Mind Association
What Happens When Someone Acts?
Author(s): J. David Velleman
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Mind, New Series, Vol. 101, No. 403 (Jul., 1992), pp. 461-481
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2253898 .
Accessed: 03/01/2012 10:45
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Oxford University Press and Mind Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to Mind.
http://www.jstor.org
WhatHappens When Someone Acts? 1
J. DAVID VELLEMAN
I
Whathappenswhen someone acts?
A familiaranswergoes like this. There is somethingthatthe agent wants, and
there is an action that he believes conducive to its attainment.His desire for the
end, and his belief in the action as a means, justify taking the action, and they
jointly cause an intentionto takeit, which in turncauses the correspondingmovements of the agent's body. Providedthatthese causal processes take theirnormal
course, the agent's movementsconsummatean action, and his motivatingdesire
and belief constitutehis reasonsfor acting.
This story is widely acceptedas a satisfactoryaccountof humanaction-or at
least, as an account that will be satisfactoryonce it is completed by a definition
of what's normalin the relevantcausal processes. The story is widely creditedto
Donald Davidson's Essays on Actions and Events (1980), but I do not wish to
become embroiledin questionsof exegesis.2 I shall thereforereferto it simply as
the standardstory of humanaction.
I think that the standardstory is flawed in several respects.The flaw that will
concernme in this paperis thatthe story fails to include an agent-or, more precisely, fails to cast the agent in his properrole.3 In this story, reasons cause an
intention, and an intention causes bodily movements, but nobody-that is, no
person-does anything.Psychological andphysiological events takeplace inside
a person,but the person serves merely as the arenafor these events: he takes no
active part.4
1 The
materialin this paperwas originallypresentedto a seminarin the philosophyof
action at the University of Michigan. I am gratefulto the participantsin that seminarfor
their comments and questions.A very differentpaper was presentedundera similar title
to the philosophydepartmentsof Yale Universityand the Universityof Dayton;this paper
shows the benefit of comments from those audiences as well. For comments on earlier
drafts,I am gratefulto Paul Boghossian, SarahBuss, Daniel Cohen, John MartinFischer,
HarryFrankfurt,CarlGinet, BrianLeiter,Connie Rosati, and several anonymousreviewers for this journal.
2 The story can be tracedback at least as far as Hobbes, Leviathan,PartI, chaptervi.
3 I discuss anotherproblemwith the standardstory in my (1992).
4 A critiquealong these lines, with special referenceto Hobbes, appearsin Dent (1984,
Chapter4). See, e.g., p. 99: "a weighty reasondoes not, like a weighty brick,fall upon one
and imparta certainpush to one's body".
Mind, Vol. 101 . 403 . July 1992
? Oxford University Press 1992
462 J. David Velleman
To be sure, a person often performsan action, in some sense, without taking
an active part in it; examples of such actions will be discussed below.' But
these examples lack that which distinguishes human action from other animal
behaviour,in our conception of it if not in reality.I shall arguethat the standard
story describesan action from which the distinctivelyhumanfeatureis missing,
and that it therefore tells us, not what happens when someone acts, but what
happens when someone acts halfheartedly,or unwittingly, or in some equally
defective way. What it describes is not a humanactionpar excellence.
11
Those who believe the story will of course contend that the events recountedin
it addup to the agent'sparticipatingin his action, as componentsaddup to a composite. The story doesn't mention his participation,they will explain, simply
becausehis participationisn't a componentof itself. Complainingthatthe agent's
participationin his action isn't mentionedin the story is, in theirview, like complainingthata cake isn't listed in its own recipe.
But this response strikes me as inadequate,because I don't accept the claim
thatthe events recountedin the story add up to a person's activity.Variousroles
thatareactuallyplayedby the agenthimself in the historyof a full-bloodedaction
are not played by anythingin the story, or are played by psychological elements
whose participationis not equivalentto his. In a full-bloodedaction, an intention
is formedby the agent himself, not by his reasons for acting. Reasons affect his
intention by influencing him to form it, but they thus affect his intention by
affectinghim first. And the agent then moves his limbs in execution of his intention;his intentiondoesn't move his limbs by itself. The agentthushas at least two
roles to play: he forms an intentionunderthe influence of reasonsfor acting, and
he producesbehaviourpursuantto thatintention.
Of course, the agent's performance of these roles probably consists in the
occurrenceof psychological states and events within him. To insist thatthe story
mentiononly the agenthimself as the object of rationalinfluence,or as the author
and executor of intentions,would be to assume a priorithat there is no psychological reduction of what happens in rational action.One is surely entitled to
hypothesize, on the contrary,that there are mental states and events within an
agentwhose causal interactionsconstitutehis being influencedby a reason,or his
formingand conformingto an intention.
5 Here I part company with some philosophers of action, who believe that nothing
counts as an action unless the agent participatesin it. (See, e.g., Bishop 1989, p. 41.) Of
course, every action must be someone's doing and must thereforebe such that an agent
participatesin it, in the sense that he does it. But this conceptionof agentialparticipation
doesn't requireanythingthatis obviously missing from the standardstory.What'smissing
fromthatstoryis agentialparticipationof a more specific kind, which may indeedbe missing from doings thatcount as cases-albeit defective or borderlinecases-of action.
WhatHappens WhenSomeoneActs ? 463
Trueenough. But the states and events describedin a psychological reduction
of a fully humanaction must be such thattheir interactionsamountto the participation of the agent. My objection to the standardstory is not that it mentions
mentaloccurrencesin the agent insteadof the agent himself; my objectionis that
the occurrencesit mentions in the agent are no more than occurrencesin him,
because their involvement in an action does not add up to the agent's being
involved.
How can I tell that the involvement of these mental states and events is not
equivalent to the agent's? I can tell because, as I have already suggested, the
agent'sinvolvement is defined in termsof his interactionswith these very states
and events, and the agent's interactionswith them are such as they couldn'thave
with themselves. His role is to intervene between reasons and intention, and
between intentionand bodily movements,in each case guided by the one to produce the other.And interveningbetween these items is not something that the
itemsthemselvescan do. Whenreasonsaredescribedas directlycausingan intention, andthe intentionas directlycausingmovements,not only has the agentbeen
cut out of the story but so has any psychological item thatmight play his role.6
At this point, defenders of the standardstory might wish to respond that it
includes the agent implicitly, as the subject of the mental and physiological
occurrencesthat it explicitly describes.7The reasons, intention,and movements
mentionedin the storyaremodificationsof the agent,and so theircausal relations
necessarilypass throughhim. Complainingthatthe agent takes no partin causal
relationsposited between reasons and intention,they might claim, is like complainingthatthe ocean takes no partin causal relationsposited between adjacent
waves.
But reflection on the phenomena of action reveals that being the subject of
causally relatedattitudesand movementsdoes not amountto participationof the
sort appropriateto an agent.8 As Harry Frankfurthas pointed out, an agent's
desires and beliefs can cause a correspondingintention despite him, and hence
withouthis participation.When an addict's desire for a drug causes his decision
to take it, Frankfurtreminds us, "he may meaningfully make the analytically
puzzling [statement]that the force moving him to take the drug is a force other
thanhis own" (1988, p. 18), and so he may be "a helpless bystanderto the forces
thatmove him" (p. 21). Similarly,an agent can fail to participatewhen his intention causes bodily movements.A frequentlycited example is the assassin whose
decision to fire on his target so unnerves him as to make his trigger-finger
twitch, causing the gun to fire.9 In such a case, the agent's intentionhas caused
6 See Bishop (1989, p. 72): "Intuitively,we thinkof agents as carryingout their intentions or acting in accordancewith their practicalreasons, and this seems different from
(simply) being caused to behave by those intentionsor reasons".
7 See Goldman(1970, pp. 80ff).
8 See Ginet (1990, pp. 6-7): "Fora person
S to cause E, it is not enough for S to be the
subjectof just any sort of event thatcauses E".
9 The most recentdiscussion of such "deviantcausal chains"appearsin Bishop (1989,
464 J. David Velleman
correspondingmovements of his body, but it has done so without the agent's
participation.
Proponentsof the standardstory believe that the agent's participationis lacking
from these cases only because the trainof causes leading from his motives to his
intention,or from his intentionto his behaviour,is somehow abnormal.'0They
thereforedeny thatthese cases demonstratethe inadequacyof the standardstory.
The story is committedonly to the claim that the causal sequence from motives
to behaviourwill involve the agent himself when it proceeds in the normalway.
In my view, however, the discussion of "deviant"causal chains has diverted
attentionfrom simpler counterexamples,which omit the agent without lapsing
into causal deviance; and it has therebyengendereda false sense of confidence
in the requirement of causal normality, as sufficient to protect the standard
story from counterexamples. In reality, an agent can fail to participate in his
behaviour even when it results from his motives in the normal way. Consequently,no definitionof causal normalitywill fix what ails the standardstory.
Suppose that I have a long-anticipated meeting with an old friend for the
purpose of resolving some minor difference; but that as we talk, his offhand
comments provoke me to raise my voice in progressively sharperreplies, until
we part in anger. Later reflection leads me to realize that accumulated grievances had crystallized in my mind, duringthe weeks before our meeting, into a
resolutionto sever our friendshipover the matterat hand, and that this resoluI In short, I may conclude
tion is what gave the hurtful edge to my remarks."
that desires of mine caused a decision, which in turn caused the corresponding
behaviour;and I may acknowledge that these mental states were therebyexerting their normal motivational force, unabettedby any strange perturbationor
compulsion. But do I necessarily think that I made the decision or that I executed it? Surely, I can believe that the decision, though genuinely motivatedby
my desires, was therebyinduced in me but not formedby me; and I can believe
Chapters4 and5). See also Harman(1976, p. 445), Peacocke (1979, p. 124), Taylor(1966,
p. 248), Goldman(1970, p. 54), and Davidson (1980, p. 79).
10 See, e.g., Davidson (1980, pp.xiii, 79, 87).
1l We can assume that this causal relation was mediated by any numberof subconscious intentions-intentions to sever the friendshipby alienatingmy friend, to alienate
my friendby raisingmy voice, to raisemy voice now...etc. So long as we assumethatthese
intentionssubconsciouslycrystallized as the conversationprogressed(which is not hard
to assume)we preservethe intuitionthatI'm currentlytryingto evoke-namely, thatI did
not participatein the resultingaction.And surely, this intuitiondoesn't dependon the assumptionthatthe causal links between these intentionsand my behaviourweren't "sensitive" to counterfactualdifferences in them (in the sense defined by Bishop 1989, Chapter
5). Thus, we can conceive of cases in which reasonscause intentions,intentionscause behaviourin all the "rightways," and yet the agent doesn't participate.
WhatHappens WhenSomeoneActs ? 465
that it was genuinely executed in my behaviourbut executed, again, withoutmy
help. Indeed, viewing the decision as directly motivatedby my desires, and my
behaviour as directly governed by the decision, is precisely what leads to the
thought that as my words became more shrill, it was my resentmentspeaking,
not 1.12
Of course, to say thatI was not involved in the formationand execution of my
intention is to concede that these processes were abnormalin some sense. My
point, however, is thatthey were not abnormalin respect to the causal operation
of the motives and intentioninvolved. When my desires and beliefs engendered
an intentionto sever the friendship,and when that intentiontriggeredmy nasty
tone, they were exercising the same causal powers that they exercise in ordinary
cases, and yet they were doing so withoutany contributionfrom me. Hence what
constitutesmy contribution,in othercases, cannotbe thatthese attitudesaremanifesting their ordinarycausal powers. When I participatein an action, I must be
addingsomethingto the normalmotivationalinfluenceof my desires,beliefs, and
intentions;and so a definitionof when theirinfluence is normalstill won't enable
the standardstory to accountfor my participation.
IV
In omitting the agent's participationfrom the history of his action, the standard
storyfalls victim to a fundamentalproblemin the philosophyof action-namely,
thatof finding a place for agents in the explanatoryorderof the world.I3 Ourconcept of full-blooded human action requires some event or state of affairs that
owes its occurrenceto an agent and hence has an explanationthat traces back to
him. As I have alreadynoted, not all actions are full-blooded-witness the aforementionedraisingof my voice, which owed its occurrenceto my attitudesbut not
to me. Such an occurrencemay still count as the behaviouralcomponent of an
action, as something that I did; but it lacks those features which seem to set
humanaction apartfrom the rest of animalbehaviour,and which thus providethe
philosophy of action with its distinctive subject matter.What makes us agents
12 I don't mean to suggest that these reflections absolve me of responsibilityfor my
action. I have an obligation to be vigilant against unconsideredintentionsand to keep my
voice down, no matttr what may be causing it to rise. The fact remains,however, thatmy
responsibilityfor the action in question arises from my having failed to preventor control
it ratherthan from my having truly initiatedit. And I am responsiblefor having failed to
prevent or control the action because it would have yielded to various measuresof selfscrutinyand self-restraintthat I could have initiated.Thus, my responsibilitydepends on
my capacity to interveneamong events in a way in which I failed to interveneamong my
desires, intentions, and movements in this instance. If my behaviour could come about
only in the mannerdescribed here-that is, springingdirectly from intentions that have
simply come over me-nothing would owe its occurrenceto either my participatingor
failing to participatein events, and I might bearno responsibilityfor anything.
13 I believe thatthis problemis distinctfrom the problemof free-will, althoughthe two
are often treatedtogether.For my views on the latterproblem,see my (1990).
466 J. David Velleman
ratherthanmere subjectsof behaviour-in our conception of ourselves, at least,
if not in reality-is our perceived capacity to interposeourselves into the course
of events in such a way thatthe behaviouraloutcome is traceabledirectlyto us.
The questionwhetherour practicalnatureis as we conceive it in this respector in any other,for thatmatter-should be clearlydistinguishedfromthe question
what we conceive our practical nature to be. Carl Ginet has recently argued
(1990, pp. 11-15) that what happenswhen someone acts is that his behaviouris
caused by a mental event whose intrinsicqualities include feeling as if it issues
directly from him; but that this feeling correspondsto no actual feature of the
event's causal history or structure.Even if Ginet's account correctly describes
what actuallyhappensin all or most of the episodes that we describe as actions,
the question remains whetherit correctlyexpresses what we mean to say about
those episodes in so describingthem.
Indeed,Ginet's account strongly suggests that what we mean to say about an
event, in calling it an action, is unlikely to be what the account itself says, since
it says thatan action begins with a mentalevent thatfeels as if it were something
that,accordingto this account,it is not-namely, a directproductionof the agent.
If our actions always begin with mentalevents thatfeel as if they are of agential
origin,then one might expect the notion of agentialorigin to crop up in our commonsense concept of action; whereas one wouldn't expect a commonsenseconcept to include the philosophicalcritiqueof this notion, as having no realization
in the history or structureof events. Ginet's account thereforesuggests that we
arelikely to conceive actionsas traceableto the agent in a sense in which, according to Ginet, they actually are not.14
Of course, if actions can fail to be as we conceive them, then the philosopher
of action must specify whetherhis object of study is the concept or the reality.
Does the philosopher seek to explain what we ordinarily mean when we call
something an action, or does he seek to explain what something ordinarily is
when so called?'1 My aim is to explain the former,at least in the first instance.
For I suspect that our practices of deliberation,rationalizingexplanation, and
moral assessment are designed for action as we conceive it to be, and that any
14 Ginet thinksthatactions otherthansimple mentalactions do issue from the agent in
the sense that they involve the agent's causing something. But he thinks that something
can be caused by an agent only insofar as it is caused by one of the agent's actions.And
he thinksthatthe resultingregress,of actions in which things are caused by otheractions,
must terminatein a simple mental action-usually, the act of willing-which qualifies as
an action only because it feels as if it was caused by the agent himself, althoughit hasn't
in fact been caused by him in any sense. Thus, Ginet thinks that complex actions issue
fromthe agent only in the sense that their componentbehaviouris ultimatelycaused by a
mentalevent that misleadingly feels as if it issued from the agent. Since the agential ancestryof complex actionis thus inheritedfrom a simple mentalact whose agentialancestry
is itself illusory, the ancestryof all actions would seem to be taintedby illusion.
15 Here, of course, I assume thatthe term"action"does not functionlike the Kripkean
name of a naturalkind, referringto whatevershares the essential natureof all or most or
a privilegedfew of the episodes to which it is applied.I assumethat"action"has a de dicto
meaning in virtue of which it may in fact fail to be a correct descriptionof anythingto
which it is applied.
WhatHappens WhenSomeoneActs ? 467
accountof a reality substantiallydifferentfrom this conception will not help us
to understandthe logic of these practices.
In saying thatmy aim is to explicate our concept of action, as opposed to the
reality,I do not mean to imply that I have given up hope of finding that the two
arein accord.All I mean is thatthe concept has an antecedentlyfixed contentthat
doesn't depend on what actually goes on in all or most or even a privileged few
of the cases to which it's applied,andhence thatcorrespondencebetweenconcept
andrealitywill count as a cognitive achievementon ourpart.As for this cognitive
achievement, however, I do hope to show that we need not despair of having
attainedit. For I hope to show thatour concept of full-bloodiedaction, as involving behaviourthat'sultimatelytraceableto an agent, can be understoodin a way
thatmay well be realized in the world, as we otherwise understandit.16
V
The obstacle to reconciling our conception of agency with the possible realities
is that our scientific view of the world regardsall events and states of affairs as
caused, and hence explained,by otherevents and states, or by nothingat all. And
this view would seem to leave no room for agents in the explanatoryorder.As
ThomasNagel puts it, "EverythingI do or thatanyone else does is partof a larger
courseof events thatno one 'does', but thathappens,with or withoutexplanation.
EverythingI do is partof somethingI don't do, because I am a partof the world"
(1986, p. 114; cf. Bishop 1989, pp. 39ff.).
16 I thereforethink that Ginet dismisses the causal conception of action too quickly. I
do agree with Ginet thatan agent, as a persistingentity, is the wrong sort of thing to cause
particularevents. (Ginetcites Broad 1952, p. 215, as the source of this objection.)But this
objection militates only against a non-reductivetheoryof agent-causation.It leaves open
the possibility that the causation of events by the right sort of things-that is, by other
events-may in some cases amountto, or deserve to be described as, their being caused
by the agent himself.It thereforeleaves open the possibility of agent-causationthat's reducible to, or supervenienton, causationby events.(I discuss this possibility, and its implications, in the next section of the text.) Ginet argues against a conception that
characterizesaction in termsof event causation(pp. 11-13). But Ginet's argumentsuffers
from two flaws. Ginet's argumentis that we can conceive of a simple mental act, such as
mentally saying a word, without conceiving of it as comprising a structureof distinct,
causally relatedevents. ("I mean that it is not conceptuallyrequiredto have such a structure,underourconceptof it as thatkind of mentalact"(p. 12).) Yet this point doesn't speak
to the hypothesis that we conceive of the act in question as comprisingbehaviourcaused
by the agent, and that the behaviour'sbeing caused by the agent superveneson its causal
relationto other events. Our concept of action may include agent-causationwithout including the superveniencebase thereof.What'smore, the illustrationsthatGinet provides
for his argument-pairs of mental causes and effects whose structureis clearly different
from thatof the mentalact in question-are all cases in which the imaginedcause is itself
a mental act. But someone who thinks that a mental act consists in mental behaviour
caused by the agent, in a sense that superveneson it's being caused by anotherevent, is
not likely to thinkthatthe causing event is yet anotheract.
468 J. David Velleman
I implicitly endorsedthis naturalisticconception of explanationwhen I conceded, earlier,thatthe standardstoryof actioncannotbe faultedmerely for alluding to states and events occurringin the agent's mind.Any explanationof human
actionwill speakin termsof some such occurrences,because occurrencesare the
basic elements of explanationin general.
Some philosophershave not been willing to concede this point. According to
RoderickChisholm (1976), for example, the explanatoryordermust include not
only occurrencesbut also agents,conceived as additionalprimitiveelements.The
causation of occurrences by agents, ratherthan by other occurrences, is what
Chisholmcalls "agent-causation".
If the phrase "agent-causation"is understoodin Chisholm's sense, then the
naturalisticconception of explanationimplies thatagent-causationdoesn't exist.
Yet those who endorse the naturalisticconception of explanation,as I do, may
still want to reconcile it with our commonsense conception of full-bloodied
action, in which behaviour is traced to the agent himself ratherthan to occurrences within him. Such a reconciliationwill have to show how the causal role
assignedto the agent by common sense reducesto, or superveneson, causal relations among events and states of affairs. And the agent's being a supervenient
cause of this sortmight also be called agent-causation,in a more relaxed sense of
the phrase. If "agent-causation"is understoodto encompass this possibility as
well as the one envisioned by Chisholm, then naturalistsmay want a theory of
agent-causation,too.
This broaderunderstandingof the phrase"agent-causation"is in fact endorsed
by Chisholmhimself, in a passage whose obscureprovenancejustifies extended
quotation.Chisholm says:
[T]he issues about "agent-causation"... have been misplaced. The
philosophicalquestion is not-or at least it shouldn'tbe-the question
whether or not there is "agent-causation".The philosophical question
should be, rather,the question whether "agent-causation"is reducible
to "eventcausation".Thus, for example, if we have good reasonfor believing that Jones... kill[ed] his uncle, then the philosophical question
about Jones as cause would be: Can we express the statement"Jones
killed his uncle" without loss of meaning into a set of statements in
which only events are said to be causes and in which Jones himself is
not said to be the source of any activity? And can we do this without
being left with any residue of agent-causation-that is, without being
left with some such statementas "Jonesraised his arm"wherein Jones
once again plays the role of cause or partialcause of a certain event?
(1978, pp. 622-23)
As the failings of the standardstory reveal, we may have difficulty in meeting
this challenge even if we help ourselves to a rich inventoryof mentalevents and
states.Wecould of course make the problem even harder,by asking how statements aboutJones's action can be reexpressed,not just in terms of occurrences,
but in terms of physical occurrencestaking place among particles and fields. In
thatcase, we would be worrying,in part,about the mind-bodyproblem.But the
problemof agent-causationlingers even if the mind-bodyproblemcan be made
WhatHappens WhenSomeoneActs ? 469
to disappear.For let there be mental states and events in abundance-motives,
reasons,intentions,plans-and let thembe connected,both to one anotherand to
externalbehaviour,by robustcausal relations;still, the questionwill remainhow
the existence and relations of these items can amount to a person's causing
somethingratherthanmerely to something'shappeningin him, albeit something
mental.17The problemof agency is thus independentof, though indeed parallel
to, the mind-body problem. Just as the mind-body problem is that of finding a
mind at work amid the workingsof the body, so the problemof agency is thatof
finding an agent at work amid the workingsof the mind.18
Now, Chisholm's non-reductionistsolution to the problem of agency hasn't
been taken seriously by many philosophers,nor do I intend to accord it serious
attentionhere. However, I do sympathizewith Chisholm's complaintthat those
who smirk at his solution do so unjustly,since they haven't taken seriously the
problemthat it is intendedto solve. Chisholm says:
Now if you can analyze such statementsas "Joneskilled his uncle"into
event-causationstatements,then you may have earnedthe rightto make
jokes aboutthe agent as [a primitive]cause.Butif you haven't done this,
and if all the same you do believe such things as that I raised my arm
and thatJones killed his uncle, and if moreoveryou still thinkit's a joke
to talk aboutthe agent as cause, then, I'm afraid,the joke is entirely on
you. You are claiming the benefits of honest philosophicaltoil without
even having a theoryof humanaction. (ibid.)'9
Here I think that Chisholm has come as close as anyone ever has to speaking
franklyabout a philosophicaldisagreement.And I hope that he would recognize
it as a token of my respect for this accomplishmentif I adopt his locution and
declare that the propergoal for the philosophy of action is to earn the right to
makejokes aboutprimitiveagent-causation,by explaininghow an agent's causal
role superveneson the causal networkof events and states.20
17 Cf. Bishop (1989, p. 43).
18 The standardstory of rationalaction has also illustratedthat the problem is more
thanthatof casting the agent in the role of cause. In explainingan action, we trace its history back to the agent who broughtthe action about;but then we trace back further,to
the reasonsthatpersuadedhim to do so. And as Donald Davidson has argued(1980), the
reasonscited in the explanationof an action must be, not just reasonsthat were available
to the agent, but reasons for which he acted, the difference being precisely that the latter
are the reasonsthat inducedhim to act. The reasonsthatexplain an action are thus distinguished by their having exerted an influence upon the agent. In the explanationof an action, then, the agent must serve not only as an origin of activity, or cause, but also as an
object of rationalinfluence-and hence, in a sense, as an effect.
19 Note the need to insert the word "primitive"in Chisholm's phrase "the agent as
cause",which illustratesthatChisholmhas revertedto understandingagent-causationin a
narrowersense.
20 See Bishop (1989, p. 69): "Of course action differs from otherbehaviourin thatthe
agentbringsit about,but the problemis how to accommodatesuch bringingaboutwithin
a naturalistontology".
470 J. David Velleman
VI
The best sustainedattemptat such an explanation,I think,is containedin a series
of articlesby HarryFrankfurt.21These articles begin with the question of what
constitutesa person,butthe focus quickly narrowsto the personas an element in
the causalorder.22WhatprimarilyinterestsFrankfurt,as I have mentioned,is the
differencebetween cases in which a person "participates"in the operationof his
will and cases in which he becomes "a helpless bystanderto the forces thatmove
him".23And this distinctionjust is that between cases in which the person does
and does not contributeto the productionof his behaviour.
In attemptingto drawthis distinction,Frankfurtis workingon the same problem as Chisholm, althoughhe is seeking a reductive solution ratherthan a solution of the non-reductivesort thatChisholmfavours.What'sodd is thatFrankfurt
conceives of the problemin a way thatinitially appearsdestinedto frustrateany
reductivesolution. In the following sections, I shall first explain why Frankfurt's
projectcan thus appearhopeless; and I shall then suggest a conceptionof agency
thatmight offer Frankfurtsome hope.
VHl
Frankfurt'sstrategyfor identifyingthe elements of agent-causationis to identify
what'smissing from cases in which humanbehaviourproceedswithoutthe agent
as its cause. Frankfurtfigures thatif he can find what's missing from instancesof
less-than-full-bloodedaction, then he'll know what makes it the case, in other
instances,that the agent gets into the act.
The cases of defective action that occupy Frankfurt'sattention are cases in
which the agent fails to participatebecause he is "alienated"from the motives
thatactuatehim and which thereforeconstitutehis will, or (as Frankfurtcalls it)
his "volition".And what's missing when an agent is alienatedfrom his volition,
accordingto Frankfurt,is his "identifying"or "beingidentified"with it.
21 "Freedomof the Will and the Concept of a Person","ThreeConcepts of Free Action", "Identificationand Externality","The Problem of Action", "Identification and
Wholeheartedness",all in Frankfurt's(1988). Frankfurthas recentlyreturnedto the topic,
in his 1991 PresidentialAddressto the EasternDivision of the APA, entitled"TheFaintest
Passion".I shall not be discussing the new suggestions containedin this address.
22 Frankfurtsays that the "essential difference between persons and other creatures"
thathe wishes to discuss "is to be found in the structureof a person's will" (1988, p.12).
And he later suggests that if someone becomes unableto exercise his will in the relevant
way, this inability"destroyshim as a person"(p. 21).
23 1988, p. 21. The same phraseappearson p. 22. In anotheressay Frankfurt
formulates
the distinctionin terms of a person's "activityor passivity with respect to... states of affairs"(p. 54).
WhatHappens WhenSomeoneActs ? 471
AlthoughFrankfurtdrawsthis observationfrom cases in which the agent consciously dissociates himself from the motives actuatinghim-cases involving
addictionor compulsion-it can equally be drawnfrom cases of the more familiar sortthatI illustratedabove. When my latentresentmentsagainsta friendyield
an intentionthatcauses my voice to rise, for example, I am not consciously alienated from that intention,perhaps,but I do not identify with it, either, since I am
simply unawareof it. Hence Frankfurtmight say that I do not participatein raising my voice because, being unawareof my intention,I cannot identify with it.
From this analysis of defective actions, Frankfurtdraws the conclusion that
what makes the difference between defective and full-blooded actions must be
that,in the case of the latter,the agent identifieswith the motives thatactuatehim
(pp. 18 ff., 54). Here Frankfurtcasts the agent in a role of the general sort that I
envisioned in my critique of the standardstory.That is, he doesn't think of the
agent as enteringthe causal history of his action by displacing the motivational
force of his desires or intentions;rather,he thinks of the agent as adding to the
force of these attitudes,by intermediatingamong them. Specifically, the agent
interacts with his motives, in Frankfurt'sconception, by throwing his weight
behind some of them ratherthanothers,therebydeterminingwhich ones govern
his behaviour.
VIII
Frankfurtthus arrives at the conclusion that if a causal account of action is to
includethe agent's contributionto his behaviour,it must includethe agent'sidentifying himself with his operativemotives. He thereforelooks for mental events
or states thatmight constitutethe agent's self-identification.
Frankfurt'sfirst candidatefor the role is a second-ordermotive. The agent's
identifyingwith the motive that actuateshim, Frankfurtsuggests, consists in his
having a second-orderdesire to be actuatedby that motive, whereas his being
alienatedfrom the motive consists in his having a desire not to be so actuated.
These higher-orderdesires either reinforce or resist the influence of the agent's
operativemotive, and they thereby"constitute his activity"--that is, his throwing his weight behind, or withholdinghis weight from, the motive that actuates
him, and thereby making or withholding a contributionto the resulting behaviour (p. 54).
As Gary Watson (1982) has pointed out and Frankfurt(pp. 65-6) has conceded, however, the same considerations that show the standardstory to be
incompletecan be appliedto this enhancedversion of it. Forjust as an agent can
be alienatedfrom his first-ordermotives, so he can be alienated from his second-orderdesires about them; and if his alienationfrom the former entails that
they operate without his participation,then his alienation from the latter must
entail similarconsequences.Yet if the agent doesn't participatewhen a secondorder desire reinforces his operative motive, then how can its doing so consti-
472 J. David Velleman
tute his identifyingwith thatmotive and contributingto the resultingbehaviour?
The occurrence that supposedly constitutes the agent's contributing to his
behaviourseems itself to stand in need of some furthercontributionfrom him.
Hence Frankfurthas failed to identify a mental item that necessarily implicates
the agent in producinghis behaviour.
WatsonandFrankfurthave subsequentlysought alternativecandidatesfor the
role. WatsonarguesthatFrankfurt'sreferencesto second-orderdesires shouldbe
replacedwith referencesto the agent's values. What is distinctive about behaviour in which the agent isn't fully involved, according to Watson, "is that the
desires and emotions in question are more or less radicallyindependentof [his]
evaluational systems" (1982, p. 110).24 Watson therefore suggests that the
agent'scontributionto an actionis the contributionmade by his system of values.
But this suggestion solves nothing.A personcan be alienatedfrom his values,
too; and he can be alienatedfrom them even as they continue to grip him and to
influence his behaviour-as, for instance, when someone recoils from his own
materialismor his own sense of sin.25Hence the contributionof values to the production of someone's behaviourcannot by itself be sufficient to constitute his
contribution,for the same reasonthatthe contributionof his second-orderdesires
provedinsufficient.26
Frankfurthas made an attemptof his own to solve the problem,in subsequent
papers, but with no more success.27 Frankfurtnow suggests that the agent's
involvement in his behaviourcan be providedby "decisions"or "decisive commitments"to his operativemotives, since these mentalitems are indivisible from
the agent himself. Frankfurtwrites,"Decisions, unlike desires or attitudes,do not
seem to be susceptibleboth to internalityand to externality"-that is, to identification and alienation-and so "[i]invokingthem... would appearto avoid... the
difficulty"(p. 68, n. 3). Yet the example of my unwittingdecision to breakoff a
friendshipshows thateven decisions and commitmentscan be foreign to the person in whom they arise.28How, then, can a decision's contributionto behaviour
guaranteethatthe agent is involved?
One might wonder, of course, why Frankfurtand Watson assume that the
agent's identifying with his operativemotives must consist in a mental state or
24
For a recent discussion of Watson'sview, see Wolf (1990, Chapter2).
I owe the latterexample to ElizabethAnderson(MS).
26 Of
course,Watsonrefersnotjust to values lodged in the agentbut to the agent'sevaluationalsystem; and he might arguethat values are no longer integratedinto that system
once the agent becomes alienated from them. But in that case, Watsonwould simply be
smuggling the concept of identification or association into his distinction between the
agent's evaluationalsystem and his other, unsystematizedvalues. And just as Frankfurt
faced the questionhow a volition becomes trulythe agent's, Watsonwould face the question how a value becomes integratedinto the agent's evaluationalsystem. See ?X below.
27 Again, the discussion thatfollows deals only with Frankfurt'spublishedworkon the
subject,not his 1991 PresidentialAddress to the EasternDivision of the AmericanPhilosophicalAssociation, in which he outlines a somewhatdifferentsolution.
28 I can of course imagine
defining a phrase "decisive commitments"denoting only
those commitmentswhich an agent actively makes. In thatcase, decisive commitments
25
WhatHappens WhenSomeoneActs ? 473
event specifiable in otherterms, as a particularkind of desire, value, or decision.
Perhaps identifying with one's motives is a mental state or event sui generis
ratherthana species of some othergenus.
Ix
Temptingthough this suggestion may be, it is reallyjust an invitationto beg the
questionof agent-causation.The question,afterall, is how an agent causally contributes to the production of his behaviour; and to observe that he sometimes
identifies with the motives producingthat behaviouris to answer this question
only if identifyingwith motives entails somehow makinga causal contributionto
their operation-throwing one's weight behind them, as I put it before. Other
kinds of identificationmay not at all guaranteethatthe agent gets into the act.
Frankfurtseems to think that an agent cannot fail to get into the act when he
identifies with a motive. "It makes no sense", he says, "to ask whethersomeone
identifieshimself with his identificationof himself, unless this is intendedsimply
as asking whetherhis identificationis wholeheartedor complete" (p. 54). What
this remarkshows, however, is thatFrankfurtis using the term"identification"in
a specialized sense, since ordinary talk of identifying with something often
denotes a mental event or state from which the subjectcan indeed be alienated.
For example, you may find yourself identifying with some characterin a trashy
novel, even as you recoil from this identification.Identifyingwith the character
may then seem like something that happensto you, or comes over you, without
your participation.
One might thinkthat such a case is what Frankfurthas in mind when he says
that an agent's identification of himself may not be "wholehearted"or "complete",but I thinknot. For if it were, then Frankfurtwould in effect be conceding
that self-identification can sometimes occur without the agent's participation;
and in that case, he could no longer claim that self-identificationalone is what
distinguishesthe actions in which the agent participatesfrom those in which he
doesn't. An agent who identifies with a motive needn't be implicated in the
behaviourthat it producesif he can somehow dissociate himself from the identification.
I think that what Frankfurtmeans, when he refuses to ask whether someone
identifies with his self-identification,is that identifying oneself with a motive is
unlike identifyingwith a characterin a novel precisely in thatit cannothappenat
all withoutone's participation.Identifyingwith anotherpersonis, at most, a matter of imaginingoneself in his skin, whereasidentifyingwith a motive entails takwill indeedbe such as cannotfail to have the agent's participation;but in what thatparticipationconsists will remaina mystery, and the claim that the agent participatesin his actions by way of decisive commitments will be uninformative. A related criticism of
Frankfurt'ssolution appearsin Christman(1991, pp. 8-9). See ?X below.
474 J. David Velleman
ing possession of it in fact, not just in imagination.Frankfurtthereforeassumes,
I think, that identifying with a motive is a mental phenomenon that simply
doesn't occurunless one participates,althoughone may participatehalfheartedly
or incompletely.
Havingput our finger on this assumption,however, we can see thatfor Frankfurtto posit self-identificationas a primitivementalphenomenonwould be to beg
the questionof agent-causation.For if self-identificationis somethingthatcannot
occur withoutthe agent's contributingto it, then it cannot occur without agentcausation,and we cannotassume thatit occurs withoutassumingthatagent-causationoccurs-which is what we set out to show, in the first place. The question
is whetherthere is such a thing as a person's participatingin the causal orderof
events and states, and we can't settle this questionsimply by positing a primitive
state or event thatrequiresthe person'sparticipation.
Lest the questionbe begged, then, "self-identification"mustnot be understood
as naming the primitive event or state that provides the needed reduction of
agent-causation;it must be understood,instead, as redescribingagent-causation
itself, the phenomenonto be reduced.When Frankfurtsays that an agent participates in an actionby identifyingwith its motives, he doesn't mean thatself-identification is, among mere states and events, the one in virtue of which the agent
gets into the act; rather,he is saying thatif we want to know which are the mere
states and events that constitutethe agent's getting into the act, we should look
for the ones thatconstitutehis identifyingwith his motives. FrankfurtandWatson
are thereforecorrect in trying to reduce self-identificationto desires, values, or
decisions-that is, to mentalphenomenawhose existence we can assume without
presupposingthat agent-causationoccurs.
x
But how can such a reduction ever succeed? If we pick out mental states and
events in terms that do not presupposeany causal contributionfrom the agent,
then we shall have picked out states and events from which the agent can in principle dissociate himself. Since the occurrenceof these items will be conceptually
possible without any participationfrom the agent, we shall have no groundsfor
saying that their occurrence guaranteesthe agent's participationin the causal
order.
The only way to guaranteethata mentalstate or event will bringthe agentinto
the act is to define it in terms thatmandatethe agent's being in the act; but then
we can't assume the occurrenceof that state or event without alreadyassuming
the occurrenceof agent-causation.Hence we seem to be confrontedwith a choice
betweenbegging the question and not answeringit at all.
We may be temptedto slip between the hornsof this dilemma,by characterizing some mentalitems in termsthatare sufficientlyvague to carryan assumption
of agent-causationwhile keeping that assumptionconcealed. I suspect thatWat-
WhatHappens WhenSomeoneActs ? 475
son's appealsto "theagent's system of values",and Frankfurt'sappealsto "decisive commitments" seem to succeed only insofar as they smuggle such an
assumptioninto the story.29But a genuine resolutionof the dilemmawill require
a more radicalchange of approach.
XI
The main flaw in Frankfurt'sapproach,I think, is that substitutingone instance
of agent-causationfor another,as the targetof reduction,does not advance the
reductionistproject. Since self-identificationwon't serve our purposeunless it's
conceived as something to which the agent contributes,ratherthan something
that happens to him, reducing self-identification to mere events and states is
unlikely to be any easier thanreducingaction itself.
The way to advance the reductionist project is not to substitute one agentcausal phenomenonfor anotheras the targetof reduction,but to get the process
of reductiongoing, by breakingagent-causationinto its components.And surely,
the principalcomponentof agent-causationis the agent himself. Instead-oflooking for mental events and states to play the role of the agent's identifying with a
motive, then, we should look for events and states to play the role of the agent.
Something to play the role of agent is precisely what I earlierjudged to be
lackingfrom the standardstoryof humanaction. I pointedout thatthe agent intermediates in various ways between his reasons and intentions, or between his
intentionsand bodily movements;and I arguedthat the standardstory omits the
agent, not because it fails to mention him by name, but ratherbecause it fails to
mentionanythingthatplays his intermediatingrole.
What plays the agent's role in a reductionistaccount of agent-causationwill
of course be events or states-most likely, events or states in the agent's mind.
We mustthereforelook for mentalevents and statesthatarefunctionallyidentical
to the agent, in the sense that they play the causal role that ordinaryparlance
attributesto him.
Looking for a mentalevent or state that'sfunctionallyidenticalto the agent is
not as bizarre as it sounds. Of course, the agent is a whole person, who is not
strictlyidenticalwith any subset of the mental states and events thatoccur within
him. But a complete person qualifies as an agent by virtue of performingsome
ratherspecific functions,and he can still lay claim to those functionseven if they
are performed,strictly speaking,by some properpartof him. When we say that
a persondigests his dinneror fights an infection, we don't meanto deny thatthese
functionsactuallybelong to some of his parts.A person is a fighter of infections
and a digester of food in the sense that his parts include infection-fightingand
food-digestingsystems. Similarly, a person may be an initiatorof actions-and
hence an agent-in the sense thatthereis an action-initiatingsystem within him,
29
See notes 26 and 28, above.
476 J. David Velleman
a system thatperformsthe functions in virtue of which he qualifies as an agent
and which are ordinarilyattributedto him in thatcapacity.A reductionistphilosophy of actionmustthereforelocate a system of mentalevents and statesthatperform the functionalrole definitive of an agent.
I sometimessuspectthatFrankfurtsees the necessity of this approachandmay
even thinkthat he's taking it. My suspicion is based on the potentialconfusions
that lurk in Frankfurt'stalk of "identifyingoneself' with a motive and thereby
"making it one's own" (p. 18). The reader, and perhaps the writer, of these
phrases may think that when a person identifies himself with motives, they
become functionallyidenticalto him, or that when motives become his, they do
so by becoming him, in the sense that they occupy his functional role. But the
psychological items that are functionallyidentical to the agent, in the sense that
they play the causalrole attributedto him in his capacityas agent,cannotbe items
with which he identifies in Frankfurt'ssense, because identifying with something, in that sense, is a relationthat one bears to somethingfunctionallydistinct
from oneself. The agent's identifying with an attituderequires,not only something to play the role of the attitudeidentified with, but also something else to
play the role of the agent identifying with it; and the latteritem, ratherthan the
former,will be what plays the functionalrole of the agent and is thereforefunctionally identicalto him.
XII
What, then, is the causal role thatmental states and events must play if they are
to perform the agent's function? I have already outlined what I take to be the
causal role of an agent;but for the remainderof this paper,I want to confine my
attentionto that aspect of the role which interestsFrankfurt,since my approach
is simply a modificationof his. Frankfurtdoesn't think of the agent as having a
functionto play in implementinghis own decisions, nordoes he thinkof the agent
as interactingwith reasonsper se. Frankfurtfocuses insteadon the agent's interactions with the motives in which his reasons for acting are ordinarilythoughtto
consist.Theagent's role, accordingto Frankfurt,is to reflect on the motives competingfor governanceof his behaviour,andto determinethe outcomeof the competition, by taking sides with some of his motives ratherthan others. For the
moment,then,I shall adoptFrankfurt'sassumptionthatthe agent'srole is to adjudicateconflicts of motives (thoughI shall subsequentlyarguethatsuch adjudication is best understoodas takingplace among reasons instead).
Whichmentalitems might play this role? Here, too, I wantto begin by following Frankfurt.Frankfurtsays that adjudicatingthe contest among one's motives
entails occupying an "identity apart"from them (p. 18); and he says this, I
assume, because a contest cannot be adjudicatedby the contestantsthemselves.
Whenan agentreflectson the motives vying to govern his behaviour,he occupies
a position of critical detachmentfrom those motives; and when he takes sides
WhatHappens WhenSomeoneActs ? 477
with some of those motives, he bolstersthem with a force additionalto, andhence
otherthan,theirown. His role must thereforebe played by somethingotherthan
the motives on which he reflects and with which he takes sides.
Indeed,the agent's role is closed, not only to the actual objects of his critical
reflection,but to all potentialobjects of it as well. Even when the agent's reflections are confined to his first-ordermotives, for example, his second-orderattitudes toward them cannot be what play his role; for he can sustain his role as
agent while turninga critical eye on those second-orderattitudes,whereas they
cannotexecute such a criticalturnupon themselves. The functionalrole of agent
is thatof a single partypreparedto reflect on, and take sides with, potentialdeterminantsof behaviourat any level in the hierarchyof attitudes;and this partycannot be identical with any of the items on which it must be preparedto reflect or
with which it must be preparedto take sides.
Thus, the agent's role cannotbe played by any mental states or events whose
behaviouralinfluence might come up for review in practicalthoughtat any level.
And the reason why it cannotbe played by anythingthatmight undergothe process of criticalreview is precisely thatit must be played by whateverdirectsthat
process. The agent, in his capacity as agent, is that partywho is always behind,
and never in frontof, the lens of criticalreflection,no matterwhere in the hierarchy of motives it turns.
What mental event or state might play this role of always directingbut never
undergoingsuch scrutiny?It can only be a motive that drives practicalthought
itself. Thatis, theremust be a motive thatdrives the agent's criticalreflectionon,
and endorsement or rejection of, the potential determinantsof his behaviour,
alwaysdoing so from a positionof independencefromthe objectsof review. Only
such a motive would occupy the agent'sfunctionalrole, and only its contribution
to his behaviourwould constitutehis own contribution.
What I'm positing here is an attitudethat embodies the concerns of practical
thoughtper se, concernsdistinctfrom those embodiedin any of the attitudesthat
practicalthoughtmight evaluateas possible springsof action. Frankfurtseems to
assume that the concerns animating the agent's critical reflection on his firstordermotives are embodiedin his second-orderdesires aboutwhetherto be governedby those motives-such as the desire not to act out of anger,for example,
or the desireto be actuatedby compassioninstead.Yet these second-orderdesires
figure in critical reflection only with respect to a particularconflict of motives,
andthey can themselves become the objects of criticalreflectionone step further
up the attitudinalhierarchy.Hence the concernsthatthey embody cannotqualify
as the concernsdirectingpracticalthoughtas such, concernsthatmust be distinct
from the objects of critical reflection and that must figure in such reflection
wheneverit occurs. If we want to find the concerns of practicalthoughtper se,
we mustfind motives thatareat worknot only when the agentsteps back andasks
whetherto act out of angerbut also when he steps back furtherand asks whether
to restrainhimself out of shameabouthis anger,and so on. Only attitudesthatare
478 J. David Velleman
at workin all such instancesof reflectionwill be eligible to play the role of agent,
who himself is at work whenevercriticalreflection takes place.
One is likely to balk at this proposal if one isn't accustomedto the idea that
practicalthoughtis propelledby a distinctivemotive of its own. Agency is traditionally conceived as a neutralcapacity for appraisingand exercising motivesa capacitythat'sneutraljust in the sense thatit is not essentially animatedby any
motive in particular.This traditionalconception is not hospitableto the idea that
the deliberativeprocesses constitutive of agency requirea distinctive motive of
theirown. My point, however,is thatanyonewho wantsto save our ordinaryconcept of full-bloodiedaction, as involving behaviourcaused by the agent, hadbetter grow accustomedto this idea, because the problemof agent-causationcannot
be solved without it. Some motive must be behind the processes of practical
thought-from the initial reflection on motives, to the eventual taking of sides;
and from second-orderreflection to reflection at any higher level-since only
something that was always behind such processes would play the causal role
that'sordinarilyattributedto the agent.
XIII
Is therein fact such a motive? I believe so, thoughit is not evident in Frankfurt's
account.Frankfurt'sconceptionof criticalreflectionstrikesme as omittinga concern that'scommon to reflection in all instancesand at all levels.
The agent's concern in reflecting on his motives, I believe, is not just to see
which ones he likes better;it's to see which ones providestrongerreasonsfor acting, andthen to ensurethatthey prevailover those whose rationalforce is weaker.
What animatespracticalthoughtis a concern for acting in accordancewith reasons. And I suggest that we think of this concern as embodied in a desire that
drivespracticalthought.
When I speak of a desire to act in accordancewith reasons,I don't have a particulardesire in mind; any one of several differentdesires would fill the bill. On
the one hand,it could be a desire to act in accordancewith reasons so described;
thatis, the de dicto contentof the desire might include the concept of reasons.30
On the otherhand,it could be a desire to act in accordancewith considerationsof
some particularkind, which happenedto be the kind of considerationthatconstituteda reasonfor acting. For example, I have arguedelsewhere (1989) thatrational agentshave a desire to do whatmakes sense, or what's intelligible to them, in
the sense thatthey could explain it; and I have arguedthatreasonsfor a particular
action are considerationsby which the action could be explained and in light of
which it would thereforemake sense. Thus, if someone wants to do what makes
30 This possibility may be ruled out by an argumentin BernardWilliams' paper"Intemal and ExternalReasons" (1981). In any case, Williams' argumentdoes not rule out
the alternativepossibility, which is the one thatI favour.I discuss Williams' argumentin
a manuscripttentativelyentitled"ExternalReasons".
WhatHappens WhenSomeoneActs ? 479
sense, then in my view he wants to act in accordancewith reasons, though not
underthatdescription. In any of its forms, the desire to act in accordancewith
reasonscan performthe functionsthatare attributedto its subjectin his capacity
as agent.We say thatthe agent turnshis thoughtsto the variousmotives thatgive
him reasonto act; but in fact, the agent's thoughtsare turnedin this directionby
the desire to act in accordancewith reasons.We say that the agent calculatesthe
relative strengthsof the reasons before him; but in fact, these calculations are
driven by his desire to act in accordance with reasons. We say that the agent
throwshis weight behindthe motives thatprovidethe strongestreasons;but what
is thrownbehind those motives, in fact, is the additionalmotivatingforce of the
desireto act in accordancewith reasons.For when a desire appearsto providethe
strongest reason for acting, then the desire to act in accordance with reasons
becomes a motive to act on thatdesire, and the desire's motivationalinfluence is
consequentlyreinforced.The agent is moved to his action, not only by his original motive for it, but also by his desire to act on that originalmotive, because of
its superiorrationalforce. This lattercontributionto the agent's behaviouris the
contributionof an attitudethatperformsthe functions definitive of agency; it is
therefore,functionallyspeaking,the agent's contributionto the causal order.
Whatreally producesthe bodily movementsthatyou are said to produce,then,
is a partof you thatperformsthe characteristicfunctions of agency. That part,I
claim, is your desire to act in accordance with reasons, a desire that produces
behaviour,in your name, by adding its motivationalforce to that of whichever
motives appearto provide the strongestreasonsfor acting,just as you are said to
throwyour weight behind them.
Note thatthe desire to act in accordancewith reasonscannotbe disowned by
an agent, althoughit can be disowned by the person in whom agency is embodied. A person can perhapssuppresshis desire to act in accordancewith reasons;
butin doing so, he will have to execute a psychic manoeuvrequite differentfrom
suppressinghis anger or his addictionto drugs or his other substantivemotives
for acting. In suppressinghis anger,the person operatesin his capacity as agent,
rejectinganger as a reason for acting; whereasin suppressinghis desire to act in
accordancewith reasons, he cannot reject it as a reason for acting, or he will in
fact be manifesting his concern for reasons ratherthan suppressingit, after all.
The only way for a persontrulyto suppresshis concernfor reasonsis to stop making rationalassessments of his motives, including this one, thus suspendingthe
processes of practical thought. And in suspending the processes of practical
thought,he will suspendthe functionsin virtueof which he qualifies as an agent.
Thus, the sense in which an agent cannot disown his desire to act in accordance
with reasonsis thathe cannot disown it while remainingan agent.
Conversely,a person'sdesire to act in accordancewith reasonscannotoperate
in him withoutits operationsbeing constitutiveof his agency. What it is for this
motive to operateis just this: for potentialdeterminantsof behaviourto be critically reviewed, to be embracedor rejected,and to be consequentlyreinforcedor
suppressed.Whateverintervenesin these ways between motives and behaviour
480 J. DavidVelleman
is therebyplaying the role of the agent andconsequentlyis the agent,functionally
speaking.Althoughthe agent must possess an identityapartfrom the substantive
motives competingfor influence over his behaviour,he needn'tpossess an identity apartfrom the attitudethat animates the activity of judging such competitions. If there is such an attitude, then its contribution to the competition's
outcome can qualify as his-not because he identifies with it but ratherbecause
it is functionallyidenticalto him.
XIV
Note, finally, that this reductionof agent-causationallows us to preserve some
aspects of commonsensepsychology about which we may have had philosophical qualms. What we would like to think, pre-philosophically,is that a person
sometimes intervenes among his motives because the best reason for acting is
associatedwith the intrinsicallyweakermotive, and he must thereforeintervene
in orderto ensure thatthe weaker motive prevails. What inhibitsus from saying
this, however, is the philosophicalrealizationthat the weaker motive can never
prevail, since an incapacityto prevail over other motives is precisely what constitutesmotivationalweakness. Every action, we are inclined to say, is the result
of the strongestmotive or the strongestcombinationof motives, by definition.
But my reduction of agent-causation enables us to say both that the agent
makesthe weakermotive prevailandthatthe contest always goes to the strongest
combinationof motives. The agent can make the weakermotive prevail, according to my story, in the sense that he can throw his weight behind the weaker of
those motives which are vying to animatehis behaviourand are thereforeobjects
of his practicalthought.But the agent's throwinghis weight behind the weaker
of these motives actually consists in its being reinforcedby anothermotive, so
that the two now form the strongestcombinationof motives. Thus, the weaker
motive can prevail with the help of the agent simply because it can prevail with
the help of anothermotive and because the agent is anothermotive, functionally
speaking.
Come to think of it, what else could an agent be?
J. DAVID VELLEMAN
Departmentof Philosophy
Universityof Michigan
2205 Angell Hall
AnnArbor
MI 48109
USA
REFERENCES
Anderson,E. (unpublishedmanuscript):"The Sources of Norms".
WhatHappens WhenSomeoneActs ? 481
Bishop, J. 1989:NaturalAgency; an Essay on the Causal Theoryof Action. Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress.
Broad,C.D. 1952: Ethics and the History of Philosophy.London:Routledgeand
Kegan Paul.
Chisholm, R. 1976: Person and Object: a Metaphysical Study. London: Allen
and Unwin.
1978: "Commentsand Replies"Philosophia, 7, pp. 597-636.
Christman,J. 1991: "Autonomy and Personal History". Canadian Journal of
Philosophy, 21, 1, pp. 1-24.
Davidson, D. 1980: Essays on Actions and Events.Oxford: ClarendonPress.
Dent, N.J.H. 1984: TheMoral Psychology of the Virtues.Cambridge:Cambridge
UniversityPress.
Frankfurt,H. 1988: The Importanceof WhatWe Care About. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
Ginet, C. 1990: On Action. Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress.
Goldman,A. I. 1970:A Theoryof HumanAction.Princeton:PrincetonUniversity
Press
Harman,G. 1976: "PracticalReasoning".Review of Metaphysics,29, 3, pp.43163.
Nagel, T. 1986: The ViewFrom Nowhere. Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress.
Peacocke, C. 1979: "DeviantCausalChains".MidwestStudies in Philosophy, 4,
pp.123-56.
Taylor,R. 1966: Action and Purpose. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Velleman, J. D. 1989: Practical Reflection. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
1990: "EpistemicFreedom".Pacific Philosophical Quarterly,70, I, pp. 7397.
1992: "The Guise of the Good".Nous, 26, 1, pp. 3-26.
Watson, G. 1982: "Free Agency", in his Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, pp. 205-20.
Williams, Bernard 1981: "Internaland ExternalReasons", in his Moral Luck.
Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press, pp. 101-13.
Wolf, S. 1990: Freedom WithinReason. Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress.