Action, Reason and Will

This thesis investigates the constitution of human action. What we do depends on what we think and what we want. Or our actions depend on our reason and our will. Understanding human action thus requires grasping the nature of human reason and will and the relationship between them. I first argue for a concept of human action as intentional action by a self-governing agent, and show the inadequacy of the standard (or desire-belief) account of action as a model of human agency (Chapter One). I then critically examine three alternative accounts of agency. Chapter Two explores Bratman’s planning theory, which extends the desire-belief model with the addition of intentions construed as elements of coordinating plans and as rational constraints on practical reasoning. I raise some problems for Bratman’s conception of intention in terms of plans and the function of coordination. Chapter Three scrutinises Velleman’s self-knowledge-based account, which adds to the desire-belief model the conception of agency as a special way of knowing and the notion of intention as a cognitive attitude that embodies self-knowledge. I argue, inter alia, that this intellectualist account of agency seems inconsistent with genuine self-determination. Chapter Four appraises Korsgaard’s Kantian account of agency as self-constitution, which is skeptical about the possibility of capturing human self-governance in naturalistic, event-causal terms. On this account, we constitute ourselves into agents by choosing our actions in accord with the moral law. I show, inter alia, the impossibility of a logical derivation of the moral law (as a principle of choice) from the premise of deliberative freedom. Finally, in Chapters Five and Six, I develop a novel account of the constitution of human action, on which when we act intentionally, we act under the guise of the good, which we apprehend first through our emotions or desires and then through practical reason, and which we volitionally commit ourselves to bring about.