In this paper, we raise two points. First, any rights‐based theory should provide a method by which to guide reasoning in addressing conflicts of rights. The reason, we argue, is that these theories must provide guidance on what should be done. Second, this method must contain two key recommendations: (1) We should try to find a deliberative mechanism through which none of the rights is simply eliminated from the scene; (2) these rights may be balanced against each other to define (...) which right should prevail, but without considering non‐rights‐interests as if they were rights in the process. These recommendations instantiate two crucial principles that underlie our common intuitions on rights, namely, the principle that rights deserve equal respect and the principle that rights should be taken seriously. (shrink)

Helen Frowe has recently offered what she calls a “practical” account of self-defense. Her account is supposed to be practical by being subjectivist about permissibility and objectivist about liability. I shall argue here that Frowe first makes up a problem that does not exist and then fails to solve it. To wit, her claim that objectivist accounts of permissibility cannot be action-guiding is wrong; and her own account of permissibility actually retains an objectivist (in the relevant sense) element. In (...) addition, her attempt to restrict subjectivism primarily to “urgent” situations like self-defense contradicts her own point of departure and is either incoherent or futile. Finally, the only actual whole-heartedly objectivist account she criticizes is an easy target; while those objectivist accounts one finds in certain Western European jurisdictions are immune to her criticisms. Those accounts are also clearly superior to hers in terms of action-guidingness. (shrink)

For all the strengths the recent recovery of the virtues brings to moral philosophy, opponents of virtue-based theories claim that such theories cannot do the essential work of guiding action. This dissertation responds to that objection by drawing upon Thomas Aquinas's account of the four cardinal virtues in the secunda pars of the Summa Theologiae. I argue that Aquinas's moral theory has an emphasis on the virtues such that proper attention is given to the character of the agent, but (...) at the same time, it also gives sufficient evaluative importance to particular actions and enough practical advice about action to counter any worry that a virtue theory's emphasis on character precludes its ability to offer anything beyond vague and unhelpful recommendations for practice. ;Chapters one and two lay out the objection and the virtue theorist's two strategies for answering it. Those strategies include, first, making the demand for action-guidingness reasonable and appropriate to the limits of moral theory, and second, offering evidence that virtue theories can indeed meet the demand. Through a constructive account of Aquinas's thought on each of the four cardinal virtues and their complex relationships to action and practical guidance, I argue in chapters three through six that Aquinas's moral theory uses both strategies effectively to answer the action-guiding objection. From this study of Aquinas on the virtues, I conclude in chapter seven that not only does his theory successfully meet the objector's challenge, but further, by introducing at least three new ways to guide action, it does so even more successfully than the theories which were originally held up as paradigms of action-guidingness. Theories that fit the principle-application model of practical guidance thus turn out to be less well-equipped to guide action than a theory of the virtues like Aquinas's, whose more various and comprehensive methods of guiding action give us rich new resources for practical guidance and moral pedagogy. (shrink)

This paper argues that theoretical consistency and actionguidingness—as these have been formulated in the moral dilemmas debate—do not rule out interpersonal moral conflict. This leaves open the possibility that theoretical consistency and action-guidingness may demand more than what has been traditionally assumed. That question is considered here. Do these resources rule out all-things-considered interpersonal moral conflict in non-consequentialist theories? This paper argues that neither theoretical consistency nor action-guidingness can rule out such conflict, but action-guidingness (...) properly construed provides a desideratum against it. (shrink)

Demoralising ethical theory involves eschewing the deontic categories of moral obligation, moral permissibility, and moral impermissibility from our ethical thought. In this paper, I evaluate the case made in Alastair Norcross’s recent book, _Morality By Degrees_ (2020), for a consequentialist version of such demoralisation. Norcross defends scalar consequentialism, a radical variant of consequentialism which restricts fundamental normative verdicts to a scalar ranking of available actions, ordered according to the goodness of the consequences they produce. Following an introductory Sect. 1, I (...) assess the positive case for scalar consequentialism in Sect. 2, concluding that no strong case has been made for the view. In Sect. 3, I assess the case against the view, concluding that while scalar consequentialism may be able to avoid _the action-guidingness objection_, it falls foul of _the force objection_. In Sect. 4, I expand on this critique, showing that Norcross gives an unstable account of how to assess attitudes, such as desires, beliefs and emotions. In Sect. 5, I argue that appeal to a contextualist reductionism does little to make the scalar view appealing. (shrink)

Can just war theory and pacifism be substantially reconciled in theory and practice? In this paper I argue that James Sterba is mistaken in thinking that they can. There is no such thing as just war pacifism. However, this does not mean that just war theorists and pacifists cannot have a reasonable conversation about the justifiability of war. They can have such a conversation if they overcome their exclusive concern with the question of action-guidingness, that is, the binary (...) question of whether or not war can be morally justified. Justified wars are tragic. (shrink)

Many philosophers think the distinctive function of deontic evaluation is to guide action. This idea is used in arguments for a range of substantive claims. In this paper, we entirely do one completely destructive thing and partly do one not entirely constructive thing. The first thing: we argue that there is an unrecognized gap between the claim that the function of deontic evaluation is to guide action and attempts to put that claim to use. We consider and reject (...) four arguments intended to bridge this gap. The interim conclusion is thus that arguments starting with the claim that the function of deontic evaluation is to guide action have a lacuna. The second thing: we consider a different tack for making arguments of this sort work. We sketch a methodology one could accept that would do the trick. Unfortunately, as we’ll explain, although this methodology would bridge the gap in arguments that put claims about the function of deontic evaluation to work, it would do so in a way that vitiates any interest we might have in such arguments. As an aside, we’ll also point out how epistemologists, who have recently become interested in the function of epistemic evaluation, appear to already recognize this fact. The conclusion is hence a dilemma: either arguments from deontic function to substance have a lacuna or such arguments lack teeth. (shrink)

In this important book, Susan Hurley sheds new light on consciousness by examining its relationships to action from various angles. She assesses the role of agency in the unity of a conscious perspective, and argues that perception and action are more deeply interdependent than we usually assume. A standard view conceives perception as input from world to mind and action as output from mind to world, with the serious business of thought in between. Hurley criticizes this picture, (...) and considers how the interdependence of perceptual experience and agency at the personal level (of mental contents and norms) may emerge from the subpersonal level (of underlying causal processes and complex dynamic feedback systems). Her two-level view has wide implications, for topics that include self-consciousness, the modularity of mind, and the relations of mind to world. The self no longer lurks hidden somewhere between perceptual input and behavioral output, but reappears out in the open, embodied and embedded in its environment. Hurley traces these themes from Kantian and Wittgensteinian arguments through to intriguing recent work in neuropsychology and in dynamic systems approaches to the mind, providing a bridge from mainstream philosophy to work in other disciplines. Consciousness in Action is unique in the range of philosophical and scientific work it draws on, and in the deep criticism it offers of centuries-old habits of thought. (shrink)

This article offers a novel interpretation of enacted knowledge through the lens of Wang Yangming’s theory of the unity of knowledge and action. By framing Wang’s concept of knowledge within an enactive model, it advances a holistic perspective that integrates mind, body, and world, as well as knowledge and action, into a unified whole. To bridge historical analysis with contemporary philosophical discourse, this article engages in dialogue with Harvey Lederman’s introspective model, offering a complementary framework that, together, provides (...) a more precise and comprehensive understanding of Wang’s philosophy. Moving beyond Lederman’s dichotomy of correspondence and identity, I introduce a third interpretation of “unity”: the Continuum Thesis. This interpretation places a more fundamental focus on the original condition of moral knowledge, presenting it as a singular entity that inherently integrates the distinct aspects of knowledge and action. By asserting that “action just is knowledge,” Wang indeed affirmed their original unity. (shrink)

Tackling some central problems in the philosophy of action, Mele constructs an explanatory model for intentional behavior, locating the place and significance of such mental phenomena as beliefs, desires, reason, and intentions in the etiology of intentional action. Part One comprises a comprehensive examination of the standard treatments of the relations between desires, beliefs, and actions. In Part Two, Mele goes on to develop a subtle and well-defended view that the motivational role of intentions is of a different (...) sort from that of beliefs and desires. Mele, also offers a provocative explanation of how we come to have intentions and elaborates on his earlier work concerning akratic failures of will. (shrink)

The study of rationality and practical reason, or rationality in action, has been central to Western intellectual culture. In this invigorating book, John Searle lays out six claims of what he calls the Classical Model of rationality and shows why they are false. He then presents an alternative theory of the role of rationality in thought and action. A central point of Searle's theory is that only irrational actions are directly caused by beliefs and desires—for example, the actions (...) of a person in the grip of an obsession or addiction. In most cases of rational action, there is a gap between the motivating desire and the actual decision making. The traditional name for this gap is "freedom of the will." According to Searle, all rational activity presupposes free will. For rationality is possible only where one has a choice among various rational as well as irrational options. Unlike many philosophical tracts, Rationality in Action invites the reader to apply the author's ideas to everyday life. Searle shows, for example, that contrary to the traditional philosophical view, weakness of will is very common. He also points out the absurdity of the claim that rational decision making always starts from a consistent set of desires. Rational decision making, he argues, is often about choosing between conflicting reasons for action. In fact, humans are distinguished by their ability to be rationally motivated by desire-independent reasons for action. Extending his theory of rationality to the self, Searle shows how rational deliberation presupposes an irreducible notion of the self. He also reveals the idea of free will to be essentially a thesis of how the brain works. (shrink)

Philosophers of action have for the most part ignored work as a case of collective action. Michael Bratman’s distinction between shared co-operative activity and prepackaged co-operation goes further, claiming that any kind of co-operation involving a division of labour is at best an attenuated form of collective action. This paper uses Bratman’s discussion to lays the groundwork for thinking about work as a genuine form of collective action. Connecting Harry Braverman’s account of the division of labour (...) in Taylorised work and the idea that plans come at different degrees of granularity, I argue that the distinction between flexible co-operation and inflexible preplanned collective action is analogous to the distinction between fine-grained and coarse-grained partial plans in the individual case. Rethinking the difference between co-operative activity and activity characterised by the division of labour opens up the possibility of thinking about work involving a division of labour as a distinctive kind of collective action, involving centralised, front-loaded, and fine-grained planning, and helps us to get clear on the harms of Taylorised and deskilled work. (shrink)

How do we control what we do not do? What are the relevant guiding mental states when an agent intentionally omits to perform an action? I argue that what happens when an agent intentionally omits is a two-part metacognitive process in which a representation of an action is brought to the agent’s mind for further processing and evaluated by her as something not to be done. Without a representation of the action not done, the agent cannot further (...) process the possibility of her own action; she cannot intentionally try to not do something, resist performing an action, or decide or choose to not perform an action. The literature on people with frontal lobe damage suggests that without metacognitive control of action, a person automatically follows what the environment affords or what others are doing. Through at least procedural metacognitive control of action, agents are able to intentionally omit. This view has explanatory power over a variety of intentional omissions and over a variety of agents. It answers central questions in the philosophy of intentional omissions: who is capable of intentionally omitting, when and where intentional omissions unfold, and what are the relevant guiding mental states on which the control of intentional omissions is based? The answers to these questions contribute in part to naturalizing agency, at least when it comes to negative agency, our ability to guide the non-performance of our actions. (shrink)

Groups behave in a variety of ways. To show that this behavior amounts to action, it would be best to fit it into a general account of action. However, nearly every account from the philosophy of action requires the agent to have mental states such as beliefs, desires, and intentions. Unfortunately, theorists are divided over whether groups can instantiate these states—typically depending on whether or not they are willing to accept functionalism about the mind. But we can (...) avoid this debate. I show how a more general view of action captures what is central to action without mentioning mental states, and I argue that a group’s members can fulfill the role in group action that mental states play in our actions. Group behavior is explicable in terms of reasons, regardless of whether the group itself cognizes those reasons. After discussing the kind of reasons at issue and arguing that groups can act in light of them without minds, I assess how this account bears on the question of group responsibility. (shrink)

Global challenge-led research seeks to contribute to solution-generation for complex problems. Multicultural, multidisciplinary, and multisectoral teams must be capable of operating in highly demanding contexts. This brings with it a swathe of ethical conflicts that require quick and effective solutions that respect both international conventions and cultural diversity. The objective of this article is to describe the process of creating a toolkit designed to support global researchers in navigating these ethical challenges. The process of creating the toolkit embodied the model (...) of ethical research practice that it advocates. Specifically, at the heart of ethical decision-making is consideration of the following: Place, solutions must be relevant to the context in which they are to be used; People, those impacted by the outcomes must be partners in co-creation; Principles, ethical projects must be guided by clear values; and Precedent, the existing evidence-base should guide the project and, in turn, the project should extend the evidence-base. It is the thesis underlying the toolkit that consideration of these 4Ps provides a strong basis for understanding ethical conflicts and allows for the generation of potential solutions. This toolkit has been designed in two phases of collaborative work. More than 200 researchers participated from more than 30 countries and more than 60 different disciplines. This allowed us to develop a model for contextual, dynamic analysis of ethical conflicts in global research that is complementary to traditional codes of ethics. It emphasizes the need to consider ethical analysis as an iterative, reflective, process relevant at all stages of the research journey, including, ultimately, in evaluating the legacy of a project. The toolkit is presented as an open access website to promote universal access. A downloadable “pocket guide” version is also now available in 11 languages. (shrink)

This article offers a novel interpretation of enacted knowledge through the lens of Wang Yangming’s theory of the unity of knowledge and action. By framing Wang’s concept of knowledge within an enactive model, it advances a holistic perspective that integrates mind, body, and world, as well as knowledge and action, into a unified whole. To bridge historical analysis with contemporary philosophical discourse, this article engages in dialogue with Harvey Lederman’s introspective model, offering a complementary framework that, together, provides (...) a more precise and comprehensive understanding of Wang’s philosophy. Moving beyond Lederman’s dichotomy of correspondence and identity, I introduce a third interpretation of ‘unity’: the Continuum Thesis. This interpretation places a more fundamental focus on the original condition of moral knowledge, presenting it as a singular entity that inherently integrates the distinct aspects of knowledge and action. By asserting that ‘action just is knowledge’, Wang indeed affirmed their original unity. (shrink)

The problem of agential guidance consists in explaining the possibility of guiding an action in purely reductive causal terms. After examining Harry Frankfurt’s articulation of this problem, the standard systemic reductive causal answer is explored and found wanting. Two general explanatory challenges are singled out as decisive in assessing the viability of a causal answer to the problem of agential guidance: first, the correct identification of the actual sources of action guidance in the form of guiding intentions, and, (...) second, the recognition of the limitations of a content-based strategy to identify an action under guidance. (shrink)

Rational Powers in Action presents a conception of instrumental rationality as governing actions that are extended in time with indeterminate ends. Tenenbaum argues that previous philosophical theories in this area, in focusing on momentary snapshots of the mind of idealized agents, miss central aspects of human rationality.

Drawing on recent phenomenological discussions of collective intentionality and existential phenomenological accounts of agency, this article proposes a novel interpretation of shared action. First, I argue that we should understand action on the basis of how an environment pre-reflectively solicits agents to behave based on (a) the affordances or goals inflected by their abilities and dispositions and (b) their self-referential commitment to a project that is furthered by these affordances. Second, I show that this definition of action (...) is sufficiently flexible to account for not only individual action (in which both (a) and (b) refer only to an individual) but also several distinct subtypes of shared action. My thesis is that behaviour counts as shared action if and only if it is caused by a solicitation in which either (a) the goals, or (b) the commitments, or both (a) goals and (b) commitments are joint, i.e., depend on several individuals. We thereby get three distinct subtypes of shared actions: (i) jointly coordinated individually committed action, (ii) individually coordinated jointly committed action, and (iii) jointly coordinated jointly committed action. (shrink)

The question "Why?" that is deployed in these exchanges evidently bears the "special sense" Elizabeth Anscombe has linked to the concepts of intention and of a reason for action; it is the sort of question "Why?" that asks for what Donald Davidson later called a "rationalization".2 The special character of what is given, in each response, as formulating a reason ── a description, namely, of the agent as actually doing something, and, moreover, as..

Various political realists claim the superior ‘action-guiding’ qualities of their way of approaching normative political theory, as compared to ‘liberal moralism’. This paper subjects that claim to critique. I first clarify the general idea of action-guidance, and identify two types of guidance that a political theory might try to offer – ‘prescriptive action-guidance’ and ‘orienting action-guidance’ – together with the conditions that must be met before we can understand such guidance as having been successfully offered. I (...) then go on to argue that if we take realist understandings of political psychology seriously, then realist attempts to offer action-guidance appear to fail by realism’s own lights. I demonstrate this by means of engagement with a variety of different realist theorists. (shrink)

This paper raises a new problem for the widely held view that, according to the Confucian philosopher Mencius, being a benevolent person necessarily entails being affectively disposed in morally relevant ways. I argue that ascribing such a view to Mencius generates an inconsistent triad with two of his central philosophical commitments on what it means to be a benevolent ruler. I then consider possible ways of resolving the triad and I argue that the most attractive option is to reject the (...) view that a benevolent person must be affectively disposed in morally relevant ways; instead, being disposed to perform benevolent actions is enough. (shrink)

Intentional action is, in some sense, non-accidental, and one common way action theorists have attempted to explain this is with reference to control. The idea, in short, is that intentional action implicates control, and control precludes accidentality. But in virtue of what, exactly, would exercising control over an action suffice to make it non-accidental in whatever sense is required for the action to be intentional? One interesting and prima facie plausible idea that we wish to (...) explore in this paper is that control is non-accidental in virtue of requiring knowledge—either knowledge-that or knowledge-how (e.g., Beddor and Pavese 2021; cf., Setiya 2008; 2012 and Habgood-Coote 2018). We review in detail some key recent work defending such knowledge-centric theories of control, and we show that none of these accounts holds water. We conclude with some discussion about how control opposes the sort of luck intentional action excludes without doing so by requiring knowledge (that- or how). (shrink)

The transmission of form and soul -- Desire, perception, and understanding -- Theoretical wisdom -- Virtue of character -- Practical wisdom -- Immortalizing beings -- Happiness -- The happiest life.

The most important question concerning picture perception is: what perceptual state are we in when we see an object in a picture? In order to answer this question, philosophers have used the results of the two visual systems model, according to which our visual system can be divided into two streams, a ventral stream for object recognition, allowing one to perceive from an allocentric frame of reference, and a dorsal stream for visually guided motor interaction, thus allowing one to perceive (...) from an egocentric frame of reference. Following this model, philosophers denied that we can be in a dorsal perceptual state when perceiving a depicted object. This is because a depicted object is not physically graspable or manipulable and, in turn, it cannot be egocentrically localized, as a normal object, by the dorsal stream. Thus, the impossibility of manipulating depicted objects and of localizing them from an egocentric frame of reference has led some people to be sceptical about the possibility of a representation of action properties in the perception of objects in pictures, which pertains to the dorsal visual system. The aim of the present paper is to show that it is possible for the depicted object to be represented by dorsal perception. That means that we can ascribe action properties to depicted objects as well, even if depicted objects cannot be egocentrically localized—at least, not as much as normal objects can. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that, to make intentional actions fully intelligible, we need to posit representations of action the content of which is nonconceptual. I further argue that an analysis of the properties of these nonconceptual representations, and of their relation- ships to action representations at higher levels, sheds light on the limits of intentional control. On the one hand, the capacity to form nonconceptual representations of goal-directed movements underscores the capacity to acquire executable concepts of these (...) movements, thus allowing them to come under intentional control. On the other hand, the degree of autonomy these nonconceptual representations enjoy, and the specific temporal constraints stemming from their role in motor control, set limits on intentional control over action execution. (shrink)

Discusses the possibility of reconciling different articulations of intentionality from a neurobiological perspective. The author analyzes the relationship between agency and representation and how representation is intrinsically related to action control. The author also presents a new account of action, arguing against what is still commonly held as its proper definition, namely the final outcome of a cascade-like process that starts from the analysis of sensory data, incorporates the result of decision processes, and ends up with responses (actions) (...) to externally-or internally-generated stimuli. The author discusses recent findings from the investigation of neural mechanisms that are at the basis of sensorimotor integration. (shrink)