to be the sort of thing that makes decisions (and

that bears responsibility for what he/she becomes). But

then, even if this were true for Sartre, which I am confi-

dent it is not, so much the worse, it would seem, for this

type of person.

II

What, then, are the results of this admittedly very

sketchy survey? They include the following:

(1) That there is a need for something to supplement

simple indeterminism, in order to explain how a

decision/action is mine and not merely a product

of a random process. On this point all the

philosophers we have considered agree.

(2) That non-entitative accounts of free decision/

action fail to provide adequate explanation for

the phenomenon of an event (expecially a choice

or a decision) being up to me — i.e., up to the

person, affected by the person, authored by the

person, originated by the person. And, there-

fore, such accounts fail to explain and justify

the attribution of responsibility for that event

to the person (or to anything else for that

matter) . This, of course, is also the point to be

 132

carried over from the last chapter.

(3) That, therefore, agent-causality (of whatever
sort, whether involving a self or a consciousness
or a self-moving body) seems required to explain
how some events (especially choices) are up to me
and originated by me, and how I am responsible
(in a broad sense that includes, but is not con-
fined to, moral responsibility) for such events.
It is worth remarking that virtually all the agent-
causality theorists above surveyed focus attention mainly
upon situations involving choice or decision-making. They
pay special attention to contexts involving inner conflict
— conflict between either normatively neutral desires (and
beliefs), or 'natural' inclinations (temptations) and felt
moral duties. Thus, their theories are primarily theories
of 'free choice'. Their question is mainly "What does it
take for a choice-making event to be free, or to be done by
the person?", which is another way of asking for the ne-
cessary and sufficient conditions for genuine choice to
occur. But, of course, most of our actions are rather
routine, non-reflective, non-glamorous. Most of what we do
is unattended by conflicts and anxiety. Aristotle's vir-
tuous person, for example, hardly ever experiences inner
conflicts. In some sense choices are constantly being
made, but they are made at the pre- or non-reflective level
 133

(to adopt Sartrean terminology). So a lot of what is said

by the authors considered (i.e., the bestowal of disparate
weights on conflicting reasons; the exertion of moral ef-
fort to overcome temptations; the presence of genuine de-
liberation, etc.) is inapplicable to most active contexts.
It does not follow that these authors consider such unre-
flective actions as not free. But it does seem that often
they need to say a lot more to justify the application and
the relevance of their accounts to the large class of
spontaneous non-reflective acts.

This point needs mentioning because there is, I think,

another important and often neglected line of support for
the adoption of an agent-causal view. If this line is
valid, it covers all fully fledged actions.
Many actions require concentration and effort, but not
necessarily explicit decisions. Take, for example, my
attentive trying to remember the name of an old school-
mate; or my concentrated juggling of a soccer ball. In
each of these cases we have either a continuous event or a
series of events that can be considered paradigmatic 'act-
ive events' — events with respect to which I am active, in
which I play an active role. If 'my activity' were con-
fined to this event(s)'s causal origination from some be-
lief/desire set; or if it were confined to its originating
in a Nozickian indeterministic fashion; then something
 134

central to my agnecy vis-a-vis this event would be left

out. This something would be my experience of doing it.
For, on event-causal or otherwise non-entitative theories,
I can only be said to be active with respect to this event
if I, via some psychological occurrent state or some unde-
termined event, initiate or trigger its occurrence (or
series of occurrences). Once this has been accomplished I,
so to say, wash my hands of its subsequent unraveling. But
I experience my 'causal contribution* as continuing dur-
ing the entire duration of the event. It is not the case
that I trigger this event(s) and then it goes on on its
own, or according to natural laws. The causation involved,
by me, is temporally coextensive with the whole caused-
event(s). So, whatever it is that I am, I must be some-
thing capable of exercizing lasting continuous causation.
Contrast the causation, by me, involved in my trying
to remember a name, or in the movements involved in my
juggling a soccer ball, with the causation, still by me, of
another event(s) also within me and involving me (in the
sense of calling my attention and concern to it). I take a
deep breath immediately after a very hard physical workout,
which act triggers and initiates, as I knew it would, a
coughing fit entirely outside my control. Here we have an
event (the coughing fit) that despite its being deliber-
ately and consciously caused by me to occur, and despite
 135

its 'carrying me along' in its unraveling, is yet inde-

pendent of, and external to, me — it is something that
while it occurs is suffered by me. It, unlike my juggling
the soccer ball, is caused by me in a radically more lim-
ited way. It is indeed triggered, even intentionally, by
me, but it then proceeds on its own. The juggling of the
ball is both triggered by me and sustained causally by me.
I retain a dynamic kind of control over it. I continue to
do it. I could, after all, stop at any time. The kind of
causation involved in this latter event, from my part, does
not end with the event's beginning.

And it should be clear, moreover, that this causation

is distinct from that exercized by what are called standing
causal conditions, for the latter are static, passive
states. The causation we are referring to is dynamic,
living, energetic (and, in short, I want to say, agent-
likel) .

The attentive juggling of the ball is an action in a

primitive non-derivative sense. In contrast, the above
specified coughing fit simply partakes of, or results from,
my activity, and so can at most be said to be an action
derivatively. What it takes for an event to be a primitive
action requires more than simple 'external' (vis-a-vis the
event in question) triggering or event-causation. Event-
causation is unequipped to capture the sense in which my
 136

juggling is more of an act than is the above-mentioned

coughing fit, though both are causally triggered by me, and
both involve my body and attention, in other words, if I
could only causally affect the (mental or physical) world
by means of occurrent event-like states (like beliefs,
desires, intentions, volitions, tryings, and what not) —
either because the I was in itself an inert passive sub-
stance-bearer; or because I was simply a totality of such
states, etc. — then my causal participation in any two
events, each caused by me, could not manifest itself in
different degrees. But it can so manifest itself. Our
agency, therefore, must be of a different sort.

The event-causal theorist might reply that the reason

why my causal participation seems to accompany the entire
duration of, say, the juggling event, is because the latter
is actually composed of a large number of short events,
each of which is event-caused by a series of momentary
psychological events. This multiple event-causation nat-
urally gives the impression of continuous causation, in
the coughing fit case, on the other hand, only one psycho-
logical event was necessary to trigger a whole train of
events; which train sustained itself through reflex-type
automatic causal ties. That explains the correct impres-
sion of my remaining causally outside the unraveling of
this •event'.
 137

This is clearly a rather desperate attempt at salvag-

ing the event-causal theory. It brings to mind Ryle's
amusing rhetorical requests for the exact number of voli-
tions involved in producing simple bodily movements. The
number of events involved in my juggling the soccer ball
is, it seems to me, rather arbitrary. This kind of issue
lures one to want to discard talk of events altogether, if
one understands by them real, discrete phenomena (as op-
posed to theoretical abstactions). And if one lets oneself
go in this direction, the event-causal theory may have
trouble getting off the ground. But this larger issue
shall be bypassed.

What does seem to be the case is that as I juggle the

ball I (normally) experience no desire whatever (if I am
concentrated, fresh, and vigorous); nor do I experience a
series of miniscule tryings, or occurrent intentions, or
what not. My causation is simply not fragmentary. Why I
show up at the soccer field may be explainable (in some
sense) through recourse to the desire to play etc. But
once I (decide to) start playing, desire and intention no
longer play a role. It is true that as I juggle I react to
a whole strean of new sensory input, and hence new beliefs
are constantly being formed. But beliefs are not by them-
selves causes of action (or reaction). And it is the
causal force behind these reactions — that which keeps the
 138

juggling going when it could stop at any moment; that which

eventually brings it to an end; the intelligent active
force — that is continuous, non-segmented, non-event-like.
To say that there must be a series of minuscule psycho-
logical events each of which is causally productive of a
minuscule segment of my juggling movements is to make re-
course to entities that one should find in experience, but
one does not. Perhaps they are present subconsciously.
And this possibility cannot simply be excluded. But even
if they were, they might, for reasons explored in the last
chapter, still be incapable of adequately explaining act-
ivity.

Nor can it be held that my juggling is a mechanical

unwinding of some habit-like skill, which need only be
triggered by, say, a desire-intention occurrent expression
for it to take effect. It is true that acquired (bodily)
skills involve conjoined series of motions happening or
being performed 'naturally', without the need to focus
attention upon each constitutive part. But having a bodily
skill also implies having control over various (series of)
movements — it implies, for example, being able to retain
one's balance when a leg is kicked upwards, being able to
direct the leg movement rather precisely, etc. And such
control is exercized in displaying the skill, in using it.
The skill does not exercize itself.
 139

Ila
Let us now examine the 'mental* counterparts of the
phenomenon of continuous causation of a physical ongoing
process. This examination, aside from elaborating further
on the strange experience of sustained causation, will
emphasize a number of additional points. It will focus on
what will be called mental 'self-direction', and in par-
ticular on our experience of 'controlled attention'. In
doing so it will discourage attempts to account for sus-
tained causation through appeals to successions of causally
efficacious mental states, the same phenomenon of sustained
causation is present at the mental level. Finally, it will
elaborate on why a Humean or Nozickean account, even if
bolstered by indeterminacy, cannot capture the peculiar
'self-directed' spontaneity that typifies various aspects
of our mental life.
***

Sartre in his characteristic exuberance more than once

identified human reality with freedom. Freedom, he said,
is "the being of man — i.e., his nothingness of being"
(Being and Nothingness, p. 569). This claim taken liter-
ally looks like a category mistake. But it also embodies a
profound truth. One crucial feature of persons is their
ability to imagine a future — almost any future — and
make of it a reality. Sartre liked to talk of 'projecting*
 140

possible futures. This term suggests the forward-jetting

of an intangible framework of ideal events which then
guides its actualization.
What interests us here is the 'spontaneity* of these
'projections'. Persons are such as not only to be able to
mold things with their hands, but also to mold and manipu-
late 'mental things' like ideal futures — and do so in a
very special way. Their mental life has, in short, a pe-
culiar and crucially significant self-direction.

How precisely they act in, and on, the intellectual

world is open to various interpretations. Perhaps the only
mental acts there are those of assenting, discarding, re-
jecting, affirming. In short, perhaps all we mentally do
is say yes or no to thoughts, images, propositions, etc.,
that occur to us. But it is more likely that we also act-
ively 'grope' for and conjure up words, ideas, memories;
that we direct attention to this or that; that we carry out
logical or mathematical operations 'in our head', etc. In
any case, whatever the precise extent of our mental activ-
ity, there is no doubt that it exists.

The thesis that will be advanced here is that not only

does mental activity exist, but that it is crucial to per-
sonhood. Sartre's claim that "freedom is identical with my
existence" (Being and Nothingness, p. 573), if interpreted
a certain way, is relevant here. Recall that for Sartre
 141

freedom equals spontaneity. And the kind of spontaneity

Sartre had in mind is neither of the following. It is
certainly not the natural uninhibited expression of one's
nature, character, of Id. For, such expression could be
both determined and predictable. On the other hand, it is
not, as we have seen, mere indeterministic randomness. It
is, for example, not reducible to the mental or physical
behavior of a determined creature in which a 'randomizer'
mechanism has been injected. Spontaneity must instead be
interestingly different. Bringing out this difference
constitutes, I believe, an important step towards under-
standing what is special about persons.

Let us consider a creature slightly different from a

person. Let us call it Hal. Hal also has a mental life —
it has thoughts, images, memories, desires, fears, values,
goals, and so on. Hal acts on the 'external world' on the
basis of his mental occurrences and states. His mental
states connect causally with his perceptions of the ex-
ternal world; and they cause movements and changes in the
physical or mental world. Hal, like us, also experiences
intentional states whose objects include some of its other
mental states. Hal, in other words, exhibits higher-order
states. Finally, he too acts on what he thinks, feels, or
on what he projects. And, given the presence of appropri-
ate mental states, Hal's goals, values, etc., can undergo
 142

corrections, revisions, and alterations. Naturally, many

or most of Hal's mental states (principally the perceptual,
sensory ones) are causally forced, directly or indirectly,
by Hal's causal interaction with his environment. But the
rest of what Hal thinks, feels, 'projects', simply surfaces
to consciousness through the operation of a randomizing-
mechanism — whether itself physical or mental is irrele-
vant. Let us say, however, that this randomization has
built-in limits of incoherence. Hal's behavior, even when
prompted by indeterministic mental states, is for the most
part regular and non-chaotic. Nonetheless, the mechanism
that produces Hal's non-determined mental states sometimes
yields anomalous states, and thus anomalous acts. Such
anomalous twists may radically alter Hal's future behavi-
oral patterns. One more thing. The yielding of occasional
anomalous states is itself randomly determined. Thus,
there is indeterministic randomness both in determining
which coherent strings of states are produced, and in
determining on which occasion an anomalous state is inter-
jected. So, while in general what Hal thinks and does is
orderly and predictable, no single 'act' (act = event
causally involving some non-determined conscious state) of
Hal is determined or predictable.

Hal, therefore, has a 'mind of his own' in one sense

of this expression. He has a 'mind of his own' in that he
 143

does not always do what others want him to do. He is

uncontrollable; and in this sense he is spontaneous. This
may lend to Hal's mental life some resemblance to our own.
But this resemblance ia partial and misleading. Hal,
unlike us, has no control over his mental life. The ideas,
thoughts, memories, moods, desires, impressions, and,
specifically, the Sartrean 'projections' that surface ran-
domly in Hal's consciousness are indeed undetermined and
open to revision via further random or determined inten-
tional states (first- or higher-order ones). But this is
the extent of Hal's control over them. His non-determined
states are not subject to a certain kind of scrutiny,
approval, rejection, repression — namely, the occurrent,
sustained, controlled variety. Hal may experience some
'reflexive' approval/disapproval thought or series of
thoughts. And these may be causally efficacious. But they
are randomly, indeterministically produced. Hal is incap-
able of 'his own' assessive consideration of propositions,
images, prospective acts, and what not. in other words,
Hal's attention is not a weapon that he ever wields, it is
either randomly or deterministically turned this way or
that, it is not controlled by Hal.

In fact, Hal as a person does not exist. What exists

is a creature whose physical and mental behavior is in part
random, arbitrary, unpredictable. Hal's mental life lacks
 144

an active controlling center that can transcend and act

upon the states it is in. Hal is a Humean mind. What it
crucially lacks is a general capacity for self-directed.
sustained, occurrent, conscious agency. This capacity in
us is vividly manifest in the phenomenon of controlled
sustained attention. Instances of this attention can occur
while one inspects a single, possibly mental, item; or
while shifting from one item to another; or while mentally
groping for something that escapes one.

This type of attention is noticeably absent in most

discussions of agency. Yet there is no doubt that it plays
a central role in our behavior, and particularly in our
mental behavior. Thus, it deserves a closer look.
***

Attention may be called by this or that event, it may

float freely from one image to another, from one idea to
another, as when one lies relaxed in bed just prior to
sleep. It may wander from the project at hand. One may be
distracted by something extraneous to such project. Fea-
tures like these show that the path, the shifts, and the
running away, of attention can be completely involuntary.
They need not be acts. One cannot, therefore, identify
with the 'stream', 'beam', jumps, of attention. One may
(be condemned to) always go where it goes. But where it
goes is not always directed, guided by one. one may simply
 145

be led by one's attention.

But one's relation to attention can be less passive.
One may indeed be 'struck' by an idea, thought (say, re-
garding a contemplated course of action). But upon being
so struck one may turn to examine the implications of car-
rying out this idea. Pros and cons occur to one. And one
weighs them in accord with other goals and principles. One
then tentatively decides whether to act on this idea or
not; or one decides to postpone the decision; or the in-
vestigation simply runs out of steam and dies out with no
decision taken. In any case, in processes such as these
the turns, focusings, unfocusings, concentration — in
short the movements — of one's attention are a complex
mixture. Some of them are guided and endorsed by one;
others are otherwise determined.

Finally, there are movements and pauses of attention

that constitute pure acts. Usually they involve our utmost
concentration. Here is an example: I close my eyes and try
to form an accurate 'mental image* of my childhood home and
neighborhood. If and when I succeed, I proceed to slowly
scan various parts of this imagined landscape (some details
one simply cannot) . If all this is carried out smgle-
mindedly, I exercize nearly complete control over the path
of my attention.

Another example: I sit in my silent room in a semi-

 146

lotus position, and I try to simply follow the rhythm of my

breathing. In and out, in and out... I fasten my whole
attention on the breathing. And every time it wanders I
bring it back. The process requires unrelenting vigilance
and, consequently, is very tiring. Let us say I am very
adept at this. So, after a few minutes I succeed at keep-
ing my attention focused simply on my breathing for indef-
inite periods.

Let us call the phenomenon illustrated through these

examples that of 'controlled attention'. Controlled at-
tention can occur in its 'pure' form, or it can be mixed
with involuntary mental promptings. In either case it
constitutes, I submit, the missing factor in Hal's mental
life.

Clearly, Hal may possess the kind of uncontrolled

attention that is called to this or that. This type of
attention is consistent with a Humean conception of the
mind. It is consistent with this conception because it
does not require anything beyond the sheer succession
(which need not be fragmentary) of mental states.

But the two related phenomena of one's sustaining

attention and fastening it to some 'object', are something
else. In these something seems to operate from behind and
beyond the succession of states. It seems to influence or
create this succession (even D. Dennett, an able and con-
 147

vinced enemy of substantial selves, has to make recourse to

an 'agent' or 'subject' who 'chooses', 'decides', and
'selects', at various junctures during a decision process
— Cf. his "On Giving the Libertarians What They Say They
Want" in Brainstorms). Moreover, it is this transcending
something that appears to guide attention in light of what
has come before and in anticipation of what is to come
subsequently, it appears to be the intelligent synthesiz-
er. It informs and elucidates. Its role seems, thus, to
be dual: causal and informative.

A Humean may claim that what we have here are (a) a

coherent series of states (or of attention fastenings/
shiftings) accompanied by (b) a single, lasting, false
impression of control; (c) a lasting impression of effort
(perhaps b and c are one and the same impression); and (d)
a lasting 'informative' memory-impression that provides the
background for the more fleeting succession of states. The
impression of control is false because it plays no causal
role vis-a-vis the path of attention.

Here, as in the case of sustained causation of a

'physical' activity, there are no knock-down arguments
against this Humean atomistic analysis. But here too this
analysis seems highly unfaithful to our experience of sus-
tained attention. The felt unity, guidance, sustainment,
seem to elude such analyses.
 148

Perhaps the feature of such experiences most resistant

to this atomistic-passive analysis is our feeling of being
the cause and guide of attention-movements. It seems that
vis-a-vis this aspect we simply cannot be mistaken. For,
the content of one's awareness in these circumstances is
not limited to a feeling of effort, a feeling of control,
and so on. This awareness seems to be of myself moving and
guiding attention this way or that. I seem aware of myself
as a cause. I am not aware of just any effort or any
control, but of my effort and jmy control. And awareness of
my effort and control is not reducible to feeling some
energy emerging or emanating from this body/mind. It is
awareness of myself as the source of this energy.

Being aware of effort and of control is in fact very

different from being aware of a throbbing toothache, or of
a recurring image. The latter are, for the most part,
'mere experiences'. They are things that one feels; and
they may even be things that one cannot help feeling. They
are, in addition, events towards which one possesses priv-
ileged (direct) access. Finally, awareness of pains and
images must be awareness of one's own pains and images„ In
these respects pains and images resemble feelings of effort
and control. However, effort and control are distinctive
in the following ways: (a) experiences of effort-control
contain the awareness of some peculiar power being exerted;
 149

(b) this power-exertion is necessarily person-implicative;

that is, one experiences oneself as immersed in the exer-
tion; one does not experience oneself as neutral towards it
or as detached from it; (c) this person-immersion in inner
exertion of power is originative and active; one is not
overwhelmed by this power, or oppressed by it; one feels
oneself merged with it as its source, not as a receiver.

Thus far we have spoken about what the experience of

effort-control is like. We have focused on the content of
this experience. We have, in other words, tried to specify
the nature of the object of one's awareness-of-effort/
control. Our conclusion has been that when one experiences
inner effort and control, one experiences oneself as the
immanent source of power-exertion.

Now, our opponent will no doubt remind us that this

does not take us beyond the realm of phenomenology; that we
are still within 'experiences'. Simply because in some
circumstances we experience ourselves as being originative
and causal does not ensure that we are in_ fact so. Could
we not experience ourselves-exerting-power without m_ fact
doing so. This could happen either because no power is
exerted, or because, though power is exerted, we are not
behind it.

Let us return to the example of my seemingly exerting

power in maintaining my attention fastened on my breathing.
 150

Could this experience be delusory in either of the above

senses? It could, of course, be delusory in the broader
sense that the entire context might be part of a dream, in
which case the component experience-of-effort would be
unreal. This dream-possibility is irrelevant for our
present discussion. For, depending on how we construe
dreams, either we take the experience-of-effort as genuine
— but in the process relocating the same issue at the
dream-level (viz. can the I of the dream have the dream-
counterpart of the experience of I-sustain-attention-
fixed-to-my-breathing, without in dream-fact so sustaining
its dream-attention?); or, alternatively, we deny that the
dream experience-of-effort — qua dream-experience — con-
stitutes a genuine experience-of-effort. Naturally, taking
this latter route would amount to dismissing the question
of its veracity qua experience-of-effort.

Can the experience be delusory in a narrower sense?

Can the genuine experience of my_ sustaining my attention on
x fail to be veridical either because I am not in fact at
the source of the power exerted to sustain it, or because
no such power is in fact exerted?

Let us consider the first alternative. Suppose we try

to imagine a powerful demonic hypnotist charged with this
complex mission: (1) he must fasten my_ attention on x dur-
ing time-period t, thereby, in effect, becoming the effi-
 151

cacious force behind this flow of attention at t (instead

of me), and (2) he must instill in me the deceptive feel-
ings of concentration and effort characteristic of my con-
trolling attention. Is this mission in principle accom-
plishable? That is, is the supposition of such a takeover
coherent? I think not.

Success in this mission would be contingent upon the

truth of two assumptions, (a) it must be possible for an
external force to take over my_ concentrated attention-flow
without such attention-flow ceasing to be mine during the
takeover; (b) it must be possible for me to experience all
the characteristic phenomenology of exerting control over
my attention-flow without in fact doing so. These assump-
tions must be rejected.

What would it be like for something else to direct an

attention-flow in such a way as to preserve the concurrent
mineness of this flow? Let us remember that attention is
necessarily intentional. Hence, the flow of attention is
always directed at some object. In our example this object
is the breathing process during period t. Suppose, now,
that the directive force behind this flow at t were not me;
what might be required for this attention-flow to remain
mine? Certainly one requirement would have to be that I
too somehow focus on the same breathing process at t.
Should I be focusing upon something else, or not focus on
 152

anything in particular, or even completely black out, then

the attention focused on the breathing would not be con-
currently mine. Moreover, by hypothesis, my focusing on
the breathing cannot constitute a second flow parallel to
the one hypnotically directed. However, if my focusing on
my breathing were identical with this demonically-control-
led focusing, would I not have to feel somehow driven or
constrained? Would I not have to feel like a puppet? If
so, I would not be deceived into thinking of myself as the
controller; and this would undermine the original supposi-
tion. On the other hand, suppose I felt my own apparent
tension, effort, power-exertion, etc., in holding the
attention-flow chained to my breathing, what sense would it
make to say that my attention would not in fact be under my
control? None, I submit.

I stake this claim on the truth of the following two

principles:
(1) If it genuinely feels to one as if one were pay-
ing attention (to x ) , then one would be paying
attention (to x);
(2) If it genuinely feels to one as if one were exert-
ing effort, then one would be exerting effort.
Combining (1) and (2) we have the result that if it genu-
inely feels to one as if one were exerting effort in seem-
ingly fastening one's attention on x, then one would be
 153

exerting effort in fastening one's attention on x (of

course, one can be mistaken in identifying x, etc.). Thus,
by instantiation, if it genuinely seems to me that I am
exerting power in holding my attention fixed (on my
breathing), then I am in fact holding my attention fixed
(on my breathing).

Can anything, other than appeals to introspection, be

said in support of (1) and (2)? Well, we might in the
first place diffuse our natural uneasiness vis-a-vis these
principles through the obvious comparison to phenomena like
pain-sensations. Just as real pain is inseparable from
seeming-pain; so too real attending-to-x is inseparable
from seeming-atteding-to-x; and so too real effort or
power-exertion is inseparable from seeming-effort or seem-
ing-power-exert ion.

More importantly, we might note that the phenomenon of

exerting control over one's attention differs from one's
exerting control over a bodily movement such as waving
one's arm. In the case the physical arm-waving would seem
to be separable from one's exertion of power in seemingly
waving it. It seems possible for one's power to somehow be
intercepted or rechanneled and for the arm to be moved by
some other force. After all, despite all the intimate
connections between my arm and me, my arm is distinct from
me. I can fully exist and be active without it; and it can
 154

fully exist and even function without me. What goes for
the arm also goes for processes like breathing. Not so for
attention. Attention and I are inextricably bound, just
like activeness and I are bound. My attention cannot
operate without me, nor I without it. I could not, for
example, sensibly hold that while I was truly engaged in a
task K at t, my attention was simply not on K (or in K) at
t. Inversely, I would also evoke puzzlement were I to
exclaim that while my attention was focused on the carrying
out of task L at t*, I was in fact not involved in L at t*.
We are not, of course, talking about the common-place
phenomenon of attention being divided between a given task
and, say the thought of one's loved ones.
Consequently, the phenomenon of effortful concentrated
attention is not simply another instance of the broader
phenomenon of activeness. it is, of course, an active
phenomenon. But what makes it a rather unusual activity is
that the object 'moved' in this activity is attention, or
its focus; and attention is not divorceable from the agent.
Attention is not some mental organ or instrument which
could function independently or through a foreign operator.
If all this is sound, we have shown that the experi-
ence of my sustaining my attention cannot be delusory in
the narrow sense that I am not at the source of the power
exerted to sustain it. Let us now recall that we listed
 155

another narrow way in which this experience could possibly

be delusory. Might one be deluded in thinking that there
is some power exerted with the object of controlling one's
attention-flow? Could it be that in fact no such power is
exerted whenever one seems to feel oneself as being at the
source of this power? Again, I think not. The idea of
attention remaining fixed on x on its own somehow, and yet
miraculously remaining firm or changing its focus in exact
correspondence with the alm(s) of my seeming efforts and
exertions, seems proposterous. After all, as was noted,
attention-flow and cotemporal, co-intentional felt concen-
tration-efforts are inseparable. Given this inextricable
union, this second possibility of delusion losses all
plausibility.

I tentatively conclude, therefore, that in the special

realm of attention the appearance of our being originative
and causal coincides with the fact of our being originative
and causal. And, I claim, I could not be aware of my
effort, control without in fact exercizing some causal
power (I could, of course, be mistaken about what I cause).
It is contrary to the very character of so-called 'exper-
iences of effort, control' that they surface in us from
sources other than the subject-person.

What I am suggesting is that our experience of agency

is inseparable from our being causal factors. And, conse-
 156

quently, in this very unique case we seem to be in posses-

sion of direct knowledge of causes — of ourselves as
causes. If this anti-Humean and anti-Nietzshean impression
is correct, we have an instance where the first-person
phenomenological data coincide with data from the 'object-
ive' sphere of causal relations.
***

The conclusion to be drawn from this brief look at

controlled attention and, more generally, at controlled
spontaneity (as opposed to random spontaneity) is that
being a person, in the sense in which we are, is intimately
bound with this capacity for self-directed mental behavior.
Hal, therefore, in lacking this capacity, is precluded from
being a person. Hal is simply a sentient, partially
unpredictable creature.

Indeed part of Hal's general behavior, and of his

attention-behavior specifically, exhibits an apparent
self-direction. (1) this behavior is not directed from
outside, say, telepathically; (2) it is not causally de-
termined by factors that ultimately precede the very exis-
tence of Hal; (3) it is due to factors internal to Hal's
body or mind; (4) it is spontaneous in the sense of being
indeterministic and unpredictable.

And yet his attention, for instance, is not genuinely

self-directed. It is not self-directed in the sense in
 157

which our attention is self-directed. And our attention is

self-directed in such a manner as to involve, in addition
to features 1 - 4 , also a seemingly transcending occurrent
controlling factor. It involves, I suggest, the person.
Incidentally, there may even be a question as to
whether genuine self-consciousness is possible without this
self-direction. Perhaps if one is to be aware of being in
pain, as opposed to merely being in pain, it must be pos-
sible while being in pain to imagine at some level not
being in pain. And this imagining may be dependent upon
the capacity for controlled attention-shifting.
lib
Let us now consider a likely rejoinder at this point in
the discussion.
One is wont to say that certain spontaneous things —
often great ones, as happens when one becomes 'inspired' —
simply get done; that they are not done by one. It does
it, the Buddhist would say, not I. But, I believe, this
need only mean that some acts take place without advance
planning, spontaneously, catching one by surprise. One can
feel astonishment at having been able to do some (great)
performance, work, creation. These things are done un-
self-consciously, pre-reflectively. But all of this only
shows that there are things that we do without being able
to explain how we do them. It shows that we can exude more
 158

than we have absorbed; that we can reach beyond our learn-

ing. But the self-forgetfulness experienced during such
times does not imply that the self-qua-agent does not play
an active role in such occurrences. It may have been fully
absorbed in its performance. This can ordinarily take
place during one's playing soccer, or tennis, or chess, or
while actively listening to music, reading a book having a
conversation, making love, etc. All of these 'activities'
may be done with detachment (self-consciously), or in an
absorbed manner. But doing them in the latter manner need
not involve the absence of, or lack of participation by,
the self/person. I am (and feel — at least in retrospect)
as much a doer in my absorbed soccer-playing as I am in my
self-conscious speech in front of a group. My causal con-
tribution may be as protracted and continuous during the
former as it is during the latter activity (though I may
only be explicitly aware of it in retrospect). As a matter
of fact in most cases my un-self-conscious protracted
causation of a complicated series of movements (think of a
dance) is far more effective than its self-conscious
counterpart would be. Why should this be?

Might it be that in un-self-conscious cases my causal

power is unified, focused, undivided? Would I not, in
effect, be trying to do one thing instead of possibly two?
For I might be doing x (the dance), and also be paying
 159

attention to my-doing-x. Paying attention to my carrying

out my primary activity can be divisive, thereby detracting
from this activity. This can be shown by imagining what
would happen to my speech (or dance), were I to play only
the observer-role and focus all of my attention on 'this-
speech-being-delivered' (or 'this-waltz-being-done'). The
speech would either cease, or become incoherent — it would
cease to be causally sustained by me, through directed at-
tention, and hence would no longer be an action of mine. I
may, on the other extreme, become a total participant and
focus all of my attention on my delivery of the speech. I
become, that is, totally absorbed in it. Here my 'causal
power* is focused, unified, thereby being more likely to
produce a better performance.

It would seem that this postulated 'causal power' that

manifests itself in the form of paying heed, observation-
ally, to 'my' speech being delivered (to various motions,
sounds, etc.), is one and the same 'causal power' that in
another occasion participates in my delivering the speech.
And if, as I suggest, I am at the source of this power,
then I am as much present in my un-self-conscious activi-
ties as I am in my self-conscious and thus somewhat unfoc-
used, dispersed and inefficient activities.
That our lives would be much more satisfying were each
of our activities of the focused sort and that being dis-
 160

posed to always be so absorbed and focused is a goal worth

striving for seem to be rather reasonable conclusions.
They may be, in part, what the Buddhist is after in seeking
to strip himself/herself of the delusion of selfhood, I-
ness, or of the Ego — and thereby achieve Enlightenment.
But the worthiness and attractiveness of such modes of
being-in-the-world seem irrelevant vis-a-vis the metaphys-
ical issue of whether action (of whatever type) requires
the presence of an 'entitative' self.
Consider, in this context, the following Zen Buddhist
claim:

"True freedom is freedom from your own desires", that

is, not the state of being without desires, but "that
while desiring and adhering to things you are at the
same time unattached to them". (Katsuki Sekida, Zen
Training, pp. 34-35).
Two points are worth taking up in thinking about the above
claim: one, for us, of incidental significance; the other
of more interest. The incidental point concerns this
question: "What is the connection between shedding one's
delusion of selfhood and one's not taking one's desires
excessively to heart?" One plausible answer is that one
can only become un-self-consciously absorbed in what one
does in the present if one does not care heavily (if at
all) for one's future. And giving importance to one's
desires means focusing upon what one lacks, and hence upon
a possibly more attractive future. That is, to hang one's
 161

worth, happiness, and what not, upon satisfying one's

desires necessarily detracts from the present, and from
one's present undertaking. Desires are disruptive, dis-
turbing forces vis-a-vis one's ongoing engagement. Hence,
being disturbed by one's desires (by what one lacks) goes
hand in hand with being unable to become absorbed in what
one is actually doing at the time, and, thus, interferes
with the loss of the perfidious sense of self or ego. All
this is compatible with there being a substantial self that
is engaged (unifiedly or dispersedly) in one's present
project.

The more interesting point regards the 'who', the

subject, being asked to become detached from 'its' desires
(and, hence, from the objects of those desires). If the
self were a delusion what could be asked to mend its ways?
It seems that such a demand presupposes that the agnecy
that is to take 'its' desires rather lightly not be iden-
tical with those desires. For this agency is asked to
consider, and in one way act towards, i.e., devalue, such
desires. Hence, this agency must somehow both transcend
and be able to interfere with the natural tendency of
desires to dominate one's existence. At the very least,
then, action cannot be conceived merely as that behavior
spurred on by one's desires. We are even asked to detach
ourselves from the desire not to be a victim of our de-
 162

sires.
These considerations, in conjunction with various
claims to the effect that upon enlightenment one realizes
that one's 'Buddha nature' (true self) is in fact identical
with the 'Buddha nature' of every sentient creature (Cf. P.
Kapleau's The Three Pillars of Zen, pp. 161-164) leads one
to believe that even the reknowned Buddhist notion of 'no
self or 'no mind1 is not meant to undermine the presuppo-
sition of a substantial self 'behind' one's actions. As I
see it, it merely undermines the assumption that there
exist individual discrete substantial selves, in favor of a
kind of monistic world-self view.

This latter view may, of course, be inconsistent with

the view of the agent-self advanced here. But it will be
so only if interpreted in certain specific ways. For,
paradoxical identifications between the many individual
selves and the one ultimate self are not uncommon in re-
ligious-mystical doctrines (Cf. for example, the Atman-
Brahman identity affirmed by Hinduism). What is important,
therefore, is that event the no-self thesis of various
Buddhist sects need not be inconsistent with some notion of
individual selves.
***

Suppose that the preceding discussions show that the

referent of 'I' must be such as to be able to exercize a
 163

prolonged and continuous type of causal power — be it on

the 'mental' or on the 'physical' level. And suppose that
such requirement can best (or only) be met by a persisting
substantial active agent-self.
If these suppositions are justified, then, as a cor-
ollary, an important puzzle gets solved. That is, this
type of causation by this alleged agent-self absolves the
agent-causality theory from a charge that, as we saw,
creates problems for the rival event-causal theory. The
charge in question concerns the 'proper causal path* issue.
This issue is a problem for event-causal theories, and it
might be thought that it also afflicts agent-causal theor-
ies.
Recall that there seemed to be no non-arbitrary way to
discriminate between those causal chains connecting inten-
tion-now with intended event, that yielded action, from
those that did not. Hence, there was no way to explain why
the shy student's release of the glass-jar did not consti-
tute an intentional action. Well, the agent-causal theor-
ist can, I believe, answer why that event was not an action
— at least he/she can on the present version of the
theory. It was not an action simply because the process of
the fingers' releasing the jar was not causally sustained
during its entire (albeit short) duration by the agent-self
(recall the coughing fit). The self's dynamic causal
 164

participation did not accompany the release of the jar.

Had the event been an action, the agent would have exer-
cized its sustained causal power in relaxing the hold of
the fingers. And had he/she done so, he/she would have
known it directly and unequivocally.
The general point is that event-causal theories have
problems at this juncture because the conception of causa-
tion they are committed to relates only temporally succes-
sive events. That is, their causation is necessarily such
that each cause-event temporally precedes the corresponding
effect-event. Hence, the cause and the effect (qua events,
not event-descriptions) only touch, so to say, at their
extremities. The end of one touches the beginning of the
other. And this is so both for chains of events that yield
action, and for those that do not. This makes it diffi-
cult, if not impossible, to distinguish the two.

The present agent-causal account, in contrast, treats

the event that counts as an action as intimately attached
to its cause — the self. It is so intimately attached, in
fact, that its cause — the agent-self — is, as we shall
see, an essential, inseparable component of the (effect)
event. Its causation is event-immanent.
Further, even if, hypothetically, an evil demon or a
mad doctor were to rewire my brain so that when I juggle
the soccer ball I do so via a complex, and unknown to me,
 165

remote-control mechanism, instead of the normal neural

path, this would not alter the status of the juggling as an
act. For, however I do it, I exert lasting causal power.
The juggling remains up to me; it is unlike something I
merely initiate. I sustain it. Even if I mistakenly think
that I am juggling when in fact I am bicycling or counting
sheep, my continual causal effort makes of these events, my
actions — albeit unintentional ones. The point is that so
long as something is being causally sustained, activity is
present. Whether this something is what I intended, or
whether the causal path traversed is the expected one, are
irrelevant vis-a-vis the activeness of the event(s). That
could not equally be said on event-causal analyses of act-
ion because there the causal path was essential vis-a-vis
the emergence of activity.

The only way for me to be mistaken in thinking that I

am being active is for me to think that I am exerting
(sustained) causal power/effort when in fact I am not.
This may happen in dreams (when e.g., I think I am trying
to scream, when I am not). But since the dream-possibility
is a general source of skepticism for all theories (both of
action and of most anything else), it need not detain us.
This closes the discussion of the positive grounds for
postulating agent-causality in the theoretical account of
action.
 166

***

It will have been noticed that the aspect of agency

that poses most problems for atomistic, deterministic,
event-causal views is the occurrent one. Specifically,
event-causal views seem unequipped to account for the ex-
perienced continuity, fluidity, and the accompanying guid-
ance/control of our active behavior.

However, it might be objected that this aspect of

action does not lead unequivocally to agent-causality. It
might be thought that there is an alternative, less ex-
treme, theory that can account for fluidity and felt-con-
trol. Let us call this intermediate theory the "process-
causal theory".
Such a theory can take many forms. All its possible
variations will not be addressed. What interests us is a
form of this theory that is thought to retain some of the
virtues of both event-causal and agent-causal theories.
From event-causal theories it might retain its determin-
istic character. With agent-causal theories it might share
the postulation of a lasting substantial entity (perhaps
the body) — albeit a non-active one. The new element is
process. This theory construes the person, let us say, as
a body endowed with a set of dispositions to believe,
desire, and perhaps even weigh beliefs, assess standards,
etc., where all of the latter are on occasion exercized as
processes. Such processes are presumably triggered by
external or internal occurrences. And this exercize is
causally efficacious. Moreover, the process-like expres-
sion of these dispositions or character-traits is to take
place deterministically, in both their being triggered and
in their unwinding.
Significantly, 'process' as used in this theory must
refer to a phenomenon that is primitive. It cannot refer
to something reducible to, or analyzable into, chains of
more basic monadic events. For, if this reduction were
permissible, this theory would not necessarily differ from
event-causal ones.
Such a theory will not be discussed at length because
at least three considerations quickly expose its implausi-
bility. First, it is not clear that there can be such
irreducible processes. For, ordinarily one thinks of a
process as a special series of events, namely, one exhib-
iting coherence, teleology, continuity, etc. Second, and
most crucially, even if a tenable conception of such proc-
esses were specifiable, it could at most account for the
continuity or fluidity of various activities. But recall
that the substantial entity of this theory is in itself
inert. So the real test of this theory lies in accounting
for our feeling of control, of guidance, and of non-de-
termination. And prima facie this process-type of account
 168

does not seem capable of capturing this agency-experience.

For, the experience of control involves the felt capacity
to stop at any time, or to go on. It involves the felt
guidance, correction, re-direction, of a given activity
(e.g., of attention). And a deterministic process that
behaves in accordance with physical laws would seem to
contradict such experiences. Naturally, if such experien-
ces are false or deceptive, then this obstacle is removed
from the application of a process-causal account. But on
the unlikelihood of this enough has already been said.

Finally, a process, like an event, is something that

simply occurs. And, therefore, even if we focus only on
those processes that express or exhibit our character
traits or dispositions, the yielding of action is not
guaranteed. Not all such expressions are acts — as we
have seen in the last chapter. The principle endowing some
such process-like expressions of our dispositions with
activity must thus be other than our character's process-
like manifestation. Therefore, process-causal theories,
like event-causal ones, will be deficient. They will also
need supplementation.

Ill
Let us now turn to consider various objections that
have been brought against agent-causality.
Irving Thalberg advances three main lines of objection
 169

to agent-causality (in "How does agent causality work?",

included in M. Brand and D. Walton (eds.), Action Theory,
1976) :
(1) Agent causality claims that some events e are

caused by agent A. And it is purported that this causing

is different from normal cases of 'transeunt' or event
causation. But since agent-causing may have to be itself
an event, the contrast between immanent and transeunt
causation dissappears (pp. 227-229). Thalberg suggests
that
Perhaps any display of our immanency really must be
somewhat event-like. After all, we can say generally
where and when any agent-causing occurred. Moreover,
the time interval we specify must not be later than the
time e began, nor may it be 'over' a long time before e
started occurring. (p. 228).
We should reply as follows: Let an instance of event-caus-
ation be represented by

^ ...e ? e'
And let a (would-be) instance of agent-causation be repre-
sented by
A * e' '
First, we can grant that agent-causation is 'event-like' in
the sense specified by Thalberg in the passage just quoted
(keeping in mind that many cases of agent-causation con-
tinue during the occurence of some entire events), without
thereby becoming committed to viewing the result e'' as
being event-caused. That we can specify where and when the
 170

agent-causing took place does not make what takes place

reducible to causation between events.
Secondly, and most importantly, with regard to the
claim that I A — > e' 'J may itself be taken as an event —
albeit complex — the proper rejoinder should be "Yes [ A -+
e'' 7 may be so taken". So can I e —j> e'J. They both can
pass as complex events. However, one must beware of draw-
ing illegitimate conclusions from this harmless admission.
One such conclusion would be that A —> e*'j qua event must
itself be caused to occur. This does not follow from any-
thing that has been granted, and is precisely what the
agent-causal theories denies. The other tempting but in-
valid inference is that since [A —9 e* 'J is an event, then
e'', the event included in this complex event, must be
e,,
event-caused by A —9 J« This seems to be what Thalberg
may be after. But to argue so is to be victim of a serious
level confusion. One might as well say that since fe —? e'J
is itself a (complex) event, e' is caused by / e —> e'J. On
the agent-causality theory e'' is caused by A. It is not
caused by the event of A's causing e''. The latter claim
makes no sense. Likewise, e' is caused by e, not by e's
causing of e', if the latter is taken as an event dif-
ferent from e. Thus, if what Thalberg is after is that any
agent A's causing of an event e'• must involve an inter-
mediary event of "A's causing of e''", then his position is
 171

groundless. If, on the other hand, his claim is that the

agent's causing of e'' had to be carried out through a-
nother event (say, a volition), then it simply is quest-
ion-begging, for this is one of the claims explicitly de-
nied by the agent-causal theorist.

There may be a third, and more generous, interpreta-

tion of Thalberg's point. Perhaps Thalberg is asking for
an explanation of the exact temporality of a given agent-
causing. That is, Thalberg may be reasoning as follows.
A's agent-causing of e*' must have occurred at some de-
finite time t (t may be instantaneous or relatively ex-
tended). But why y? A itself cannot be the cause of e' •-
at-t unless there is something about A at t that disting-
uishes A from A at t'. Otherwise why did e'• occur at t?
Why not 15 seconds later? One may recall that this is
substantially the same objection levelled at dispositional
causal accounts of action.

My assumpcion has been all along that immunity from

such attacks is one of the virtues of a theory postulating
an intrinsically active substance (as the agent A ) . Why?
Let us assume, going along with the objection, that A does
not change from time t to t'. Let us say A has some tem-
porally indefinite motives (some set of dispositional
desires and beliefs) for bringing about an event of type
E. Why does A agent-cause e'* at t and not at some other
 172

equally satisfactory time t*? That question is, in my

theory, in one sense unanswerable. On the other hand, it
can be said that A simply decided to act then. But why?
Because! By hypothesis, A is an entity that can move
without being causally triggered into 'motion' by any in-
ternal or external occurrence. This follows from A's es-
sence of 'intrinsic activeness'. This answer does not
exclude A's having reasons that explain why A does e'1 at
roughly around the time A does so. These can 'explain' why
A acts. But why A does e'• precisely at t, say, needs no
explanation. It may be simply a brute inexplicable ex-
pression of A's active nature. However, such an 'inex-
plicable expression' does not reduce to a random, inde-
terministic occurrence. A, on my theory, is capable of
'a-rational choices' (these will be discussed later).
A passive dispositional state needs a trigger to
express itself occurrently. But an intrinsically active
substance does not. Why, recall, did I jump in the water
just when I did? Why do I stop juggling exactly when I do?
Why not before? Explanatory answers cannot always be given
to these questions. And event-causes can almost never be
indicated. It is part of the experienced activeness of
this substance that, I hope, preempts or defuses requests
for explanations of the type put forth in this version of
Thalber's objection.
 173

(2) Thalberg's second main objection centers around

the admittedly difficult problem of how an agent's reason

are related to agent-causings. He considers Liebniz' an-

swer that reasons 'incline but do not necessitate' actions;

he suggests three interpretations of it, each of which he

finds problematic.

(A) Motives restrict the agent's options, without

dictating which option amongst the resulting

limited set one will take. This, Thalberg finds

objectionable because choice within the limits

outlined by motives remains capricious and arbi-

trary. We should answer that the agent-causal

theorist may well grant that within such specifi-

ed limits the choice is unexplainable — without

being random. But this is what is at the core of

our agency. More on this point will be said in

the later discussion of a-rational choices.

(B) Motives are necessary but not sufficient condi-

tions for a specific action (or agent-causing).

And here Thalberg asks why stop at necessary,

why not also sufficient?

(C) Motives do not cause, but serve to render what one

does intelligible/rational, etc. And, again,

Thalberg's natural Davidsonian reply is to ask

'Why not both? Why cannot it be the case that

 174

motives render actions intelligible by being the

causes of acts?"
Both of Thalberg's points in (B) and (C) have
already been given relevant and, I hope, adequate
answers in the last chapter. These will be sup-
plemented in the upcoming discussion of a-rational
choices.
(3) Thalberg's final criticism is that even if reasons
are not event-causes, what counts in explaining an agent's
doing of x are reasons (what answers the question "Why?"),
not the immanency or agent form of causation (What answers
the question "How?") (pp. 234-235).

This is eminently true. In the ordinary sense of

'explanation' operating in normal contexts (e.g., psycho-
logy, every-day talk, etc.) what we request are the reasons
out of which the agent has acted (or was prompted to act).
What we ordinarily want to know is whether, e.g., John
prepares to go to China because of intellectual curiosity,
because he wants to impress his collegues, because he is
bored, becaue he feels an inexplicable call of the Orient,
or becaue he wants to prove to himself that he can survive
in an alien environment. We want, that is, to know what is
distinctive in the psychological antecedents of that spe-
cific course of action. It is no help in these ordinary
contexts to be told that the various movements involved
 175

were causally intitiated by an intrinsically active sub-

stantial self. For, if the latter is true, it is true of
all actions, and, thus, cannot shed the kind of illumina-
tion being sought on John's preparations for a trip to
China.
But all of this does not invalidate the metaphysical
search for the 'causal structure* or every action; nor can
it by itself call into question the agent-causal theory of
action — were the latter to hold true. What is called
upon by, and is of interest to, psychological theory need
not correspond with what is called upon by, and is of
interest to, metaphysics — as William James repeatedly
warned in his Principles of Psychology.
***

Davidson's objections:
Donald Davidson thinks that the agent-causal theorist
is faced with, and impaled by, an inevitable dilemma.
... Either the causing by the agent of a primitive
action is an event discrete from the primitive
action..., or it is not a discrete event... fif the
former, thenj this prior event in turn must either be an
action, or not. If an action, than the action we began
with was not, contrary to our assumption, primitive. If
not an action, then we have tried to explain agency by
appeal to an even more obscure notion, that of a causing
that is not a doing.

One is impaled on the second horn of the dilemma if

one supposes that agent causation does not introduce an
event in addition to the primitive action. For then
what more have we said when we say that the agent caused
the action then when we say he was the agent of the
action? The concept of cause seems to play no role. We
may fail to detect the vacuity of this suggestion
 176

because causality does, as we have noticed, enter

conspicuously into account of agency; but where it does
it is the garden-variety of causality; which sheds no
light on the relation between the agent and his
primitive actions.
We explain a broken window by saying that a brick
broke it; what explanatory power the remark has derives
from the fact that we may first expand the account of
the cause to embrace an event, the movement of the
brick, and we can then summon up evidence for the
existence of a law connecting such event as motions of
medium sized objects and the breaking of windows. The
ordinary notion of cause is inseparable from this
elementary form of explanation. But the concept of
agent-causation lacks these features entirely. What
distinguishes agent-causation from ordinary causation is
that no expansion into a tale of two events is possible,
and no law lurks. By the same token, nothing is
explained. There seems no good reason, therefore, for
using such expressions as 'cause', 'bring about', 'make
the case' to illuminate the relation between the agent
and his act. ...I do not think that by introducing...
such expressions we make progress towards understanding
agency and action. (Donald Davidson, "Agency" from
Essays on Action and Events, 1980, pp. 52-53).

In the first place, Davidson is correct in holding

that the agent-causality theorist is faced with the overall
dilemma sketched above: the agent-causation of a primitive
act or, more precisely, of an event, either constitutes a
discrete event or not. As is by now clear, from the dis-
cussion of Thalberg's first objection, we should hold that
an agent's causing of an event e'' ought not to be taken as
a separate discrete event (at least not one logically ca-
pable of being the cause of e'').

So, one must, I believe, take hold of the second horn.

However, this horn need not impale and paralyze one — on
the contrary, I think it may be somewhat harmlessly em-
 177

braced. Davidson's charge is that if one takes the option

that A's agent-causing a 'primitive action' does not in-
troduce or involve a further event, then one's account is
explanatorily vacuous. He claims that saying A caused, or
agent-caused, a (as opposed to the event e'') is no dif-
ferent from saying A was the agent of a. Nothing is added
by the former reformulation. Hence, nothing is explained.
Nothing is explained because (causal) explanation requires
subsumption of two events (however described) under some
law (connecting types of events).

This ought to remind us of Thalberg's last argument.

If the above constraint is imposed upon what can constitute
an explanation, then of course the account offered by the
agent-causal theories cannot be explanatory. And the same
applies to whether or not such an account can be causal.
Let us consider this latter concern first. If causal
accounts must involve laws, then perhaps we might try to
call the purported relation between the agent-self and the
event in question one of 'authoring' or 'doing'. But,
naturally, the issue is not merely a verbal one. There is
an implicit threat in Davidson's insistence that the above
relation cannot take the predicate 'causal'. The threat is
that if one withdraws the predicate 'causal' one will be
left with a sheer, unfathomable, irreducible, 'authorship'
relation. By having 'cause' in the description of the
 178

relation one illegitimately draws an appearance of content.

Taking 'cause' out leaves one with a suspect unanalyzable
relation.
The response must indeed grant that 'authoring' — if
that be the proper name for the relation is question —
does not involve the ordinary idea of 'cause'. It does not
involve laws. But it does involve some causal notion —
albeit a more primitive, raw, and experiential one.

This notion is not completely new in philosophy. For

example, Schopenhauer proposed that the concept of 'force'
as encountered in the physical world (the world qua phen-
omenon) is epistemically more indirect, inferential, than
that of 'will'. Will, as our alleged inner essence, and as
the ground of all action (and indeed of all natural forces)
is for Schopenhauer "the one thing really known to us
immediately and completely" (Book II, #23 of The World as
Will and Representation, tr. by E. F. J. Payne). And even
Nietzsche, a definite enemy of the substantial self, spec-
ulated that we first form the idea of 'cause* from the
experience of agency, and subsequently we project 'causa-
tion' on the outer world (The Will to Power, #551). Of
course, he believed that the experience of agency was de-
lusory, and so he thought that causation was ultimately
inapplicable in any realm. But if we differ from Neitzsche
about the genuineness of the experience of agency, as we
 179

should, then his view lends support to the present stand.

That is, it supports the view, defended in preceding dis-
cussions, that the experiences of continuous causation and
of 'controlled spontaneity' display an essentially causal
element. They are experiences of guiding, of influencing,
of initiating, of terminating, of directing energy. And
these are all causal notions. Calling the present account
an agent-causal one, therefore, is not groundless and de-
ceptive.

The issue may differ in the case of calling such an

account an explanation. Perhaps event-nomic subsumption
does hold exclusive rights on explanation. Even were this
so, it would not preclude the possibility of other forms of
elucidative accounts. indeed, the explanation sought by
Thalberg, by the psychologist, by the scientist in general,
and by Davidson, is the sort that cannot be satisfied by
the agent-causal theory. The latter, in fact, does not
appeal to regularities holding between event-types (for
example, it does not appeal to psychological or behavioral
laws). But the agent-causal theorist offers a kind of
metaphysical analysis of action-as-such (not, primarily, of
particular actions). it does so by attempting to unveil an
act's — any act's — necessary constitutive parts. The
parts it 'discovers' are (a) an intrinsically active self,
and (b) an event caused (or authored, done, etc.) by this
 180

entity. It sheds a kind of light on what for Davidson

remains a mystery — the relation between the ordinary
agent and 'his primitive act'.
Put differently, the agent-causal theory is not meant
to apply to, or to shed light on, the 'because' of, e.g.,
"I did x because I felt cold". Rather, it is intended to
apply only to the "I did x" part. The mystery it proposes
to illuminate is a person's doing something (the 'Why' of
actions will be examined later). It remains true that
'activeness' is not itself analyzed into non-active con-
stituents. (Thus, the sense in which the present account
is a metaphysical analysis ought to be kept firmly apart
from the sense in which some event-causal accounts are
analyses of activeness). But the core of the theory is the
attempted breakdown of action into more basic elements.

It is suggestive that Davidson chooses to speak as if

the agent-causal theorist is committed to characterize
his/her theory in terms of an agent causing an action.
And, naturally, if the action is taken as being merely
causally subsequent to the causal activity of the agent
(the agent-causing), no progress is made in going from 'A
was the agent of a' to 'A caused a'. If the action a is
treated as a primitive datum, all that remains to be ex-
plained through any causal relation between a and prior (or
cotemporal) phenomena is how a fits in some pattern of
 181

regularities (one cannot explain anything about a simple by

looking within it, for by definition it has no parts). If
a does not fit in any such patterns, then a remains inex-
plicable. And agent-causality is, naturally, unable to
explain anything at this level.
But agent-causality theories are not meant to provide
the kind of explanation of action that begins with the
action as a primitive datum. If agent-causality explains
anything, it explains the internal structure of an act-
event (what it takes for an event e to be an action a) .
Its sphere of application is intra a, not between a and
other phenomena. It seems, therefore, that (unless action
is a primitive simple) Davidson's thrust can be absorbed
without incurring major damage.

IV
Naturally, at this point more needs to be said about
the so-called internal structure of an action that is sup-
posed to be revealed by the agent-causal theory. It is, I
maintain, a virtue of this theory that it gives us an ac-
count of the distinction between 'passive events' and those
that are non-derivatively active (actions). Such an ac-
count is of importance because, as we have seen in the last
chapter, event-causal theories — among others — are un-
able to do likewise. Recall, for example, how in thinking
about O'Shaughnessy's theory it seemed arbitrary to choose
 182

one among various psychological candidates (desire, occur-

rent intention, striving) as the one being intrinsically
active (albeit caused). Recall, too, how desperate was the
search for the proper causal path linking desire or inten-
tion with object-event; a magical path that was to permit
the ascension of the latter out of the realm of passivity.
A theory more capable to account for the distinction scores
an important point in its favor. Let us continue, then,
with the agent-causal theory.
Kim and others have argued that events are to be taken
as changes of state of particulars (or property-changes of
individuals/substances). In what follows it will be as-
sumed that their position is sound. On my view, then, what
makes some such state-changes passive is their resulting
causally from other events or states. That is, if the
motive-source of a state-change is external to the change
itself, this change is passive. It does not originate
actively. In contrast, active basic changes of state of
particulars are distinctive in that their 'upsurge' is not
causally necessitated by events or other phenomena external
to these state-changes. The motive-source of such events
is internal to these events. It is, on the agent-causal
view, the particular whose states change that itself pro-
duces such changes. That is, if X is the particular under
consideration, and if x's arm going up is the (basic)
 183

change X undergoes, then this change of state of X (from

arm-down to the arm-moving-up, etc.) will be an action just
in case the necessitative force producing such change is X,
and not any other state-change of X or of anything else.
Since every event necessarily must 'revolve' around some
particular (on the view of events being assumed), and since
every event coheres through some particular, X becomes a
constituent part (the very hub) of this event. The event
in question in effect becomes self-caused, or internally-
caused, or immanently-caused. That makes it an active
event, i.e., an action. Such events are actions par ex-
cellence, other events caused by these can only be deriv-
ative actions — they may inherit, as it were, the active
quality of the former.

We need not be committed to viewing gross physical

changes, like arm-rises, as the class of primitive or basic
actions. The physiologist tells us that such gross physi-
cal events are immediately necessitated by neural impulses,
etc. It may be that what have been called genuine self-
caused events are minute brain-events; or perhaps they are
phsychological events of the general sort as
O'Shaughnessy's 'striving' (or even of the old volitions).
Nor must we be committed to viewing the substantial agent-
self involved in such self-caused events as being either
the physical brain (or part thereof), or some immaterial
 184

soul. All we are committed to is the claim that at the

origin of (and/or throughout) a course of events constitu-
ting an action (or various actions) there is at least one
(causally efficacious) self-caused event — whether physi-
cal or mental is left open. We are committed to the pres-
ence, whenever there is action, of a substantial entity
that can, on its own — without the causal necessitation of
any state or event — produce changes in itself (and indi-
rectly in the world around itself). Such an entity we have
termed an intrinsically active entity. Such an entity is
what I believe to fundamentally be. Whether this strange
entity be physical or not we need not speculate. Perhaps
such an entity cannot be physical, given its peculiar pro-
perties. But that does not concern us now.

However, this substantial self must be a relatively

persisting entity. If it were a momentary, fleeting entity
coming and going with each active event, so as to become a
succession of entities, we would essentially be in the
position we have attributed to Sartre — in his Humean
version — and to Nozick. We would find ourselves oscil-
lating between randomness and determinism if we tried to
explain why an active event (with its own unique agent)
popped into existence at the moment it did, as opposed to
any other. And the same would happen in attempting to ex-
plain why, say, a choice went in one direction rather than
 185

in another. For, the agent associated with the choice

taken would not pre-exist such choice — the agent would
have to have come into existence with the choice. Such
instantaneous agents could not really make genuine choices.
Moreover, responsibility could not be ascribed, on this
view, to me-now for what the predecessors-me have done.
Finally, and most importantly, there is the baffling yet
obstinate fact that I experience myself as being numeric-
ally one with the 'me' of a few seconds, minutes, hours,
and I think, years ago. For all of these reasons the sub-
stantial self needed by my theory must be a relatively
persisting entity.

The purported facts, then, that the substantial self

being posited by the present agent-causal theory persists,
and that such a self is the immanent cause of some events,
accord with the phenomenon of continuous, fluid, lasting
causation exhibited (to the agent) by many actions. A
lasting entity can sustain a lasting occurrence, whether
the latter be one continuous event or many events flowing
into each other. Moreover, having an entity that persists
throughout the duration of a longish event causally sus-
taining it — as in the example of the juggling — can
account for the indubitable datum that one is in control of
its ongoing.
 186

CHAPTER FOUR:
THE SELF AND MOTIVATION

Are the self-caused events being supposed by this

theory capricious, arbitrary, unintelligible eruptions? Or
is there some sense to them? That is, are actions more
than simply self-caused events? Can they also be self-ex-
planatory in Nozick's sense, i.e., manifestations of fund-
amental projects, psychological laws, expressions of char-
acter, etc.?
We have denied that an action consists of the appear-
ance of a new state of a person, causally necessitated by a
complex psychological state of that person spurred by a
fresh stimulus (a new perceptual belief, for example) —
the whole process behaving in accordance with some (as yet
undiscovered, no doubt) law. But we also should not pro-
pose that a person — a bare particular separate from its
various states — desirelessly and motivelessly produces
state-changes. That is surely not our experience of act-
ion. Reasons are not causes; but neither are they impotent
bystanders. States like desires, beliefs, etc., must have
some influence on what changes of state one agent-causes.

The important data here include at least the fact that

most actions conform to, satisfy, express, desire and be-
 187

lief. Most actions, in short, are rational and intellig-

ible. There are, no doubt, some rare actions that are done
inexplicably, out of the blue, and such that one cannot
quite say why one did what one did. Dostoyevsky's under-
ground man at times perhaps acted this way. However, these
are rare. They are, however, theoretically significant in
that an agent-causal theory easily explains them, whereas
rival theories have to make recourse to unconscious desires
and motives that may lead to embarassments. On the other
hand, we must explain the rationality of the vast majority
of our actions. This shall be the next task.

***

An act can be rational in at least two ways. First,

an act can be rational when it is motivated by one out-
standing ordinary motive which poses no inner conflict in
the agent. Second, it can be rational when indeed there is
a clear motive in light of which the agent acts; but this
time the motive has to overcome strong conflicting motives
that would prompt alternative acts. This 'overcoming' can
itself occur on the basis of conflict-free rational grounds
(motives). But sometimes in conflict-situations the
'overcoming' by one motive of the other(s) results from the
agent's .a-rational choice. In this case the resulting act
is scarred by an a-rational element. It is 'imperfectly
rational'.
 188

Let us, first, look at 'imperfectly rational' acts.

They are rational because the agent does have a clear
motive for them. If one were to ask this agent why he/she
did x, one would be told that he/she did x mainly because
of reason R. We are, let us assume, considering a type of
case where there is no self-deception involved. The agent
consciously acts for some reason. For example, Jill goes
to the movies because she enjoys Fellini films (and there
is one playing nearby). However, had the agent done y out
of reason R', y too would have been rational. And y could
be the act of refraining from doing x; or it could be a
positive incompatible course of action. Jill, for example,
could have read an article on Plato, because she enjoys
reading about Plato. In any case, an act is imperfectly
rational when both it and the discarded alternatives are,
or would have been, buttressed by strong reasons the agent
recognizes and avows.

Such acts are imperfectly rational because they in-

volve an a-rational choice. An a-rational choice is indeed
a choice among alternatives; but it is one not explicable
in terms of any reason or motive. It is a sheer arbitrary
choice. In the case above it occurs in the decision to
follow (or to act out of) reason R (wanting to see a
Fellini movie) as opposed to reason R' (wanting to read
about Plato), when both R and R' seem equally compelling.
 189

It can occur when both R and R' are each buttressed by more
fundamental incompatible principles; or when they rest on
the same fundamental principle; or when they do not rest on
any further principle.
A-rational choices may be motivated in the sense that
the act of choosing among the alternatives may be endowed
with a clear conflict-free justification. The agent may be
under pressure to choose. But for the choice to be a-ra-
tional the direction of this choice must be motiveless. An
a-rational choice is one where choosing one way instead of
another is ultimately not based on any reason, motive, or
justification. And yet such choices are in fact choices.
They are not random, causally indeterministic events. They
are done by the agent.

Here are two examples of a-rational choices — one

trivial; the other less so.
First case: a woman is playing roulette; she wants to
bet on some number; she is undecided as to which number to
choose; she repeatedly scans the board; finally, for no
reason, she decides to try her luck with number 17. The
situation is just that simple, at least as far as the re-
levant details are concerned. She does not feel any prem-
onition to pick 17. She does not experience the number 17
jumping out at her from the board. She may have been
waiting for such an experience; but in the case at hand
 190

nothing happens. Most importantly, her pick of 17 is not a

fortunate or unfortunate random occurrence. She does not
close her eyes prior to landing her finger on 17. She does
not flip a coin that happens to land on 17. Nothing of
this sort happens. She knows perfectly well which number
she is picking. She simply surveys the board knowing that
she must/wants to make a decision. But, again, it is not
the case that she is in time trouble and the last number
she happens to look at is 17, and therefore she stops
there. No, she has time, she looks at various numbers,
nothing that would permit her to favor any one number hap-
pens. And, then, she simply decides that she will try 17,
and proceeds to place her chips on it.

This type of trivial choosing occurs rather often,

though indeed most of the times we may discover reasons,
however silly, for choosing one way rather than any other.
The second case is a version of Sartre's famous exam-
ple. A young Frenchman faces a major dilemma during the
Nazi occupation. Either he joins the resistance, thereby
failing in his duty towards his mother; or he stays with
his mother, thereby failing in his duty towards society at
large (his country). Each possible action is upheld by
justificatory grounds, if he remains at home, it will be
because of his desire to fulfill his obligation toward his
mother. If he joins the resistance, it will be because of
 191

his desire to fulfill his obligation toward his society.

And, furthermore, it may be that both desires are in turn
supported by the same higher-order state. For example, he
may have a desire that his desires to fulfill his obliga-
tions be satisfied whenever possible. Or, alternately, it
may be that he has distinct higher-order states that bol-
ster each first-order obligation-desire. I do not specu-
late what these may be in this specific case, since the two
contemplated actions are both on the side of morality.
However, in other cases this is quite imaginable.

At any rate, whether each conflicting course of action

is buttressed by separate lines of justification or by
lines that eventually unite, the result is the same. In
either case the subject has no basis for adoptiing one
justificatory line rather than the other.
We must assume, naturally, that the other states of
the person have little or no bearing on the choice. Often,
in similar cases, this assumption is false. The young man
could have other reasons, e.g., for staying home. He may
want to stay close to his girl-friend. And this latter
want, subliminally combined with the felt duty toward his
mother, may outweigh his other felt duty. But such dicis-
ive extraneous desires will not always be there. And we
are concerned with a case when they are not available.

What he have, then, is a situation where a person is

 192

'pulled' in two different directions, each of which is

recognized by the subject as equally compelling. The per-
son at one point throws himself in one direction. And
quite possibly such a choice may constitute the adoption of
distinct life-goals, life-styles, fundamental projects. Or
it may turn out to be relatively insignificant — the per-
son may change his mind the next day. Whatever the impli-
cations of the choice, this latter remains a choice and not
a random occurrence.

The case at hand is not one where the young man feels
a glow or tingle of excitement when considering the possi-
bility of joining the resistance; or one where his mind
refuses to go any further every time this resistance-option
is contemplated. Instead both options feel equally com-
pelling, equally consistent with all that he believes and
feels. The person is perfectly lucid. He sees the alter-
natives. He sees no reason to choose one over the other.
Yet when he makes his choice he knows perfectly well what
he is doing. He knows that he is choosing as he is choos-
ing. No coin is being flipped in his head. He chooses
a-rationally.

Despite the a-rationality (the 'absurdity') of the

choice the agent still takes responsibility for it. He
cannot reason, "Well I have no decisive reasons or motives
one way or the other; therefore the choice is accidental or
 193

random; therefore it simply happens; therefore I am not

really the one that does it; and therefore I am not res-

ponsible for it".

A-rational, yet genuine, choices obviously pose grave

problems for any account of action that views the latter as

deterministic expressions of the agent's character, or of

some subset of the persons's states. So, to avoid postu-

lating an active self that resolves these 'conflicts', a

number of responses might be offered:

(1) It is some subconscious desire or force that tips

the balance one way or the other.

(2) It is (always) some environmental or mental

impulse that is the determinant factor at, or just

prior to, the moment of decision.

(3) It is indeed accidental which way the choice goes

— though possibly fully determined. And our

sense of agency is illusory.

(4) Any combination of 1 - 3.

Let us quickly look at these possible responses.

(3) should immediately be eliminated since it contra-

dicts the basic premise of this enterprise, namely, that

the experience of agency is not sheer illusion. It is

instead the basic datum to be explained.

(1) seems silly when applied to trivial a-rational

choices such as choosing a number, a locker, a cereal box.

 194

(2) on the other hand seems inadequate for cases where

the choice is a major one; where it is undertaken after
considerable deliberation, and is not impulsive.
So it seems that the only real possibility is a dis-
junctive combination of all three. That is, for any one
a-rational choice one of the three must apply. So, for
example, in the case of the Frenchman dilemma (1) applies.
And in the case of the roulette player (2) applies. Pos-
sibly in some third case (3) will apply.
(4) must be acknowledged as a definite possibility.
It does seem, however, rather ad hoc. For, it must claim
that
every apparent case of naked unaided choice is in
reality one triggered by some decisive subliminal or envi-
ronmental factor. And this claim simply sounds too sweep-
ing and dogmatic.
It seems, therefore, that the phenomenon of a-rational
choices, like that of continuous causation, is most natur-
ally accounted by the agent-causal theory. And, conse-
quently, imperfectly rational acts testify in favor of such
a theory.
***

We must now consider ordinary rational acts. These

are acts proceeding either from ordinary, often routine,
conflict-free, motives; or they are acts proceeding from
conflicts where one motive clearly outweighs its opponents.
 195

The first is obviously the one most conscpicuously dis-

cordant with, or even inimical to, the agent-causal theory.
Eating lunch, reading a book, going to work, greeting a
friend, are examples of this type. They constitute the
vast majority of our active behavior. And they do not seem
to require a self of the type proposed by the agent-causal
theory. For, they involve little or no reflection/delib-
eration. This has prompted people like C. A. Campbell to
restrict the self's interventions to areas of conflict, and
to relinquish the rest of active behavior to deterministic
forces. Obviously this restriction is problematic; for if
there is an active agent behind actions, this agent must be
involved in all actions. Otherwise the agent becomes an ad
hoc invention. This issue will be discussed in a rather
indirect fashion in what follows. The strategy will be
defensive. It will only be argued that the presence of the
hypothesized self sketched so far would not be incompatible
with the pre-reflective routine character of most rational
acts.

Whatever we are, we are not cool, disengaged, bare

substances. We are marked, soiled, soaked, penetrated by
our past acts and experiences; by our present desires,
fears, beliefs, hopes, commitments; by many abilities,
character traits and relative deficiencies — in short, we
are necessarily in-the-world and entangled in facticity.
 196

In psychological terms, we are always in some very complex

state which includes our beliefs, intentions, desires. And
it is out of this inevitable initial position that we act.
We are not virginal bare particulars feeling neither the
constraints of the intellect (of our very complex belief-
system that includes the constant flow of perceptual in-
formation) nor the pulsating of our sentiency, nor the pull
of our desiring nature. We are sentient intellects. Our
desires proceed from our capacity to feel, and are guided
by the intellectual-informational apparatus. Being able to
feel means, among other things, that some things will feel
good, others bad. That gives us one basis of value, and
one motive for action. We 'feel moved' to act on our en-
vironment so as to attain more of the 'things' that feel
good, and to avoid or banish more of the 'things' that feel
bad.

Let us imagine that the ancient fable of the pure

immaterial soul undergoing its unfortunate incarnations
here on earth were true. Imagine, that is, that each of us
were fundamentally one such unhappy soul, who despite the
bondage of the incarnation is still able to maneuver some-
what. That is, it remains the unmoved-mover of many types
of motions of this body (and intellect, if we assumed" r-
ther that the brain is at best a constraining vehicle for
the higher intellectuality of the soul). Let us imagine
 197

that our earthly desires and beliefs, abilities and defic-

iencies, came to us from the outside, as it were. They are
not natural to us — to our real essential selves. They
inflict themselves upon our pristine essences as a kind of
punishment. The only property natural and essential to us
is the pure potentiality for action. Nonetheless, for all
their inessential, foreign source, these features are felt
(pains/pleasures), exercized, or otherwise intimately
experienced.

In this situation what would a poor soul do? Would or

would not such a soul try to satisfy as well as it could
the desires it was victimized by, using the various in-
formation (beliefs) it had about how best to go about
changing things for the purposes of desire-satisfaction?
Would not, in other words, such a soul act rationally
(i.e., out of beliefs and desires)? it seems to me that it
would. For even souls can not enjoy feeling pains, fears,
and frustrations. Their behavior would, therefore, be on
the whole predictable and intelligible. It would exhibit
certain regular patterns — more or less like ours. Felt
hunger would be observed to be generally followed by food-
search.

The obvious point of the story is that postulating a

substantial active self does not preclude the application
of regularity-type nomological explanations vis-a-vis our
 198

behavior. What this postulations precludes is a specific

account of such explanations. What is precluded is inter-
preting these lawful correlations as being event-causal (or
otherwise) necessitative. This is the interpretation urged
by Davidson, and perhaps by most behavioral scientists.

Naturally this story does not usher in the simplest

explanation of rationality. But its function was to il-
lustrate that an agent-causal account need not be incom-
patible with 'rational explanations' of behavior.
But, one might ask, what, aside from the above hypo-
thetical fable, is really the connection between the so-
called active substantial self and our actual desires,
beliefs, emotions, felings, thoughts, etc.? Are the latter
inscribed inexorably in the very depths of the self? Or
are they superficial coat-like covers? Is or is not this
active particular essentially bare — is it pure agency or
pure dynamic potentiality? Are, e.g., desires peel-able
features it has? Or are they qua-individual contingent
(peel-able) yet qua-species necessary — somewhat like the
contingency of the individual color of this table, as con-
trasted with the necessity that this table be of some
color? Are desires distinguishable and separable from me?

The principle we ought to observe in addressing these

questions is that of parsimony of commitment. But what is
required, by way of commitment, in view of what has been
 199

already affirmed, may be quite a lot. Let us begin with

what has been shown; and then let us ponder the implica-
tions.
What, I hope, has been shown is that I am a peculiar
substance. I am pure, intelligent, conscious, active,
persisting power. Note that this substance is closer to a
Sartrean consciousness than it is to an Aristotelian body.
This is, however, the most basic essence of ourselves. We
have tried to leave open whether this power is physical or
mental energy, or whether it is 'crystallized' energy (body
or mind).
Natually if this were all we were, there would be
neither the vehicle nor the motivation for action. Even
more fundamentally, this basic nature, qua potentiality,
might require a 'world' to reveal itself (to itself) and to
become fully actual. To be conscious, for example, seems
to require 'objects' of consciousness. To be intelligent
and active seems to require acting upon such 'objects'. We
need not concern ourselves with the nature of such 'ob-
jects'. They might be 'mental' or 'physical' or both or
neither. What counts, however, is that in order for my
essential activeness to express itself, some material is
necessary — some particular set of desires, capacities,
beliefs, not to mention some spatio-temporal point of view
and thus a body, etc. I must have both the motives (sent-
 200

ience, desires, etc.) and the means (a set of beliefs; a

body or mind that responds to my 'control', etc.) for act-
ion.
However, what if these 'objects' and 'properties'
penetrated to the very core of ourselves? Let us take
desires as examples. If desires were centrally rooted and
inscribed in ourselves, there could not be any 'space'
between us and them. They would be (part of) us. In that
case, necessarily, whenever they would cause changes, we
would cause those changes. Their acts would be our acts.
Furthermore, checks and opposition to them, from us, could
only come through other desires (or beliefs, etc.). Con-
flicts would have to take care of themselves, through a
sort of mechanical struggle of forces or intensities.
Thus, the expressions of desires would be, in a certain
sense, blind and uncontrollable. We could not directly
survey and intervene to check or correct our desiring
nature. And since such a nature would be merely the result
of factors over which we have no control — genes and
environment — genuine autonomy would become a mirage.

For various reasons, already encountered, this picture

runs counter to the facts. First, not all causal expres-
sions of our desires are acts. Second, we — qua pure
agents — sometimes need to intervene directly to resolve
conflicts of desires, as in cases of a-rational choices.
 201

Third, we can often transcend, or step back from, our

desires so as to at least consciously examine them. And
sometimes this examination leads us to take indirect steps
to try to affect them. This, as we shall see, engenders a
measure of autonomy.

We must conclude, therefore, that desires, for one,

are not part of our very essence. Our dynamic essence is,
as such, distinguishable from our desires. I can change my
desires, even radically, and yet remain numerically the
same agent-self. Whether or not I am separable from any
and all sets of desires is a different matter. Perhaps I
am not separable in this sense. Perhaps my actuality, my
definiteness, my individuality, depends upon my having some
wants, just as it depends upon my sentience and upon my
being conscious of something. But this is one of the
issues on which a stand need not be taken here.

What must be said, however, is that my being distin-

guishable from my desires should not suggest that in most
cases I experience desires as external forces impinging
upon me or assaulting me. On the contrary, I am in most
cases consonant with my wants, urges, goals, etc. And some
people may always be so consonant, barring conflicts a-
mongst desires themselves. It is not an accident that
virtually all our acts are designed to satisfy wants, and
not to frustrate them. We move pre-reflectively or con-
 202

sciously in accord with them. All this, however, can be

seen to further illustrate a basic distinction: that be-
tween what we are and why we act. We are a certain kind of
agent. We act out of very diverse and complex motives
engendered by our concrete embodied/mmd-ful situation.
Can we generalize the above conclusion so as to apply
not merely to desires but to all my non-agential proper-
ties? Am I distinguishable from my beliefs, principles,
dispositions, body; or are these inscribed in my very
essence?
It would seem that the answer given in the case of
desires ought to be applicable to these other 'features' as
well. Though a lot more would need to be said here, it
seems that prima facie I can undergo vast changes in these
categories and yet recognize myself as the same single
being. The possible exception is the bodily case, for I
may be a part of this body, in which case a change in this
part might signify my extinction.

Having said this we must, again, take care not to

conclude that, for example, moral principles are distinct
from us. We sometimes affirm that we stand for certain
principles; that if anything defines us, these do. This
suggests some kind of 'identification' between us and such
principles. But this 'identification' ought not to be
misconstrued. We do not become these principles. We may
 203

indeed 'define' ourselves, always revokably, as this or

that. We take on certain projects, causes, moral or non-
moral values. But this self-definition (which in most
cases is done for us) should not be confused with some
self-construction or self-constitution.
***

I am, indeed, as the existentialists tirelessly point

out, mired inextricably in facticity. I find myself
charged with values, ties, commitments, limitations. I
face the world from a concrete situation, not as a cool
disengaged observer. Things matter to me. How they matter
may be accidental. That they matter is a necessary prere-
quisite for action. Yet, despite being immersed 'in the
world', I need not be swallowed by it. I have the import-
ant capacity to draw back from it. It is a limited capac-
ity (if I am hit over the head with a hammer I cannot pull
back from the pain). But it is invaluable nonetheless.
Such is the capacity born out of the sub-capacities of
reflection, of critical assessment, of self-consciousness,
self-evaluation, and self-transformation. It is (in part
at least) through the exercise of such capacities that I
can (as will be argued further in the next chapter) achieve
a measure of freedom, autonomy, and responsibility.
 204

CHAPTER FIVE:
TWO CONTRASTING MODELS OF THE SELF

I will now offer two models, two pictures, of how the

self or person relates to those psychological states that
play an active role in active or voluntary behavior —
namely, its motives. The first model will represent this
relation according to an event-causal deterministic theory
of action. The second, more detailed, model is meant to
represent the same relation on my agent-causal theory. The
chief function of this second model is to evoke a picture
— albeit simple — of the unique relation between self and
motives implied by my theory. Specifically, we will try to
conjure up an objectified image of how this implied-rela-
tion transcends two other types of relation that might be
confused with it. These latter are the relation between an
ontological subject and its properties; and the one between
a logical subject and its predicates. What makes the
self/motives relation distinctive is, I claim, the self's
dynamic capacity to act upon some of its own states.
(Further, more direct, discussion of this point will follow
in the chapter on autonomy).

Essentially the thesis we will attempt to make con-

crete via the following model is that the self can maneuver
 205

even while 'enclosed' in the 'husk' of occurrent, experi-

enced desires and beliefs, and of other more complex dis-
positional states. Our hypothesized self is not firmly
fixed to — and carried hither and thither by — these
outward-aiming belief-desire tentacles. Here, then, are
the two contrasting models in a possible cross-section:

We are to imagine the above as two self-moving systems,

each shaped as a three-dimensional sphere whose outer
surface is covered with spikes of various sizes, length and
weight. Both systems sport a central hub-like core that
somehow 'supports' the outer spikes. The core, of course,
is to represent the substantial self; the outer spikes its
attitudes, beliefs, desires, principles... Both systems
move (roll) in a paradoxical search for balance.

In model A the core-self (perhaps the body) is fixed

and inflexibly attached to its outer rigid spikes, it is
per se a motionless hub supporting and holding together its
spikes. How the system moves spatially is solely a func-
tion of the predetermined lengths and weights of its
 206

spikes. The system will lean one way rather than another
due to the intrinsic distribution of weights to various
spikes. Often the longest and heaviest spike will tip the
balance one way as against any other. Naturally, diame-
trically opposed spikes represent opposite attitudes,
close spikes represent compatible or even similar atti-
tudes. The core-self of this system is a passive rider
carried by its spikes; these latter determine its motion.
The length and weight of the spikes can change in at least
two ways: through natural genetic programming, and through
the spikes' contact and interaction with environmental
obstacles, etc. At times this interaction, together per-
haps with the spikes' natural development, will trigger the
growth of new spikes that will uproot some older ones (as
in some higher-order states eradicating first-order ones).
Such alterations might be considered as coming 'from with-
in', but this would only mean that here the determination
'from without' is more complex and indirect.
In model B the core-self also supports its spikes.
But it can swivel, rotate, or otherwise move on its own,
independently of these spikes. It can orient its weight a
certain way and thus often 'make' the system move on those
spikes upon which it presses (perhaps by altering their
length and weight). While it is not free to be spikeless,
this self can use some of the spikes it has, within the
 207

limits they impose on it, as it wills. Why it presses one

way rather than another is sometimes ultimately inexplic-
able. In cases of this sort we can say, for example, that
the self chooses to resist the desire to do x because (or
out of) the desire to accomplish y - x and y being more or
less incompatible. But why it does so, as opposed to
resisting (or repressing) y because of x, may be absolutely
inexplicable. The choice may be a brute a-rational one.
Qua chosen, though, the opting is not random.

Various desires may carry determinate weights — some

more, some less. But the self can, as it were, throw its
weight one way or another to offset many initial inclina-
tions of the system. It can do so through its so-called
will-power, or effort of will, or what I have called oc-
current sustained causal power. This, on model B, can be
done through the swiveling motion that the hub-self has in
its power (or perhaps the self at the core of this system
is somewhat viscous and can pour itself in the hollow of
one spike or another). The arrangement and individual
length and weight of the spikes is itself not fixed and
invariable. Both the configuration (the overall 'natural'
disposition of the system, independent of the influence of
the self), and the individual disparate weights and lengths
of the spikes (the desire-intensity, etc.) can vary over
time. This variation can occur through the activity of the
 208

self or through the system's 'natural' impact with the kind

of terrain it rolls over and the obstacles it encounters
(i.e., through its interaction with the environment).
Presumably some 'natural' predispositions of the sys-
tem are immune to the influence of the flexible internal
self. This may mean, depending on the spike being consid-
ered, that the self's weight-allotment is incapable of off-
setting such leanings of the system. Alternatively, it may
mean that the self is somehow unable to bring itself to
throw its weight against these tendencies (though if it
did, it could adjust the 'natural' imbalance). I like to
imagine that the self has various 'blind spots' that pre-
clude a turn of awareness to the spikes thus obscured.
Perhaps the self has come to be fixed to, and cannot detach
itself from, some spikes. Quite possibly, the self was
originally fixed to most or all of its spikes. Its nature
was rigid, not yet viscous and flexible (this could cor-
respond to its original lack of self-consciousness which
precludes its being able to assess the configuration of its
spikes or dispositions and leanings of the system as a
whole). It was a completely 'natural' creature. Then,
gradually, it liquifies — or begins to swivel — and lib-
erates itself from many, most, or all of its original rigid
attachments.

Undoubtedly, this becoming flexible, this process of

 209

rarification, is accomplished through natural or heterono-

mous (social) forces. At any rate, whatever the mechanics
of this development, it is only when the process is accom-
plished that the core-self can begin to influence the
behavior of the system. Only at this stage can it arrange
its weight to create a lean one way rather than another.
Perhaps, indeed, it is not it that gives rigidity and uni-
fies the spherical system. Rather it is the rigidity of
its outer spikes that holds it together. Perhaps it itself
is air-like, prone to disperse itself into the larger
atmosphere (Cf. the return to the ever-recurring One) .
Significantly, however, it could be that it never
comes to detach, through 'flexification*, from a few
spikes, thereby barring its own passage to (the cavities
of) these spikes. Consequently, it would be unable to
interfere with the specific weight exerted by such spikes
on the motion of the whole. It would remain victimized
through its own immobility, by these 'blind' spikes (its
blind, uncontrollable desires and tendencies). Naturally,
this type of 'self-induced' subjection need not be perman-
ent, psychotherapy may bring relief from such myopia,
through increased awareness perhaps. Other spikes may
already be 'full'. As 'full', they are permanently beyond
the influence of the self. Some may be 'full' by nature;
others may grow to become 'full' and frozen through the
 210

self's activity (drug-addiction, etc.). One could go on

suggesting ways such a system can capture various aspects
of our own 'incarnation'; but the preceding should be suf-
ficient to aid us in picturing our theorized unique rela-
tion to our motive-states.
Summarizing, then, on some version of model B, we have
a system whose overall dispositions — its character —
are, for one, relatively malleable. This by itself does
not distinguish model B from deterministic versions of
model A. What makes B distinctive is that its behavior on
given occasions, as well as its overall character-mallea-
bility, can be internally determined or at least influenc-
ed. Moreover, this internal determination is not advanced
as merely a more complex and indirect form of external
direction. It is, according to this model at least, ulti-
mately internal. Consequently, on model B, many of the
system's individual spikes are both externally and autono-
mously adjustable in their length, size, and weight. This
suggests that the normal 'adult' core-self of the system is
somewhat amorphous, active, self-moving, indefinite in
nature (its existence precedes its essence); and such as to
be able to spontaneously influence the behavior of the
whole.
 211

CHAPTER SIX:
FREEDOM-QUA-AUTONOMY

I
It has already been hinted that activeness is not
equivalent to freedom, and consequently, does not entail
strict responsibility. Recall the hypothetical case of my
being induced, through hypnosis or through some special
drug, to think that I am doing X when in fact I am doing
some different Y. The example points to one type of 'un-
freedom'. Let us call it unfreedom due to ignorance or
confusion. In that kind of case I actively do_ (initiate
and causally sustain) something. But I do not mean to do
what it is that in fact I do. Analogously, Oedipus act-
ively kills his father, but does not mean to kill his
father. The distinction between activeness and this type
of unfreedom can be expressed by saying that agency is
extensional while freedom (or, more precisely, intention-
ality) is intensional or description-dependent. However,
we are not interested in this type of unfreedom.

Here is a different case. Suppose I am coerced, again

via hypnosis or drugs, £o do. X, or at least to initiate the
doing of an X-activity (say, juggling a soccer ball). Can
I nonetheless do this X (this juggling) actively? Can I,
 212

despite the coercion, exert sustained causal power and

retain my control, guidance, monitoring over the juggling?
I think the answer depends on the type of coercion I am
incurring. If the coercion causally necessitates (in an
actual, as opposed to a potential or counterfactual mode)
my initiating the juggling at t as well as its sustainment,
then, of course, I am not active at t, for one necessary
condition of active events is that they not be actually
event-caused. This can be brought out by recalling that my
exerting sustained causal power is intimately tied to my
retaining control over an activity or process. If it is I
that sustain the juggling, it is I that 'decide' at least
how long the juggling will last; I 'decide' at every in-
stant to continue, for I could at every instant choose to
stop. If these latter options are taken away, through
strict 'suggestive' coercion, then I cannot really be the
one exercizing causal power. That is, if I could not even
•decide' to stop — not because over-determination prevents
my success in stopping, but because I am made impotent to
form the decision to attempt to stop — then I have not
control over the normally voluntary motions of my body. I
cannot, thus, really be active.

But I may be subject to a different type of coercion;

one that is consistent with my being active. Suppose I
inexplicably find myself juggling a soccer ball. I come to
 213

consciousness, as it were, after a blackout period, and

find myself juggling. I may experience an ecstatic joy at
doing so. I may, additionally, feel a strong and hereto-
fore unknown urge to juggle. What has happened, let us
say, is that I have undergone an artificial implantation
(somehow) or an urge to juggle. Moreover, my 'programmers'
have erased every pre-existing attitude of mine that was
opposed to, or incompatible with, the satisfaction of this
desire-to-juggle-at-t. So, I am programmed into experi-
encing this sudden desire to juggle (by hypothesis, I do
not even realize that such a desire is peculiar, unusual,
improper, or otherwise suspicious; I may even be programmed
to fail to realize that there has been a strange blackout
on my conscious life). I can see, thus, no reason not to
try to satisy this desire now. So, of course, I begin or
continue to juggle 'of my own free will'. That is, I con-
sciously 'decide' to try to juggle. Things are not auto-
matic and 'outside my will' here. Presumably, I could
resist this urge. I am not strictly caused to juggle. It
simply feels like the natural thing to do — so I do it.
It would be causally possible, but highly irrational, for
me to desist from juggling; just like it would be irra-
tional for me to desist from drinking some water when I am
extremely thirsty, and water is within reach, and I am not
aware of any reason whatever not to drink it.
 214

The point is that there is a strong sense, yet to be

investigated, that in this second situation I am not really
acting freely when I juggle, though I am nonetheless active
in juggling. I am active in that I causally initiate and
sustain the juggling. I carry out the juggling. In this
chapter I want to explore this complex issue of how I can
act unfreely while acting out of some desire. I will
investigate, that is, how I can act unfreely without being
subject to irresistible coercion. In doing so, my aim is
to elaborate and defend a kind of libertarian conception of
freedom-qua-autonomy.

II
The libertarians and the soft determinists (compati-
bilists) have often spoken at cross-purposes — for each
has meant by freedom something the other has not acknow-
ledged. So, their fundamental point of dispute concerns
the proper definition or conception of freedom. Freedom
for the soft-determinist refers roughly to one's ability to
do as one pleases (to satisfy one's prevailing strongest
desires). The libertarian is more demanding. According to
the libertarian, while freedom incorporates one's being
able to satisfy one's desires, its essence lies in one's
ability to 'please as one pleases' (to determine, control,
which desires one will have, and hence which ones one will
try to satisfy). This latter freedom ('freedom of the
 215

will') is in essence self-determination — the determina-

tion, through one's own power and activity, of one's life-
guiding desires, beliefs, principles, etc. The libertar-
ian's guiding thought is, in effect, that if one's overall
desires, beliefs, life-goals, etc., are determined, i.e.,
generated and shaped, by factors outside one's control —
genes, environment, etc. — then satisfying such desires
and goals will at most bring contentment and happiness. It
will not bring self-determination. One who is fortunate
enough to satisfy such preexisting 'natural' desires may
even exhibit spontaneity, naturalness. But these can also
be exhibited by the fortunate animal in the wild. It
strikes the libertarian that such a 'natural' person has no
control over his/her desires and inclinations. And if one
has no control over one's inclinations, and yet these
inclinations dictate the course of one's behavior, one
obviously has no control over one's behavior. One lacks
genuine or 'deep' freedom. One is not autonomous.

Let us examine this notion of 'having control over

one's motives'. This control can be construed in at least
two ways. One way is in terms of one's capacity to manip-
ulate — evaluate, disown, dissociate, change, extirpate,
appropriate — one's pre-existing set of desires, goals,
beliefs, principles, etc. The other, more radical, way is
in terms of one's generating, creating such desires, etc.,
 216

so that one may be the sole bearer of responsibility for

one's character. On this latter view, one would choose
one's character ex nihilo, and not in the 'passive'
Sartrean sense of not doing anything to change one's actual
state.

Clearly, this extreme interpretation of being respon-

sible for one's desires and character traits may at most be
of theoretical interest. Given our being necessarily mired
in 'facticity', this mode of self-determination is not
available to us. So, the libertarian is well-advised to
pursue the softer reading of 'control over' or 'determina-
tion o f one's motives.
On this softer reading, if one is to have such con-
trol, one must at least be in a position to actively accept
or reject, and hence disown or attempt to alter, the
desires, etc., one 'discovers' oneself as having or feel-
ing. Being in this position requires the capacity for
self-consciousness and reflexivity. Therefore, only cer-
tain kinds of creatures may possess this kind of control
For example, most or all non-human animals cannot exhibit
such control. What else may be required for one to be in
such a position to 'take responsibility' for oneself is an
interesting question. Might it be required that the
'self-determiner' have, in addition to the capacity for
complex reflexive action and for action aimed at changing
 217

one's desires etc., also the second-order desire to self-

evaluate and self-change? (And the determinist will con-
tinue, is not such a desire normally inspired by disaffec-
tion with the course of one's life, provoked by the fail-
ures of one's attempts to satisfy one's actual desires and
goals? If so, does determinism not slip back into the
picture? If impact with the environment causes one to
review and alter oneself, one is no longer genuinely re-
sponsible for such alterations).

Let us assume that these second-order 'desires* are

essential for active acceptance or rejection of, and hence
for repsonsibility for, some aspect of oneself. This need
not be a victory for the soft determinist. The key ques-
tion still remains. That is, how should these second-order
'desires' be understood? Are they blind causal factors?
Are they desires in the sense in which a felt biological
urge (e.g., to drink) is a desire?

This issue will be approached through a couple of

illustrations. Take the person who endures torture rather
than betray a friend. Note that the 'desire' to remain
loyal to one's friends is not at all like a felt urge —
hunger, pain, sex. It requires constant affirmation, com-
mitment, reaffirmation. During torture, when the tempta-
tion to talk assails one in rhythmic waves, one must re-
constitute this 'loyalty-desire' anew. One must tell one-
 218

self that one's life-to-be as a 'talker', one's self-image,

would be unbearable. One must summon up images of such a
life to fight the temptation to give in. This kind of case
constitutes evidence that not all desires, principles, or
motives in general, are passive causal factors.
Consider now the case of the 'natural', 'spontaneous*
fellow who one day lands upon and reads a piece on Stoicism
or on Buddhism. Such interesting and different approaches
to living may prompt this fellow to start reflecting upon
his life, his goals, his pervasive sense of dissatisfac-
tion. He may do more reading, more thinking, and finally
come to the conclusion or to the realization that his life
must change radically. Has this fellow been 'hit' by his
environment, and causally prompted to have a reflexive-type
desire which now causes certain attempted alterations of
behavior? It would seem that characterizing the arrival of
this realization as the (passive) acquisition of a new
'desire' or 'principle' tends to obscure and distort the
reality in question here. The 'desire' this person has
acquired seems rather to fall in the class of active,
intelligent, judgments; and not in that of causal urges
that one feels, or by which one feels assailed. One ar-
rives at, forms this new felt need for change. One does so
almost in a Sartrean manner of projecting an ideal end that
reveals to one the impoverished state of one's existence.
 219

Moreover, the 'one' that engages in this evaluation and in

this projection must be an agency that while feeling or
having the desires being judged, can separate itself from
these desires.

Perhaps not all higher-order 'desires' are (acquired)

like the above. But some certainly are. And those that
are of this malleable sort permit the person who has formed
them to take partial control over (and hence partial re-
sponsibility for) the course of his/her existence. It is
in this sense that one becomes at least to a certain extent
truly free — i.e., self-determined, autonomous. It fol-
lows that wholly non-reflective humans are not truly free
or truly responsibly — are in effect victims. (It should
be clear that the reflection in question is not of the
calculative type concerning how best to reach certain
goals, or satisfy certain desires. It concerns, rather,
the value, worth, feasibility, practicality, etc., of one's
very goals, desires, values, etc. What is at issue in this
peculiar type of reflection is whether certain desires,
values, etc., are worth attempting to acquire, or whether
they ought to be expunged). The implication that to be
non-reflective is to be unfree is corroborated by the com-
mon sense and psychiatric sense that the neurotic or psy-
chotic individual, prone to various uncontrollable urges,
emotions, and fantasies is something of a victim. Natur-
 220

ally, this kind of freedom, if real, is subject to degrees.

The more a person lacks the self-reflective dimension, the
less free he/she is. The more one turns inward toward
self-analysis and self-evaluation, which open the way to
possible self-acceptance or self-transformation, the
broader is likely to become one's scope of freedom and
responsibility.

Perhaps it is appropriate at this juncture to advance

some speculations prompted by a personal experience with an
older childhood acquaintance of mine whom I saw after many
years, some time ago. I will call this person S. I met S
at his place of work — an Italian cafe which he owned in
partnership with his sons. I expected a cordial and at-
tentive reception by S. After all, we knew each other
fairly closely, though we had not been intimate, given our
differences in age (he is thirty-five years older). But
after the customary embrace, kiss, and exchange of news
regarding our families, etc., his eyes and attention slip-
ped inexorably towards the purchases some clients were
conducting with his sons, who actually ran the cafe. This
gradual shift of attention — unnecessary, for things were
well taken care of by others whose interests coincided with
his — was greatly disconcerting to me. For I thought I
deserved at least a few minutes of his warmth and atten-
tion, after many years of separation.
 221

Later I reflected back on other instances of our

relationship, and on his character and past behavior in
general. And it struck me that this person had always
downplayed and ridiculed play — every type of play. For,
play interfered with serious matters. He had instilled in
his children the serious puritanical attitude that there is
work to be done, and that time and energy is better occu-
pied in doing some work and earning some money. His
children had been my close friends, and I often struggled
to get them to play with me and to get them to overcome
their parental admonishments. They were now workaholics,
busy from dawn to dusk, mostly seven days a week, earning
their livelihood and more. So I realized that his com-
portment with me in our last encounter was expressive of
his overall character. Here was a man who when it came to
work, businees, and getting ahead, became blind to almost
everything else. Significantly, he had the capacity to
joke and laugh in other matters. But when it came to his
interests and his close family's interests — his 'things'
— S was penetrated to the care by an all-out, righteous,
defensive seriousness. In this aspect of his life there
was no room for humor and play. One felt that his call for
work and business was blind, and that he was in a sense
victimized by it. He could not detach himself from it.
One could not imagine his laughing at this aspect of him-
 222

self. In short, this man was incapable of taking a re-

flective stance vis-a-vis this aspect of himself — at
least not on his own (recall the 'blind spots' on my model
of the self).

It seems to me that these particular observations can

be generalized to apply to the puritan, the religious,
political, or otherwise ianatic, etc. Persons can be
driven by a desire, cause, etc., in a sense not involving
inner struggle. That is, they may be unable to question,
critically evaluate, and hence doubt, the correctness and
value of their cause, possession, etc. Each such person is
blindly, and often dangerously, devoted to attaining the
value in question. As such he/she is unable to look within
him/herself and find his/her own impetus amusing or even
ridiculous in the face of, say, greater ills, like massive
starvation — or in the face of death (recall those philo-
sophers who stress the liberating nature of one's awareness
of one's own impending death). One finds in such 'fanat-
ics' a lack of the panoramic perspective. They suffer from
a kind of psychic myopia. The person at the center of whom
lies one such serious and opaque drive, is one prone to
anger when this drive (goal, value, possession) is ob-
structed — anger of a deep, blind, unreflective, and hence
uncontrollable sort.

The point that concerns us here is that these types of

 223

persons are unfree; they are victimized, driven by their

concerns — however noble these concerns may be. And their
•slavery' is due to their effective inability to distance
themselves, through reflection, from their engagements and
attachments (Cf. the Buddhist call for detachment). If
they cannot so detach themselves, they cannot laugh deeply
at themselves. They are stuck in Blake's grave and dismal
stage of 'Experience', unable to rise to the renewed play-
fulness of 'Organized Innocence'.

Conversely, it is a well-known fact that actualizers

of mystical freedom, like the enlightened Buddhist, stress
a number of attitudes and traits diametrically opposed to
the ones examined above. They stress non-attachment to
one's desires and their objects; they foster the acquisi-
tion of the larger panoramic cosmic awareness, which finds
the great (selfish) causes and interests of most humans to
be small and insignificant; they encourage gentleness,
lightheadedness, and compassion. The Buddhist, for one,
realizes that true com-passion is impossible so long as one
takes oneself and one's concerns very seriously. And the
'fanatic' type of person evoked above is precisely one who
in some fundamental respects is profoundly caught up in
his/her own projects. From the perspective of such in-
volvment, all else, people included, will appear either as
obstacles, or as aids, or as insignificant. That is not to
say that, for example, the Zen Buddhist finds life as
merely the stepping stone to some otherworldly existence
(such was Nietzsche's mis-interpretation of Buddhism).
Rather, the Zen Buddhist aims in part at a full yet play-
ful, anxiety-free, absorption in his/her daily tasks. And
this is to be accomplished through a revolution in attitude
and perspective that includes the expurgation of all forms
of 'fanaticism', including the 'fanaticism' possibly ac-
companying one's drive toward enlightenment. Accomplished
adepts, in fact, warn against the subtle self-absorptive
dangers implicit in spirituality. There are, after all,
forms of spiritual (or intellectual) egoism and material-
ism. It is very tempting, for example, to feel holy, pure,
superior. Failure to overcome this may exemplify an in-
complete expurgation of one's serious attachments — i.e.,
one may still be taking aspects of oneself and of one's
accomplishments far too seriously (Cf. Choyam Trungpa's
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, and J. D. Salinger's
Franny and Zooey for interesting discussions of this
topic).

Socrates is famous for holding that the unexamined

life is not worth living. Part of the wisdom of this dic-
tum, I propose (with no pretence of originality), lies in
the fact that self-examination is an absolute precondition
for true autonomy.
 225

Consider, in this context, the reason why we tend to

judge that the vast masses populating Huxley's Brave New
World lack an essential element of freedom, despite the
fact that they are able to satisfy their desires and
achieve contentment. The explanation, I suggest, has
nothing to do with the fact that their desires are arti-
ficially instilled, and hence are acquired against — or
better, outside — their will. Most desires, after all,
originate from outside one's will. Nor does the explana-
tion lie in the fact that the inhabitants of a Brave New
World lack higher-order attitudes (desires), for they may
well have been trained to judge their desires, attitudes,
goals, practices, as perfectly proper. Thus, nothing
excludes their having, for example, the higher-order desire
that the first-order desire to be happy be satisfied. More
likely, the crucial element extinguished from the psyches
of the above inhabitants, through their conditioning — the
element without which no autonomy is possible — is the ca-
pacity for, and the tendency towards, self-reflection,
self-criticism, and hence self-transformation. It is not
accidental that books of literature, philosophy, etc., are
banned from this society. For, such books, more than
•scientific' books, promote the development of the self-
critical imaginative attitude.

Finally, we cannot conclude this discussion without

 226

invoking Kant. He argued that the creature who from nat-

ural inclination is incapable of doing wrong will be pure,
innocent, trustworthy, likeable... but not a moral agent.
This person's acts will be morally neutral. He/She cannot
really be held accountable (does not deserve our moral
praise), since he/she has not in any sense chosen such an
inclination. The person is a victim of — is bound by —
such a natural force; at least until he/she becomes ex-
plicitly conscious of it and can have a say as to whether
to embrace or reject this inclination.
This line of reasoning strikes me as .fundamentally
correct, and insofar as it presupposes a view of the self
similar to the one we have been defending, it constitutes
an important reason for adopting such a view.

Ill
In accordance with the above discussion, we shall
define freedom-qua-autonomy as follows:
A acts autonomously = A's action is prompted (motivat-
ed, rationalized, but not caus-
ally necessitated) by a motive
(desire, principle, etc.) which
is truly -A's own.
And a motive m is A's own roughly if m's origin and/or
retainment is due at least in part to A's intentional,
 227

reflexive (higher-order) activity. A may also appropriate

(make A's own) a motive which is causally inexpungeable
from A's nature, if A is at least able to affect its in-
tensity, say, by consciously throwing A's weight behind it
in cases of conflict.
Thus, if I act out of an artifically instilled desire
that I have not had the opportunity to examine, evaluate,
and appropriate (for whatever reason, whether lack of time,
'blindness', incapacity to 'vex reflective', . . . ) , then
while I have no doubt acted, I have not acted autonomously.
This explains why when I juggle the ball out of the pro-
grammed urge to juggle, etc., I do so actively but not
autonomously. Naturally, for autonomy to obtain the ap-
propriation of a desire must be genuine. It cannot, for
example, be itself prompted — as the above desire to jug-
gle was — by a further artificially instilled desire which
one has not had the chance to appropriate.

Activity is, thus, only a necessary condition for

freedom or autonomy. But it is a necessary condition. It
should be obvious that if even one's turn inward, toward
self-examination and self-acceptance or transformation, is
causally necessitated, then talk of autonomy and responsi-
bility becomes a sham. For in such circumstances the per-
son or self will have no original input in the process.

Autonomous activity involves events that are one's own

 228

in a double sense. The agent must have a say in the occur-

rent causal carrying out of an act-event — let us call
this a purely practical co-temporal appropriation of the
event. Most actions, however, are motivated, though not,
let us assume, causally necessitated. Hence, to more fully
appropriate an event, its motive must be addressed. Ac-
cordingly, this second layer of appropriation requires the
agent's having a say regarding the presence of his motive
for the act. The agent must contribute to the 'why' of the
act. This latter appropriation of the event can be termed
motivational (or higher-order). When an act is authored
both practically and motivationally. then it is autonom-
ously done. When an act is authored purely practically (as
in most animal life) the act is non-autonomous. When an
event is irresistibly event-caused, then it is not even an
act. The free or autonomous person is one who to some
degree or another creates himself/herself in a Sartrean
sense. Such persons take some responsibility for what they
become.

Notice that on this picture mere choice between two

courses of action does not ensure autonomy and hence re-
sponsibility. For, one could be programmed to have con-
flicting desires that call for hard conscious choices as to
which desire to try to satisfy. Yet the resulting act will
hardly count as autonomous. A purely instinctual natural
 229

creature would exemplify such programming.

So, the autonomous person, in effect, has to leave
his/her initial home, and go into a type of exile. He/she
must distance him/herself from the natural, familiar envi-
ronment of his/her innocent inclinations and activities, if
he/she is to achieve some degree of autonomy. Just as
distance from his natural homeland is often essential to
the great thinker (e.g., Joyce) for him to fully understand
this homeland; so detachment and self-consciouness is
essential to the individual for him/her to creatively take
charge of him/herself. Often the great artist comes back
to his/her homeland and finds reconciliation. But this
new-found harmony is born out of estrangement, and takes a
more mature form. For it has been tested and conquered.
It has been gained. So, too, the individual can recover
him/herself — come to self-acceptance — and be outwardly
no different than before. Yet one's 'nature' or 'essence'
has been tested and gained. One has conquered a degree of
autonomy.

It hardly needs pointing out that this motif, this

pattern, of innoccnce-to-estrangement-to-mature/'organiz-
ed'-innocence is central to many great religions and myths,
and for countless poets and visionaries. Its universality
may well testify to the utmost significance of autonomous
freedom as a human goal.
 230

IV

Naturally, a tremendous number of questions are

envoked by serious consideration of this sketchy and sim-

plified theory. Here are some of them:

(1) To what extent must the reflective appropriation

of one's motives be conscious or theoretical? To what

extent can it be expressed practically? Must one explic-

itly look inward and give one's blessing to some desire,

principle, habit, for the latter to become one's own? Can

I not in some sense consciously give allegiance to one such

desire, say, by merely continuing to try to satisfy it?

Can I not be, to some degree, responsible (in a Sartrean

sense) for a type of emotional outburst to which I am given

despite never having declared 'Yes, this anger is truly

me 1 • ?

Precise answers to this line of questions are hard to

come by; and should our theory be so specific as to fit

every individual case, our task might be hopeless. Gener-

ally, I claim that some kind of reflexive awareness of a

motive is necessary for one to be able to make it 'one's

own'. Moreover, some kind of more than purely practical

endorsement is necessary for this appropriation. The en-

dorsement cannot be purely practical — purely a function

of the choices that one makes — for this could occur with

a fully 'natural', 'programmed', un-self-conscious creat-

 231

ure.
Furthermore, to mention one complication, it may be
that once one acquires a taste of self-examination and
self-criticism, once one learns the value and range of
self-creation, one becomes responsible for aspects of one-
self (for motives) that remain unexamined. For, not prob-
ing deeply and widely enough within oneself may be a fail-
ure on one's part. The omission, or evasion, may even be
deliberate. This kind of consideration seems to actually
play a large role in our evaluation of others.
(2) Does this theory not give excessive weight and
importance to reflection? Does it not unduly elevate the
self-conscious specialist? Does one not often feel most
free and self-expressed during completely spontaneous non-
reflective undertakings — e.g., in one's artistic pro-
jects, in sports, in dance? And, therefore, is not appro-
priation of, or identification with, some motives or prac-
tices more a function of the presence of these spontaneous,
natural, feelings, than it is a function of conscious,
deliberate affirmation? (Cf. Frithjof Bergmann's theory of
freedom as formulated in his jOn Being Free).

The answer to this must be that however self-expressed

one may feel in the course of satisfying certain inclina-
tions, if these inclinations are fully outside one's con-
trol, in the sense we have specified, then one does not act
 232

autonomously. The case of the hypnotically-induced irre-

sistible want — which yet feels natural — is decisive
here. There is nothing incoherent in imagining the person
subject to this hypnotic suggestion feeling fully liberated
in realizing the object of this want. Let us say this
object is reading T. S. Eliot. Perhaps the person in
question never read a line of poetry, and doing so feels
deeply exhilarating (whether or not this is part of the
suggestion). It may be that according to some other sense
of freedom the person in the example is free. But, surely,
if the person does not have a chance to examine this new
want, his actions prompted by it cannot be autonomous.
Moreover, what is true of hypnosis can be extended. An
inclination genetically acquired comes no less from the
'outside' as far as autonomy is concerned, than does one
instilled by a mad genius or a demon. Satisfying the first
type of inclination need not be any more exhilarating than
satisfying the second. But in both cases the 'me' that
gets expressed is, in the absence of further appropria-
tions, thoroughly non-self-made. The successful expression
of such a nature may no doubt yield 'self-expression' or
spontaneity, but not autonomy.

Inversely, one can and perhaps must have autonomy

without felt spontaneity or self-expression. If one con-
sciously embraces a moral principle and acts in accord with
 233

it, one may find its observance utterly awkward and alien.
One may have to sacrifice various 'natural' pleasures and
suppress powerful inclinations. Yet such unnatural going
might manifest autonomy.

This obviously implies that the natural man is not

necessarily the autonomous man. Moreover, there is a lot
to be said for spontaneity and innocence. We are, for
example, more likely to like Dostoyevsky's Idiot than some
self-conscious reflective duplicate. Similarly, we are
more likely to forgive the naturally-evil monster, than the
coldly deliberate follower of Satan. However, reflection
should reveal that if x springs entirely from forces inde-
pendent of one, then X is not attributable to one, and one
can neither be credited nor blamed for X. This certainly
applies to external items like inherited wealth. Is there
any reason this same principle should not apply to items,
to properties, 'closer' to one? It seems not. Hence, this
should apply to one's initial looks, to one's intelli-
gence-potential, to one's initial dispositions.

Self-reflection is the closest vehicle to pure self-

creation we have. No doubt our self-evaluative wings must
be built out of heteronomous material. But once we acquire
such wings we can rise above such material, though like
Icarus we cannot get too far away from the earthly (the
involuntary). The only other possible way of reconciling,
 234

or even equating, autonomy with spontaneity is through

reincarnation and Karma. But, of course, if this possi-
bility were true, then much of the general theory of the
substantial self here outlined would have found decisive
support.
 235

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1) Bergmann, Frithjof, On Being Free, University of Notre

Dame Press (Notre Dame, 1977).
2) Campbell, Charles Arthur, On Selfhood and Godhood,
MacMillan (New York, 1957).
3) Chisholm, Roderick, "Freedom and Action", included in
Lehrer, Keith (ed.), Freedom and Determinism, Random
House (New York, 1966).
4) Davidson, Donald, Essays on Actions and Events,
Clarendon Press (Oxford, 1980) .
5) Dennett, Daniel, Brainstorms, Bradford Books
(Montgomery, Vermont, 1978).

6) Fankfurt, Harry, "Identification and Externality",

included in Rorty, Amelie Oksenberg (ed.), The
Identities of Persons, University of California Press
(Berkely and Los Angeles, 1976).
7) Goldman, Alvin I., A Theory of Human Action, Prentice
Hall (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1970).
8) Kapleau, Philip, The Three Pillars of Zen, Beacon Press
(Boston, 1967).
9) McKeon, Richard (ed.), Introduction to Aristotle,
Random House (New York, 1947).
10) Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Will to Power, tr. by W.
Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, Weidenfelt and Nicolson
 236

(London, 1968).
11) Nozick, Robert, philosophical Explanations, Harvard
University Press (Cambridge, Massachussetts, 1981).
12) O'Shaughnessy, Brian, The Will: A Dual Aspect Theory,
Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, New York, 1980).
13) Ricoeur, Paul, Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and
the Involuntary, Northwestern University Press
(Evanston, Illinois, 1966).
14) Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness, tr. by Hazel
E. Barnes, Pocket Books (New York, 1956).
15) Schopenhauer, Arthur, The World as Will and
Representation, (vol. I ) , tr. by E. F. J. Payne, Dover
Publications (New York, 1969).
16) Taylor, Richard, Metaphysics, (second edition),
Prentice Hall, (Englewood Cliffs, New jersey, 1974).
 VITA
Carlo Filice

Date of Birth: October 5, 1955

Place of Birth: Cosenza, Italy
Address: 904 N. Broadway #17, Urbana, IL 61801
Telephone: Home, (217) 367-7730; Office, (217) 333-7381;
Department Office, (217) 333-2889

Education:
Ph. D. (projected: spring 1983), Philosophy, University
of Illinois.
M. A., Philosophy, University of Illinois, 1982
B. A., Philosophy/English Literature (double major),
Western Illinois University, 1977.

Teaching Experience:
University of Illinois
Teaching Assistant (solely responsible for every
aspect of the course):
Introduction to Ethics (2 sections), spring 1982.
Introduction to Philosophy, spring 1981.
Logic and Reasoning (2 sections), fall 1980.
Discussion Section Instructor:
Introduction to Philosphy, spring 1979.
 Philosophy of Religion, fall 1977, spring 1978.
Assistant/Paper Grader:
On Being Free, spring 1980.
Philosophy of Art, spring 1980.
Introduction to Ethics, fall 1979.
Current Controversies: Socio-Biology and Human
Nature, fall 1979.
Symbolic Logic, spring 1979.
Philosophy in Literature, fall 1978, spring 1978.
Philosophy of Democracy, fall 1978.

Parkland Community College, Champaign, Illinois.

Part-time faculty member
Logic, fall 1979.

Honors and Awards:

English Honorary Society, 1977.
B.A. Magna Cum Laude, 1977.
Graduate Fellow, Philosophy, U. of Illinois, 1980-1981.
Graduate Fellow, Philosophy, U. of Illinois, 1981-1982.
HAN YU-WEN PRIZE (best essay), U. of Illinois, spring
1982.

Thesis Title: Agency and the Self

Area of Specialization: Philosophy of Mind, esp. Theory of
Action, Theory of the Self/Person, Theory of Freedom;
Metaphysics.

Area of Competence: Philosophy of Religion/Comparative

Religion/Mysticism; Philosophy in/of Literature;
Philosophy and Parapsychology; Epistemology; Selected
Continental Philosophy (esp. Nietzsche, Heidegger,
Sartre); Ethics and Value Theory; Philosophy and Human
Nature; History of Modern Philosophy.

References:
Professor Wright Neely
Dept. of Philosophy, U. of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801.
Professor Arthur Melnick
Dept. of Philosophy, U. of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801.
Professor William Schroeder
Dept. of Philosophy, U. of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801.
Professor Richard Schacht
Dept. of Philosophy, U. of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801.

For complete dossier, write to:

Professor Arthur Melnick
Department of Philosophy
105 Gregory Hall
810 S. Wright Street
Urbana, Illinois 61801