Voluntary and Intentional Action
By John Schwenkler
“I will present four theses in this paper. The first is that, since its inception in the 1950s, analytic philosophy of action has been focused on giving a theory of intentional action, rather than of action insofar as it is voluntary. The second is that this focus is unhealthy, because the concepts of intentional and of voluntary action are distinct, and each of them deserves its own treatment. The third is that this unhealth is especially evident in the way so many philosophers are inclined to treat intention as a causally efficacious mental state. And the fourth is that, to cure it, we ought to begin by going back to Aristotle.”
Normativism
By Anton Ford
“Agents are subjects and objects of thought: subjects, because in order to act they think; objects, because they are among the things that thinking is about. This double-relation to thought raises a question of method for any investigation of agency. If, as Wittgenstein claimed in the Tractatus, ‘the object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts,’ then which thoughts is it the primary task of practical philosophy to clarify? The thoughts that agents think, or the ones that are about them? Those of which they are the subject, or those of which they are the object?
Overwhelmingly, analytic philosophers have pursued the latter course. This is what I call the objectification of agency. It has historically taken two main forms, one in action theory, the other in value theory. The first, which I call explanationism, is the practice (exemplified by Anscombe and Davidson alike) of accounting for the nature of action in terms of how an action is explained. The second, which I call normativism, is the practice of theorizing agency in terms of how it satisfies, or fails to satisfy, one or another ‘norm’—that is, a rule, criterion, principle, law or evaluative standard. (According to whether the relevant norms are moral or aesthetic, as they are in moral theory and aesthetic theory, respectively, normativism has different specific forms, viz. moralism and aestheticism.) Taken together, explanationism and normativism comprise the main body of work of practical philosophy as it has been practiced in the analytic tradition since its inception.
The aims of this talk are as follows: (1) to exhibit and denaturalize objectification, in general; (2) to exhibit and denaturalize normativism, in particular; (3) to suggest that normativism is the philosophical motive behind allobjectification; (4) to venture a speculative answer to the diagnostic question, ‘What might lead philosophers to theorize agency in terms of the norms that apply to it?’; and finally (4) to gesture in the direction of an answer to the question, ‘What is the alternative?'”