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Philosophical Review The Works of Agency: On Human Action, Will, and Freedom by Hugh J. McCann Review by: Carl Ginet The Philosophical Review, Vol. 109, No. 4 (Oct., 2000), pp. 632-635 Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical Review Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2693639 . Accessed: 28/06/2014 10:39 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Duke University Press and Philosophical Review are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Philosophical Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 91.220.202.73 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 10:39:42 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Works of Agency: On Human Action, Will, and Freedomby Hugh J. McCann

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Page 1: The Works of Agency: On Human Action, Will, and Freedomby Hugh J. McCann

Philosophical Review

The Works of Agency: On Human Action, Will, and Freedom by Hugh J. McCannReview by: Carl GinetThe Philosophical Review, Vol. 109, No. 4 (Oct., 2000), pp. 632-635Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2693639 .

Accessed: 28/06/2014 10:39

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Duke University Press and Philosophical Review are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to The Philosophical Review.

http://www.jstor.org

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Page 2: The Works of Agency: On Human Action, Will, and Freedomby Hugh J. McCann

BOOK REVLEWS

because of the way we are. This is somehow true even for DOORKNOB and doorknobhood and BACHELOR and bachelorhood. Unfortunately, Fodor does not tell us how the story is supposed to go for concepts ex- pressed by verbs, adverbs, or prepositions, which are conspicuously absent from the discussion. But he does hold that some concepts, like GENE and NEUTRINO, are locked to properties in a more indirect way. The prop- erties they are locked to are mind-independent. These are natural kind concepts, concepts of natural kinds "as such," and acquiring them (lock- ing to the properties they express) requires the help of theories. It's not clear which category WITCH and UNICORN fall into.

At any rate, most lexical concepts are like the concept RED in that they pick out "appearance properties," ways in which things can strike us. These are not limited to sensory properties. Our minds lock (or is it Locke?) to such properties as redness, rockhood, and doorknobhood because each of these properties comprises a distinctive way in which we can be struck by things. Experiences with "stereotypic" cases somehow cause us to lock on to the property in question. At least this is a sufficient condition for locking to a property. It's not clear how this process could work for ANIMAL, MINERAL, or VEGETABLE, never mind relational concepts. Also, there's the question of which property a stereotypic case is a stereotype of, for it seems that different properties can have the same stereotype (Fodor says nothing to suggest otherwise). So how does a stereotype, even with the help of human psychology, determine a unique property and thereby the reference of the concept it triggers?

Details aside, it does seem that the world must be nominally related to the mind somehow if the mind is to get a grip on the world. So Fodor is surely on to something, perhaps even locked to it. But just what that is is not entirely clear.

KENT BACH

San Francisco State University

The Philosophical Review, Vol. 109, No. 4 (October 2000)

THE WORKS OF AGENCY ON HUMAN ACTION, WILL, AND FREEDOM.

By HUGH J. MCCANN. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998. Pp. x, 238.

This book comprises eleven essays in the philosophy of action, six of which were previously published (though slightly modified here). The book has a fairly extensive index. The essays are arranged in four groups. The first group contains two essays (one previously published) on the individuation of action. The second contains four essays (three previously published) that argue for the view that what makes an event an action is, not how it is caused, but that it is, or begins with, a volition, "an intrinsically actional"

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mental event. The third contains three essays (one previously published) that defend the view that free and responsible action is incompatible with determinism, largely by arguing for a noncausal account of reasons expla- nation of action (among other things the argument contends that causal accounts cannot successfully avoid the problem of wayward causal chains). The final group contains two essays on intention formation and rationality; the first (previously published) argues that it is sometimes rational to form intentions that are inconsistent with each other or with one's beliefs; the second (not previously published) argues that an important sort of prac- tical reasoning has as its conclusion the forming of an intention for action, rather than the adopting of a belief as to what one should do (or what is the best thing to do).

The essays are highly readable and clear. They contain many intelligent ideas and arguments that, as far as I know, are original with McCann. I find myself in agreement with nearly all of the main controversial positions defended in the essays and I heartily welcome their publication in a single volume.

The earliest of the previously published papers are three in part 2: "Is Raising One's Arm a Basic Action?" (1972), "Volition and Basic Action" (1974), and "Trying, Paralysis, and Volition" (1975). They argue that vol- untary bodily exertion begins with volition, a special sort of conscious men- tal activity-not reducible to intention or desire-that causes the body's exertion. He makes a clear and forceful case for this thesis, one that is, to my mind, persuasive.'

I don't agree with everything McCann says about volition. For instance, regarding the content of volition he says that what one wills is, not to exert a certain bodily part in a certain way, but rather that the part exert in that way. He argues (88) that the volitional content cannot be that one cause the exertion by means of the willing because "that would lead to an infinite regress: since volition is essential to the very process of raising one's arm, to will to raise it would be to will to will to raise it, and so forth." It is true that if what I will is that I voluntarily exert my arm, then the content of the willing will include a reference to a willing, but not to another willing, rather to that very willing. The willing's content will be that this willing cause my arm to exert; and I don't see that any regress follows from this.

McCann might argue that in order for "this willing" to actually secure reference to a particular willing, the content of the referred to willing must be part of its meaning. If that were so, then, since the content of the referred to willing contains a reference to a willing whose content

'When I argued for this thesis in my 1990 book, On Action, I neglected to mention McCann's much earlier work-an oversight that I very much regret.

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contains a reference to a willing ... and so on, the implicit specification of the content would indeed never end. But I don't think it is so. The assumption imposes on attempted demonstrative reference to an event with intentional content a condition for success that is in fact not nec- essary. It says that in order for such a reference to succeed in picking out a particular such event it must specify the content of that event. But this is pretty clearly false. Consider the event of my uttering the follow- ing sentence: "This utterance I am now making is an utterance of an English sentence." Here the phrase "This utterance I am now making" succeeds in referring to a particular utterance without containing in its content, even implicitly, a specification of the content of the utterance it refers to.

In "Intrinsic Intentionality" (1986; here chap. 7) McCann holds, rightly, that volition is intrinsically intentional: "it would be self-contradictory to say that Tom unintentionally willed the [exertional] changes his golf swing required" (141). But he takes the intrinsic intentionality of volition to entail more than the impossibility of willing unintentionally. The sentence just quoted continues: "or did so without intending those changes to oc- cur." Here I demur. Though willing must be intentional willing, it is not true that bringing about an exertion by willing it must be intentionally bringing about the exertion. While falsely believing that one's body is par- alyzed, one might will a certain exertion, in order just to find out what it is like to will ineffectually and without intending to bring about that ex- ertion. One would then have voluntarily but unintentionally exerted one's body.

What this means is that we cannot, as McCann would like to do, derive the intentionality of voluntary bodily exertion from the intrinsic intention- ality of the volition that is its beginning phase. If the intentionality of in- tentional voluntary exertion is not intrinsic to it, how is it constituted? The only alternative McCann considers, and rightly rejects, is that it is consti- tuted by a causal relation between the voluntary exertion and an intention to make such an exertion. But there are other alternatives. One important one is to say that a voluntary exertion is intentional if the volition involved is accompanied by an intention whose content is that this volition bring about the exertion.

In "Settled Objectives and Rational Constraints" (1991; here chap. 10) McCann defends the view that "in order for me to perform an action A intentionally, I must at the time intend to A" (200). Against this view, Michael Bratman offered counterexamples.2 In one sort of example, cir-

2See his "Two Faces of Intention," Philosophical Review 93 (1984): 375-405, and his Intentions, Plans, and Practical Reason (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), chap. 8.

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cumstances make it rational for a person to try to do something she be- lieves she cannot do. If, surprisingly, the attempt succeeds, then it may be right to say that her doing the thing was intentional (particularly if it was something she had a desire to do); but it need not be intended, for she need not have been guilty of the irrationality of intending to do what she believes she cannot do. I might, for example, try by tugging on it to move a log that has fallen across my driveway, while believing that I won't be able to move it (200). McCann holds that if I try to move it, then I must intend to move it; and he suggests that the inconsistency of this intention with my belief that I won't be able to move it really doesn't impugn my rationality, because

it is perfectly consistent for me to believe both that I will not move the log, and that there is a slight chance I will move it. Why not, then, adopt the intention of moving the log myself, since I can pursue this objective at minimal cost and with a chance of considerable gain? (206)

But what if the log is so immense that it is perfectly clear to me that there is no chance whatever that my unaided effort could move it? It might still be rational for me to try to move it, in order, for example, to show my five- year-old child that I cannot move it or just to gratify the child's wish that I try to move it. In that circumstance it would be an unjustified slur on my rationality to say that I intended my tugging to move the log.

McCann's reason for embracing the thesis that trying to A entails in- tending to A appears to be that he sees nothing else that can make an agent's action count as trying to A if it is not her performing it with the purpose of A-ing (203-4). But that there must be something else is clear, I think, from the fact that it is possible for a person to try to bring about what they know for certain it is impossible for them to bring about or even what they have no desire to bring about-if, for example, they have been ordered to try to bring it about and threatened with harm if they do not make an attempt, or they have been offered a significant reward for merely trying. Of course, in cases where the agent, contrary to her expectation, does bring the thing about, if she has no desire to bring it about, then her doing so is not properly said to be intentional.

Having aired some of my quibbles, let me express again my conviction that this book is massively on target. And I believe that philosophers of action who do not agree with it as much as I do will nevertheless find considerable profit in reading it.

CARL GINET

Cornell University

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