anscombe-davidson thesis questions

 Donald Davidson appears to concur with G.E.M. Anscombe on the following view about action: 

    If a person Fs by Ging, then her act of Fing = her act of Ging. 

This account of action is motivated by the fact that every action we take usually escapes there being one single event that caused the action. For example, if I raise my hand in order to flip a switch that turns on a light so I can see the book I want to read in my office, there are multiple events going on. First, I might experience the mental event of forming the belief-desire to read a book, and I reason that I need the light on in order to read the book. I then form the belief that I have to flip the switch in order for the lights to turn on. At this point, no physical actions have occured--these are all mental events that, as Anscombe might say, are 'known without observation.' Further, these beliefs might be dispositional as opposed to being occurent, since it seems prima facie absurd to say that we consciously perform these inferences when we go about doing normal actions, even if multiple dispositional beliefs inform why we take certain actions.

Then the physical part begins: after forming my beliefs about these actions, I then control my body to stand up, walk over to the light switch, flip the switch, turn around, sit at my desk, and begin reading with the lights on. Further, my very scant knowledge of physiology/psychology tells me that there are muscle contractions that must allow me to make these movements, and certain neural events that occur to make these movements possible. It does seem a bit strange to say that I intend these movements; I obviously do intend them, but they seem to be apart of a sub-species of intentional action that is under my primary intentional action of turning on the light. 

So, this is all to say intentional actions are usually constitutive of several other intentional actions, and it proves quite difficult to splice them and categorize them as different sorts of actions. So, this thesis tries to nicely group them together, such that if a person turns off a light by muscle contractions, standing up, raising an arm, etc., then all of these things are constitutive of the action turning on the light. 

One question relates to the problem of the identity of action. If there are a set of sub-actions that are constitutive of another action, are these equivalent or just constitutive? In the example of turning on a light, is it really the case that my act of standing up is equivalent to turning on the light? Because it seems obvious I can be standing up to do a host of entirely different actions: I stand up to walk to the bathroom, to turn off the lights, etc. So it seems that, for this thesis to work, there has to be an explanation of how these kinds of sub-intentional actions relate to the original action a person set out to achieve. 

Then there's the second question of what sorts of sub-actions relate to actions, and whether or not this sets us up for a bit of a slippery slope. For example, in the same way that the original example posed a subject with the belief-desire to turn off the lights and read--and this person took measures to realize this--I have the desire to finish a dissertation at the end of my doctoral program. This is an action that cannot take place almost instantaneously like turning on a light switch would; it requires prolonged work and planning. So, over the next few years, I study hard and begin outlining the dissertation prospectus to submit to a thesis committee full of faculty I've researched about, and I finally finish my dissertation and send it to this committee with no recommendations for changes (Lord willing!). 

The question here is when the action began. I might say that the action of finishing the dissertation is when I hand the copy in physically to my professors, but this seems very strange--nobody would say they started the action of completing their dissertation by merely handing it in to professors, since this is an action that's required years of working that were full of a host of variegated intentional actions. But if this thesis is correct, then it seems that the intentional action of completing a dissertation is equivalent to all the subsequent intentional actions that were apart of the process, such that finishing a dissertation is equivalent to reading, writing, passing classes, participating in seminars, fulfilling needs (social, physical, social), etc. But it seems strange to say each of these are equivalent to completing a dissertation, since I could do just about anyone of these actions alone and would be nowhere near finishing a dissertation--I'm even doing that now!

I'm sure Davidson-Anscombe have answers to this, but these are just my original thoughts as I'm beginning to think more about this issue. 

id-continuity and postmortem character healing

I am working on a short essay that has been approved for publication by Heythrop Journal, and the goal of the essay is to reply to Marilyn Adams' objection that postmortem changes to a person's character poses an ID continuity problem. Roughly, the argument goes like this: 

Horrendous evils might damage a person's character so deeply that any reparative psychological measures for this person in the afterlife by God--which are typically included in 'optimal grace' solutions to the problem of horrendous evils--would be so significant that the person would no longer retain their identity in a relevant sense. If this is the case, then the person's agency will have been overridden to such a degree that this override is not different from a universal salvation of all persons, which (at least on Adams' account) would require God to override the agency of every person in order that they might accept him. Therefore, the 'optimal grace' solution to the psychological distress that comes from horrendous evils does not succeed in retaining libertarian free will of persons.

My initial response is that it seems prima facie absurd to suggest that psycho-therapy constitutes some violation of agency, since we observe people go into counseling all the time without the slightest thought that they're somehow being coerced. The obvious counter-example to my response is exactly the person who is coerced into psycho-therapy/rehabilitation for addiction, such as the Office episode in which Michael tries to check Meredith into rehabilitation for her troubles with alcoholism. It seems that the Michael-Meredith case constitutes an obvious violation of Meredith's agency, especially when the rehabilitation center refuses to take Meredith in. So, while psycho-therapy is not necessarily coercive in a way that violates agency, it has the potential to be coercive. 

In a postmortem world, we should expect that there will be a significant amount of persons who enter it with psychological disadvantages that come from their experiences with horrendous evils of various kinds, and the question we face is what God will do about them. I think it uncontroversial that there will be a sub-group who will be willing to undergo any psycho-therapy available to them in this life (perhaps given to them by God Himself? By angels? Who knows...) in a way that protects their agency, whereas there will be a group of people like Meredith who refuse any kind of treatment at all.

What do we do with Merediths in the postmortem world? Are they lost beyond cause? There are at least two possible ways of dealing with Merediths: 

    a) We can take a harsh view and posit that the Merediths who refuse God at every point in their lives--        including psycho-therapy in the postmortem world--will be justly condemned to Hell forever in virtue     of their perpetual refusal of God, even if we know that they are doing so because of the psychological         disadvantages they obtained from their participation in horrendous evils. I'm uncomfortable with this         view because the persons involved in making such a radical decision seem unqualified to make the             decision in a similar way that US legal courts allow persons to make insanity please. This is where I'm      sympathetic to Adams' reading on 'impaired agency,' which holds that persons are far too irresponsible      to use their agency responsibly in a decision that determines their eternal fate. 

    b) We can class persons with such severe psychological disadvantages accorded to them from                     horrendous evils in a special class of persons with impaired agency, with whom God can make a                 special exception in overriding their wills in some way. This class can include persons who die                 before a certain age of accountability (I'm thinking especially of infants, though some philosophers             think the postmortem world might consist in God permitting infants to grow up to a certain age of             accountability and then making a decision about him from there--though that's a discussion for another     time), persons with significant mental disabilities, etc. I'm more comfortable with this option.

the hobbit and luck

 Since I'm a TA for a course on the Inklings this Fall, I'm having to finally get around to reading through Tolkien's corpus of work. Earlier this week, I completed The Hobbit, and I really enjoyed this engaging story of Bilbo Baggins--a simple person who never went on any kind of adventures--rising to the call of Gandalf to be courageous in battling against Smaug for Thorin's family riches. 

One thing about the story that stuck out to me was the notion of luck: it seems like Biblo was regularly looking back at major feats he accomplished in his journey and finding places in which he just got lucky. For example, when the Goblins and wolves were hunting the dwarves (or dwarfs, as Tolkien would later correct himself), the eagles come and rescue them. Or, the way Smaug dies is not by the power of Bilbo and the dwarves, but by a neighboring archer-king. Or, the fact that Bilbo just happens to find the Ring while he is feeling his way through a dark cave. It seems, then, that much of Bilbo's success can be attributed to luck.

But then it also seems that Bilbo had to do things on his own initiative to make these sorts of successes happen. When Gandalf calls him to an adventure, he has the decision to stay behind. When Bilbo meets Gollum in the cave, it took a special kind of cleverness and cunning to beat out Gollum in the riddle contest--even though Bilbo is quick to note that he got lucky a couple of times in that exchange. When Bilbo decides to give the Arkenstone to Bard so that they could join together and fight in the Battle of the Five Armies, it took a special kind of courage and risk, especially since Bilbo knew that doing this would enrage Thorin, and there was no guarantee that Bard would acquiesce to Bilbo's plan of collaboration. 

So, we have these external circumstances that seem to work out well for Bilbo, regardless of how he acts. We also have a series of events that appear to be caused directly from Bilbo's own development of character. So, is Bilbo lucky or skilled? It seems like the answer is both: Bilbo is lucky in the sense that some time his external circumstances saved him from danger he could not have escaped within his own resources, but also in very important parts of his expedition, we can attribute much of Bilbo's success to his own resources and virtues. 

This discussion makes me think of a few interesting questions: first, how much culpability does an individual have in developing certain virtues and vices? When a vice gets too strong and overcomes the individual, how culpable should we hold them in respect to their actions? Secondly, if God's providence construed as being in control of contingent object (or at least, having the capacity to do so, not necessarily using that capacity), then how does this affect individual culpability in respect to their actions? Maybe I can write on these later.