Action, Knowledge, and Will

by John Hyman

Human agency has four irreducibly different dimensions - psychological, ethical, intellectual, and physical - which the traditional idea of a will tended to conflate. Twentieth-century philosophers criticized the idea that acts are caused by 'willing' or 'volition', but the study of human action continued to be governed by a tendency to equate these dimensions of agency, or to reduce one to another. Cutting across the branches of philosophy, from logic and epistemology to ethics and jurisprudence, Action, Knowledge, and Will defends comprehensive theories of action and knowledge, and shows how thinking about agency in four dimensions deepens our understanding of human conduct and its causes.

In Action, Knowledge, and Will , John Hyman ranges across the branches of philosophy, from logic and epistemology to ethics and jurisprudence, defends comprehensive theories of action and knowledge, and offers new answers to some of the most challenging theoretical and practical questions about human conduct, for What is the difference between the changes in our bodies we cause personally ourselves, such as the movements of our legs when we walk, and the movements we do not cause personally, such as the contraction of the heart? Are the acts we do to escape threats or fulfil obligations done voluntarily, out of choice? Should duress exculpate a defendant completely, or should it merely mitigate the criminality of an act? When we explain an intentional act by stating our reasons for doing it, do we explain it causally or teleologically or both? How does knowledge inform rational behaviour? Is knowledge a better guide to action than belief?

Genres: Philosophy

270 pages, Hardcover

First published April 22, 2015

Reviews

[Caleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an ambitious book. It aims to discredit the modern theory of the will, elaborate a variegated theory of action (a point I will explain below) and provide a novel account of knowledge that links it with action. Hyman argues that the modern theory of the will is in adequate, in part, by pointing out that in its most common form this theory results in a regress. So if we claim that an act is free insofar as it is preceded by an act of will, we can ask whether the act of the will was free or caused by some non-volitional factor. If free then it seems to require an additional preceding act of will if caused by a non-volitional factor it is hard to see how the subsequent act can be considered free. While there are answers to this challenge, for instance, one might claim that acts of the will are uncaused, Hyman's primary concern is to stress that the modern theory of the will does not adequately address all of the relevant questions concerning agency that such a theory should address.

This is explained in terms of a set distinctions he makes concerning the questions that a theory of action should answer. One distinction is between action and movement. He argues that actions are distinct from bodily movements because the former involve the full range of human capacities: sensory, intellectual, appetitive, etc., whereas the latter involves isolated subsystems of the human organism. In making this argument, Hyman argues that action should be understood as the causing of some effect; not a cause that would be distinct from the effect, but the very causing of the effect.

Next, Hyman argues that the notion of 'voluntary,' as an adjective describing some actions, should be understood primarily as an ethical notion so that a voluntary act is one that was not caused by ignorance or force and for which the agent is responsible. In making this claim, Hyman argues that coercion and threats of violence limit voluntariness despite the fact that such actions remain intentional. He bases this argument upon the notion of rape, arguing that it would be wrong to claim that a person was not raped merely because he or she had not resisted to the point of death. This seems quite convincing and illustrates the relevance of distinguishing the notion of voluntary from that of intentional. In a chapter concerned with the latter notion, Hyman argues that the respective action theories of Anscombe and Davidson are not only compatible but are each incomplete without the other. Why? Davidson's needs Anscombe's account of intention to adequately dispel the problem of deviant causal chains and Anscombe needs Davidson's account of causality to make sense of the way in which intentions explain actions. They do so by specifying the desires that figure causally in the generation of action. This chapter was very well done and is quite plausible.

After this, Hyman addresses the question of reasons for action. He argues against Anscombe's equation of action for a reason with intentional action, though acknowledging their close relation. For Hyman, reasons for actions are beliefs, and intentions are expressions of desire. He stresses the fact that reasons figure into a broader range of cognitive phenomena than intentional action - reasons for belief, for certain attitudes, (non-intentional) reactions, etc. While chapter is necessary for Hyman to frame the later chapters of the book that deal with knowledge, its most important conclusion is that some claims about reasons for action are factive, they presuppose the truth of the agent's reason.

In the concluding chapters, Hyman argues that knowledge is not belief plus... Instead, knowledge should be understood as an ability to be guided the facts. While this claim is interesting, Hyman rests his argument for this claim on the claim that an agent "can only be guided by facts that he knows" (p. 172). Unfortunately this claim is circular since he had previously defined knowledge as the ability to be guided by the facts. Hyman's aim in the final portion of the book is to defend the superiority, or preferability, of knowledge, understood in this way to justified true belief. Given the choice between advice from someone who has justified true belief and someone from knowledge, Hyman thinks we should prefer the latter. But his arguments for this claim are not terribly convincing. Hyman appeals to Nozick's experience machine in order to claim that we want to be guided by reality. The inadequacy of this claim combined with the circularity of his defense of the definition of knowledge limit the success of this portion of the book. But despite this the entire book is challenging, comprehensive and insightful. It should be widely read.

[Istvan Zoltan · Rating 4 out of 5]

In short, the book offers
- a useful distinction between three dimension of actions, a metaphysical/general, a psychologycal, and an ethical,
- a very clear distinction between the intentionality and the voluntariness of actions,
- a view of action according to which acting is an agent's causing something (a new, sophisticated version of agent causation),
- a view of agents as substances with powers and abilities,
- a view of the causation and motivation of actions, incorporating an account of intention and desire,
- a theory of knowledge as a disposition to be guided by the relevant facts,
- plenty of interesting historical background and context, with special attention given to the action related work of James, Russel, Wittgenstein, Ryle, Kenny, Anscombe, and Davidson.

Hyman's book is still one of the best accounts of voluntariness and intention, as well as one of the most interesting and promising views of agency and action. While I disagree with details of his view of what acting is, and I'm not sure what to think of his theory of knowledge, I do think it would be lucky for philosophy if more people would engage with the book and explore its recommended solutions to some of the issues in action theory and beyond.