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.