[Editor’s Note: The following new entry byJuan Piñeros Glasscock and Sergio Tenenbaumreplaces theformer entry on this topic by the previous author.]

There is an important difference between activity and passivity: thefire is active with respect to the log when it burns it (and the logpassive with respect to the fire). Within activity, there is also animportant difference between the acts of certain organisms and theactivities of non-living things like fire: when ants build a nest,or a cat stalks a bird, theyact in a sense in which the firedoes not. Finally, there is a long-standing tradition in philosophygoing back at least as far as Plato and Aristotle that recognizes animportant distinction between the acts that (non-human) animals ingeneral are capable of, and the special sorts of actions that humanbeings do intentionally, such as going to the store, making phonecalls, protesting an injustice, or knitting a sweater. This traditionviews the latter group as practical manifestations of our rationalcapacities.

Although this entry largely follows suit in focusing on intentionalhuman action as a manifestation of reason, we flag from the start thatthere are other philosophical traditions that call this assumptioninto question. For example, Japanese (as well as Buddhist)philosophers have discussed the possibility of action without the needof a self (Kasulis 2019, section 5.3). And on one reading of theDaode Jing, the highest forms of human agency are, in somesense, beyond reason. This is one way to understand the notion ofwuwei, or “nonaction,” which describes an ideal way ofacting that is neither unconscious or involuntary, nor purposeful orgoal-oriented (cf. Hansen 2020, section 9.4 and Wong 2021, section4.1). Similarly, the Inner Chapters of theZhuangzi maypresent a view of human action as going beyond thought and reason. Byceasing to think about his action, Butcher Ding, appears to achievesuch a sublime level of harmony with his activity as to obviate theneed for effort (3.2). On one reading, Zhuangzi is presenting anon-intellectualist account of skill, not unlike that defended byDreyfus and Dreyfus (2004) as the highest form of expertise (Ivanhoe1993). On a more radical reading, the Inner Chapters do not present ahigher form of skill, but rather a more radical notion,Dao(way), opposing skill (Schwitzgebel 2019).^[1]

The entry is divided in eight sections. Section 1 discusses thequestion “What is an action?”. Section 2 examines aclassic account of intentional action in terms of causation,associated with Donald Davidson’s work. Section 3 considers thechallenge that extended actions—actions that take more than aninstant to accomplish—pose for such a theory, as exploredespecially in Michael Bratman’s work, and different reactions tothis challenge. Section 4 considers the notion of practical knowledge,as presented by Elizabeth Anscombe, which has served as the basis forthe most important rival account to causal theories. Section 5explores foundational questions about the ontology of action. Section6 considers the question: does action have a constitutiveaim–something it aims at just by being an intentional action?Section 7 considers whether omissions are actions, and, if so, howvarious accounts might accommodate this. Finally, Section 8 exploreswhether animals can act intentionally.

• 1. About the Question: What is an Action?
• 2. Causalism and Causal Theories of Action
  • 2.1 Davidson’s Predecessors and the Central Arguments in the Debate
  • 2.2 Davidson on the Nature of Intentional Actions
  • 2.3 Mental states as the causal explanans of actions
  • 2.4 The Problem of Causal Deviance
• 3. Extended Action
• 4. Practical Knowledge
  • 4.1 The Nature of Practical Knowledge
  • 4.2 Arguments for a knowledge condition
  • 4.3 Objections to the knowledge condition
  • 4.4 Weakening the knowledge condition
  • 4.5 The possibility of practical knowledge
• 5. The Ontology of Actions
  • 5.1 Events, processes, and more
  • 5.2 The Individuation of Action
  • 5.3 The Debate Over Basic Action
  • 5.4 Making, Acting, and the Varieties of Agency
• 6. Constitutive Aim
  • 6.1 Motivations and Different Versions of the View
  • 6.2 Objections
• 7. Omission
  • 7.1 Different Ways of Not Acting
  • 7.2 Agency, Omissions, and Refrainings
  • 7.3 Intentional Omissions and the Causal Theory of Action
• 8. Animal Action
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. About the Question: What is an Action?

The central question in philosophy of action is standardly taken tobe: “What makes something an action?” However, we obtaindifferent versions of the question depending on what we take as thecontrast class from which actions are to be differentiated. Thedifferent questions in turn encode important presuppositions. First,we may understand the question as asking us to differentiate betweenintentional action and the notions of acting and activity consideredabove (cf. Hyman 2015). Most commonly, however, the question is takenin terms of Wittgenstein’s classic formulation: “What isleft over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the factthat I raise my arm?” (1953 [2010], §621). A common, thoughcontested, reading of this passage is this: there are certain eventsof an arm’s going up that are actions, and some that are not(e.g. if someone tickles me in my sleep). What further factor does theaction have that the event resulting from tickling lacks?

Many historical as well as contemporary thinkers hope to answer justthis question. A simple answer, common in the early modern period(e.g. Descartes 1641 AT VII 57; Hobbes 1651/1668, i.6; Hume 1739–1740T II.3.iii; SB 413–18), is that what distinguishes actions from otherevents is that they are the causal outcomes of desires, volitions, oracts of will. A modern version of this view, considered below, appealsinstead to intentions, regarded as distinctive mental states. Despitethe intuitiveness of these “standard” answers, there havebeen increasing worries that they are based on disputable assumptions.First, there is an assumption about the metaphysical category to whichactions belong. Although it is natural to take them as events, somephilosophers have argued that there are good reasons to group themunder a different category. Second, the common reading ofWittgenstein’s question presupposes what has been called“additive” or “decompositional” conceptions ofaction (Ford 2011; Lavin 2015, 2013; cf. Boyle 2016): it is assumedthat an account of action can be given in terms of distinct, andsimpler components. However, a number of authors have argued that thisreductive project is bound to fail (Anscombe 1995; Vogler 2001;O’Brien 2012; Levy 2013; Horst 2015; Valaris 2015; Della Rocca2020, ch.4).

It has also been contended that philosophers who offer the standardanswers make important methodological assumptions. These philosophersapproach questions about agency as though they were on par withscientific questions to this extent: they seek mechanistic, or causalexplanations of agency, explanations that can be grasped from anobjective perspective. However, drawing inspiration from Kant, somephilosophers contend that philosophy of action should be done from theagential perspective (Nagel 1989; Korsgaard 2009; Bilgrami 2012;Schapiro 2021); and other philosophers drawing from Aristotle andFrege have argued for similar views (Thompson 2008; Lavin 2013; Ford2017). From a different standpoint, the standard methodology has beencriticized as not being scientific enough. It has been argued thatcertain empirical results disprove some of the basic assumptionsbehind these answers. For example, Libet’s experiments have beentaken to suggest that intentions are causally ineffective, and that tounderstand the true causes of action we would have to focus on neuralprocesses (‘action potentials’) about which we could onlylearn through standard scientific methods (Libet 1985; Libet et al.1993). Although these radical views are now widely held to be based onfaulty conceptual and empirical grounds (e.g. Mele. 2010; Levy 2005;Brass, Furstenberg, and Mele 2019), surprising scientific resultscontinue to challenge commonly held views in philosophy of action (seee.g. Wegner 2002 and Nahmias 2014 for critical discussion of recentfindings).

In this entry we draw from the work of philosophers working throughdifferent methodological paradigms. We will not bring up thesedifferences again, but they may be worth keeping in mind as weconsider the various debates below.

2. Causalism and Causal Theories of Action

Possibly the most widespread and accepted theory of intentional action(though by no means without its challengers) is the causal theory ofaction, a theory according to which something counts as an intentionalaction in virtue of its causal connection to certain mental states. Infact, this view is often dubbed (following Velleman 1992) the‘standard story of action’. Although other philosophersproposed similar views before, the contemporary causal theory ofaction, or “causalism,” was pioneered by Donald Davidson,especially the essays collected in Davidson (2001a). Davidson hascontributed to many topics in the philosophy of action, such as actionindividuation, the logical form of action sentences, the relationbetween intention and evaluative judgments, among others, but here wewill focus mostly on his arguments for, and his formulation of, thecausal theory of action. InAction, Reasons, and Causes(ARC), Davidson provides an account of the nature of rationalizingexplanations of actions, or what is often called ‘intentionalexplanations’. Such explanations explain the action by providingthe reason why the agent acted. ARC tries to understand how a reasoncan explain an action. The two central theses of ARC, or modifiedversions of them, became subsequently widely, though certainly notuniversally, accepted. The first thesis is that the explanation of anaction involves a “primary reason”: a belief and a desirepair that rationalizes the action by expressing the end pursued in theaction (desire) and how the agent thought the action would accomplishthis end (instrumental belief). So, for instance, in “Larry wentto Gus the Barber because he wanted a haircut”, Larry’saction is explained by a desire (his wanting a haircut) and a belief,left implicit in this case (his believing that he could get a haircutby going to Gus the Barber). The second central thesis is that theprimary reason is also the cause of the action.

2.1 Davidson’s Predecessors and the Central Arguments in the Debate

Davidson’s view in ARC is presented against a number ofphilosophers (mostly influenced by Wittgenstein), who, on his view,take action explanations to provide a different kind of understandingthan causal explanations (for a sympathetic overview of thisWittgenstein-inspired work, see Sandis 2015). Some of the identifiedtargets of the paper (such as Melden 1961) are clearly arguing for theviews Davidson rejects. Others (such as Anscombe 1957 and Ryle 1949)do not clearly embrace the theses Davidson objects to, or at least notall of them. These philosophers took intentional explanations todisplay how an action is made intelligible or justified. So Meldensays that “citing a motive [gives] a fuller characterization ofthe action; it [provides] a better understanding of what the [agent]is doing” (Melden 1961, 88). Similarly, Anscombe’s specialsense of the question “Why?’, discussed below (section4.1), is supposed to pick out the particular way in which actions areexplained. This claim is not one that Davidson denies; according toDavidson, in intentional explanations, or‘rationalizations’, ”the agent is shown in his Roleof Rational Animal … There is an irreducible … sense inwhich every rationalization justifies: from the agent’s point ofview there was, when he acted, something to be said for theaction.“ (Davidson 1963, 690–1). But Melden, and otherWittgensteineans, argue that this kind of explanation cannot be acausal explanation. Melden’s central argument is the”logical connection“ argument. According to Melden, sincethe supposedly causal antecedents of an action (mental items such asdesires and intentions) are logically related to the intentionalaction (I would not count as intentionally signalling a turn if I didnot desire/intend to signal a turn), the explanation of the action interms of such mental items cannot be an explanation in terms of”Humean causes“. After all, Humean causation connectsevents that are logically independent.

Davidson’s ARC exposes a crucial fallacy with Melden’sargument (similar problems had been pointed out by Annette Baier (thenAnnette Stoop) in Stoop 1962). Accepting Hume’s account ofcausal relations does not commit us to the view that any descriptionof a cause is logically independent of any description of its effect.An event can only be described as ”sunburning“ if it iscaused by exposure to the sun, but this does not mean that the causeof a sunburn is not a ”separate entity“ from the sunburn.We can describe an event as ”The event that caused X“without thereby refuting Humeanism about causation. Davidson arguesthat, on the contrary, the mental items cited in an action explanationcan only explain the action if they are also the cause of the action(the second central thesis of ARC). In our example above, Larry mighthave had other belief-desire pairs that rationalized his action ofgoing to the barber. For instance, Larry might also have wanted abottle of cream soda and believed that he could procure such an itemat Gus the Barber. However, he did not (we may stipulate) go therebecause he wanted cream soda but because he wanted a haircut (andbelieved he could get one at Gus the Barber). The only way we canexplain the difference between potentially rationalizing, butnon-explanatory belief-desire pairs, is that the belief-desire pairthat genuinely explains the action, the primary reason, also causesthe action. The question of how non-causal theories can distinguishbetween merely potentially explanatory reasons for an action from thereasons that actually explain it became known as”Davidson’s Challenge“ to non-causal theories ofaction (Mele 1992; Mele 2013).

2.2 Davidson on the Nature of Intentional Actions

Although initially presented as an account of the nature of actionexplanation, Davidson’s account also contains the basicstructure of an understanding of human action: according to Davidson,a true action statement (of the form ”x φ-ed“) denotesan event, and more specifically, a bodily movement. A bodily movementis an action if, and only if, the event is an intentional action(Davidson 1971). Davidson does not say this explicitly,^[2] but clearly on his view, an event is an intentional action under acertain description, if and only if, there is a true rationalizingexplanation of the event under this description. Davidson (1971)(following Anscombe) points out that ”x φ-edintentionally“ creates an intensional context; that is whetheran action is intentional depends on how the action is described. Touse Davidson’s example, if I flip a switch, I also turn on thelight, and alert the burglar. On Davidson’s view ”flippingthe switch“, ”turning on the light“, and”alerting the burglar“ are all descriptions of the sameaction. The ”accordion effect“ (so dubbed by Feinberg1965), characteristic of human action, makes it the case that thecausal consequences of an intentional action provide furtherdescriptions of human actions. If my flipping the switch caused thelight to go on and the burglar to be alerted, then I also turned thelight on and alerted the burglar. However, only the first two areintentional actions. On Davidson’s view, all these descriptionsare descriptions of the same action; alerting the burglar is an actionin virtue of the fact that these same bodily movements, under adifferent description, are a case of intentional action (flipping theswitch). Thus Davidson concludes that, ”we never do more thanmove our bodies: the rest is up to nature“ (Davidson 1971, 23).We can see now how the claims developed in these papers provide uswith a theory of action: an action is a bodily movement such that,under some description, the bodily movement is causally explained by aprimary reason.

This also gives us the barebones of a causal theory of action:according to ”causalists“, intentional action is explainedin terms of mental states that are the causal antecedents, orconcomitants, of the agent’s behaviour or bodily movement.Subsequent to Davidson, causalists have aimed to provide reductiveexplanations: intentional action is identified with behaviour orbodily movement (or in less ”ambitious“ versions of theview, a more general form of action, see Setiya 2011) whose causalantecedents (or concomitants) are certain specified mental states.Although Davidson himself is often portrayed as proposing a reductiveanalysis, he never presents any of his views as fulfilling suchambition and expresses skepticism that such analysis is possible giventhe problem of deviance (see below).

2.3 Mental states as the causal explanans of actions

The idea that an action is rationalized by its mental states is stillvery popular; much less so is the view that the only relevant statesare beliefs and desires (though see Sinhababu 2017 for a moderndefense of this simple ”Humean“ account). As Bratman(1987) argues, desires do not have the conduct-controlling andsettling functions characteristic of intentions, and thus intentionsseem to be better placed to be at the center of an account in whichintentional actions are constituted by their causal genesis. My desireto have my teeth cleaned, when conjoined with my belief that in orderto get my teeth cleaned I need to go to a dentist, will not result inmy moving towards the dentist until I actuallyintend to goto the dentist. In fact, when Velleman comes to dub this kind ofcausal theory of action ”the standard story of action“, heexplicitly describes the view as one in which intention plays acentral role between the ”primary reason“ and the action.In the standard story, the agent’s ”desire for the end,and his belief in the action as a means …jointly cause anintention to take it, which in turn causes the correspondingmovements of the agent’s body.“ (Velleman 1992, 461).Davidson (1970b) himself came to accept that intentions play animportant role in the causation and constitution of action and thatintentions could not be reduced to beliefs or desires. But common toall these views is the idea that human actions are events that bearthe right kind of causal relation to certain mental states or eventsof the agent that also explain the action.

One alternative to the causal view understands agency as a form ofirreducible agent-causation. Chisholm (1964) presents a classicversion of the view; Alvarez and Hyman (1998) presents a radicallydifferent version which denies that agents cause the actionsthemselves; Mayr (2011) develops a version of the view that, unlikeChisholm’s version, tries to show that human agency is notessentially different from other forms of substance causation that wefind in the natural world. A second alternative sees intentionalexplanations as teleological rather than causal explanations (Wilson1980; Cleveland 1997; Schueler 2003; Sehon 2005); that is, anintentional explanation cites the goal, the purpose, or the reason forwhich the agent actedrather than the antecedent causes ofthe action. Defenders of this view also try to provide anunderstanding of the teleological structure of intentional action thatdenies that teleological explanations reduce to causal explanations;they are instead asui generis form of explanation. One waythis view can meet Davidson’s Challenge is to argue that thetruth of certain counterfactuals distinguishes potential reasons fromthe actual reasons. For instance, it could be true that even thoughthe fact that the asparagus was delicious was a potential reason forMary to eat asparagus, she would not have eaten them if they were nothealthy and she would have eaten them even if they were not delicious(Löhrer and Sehon 2016); such counterfactuals, on this view, arenot grounded on causal relations between mental states and the bodilymovements, but on the teleological structures that constituteintentional action. Finally, the causal account also contrasts withthe neo-Aristotelian view in which human action is constituted,roughly, by a special form of practical knowledge (Anscombe 1957); onthis view, in intentional action, ”knowledge is the [formal]cause of what it understands“ (see section 4 of this entry).

2.4 The Problem of Causal Deviance

Let us take the following as the general form of a (reductive) causaltheory of action:

An event (bodily movement)B is an intentional action if andonly if it is an event caused by mental states [S₁,… S_n].

We can immediately see how to generate counterexamples to any suchformula: find cases in which there is a causal path from[S₁, …, S_n] toB, but notthrough the ”normal“ causal path that would presumablygive rise to the bodily movement in a genuine case of action. This isthe problem of deviance for the causal theory of action; Davidsonhimself was among the first who provided classical examples of suchcausal deviance for his own account of action (but Frankfurt1978’s presentation of the problem was particularlyinfluential):

A climber might want to rid himself of the weight and danger ofholding another man on a rope, and he might know that by loosening hishold on the rope he could rid himself of the weight and danger. Thisbelief and want might so unnerve him as to cause him to loosen hishold, and yet it might be the case that he never chose to loosen hishold, nor did he do it intentionally. (Davidson 1973, 153–4)

This is a case of what is often called ”primary deviance“(Mele and Moser 1994), in which the bodily movements in question arenot even actions, but the causal theory seems to imply they are. Incontrast, in cases of ”secondary deviance’’, thetheory misdescribes one of the consequences of the action asintentional when it clearly is not. The same Davidson paper providesan example of the latter:

A man may try to kill someone by shooting at him. Suppose the killermisses his victim by a mile, but the shot stampedes a herd of wildpigs that trample the intended victim to death. Do we want to say theman killed his victim intentionally? (Davidson 1973, 152–3)

There are very many attempts to solve the problem of causal deviancefor a causal theory of action and we cannot cover in detail any ofthem or mention all of them; here we’ll just list a fewinfluential strategies (and, of course, some solutions incorporatemore than one of these strategies). The first appeals to the notion ofa “proximate cause” (Mele 1992) such that an action isintentional only if, for instance, the formation of an intention toφ is the proximate cause of your φ-ing. Another family ofsolutions appeal to sensitivity and feedback conditions (Peacocke1979; Bishop 1989; Smith 2012): the climber’s bodily movementswould not count as an intentional action because they would not besensitive to variations in conditions and information on what needs tobe done (the climber would not release their hands differently if therope turned out to be stickier or would not change their behaviour ifthey were to realize that the rope had a safety latch fastened totheir hips). A different type of approach (though with some relevantsimilarities to the latter) takes the central problem for theDavidsonian approach, the reason why the problem of deviance isendemic to Davidson’s causalism, to be the attempt to understandaction in terms of itscausal antecedents, rather than itssustaining causes. For Frankfurt (1978) the relevant causalmechanisms involved must be guiding the action. Given that action is aform of purposive behaviour, we cannot hope to understand whatdistinguishes action from mere bodily movements by focusing on whatprecedes the action, rather than by what happenswhilethe agent is acting. As Setiya puts it:

In the case of basic action, the crucial concept is that ofguidance: when an agent intentionally φs, hewants to φ, and this desire not only causes but continuesto guide behaviour towards its object. (It is this condition thatfails in Davidson’s example). (Setiya 2007, 32)

In the case of secondary deviance, a seemingly promising approach isto require that a “non-basic” action counts as intentionalonly if (roughly) it follows the agent’s plan (Mele and Moser1994). Davidson’s killer’s plan to kill his enemy did notinvolve a stampede, and thus it should not count as intentionalaction.

Another strategy has been developed by “empiricallyinformed” philosophers, who hold that attention to the detailsof control mechanisms implemented at the cognitive level yields aresponse to the deviance problem. For example, it has been argued thatcases of deviance involve lack of attention (Wu 2016), failures at thefine-grained level of motor (as opposed to distal and proximal)intentions (Mylopoulos and Pacherie 2019), or failures in the causalpathways responsible for flexible agency (Shepherd 2021).

Needless to say, there is no agreed upon solution to the problem ofdeviance (for general skepticism about the possibility of a solutionsee Anscombe 1995; Vogler 2001; O’Brien 2012; Levy 2013; Horst2015; Valaris 2015); on the other hand, philosophers have also arguedthat competing accounts suffer from problems that parallel the problemof deviant causation for theories of action (Paul 2011b).

3. Extended Action

Davidson’s work focuses mostly on “punctualactions”, actions that take place very quickly, and that havealready occurred. A typical example of an action for Davidson will bedescribed by a sentence like “α flicked theswitch” (see Davidson 1971). Flicking a switch happens almostinstantaneously; moreover, when I describe my action as “flickedthe switch”, the sentence picks up a completed event in whichthe action is already done. And flicking a switch, buttering toast,etc. are actions typically performed from beginning to end withoutinterruption. In sum, Davidson’s typical examples of actions areshort-lived, continuous, and completed actions. Davidson’sconception of an intention follows a similar pattern, focusing onintentions that are executed in actions that follow the aforementionedpattern. At first, Davidson takes intentions in (short-lived) actionto be primary, and later (Davidson 1970b) expands the model toprospective intention (intentions for a future action), but stillfocusing mostly on intentions for a simply executed action thathappens to lie in the future. However our actions often extend throughlong stretches of time, and seem to rely on future-directed intentionsthat govern very complex plans and activities. Moreover, we only seemto have a completed action when we are no longer engaged in therelevant activity (when it is true that I’ve crossed the streetI am no longer engaged in the activities that constitute or are meansto having crossed the street); agency arguably manifests itself onlyin action in progress (I am engaged in these activities whileI amcrossing the street). By keeping our focus on completed action,we risk losing sight of another seemingly essential feature of humanaction: that it extends through time under the guidance of the agent.Of course, this kind of initial focus on nearly momentary, completedactions does not necessarily mean that the theory cannot accommodateextended action that requires complex planning or action in progress(or any form of agency that necessarily stretches through time). But anumber of philosophers have tried to either expand, modify, or rejectDavidson’s theory to account for extended agency or action inprogress, or to argue that a proper theory of action should focus onthe nature and structure of action in progress (Thompson 2008; Ford2018). This section will focus on extended agency of the former kind,and the relevance of action in progress will be discussed in section4.

Michael Bratman’s work (Bratman 1987; 1999a; 2007; 2018, amongothers) was seminal in arguing for the importance of intentions,policies, and plans (all of which he classifies as intentions orplanning states) in our understanding of how limited rational beingscoordinate their actions through time and can pursue ends and projectsthrough extended periods of time. Bratman’s planning theory ofagency starts from rejecting Davidson’s account of intention,and replacing it with a new understanding of the function (and nature)of intentions and planning states. Davidson had identified intentionwith an “all-out” or unconditional judgment, “which,if we were to express it in words, would have a form like ”Thisaction is desirable’“ (Davidson 1970b, 55); that is, anintention is a distinctive kind of evaluative judgment (”thisaction is good“ or ”this action is desirable“). Onthis view, to intend to φ is to have φ-ing as the conclusionof one’s practical reasoning. Bratman finds this viewproblematic in many ways, but arguably his most important objection toDavidson’s view is that Davidson’s theory of intentionmisses out one of the ”two faces“ of intentions.Intentions, on Bratman’s views, are tied not only to intentionalaction but also to coordinating plans (Bratman 1987); Davidson’sidentification of intentions with certain evaluative judgments seemsincapable of making room for the latter ”face“. However,this role offuture-directed intentions in planning andcoordinating action through time is essential to agency. Among ourfuture-directed intentions, there are very specific intentions to,say, make huevos rancheros for brunch later today, but also morecomplex plans and projects (my plan to write a book on tricycles isalso a specific, though not significantly filled out, intention for aspecific action or set of actions), and policies (my policy toexercise once a week is a ”repeatable“, general, intentionto perform various futures actions).^[3]

Future-directed intentions have for Bratman at least two importantfunctions in our deliberation: they have a settling function and acoordination function. Suppose I am deciding where I am spending mynext vacation, and let us assume that I narrow it down to twopossibilities: Poughkeepsie and Daytona Beach. At some point,typically much before my first vacation day, I will form an intentionto go on one of these specific vacations (say to Daytona Beach), andthis intention is independent of forming an evaluative judgment infavour of either option; I might be convinced that they are equallydesirable, but I can only take one vacation a year. Forming theintention to go to Daytona Beachsettles the question for meand ends deliberation on the matter. Since there is intrinsically nolimit on how long I could spend deliberating, this settling functionperforms an important role in managing the cognitive resources oflimited beings like us. But future-directed intentions also perform animportant coordinating function in our extended agency. Going onvacation is a complex endeavour and we cannot successfully engage inthis action without prior planning. If I am going to Daytona Beach, Ineed to plan how long I will stay, and what I will do when I am there,make hotel reservations, etc. These plans will also require moreconcrete plans as these actions unfold (if I plan to have snacks withme for the Indy-500, I need to plan which snacks, and then plan onwhere and when I will get them, and then plan on how I will get to thechosen grocery store, and so forth). Our capacity to form thesedifferent types of future-directed intentions (plans, policies, andmore specific future-directed intentions) allows us to engage in thesecomplex forms of extended agency (to be ”planning agents“in Bratman’s words). In order to perform these functions,future-directed intentions must resist reconsideration and be stablethrough time. If I keep changing my mind after I form the intention totravel to Daytona Beach, my intention will not have settled the issueor foreclosed further deliberation. And it will also make bothintrapersonal and interpersonal coordination impossible: if I expect Iwill change my mind, there’ll be no point in making hotelreservations at Daytona Beach. Moreover, these functions imposecoherence constraints on my intentions: lack of means-ends coherence,for instance, will similarly prevent future-directed intention fromfunctioning properly.

Thus, Bratman, as well as a number of other philosophers afterwards(for instance, Holton 2004; Holton 2009; Yaffe 2010; Paul 2014),suggest that an account of planning agency reshapes our understandingof agency and practical rationality. Bratman (1987) argues, forinstance, that certain dispositions for nonreconsideration areessential to understanding the rationality of limited agents likeourselves. Holton (2004; 2009) extends Bratman’s account toanother function of a future-directed intention: resisting temptationwhen we expect preferences and judgment shifts. We achieve this,according to Holton, by formingresolutions: intentions toremain firm in our intentions, which are harder to reconsider thansimple desires or (first-order) intentions. (See Paul 2011a for someskepticism about this extension.)

Bratman also tries to expand his planning theory to explain therationality of acting on a future-directed intention even in cases inwhich judgment or preference shifts might seem to justify actingotherwise. In earlier work, Bratman (1999b) appeals to a”no-regret“ condition; roughly, a requirement that weshould not reconsider or revise an intention if we’ll regrethaving done so at the conclusion of our planned actions. In laterwork, Bratman (2018) appeals to the end of self-governance, an endthat is typically shared by human agents, to explain the rationalityof sticking to one’s intentions in face of temptation (forsomewhat similar ideas in the context of cooperation, see Velleman1997). According to Bratman, self-governance is a form of agency inwhich the agent acts from a standpoint that is truly his own; aself-governing agent is guided ”by attitudes that constitutewhere he stands“ (Bratman 2018, 159).^[4] On this view, self-governance has both a synchronic and diachronicform. Synchronic self-governance requires a coherent practicalstandpoint at a time that can constitute where the agent stands in acoherent manner, while diachronic self-governance requires a coherentstandpoint across different times when the agent’s plans stretchthrough an extended period. Since typically planning agents also haveself-governance as one of their ends, the need for such a coherentstandpoint generates reasons to conform to a requirement not to reviseintentions not only in cases of temptation, but also in cases in whichan agent forms a future-directed intention to choose one of a numberof alternatives that are either indifferent or incommensurable. Eventhough in such cases an agent has sufficient reasons to actdifferently than she intends (since other options are just as good orat least on a par), self-governance requires that she preserves acoherent standpoint over time (for a different way to justifynormative reasons against ”brute shuffling“ in terms ofself-governance, see Paul 2014; for skepticism about some of theserequirements against brute shuffling, see Ferrero 2010; Nefsky andTenenbaum 2022).

Although these challenges to Davidson’s original theory ofaction are different from the challenges that focus on the nature ofaction in progress, some philosophers argue that they are notunrelated. Tenenbaum (2018; 2020) argues that understanding better thenature of intentional action as actions that arealwaysextended through time, and the nature of the instrumental reasoninginvolved in intentional action in progress, makes Bratman’sappeal to asui generis state of future-directed intentionsuperfluous in our understanding of practical rationality. On thisview, there is no difference between the rational requirementsgoverning the various phases of an action in progress and therequirements governing the execution of a plan that contains varioussteps, or of a general intention that contains various instances (andthus purported requirements that are specific to future-directedintentions turn out to be redundant or spurious).

On a somewhat different vein, some philosophers have challenged theview that there is a significant metaphysical ”break“between a prior intention and an action in progress. From the time Idecide to make an omelet, to the time the finished product is on myplate, my agency unfolds in various stages and phases in pursuit ofthis end: I plan to make an omelet, I check which ingredients I need,I make sure that I leave myself enough time to go to the store whileengaged in other activities in the morning, I buy the milk, go backhome, melt the butter, break the eggs, drop them on the pan, and soforth. These are all parts, or phases, of the unfolding of theactivity that, if nothing untoward happens, will result in my havingmade an omelet. Although we can impose various breaks and divide theprocess into ”intending“, ”preparing“,”making the omelet“, these breaks are largely arbitraryfrom the point of view of the activity itself (Thompson 2008; Moranand Stone 2009; Ferrero 2017; Russell 2018); a metaphysics ofintention that emphasizes differences risks losing sight of thecontinuity of the phenomena (for criticisms of these deflationaryideas about the differences between the various phases of theactivity from intending to doing, see Yaffe 2010; Paul 2014).

4. Practical Knowledge

Whereas the central notion in Davidson’s theory of intentionalaction was that ofcausation, the central one inAnscombe’s is that ofpractical knowledge. In a famouspassage, she appears to define intentional action as an event thatmanifests practical knowledge:

[W]here (a) the description of an event is of a type to be formallythe description of an executed intention (b) the event is actually theexecution of an intention (by our criteria) then the account given byAquinas of the nature of practical knowledge holds: Practicalknowledge is ‘the cause of what it understands’, unlike‘speculative’ knowledge, which ‘is derived from theobjects known’. (Anscombe 1957, §48)

Only recently practical knowledge has received sustained interest inphilosophy of action. Much of the resulting work aims to clarify anddefend Anscombe’s view (Moran 2004; Thompson 2008, 2011; Haddock2011; Rödl 2011; Small 2012; Wolfson 2012; Marcus 2012;Stathopoulos 2016; Campbell 2018; Marcus 2018; Frey 2019; Valaris2021); but several critics question her arguments, as well asapplication of the notion to the definition of intentional action(e.g., Houlgate 1966; Grice 1971; Paul 2009b; 2011b). In response, anumber of scholars who still find inspiration in Anscombe have soughtto accommodate the criticisms by giving up on some of her mostambitious claims. This section concentrates on contemporary debatesabout practical knowledge stemming from Anscombe’s discussion,but we start by briefly examining its origins in ancient Greek andmediaeval philosophy.

4.1 The Nature of Practical Knowledge

The idea that there is a distinctively practical form of knowledgetraces back to Aristotle, who distinguished different ways ”byvirtue of which the soul possesses truth“ (EE5.3/NE 6.3). There are three theoretical forms by which ascientist grasps the truth: knowledge (epistêmê),wisdom (sophia), and comprehension (nous). Practicalknowledge comes in two varieties: the knowledge of the skilled personabout what she makes—skill (technê), and theknowledge of the virtuous person about her actions—practicalwisdom (phronêsis).

Aristotle’s account of practical knowledge is complex, and ourfocus shall lie on three points of particular significance. First,Aristotle claimed that skill is the ”cause“(aitia) of the things produced by it. For instance, heclaimed that the craft of building is the cause of the house(Phys. 2.5, 196b26). Second, Aristotle imposed epistemicconditions on voluntary and, a fortiori, intentional action: accordingto him, to act voluntarily one must know, among other things, what oneis doing, to whom, and why (NE 3.1 1111a3–6;EE 2.91225a36–b10). Third, Aristotle identified a distinctive kind ofreasoning associated with practical knowledge, a form of reasoningtraditionally rendered ”practical syllogism“ (though seeSegvic 2011). Such reasoning begins from a certain good and itsconclusion is an action. For instance, on the basis of thinking thatwalks are good after lunch, and that he has eaten lunch, a man mighttake a walk (DMA 7, 701a13–14). (For more on ancientviews on action, see Parry 2021.)

Several mediaeval philosophers built on these Aristotelian ideas,especially to understand God’s knowledge of creation (seeSchwenkler 2015). Anscombe (1957)’s account of practicalknowledge draws on this tradition. She first characterizes intentionalaction as that to which a special sense of the question”Why?“ applies, the sense that requests a reason foraction (§5). Later, Anscombe appeals to Aristotle’s notionof practical reasoning to connect the notion of reason for action andthe deliberative structure by which an agent determines how to attaina goal by acting (§33ff.). What the question ”Why?“reveals, then, is the rational ”order“ of means-to-endsthat define practical reasoning, and the answers reveal thedescriptions under which the action is intentional.

To illustrate with her famous example of a man pumping water(§23): A man is moving his arms up and down. Why? Because he isoperating a pump. Why? Because he is pumping water. Why? Because he ispoisoning the inhabitants of the house (you see, the water ispoisoned). Why? Because he wants to kill them to bring world peace.The question ”Why?“ has application only inasmuch as theagent recognizes himself as acting under the correspondingdescriptions expressed by his answers. As Anscombe notes, if the manwere asked ”Why are you pumping water?“ and he replied,”I was not aware I was doing that“, then he would not beacting intentionally under that description (§6; §42). Thedescriptions that manifest the agent’s understanding of what sheis doing are therefore intrinsic to the action: an action does notcount as intentional under a description unless the agent grasps theaction as such (under that description). Such grasp, therefore, cannotbe a separate occurrence (§42).

This reveals at least one important sense in which practical knowledgeis the ”cause of what it understands“. It is the formalcause because the agent’s grasp determines what the action is(an intentional action with a determinate content). In turn, thisshows why, in the phrase Anscombe borrows from Aristotle’sMagna Moralia, ”the mistake is in theperformance“ when it doesn’t conform to the judgment(§32): qua formal cause, the knowledge sets the standard for whatis known. Whether, like Aristotle, Anscombe holds that practicalknowledge is also an efficient cause is a complex, and disputedquestion (see Setiya 2016a for skepticism, and PiñerosGlasscock 2020a for endorsement).

One last important aspect of Anscombe’s conception of practicalknowledge is the contention that an agent knows what she is doing”without observation“ (1957, §8). This is because,intuitively, whereas I need to look at what is being written on theboard to know what someone else is writing, I don’t need to lookat whatI am doing to know what I am writing. Beyondintuitive examples, however, it has proven difficult to explain whatnon-observational knowledge is.^[5] Nevertheless, there are three points on which there is wideagreement. First, the class of practical knowledge is a propersubclass of the class of non-observational knowledge, one that alsoincludes, for instance, knowledge of our limbs’s position(§§9–10). Second, to say that knowledge is non-observationalis minimally to say that it is non-inferential. Third, and finally,the non-observational character of this knowledge is of the sorttraditionally associated with mental states. Hence, one of the mostremarkable theses ofIntention is that publichappenings—actions—could be known in the distinctive waytraditionally reserved for internal mental states, so that there wouldbe ”spontaneous knowledge of material reality“ (Rödl2007, 121).

4.2 Arguments for a knowledge condition

Anscombe presents several arguments for the claim that to actintentionally an agent must know what she is doing (call this the”knowledge condition’), and further arguments have beenpresented in the literature. This section surveys four influentialarguments.

One argument has already been mentioned: If a person is asked,“Why are you φ-ing?” and she (sincerely) replies,“I didn’t realize I was φ-ing” then shewasn’t φ-ing intentionally. It would seem to follow that aperson must know what she is doing if acting intentionally. However,this argument is unsound. First, the expression “I didn’trealize…” is colloquially used to express complete lackof awareness, rather than mere ignorance (Schwenkler 2019, 189). Atmost, then, the argument would show that the action cannot becompletely beyond the agent’s purview. Second, even if theperson’s state is in fact knowledgeafter the questionis asked, this may be a conversational effect: By asking “Whyare you φ-ing?”, the speaker intimates that the agent isφ-ing. This puts the agent in a position to know this, but not ina way that is tied to her agency.

A more promising argument, suggested by Anscombe and endorsed by someof her followers in some form (Setiya 2007; Marušić andSchwenkler 2018), appeals to the connection between action andassertion. It can be stated thus:

Premise 2 is the standard claim that knowledge is the norm ofassertion (Unger 1975; Slote 1979; Williamson 2000; DeRose 2002;Reynolds 2002; Hawthorne 2004). Premise 1 may also look innocuous;but, as we shall see, there may be cases that speak against it.

There are two more influential arguments inspired by Anscombe thathave been used to defend the connection with knowledge. The firstbegins with the observation that a process in progress bears anon-accidental connection to its completion (Thompson 2011; Small2012; Wolfson 2012; Valaris 2021). If a house is burning, it would notbe an accident if it is burnt later; and if you are writing a letter,it won’t be an accident if it is written later. Whatdistinguishes intentional action is that the non-accidental connectionobtains in virtue of the agent’s representation—herintention—to act in some way. That the agent is writing aletter—even while she takes a break, cooks a snack, and goes tothe bathroom—is true precisely because she represents herself aswriting a letter, and this representation guides her proceedings.Intentions, in other words ground what Falvey (2000) calls the“openness of the progressive”: the fact that “aperson may be doing something, in a suitably broad sense, when at themoment she is not doing anything, in a more narrow sense, that is forthe sake of what she is doing in the broad sense” (p.22).Suppose, then, that an agent is intentionally φ-ing. Then it istrue that she represents herself as doing so, the representation istrue, and non-accidentally so. It is a short step to the conclusionthat she knows that she is φ-ing.

The final argument is based on the claim that intentional action isaction for a reason (Thompson 2013). An agent must therefore be in aposition to give an answer fitting the schema:

(1)

I’m φ-ing because ψ.

Now, Thompson (2008) has argued that the most basic way of fillingthis schema is one where actions themselves occupy the ψ-position(i.e. where actions are given as reasons). For instance:

(2)

I am moving my hands becauseI am pumping water.

So, in what sort of relation must an agent stand to the fact that sheis pumping water for a sentence like (2) to be true? Hyman (1999;2015) has argued that the relation must be knowledge (though see Dancy2000, ch.6). If, then, every intentional action description is onethat the agent could substitute for ψ in (1), it follows thatagents must know what they are doing when acting intentionally.

4.3 Objections to the knowledge condition

Davidson argued that the knowledge condition, and even a weaker beliefcondition, is vulnerable to counterexamples:

[I]n writing heavily on this page I may be intending to produce tenlegible carbon copies. I do not know, or believe with any confidence,that I am succeeding. But if I am producing ten legible carbon copies,I am certainly doing it intentionally. (Davidson 1970b, 92)

In this case, Davidson argued that the agent is making 10 carboncopies intentionally despite not believing that he is (never mindknowing); and some recent empirical results appear to support thisverdict (Vekony 2021). Hence, it seems that agents can φ intentionally withouteven believing that they are φ-ing.

For a long time, this and similar examples (e.g. Bratman 1987, 37,Mele 1992, ch.8) were taken as decisive refutations in the literature,but their force has been contested recently (Thompson 2011; Small2012; Wolfson 2012; Stathopoulos 2016; Beddor and Pavese 2021; Paveseforthcoming). The impetus for many of these responses stems fromThompson’s work on the importance of aspect for action-theory.In particular, actions in progress display what Falvey (2000) hascalled “openness”, which corresponds to the inaptly-named“imperfective paradox” in the linguistic literature (morebelow): Someone can be doing something and never get around to havedone it (e.g. I can be crossing the street, but never cross it). It isthus possible for someone to know that they are φ-ing even if theydon’t, in fact, get to have φ-ed. To apply theseconsiderations to Davidson’s argument, we need to distinguishbetween two cases. First, the normal case where the agent intends tomake 10 carbon copies, but has the opportunity to correct and continueon if things go wrong (e.g. if he initially only makes 5, but thenmakes 5 more). Second, the one-shot case where the agent must make 10carbon copies in one go (say, because he is competing in a copy-makingtournament). In the normal case, it appears like the agent may knowthat he is making 10 carbon copies (even if he doesn’t know thathe will complete the 10 in one go). So it raises no problems for theknowledge condition. What, then, of the one-shot case? Although hereit may be granted that the agent doesn’t know that he is making10 carbon copies, it is questionable whether he is making 10 carboncopies intentionally. The reason is thatif he were to make10 carbon copies as a result of pressing as hard as he can, this wouldbe too much an accidental result of his performance. But, as we saw(see section 2.4), accidentality is incompatible with intentionalaction. Hence, in the normal case the agent acts intentionally whileknowing, while in the one-shot case he doesn’t even actintentionally.

It is contentious whether the foregoing response works (see Kirleyforthcoming, for criticism), but it shows that Davidson’sexample is far from decisive. However, other examples appear to beimmune from this type of response. For instance, Schwenkler (2019)presents a case of an agent who is trying to fill a cistern in thekind of environment where doubts that he is doing so are appropriate(e.g. where he is filling up one of many cisterns, but he knowsseveral of them are broken, but not which). Suppose, however, that heis in fact filling up the cistern (it is not broken). If he does so topoison the inhabitants of the house, Anscombe’s question“Why?” appears to have application, which means that he isfilling up the cistern intentionally, even though the best he couldsay is that “he thinks” he is doing so (Schwenkler 2019,188–9; cf. Vekony, Mele, and Rose 2021; Shepherd & Carterforthcoming).

The key difference between this case and the carbon copier is that theagent remains fully in control of her action: the fact that he isfilling up the cistern by moving his arms so and so is no accident.So, there is no reason to dispute the action’s status asintentional. Still, whatever belief the person might have is unsafe,as nearby beliefs (such as those relating to the other faucets) arefalse. Hence, it isn’t knowledge.

Building on similar considerations, Piñeros Glasscock (2020b)presents a version of Williamson (2000)’s anti-luminosityargument, aiming to show that the knowledge condition is incompatiblewith a safety principle, to the effect that to constitute knowledge, arepresentation could not easily be wrong. He argues that since agentscan slowly transition from φ-ing to not-φ-ing through changesso small as to outstrip the agent’s discriminating capacities,agents must sometimes find themselves in situations where they areacting intentionally but either lack the confidence to possessknowledge, or, if they have it, it is misplaced. Either way, they donot know.

Together, these arguments force defenders of the knowledge conditioninto an uncomfortable position: if they wish to uphold the knowledgecondition, they must reject safety for practical knowledge. However,this threatens to undermine the point of counting this as knowledge,given how epistemically frail it can be. On the other hand, it hasbeen argued that a suitable understanding of the knowledge conditionmay evade these worries (Beddor and Pavese 2021; Valaris 2021).

4.4 Weakening the knowledge condition

The knowledge condition remains a controversial thesis in philosophyof action; but even those who reject it tend to hold that theconnection between intentional action and knowledge is not accidental.Thus, there is a growing literature that aims to capture an importantconnection between knowledge and intentional action in weaker terms.These views can be categorized according to the term for which theyrecommend modification, whether (i) the practical state, (ii) theepistemic state, or (iii) the nature of the connection between them.(Naturally, since these are all compatible, some scholars recommendmore than one revision.)

Though regarded as Anscombe’s central opponent, Davidson himselfrecommended a version of (i). According to him, although agents neednot know what they are doing under every description under which theyact intentionally, they must know what they are doing underatleast one description under which the action is intentional(Davidson 1971, 51). The carbon copier, for instance, may not knowthat he is making 10 carbon copies, but he would have to know that heis making carbon copies, or that he is moving his hands, etc.Arguably, the idea that practical knowledge is restricted to knowledgeof actionsin progress is also a weakening of the thesis,since Anscombe appears to include also knowledge of future actions(§§51–2) and of completed actions such as the knowledge thatIwrote my name on the board (§48) or even of what iswritten (§19). Indeed, it has been argued thatimperfective and perfective knowledge are interdependent (Haase 2018).Finally, other weakenings include the view that agents must know whatthey intend (Fleming 1964), what they are trying to do/that they aretrying (Searle 1985; cf. Grice 1971), or what basic actions they areperforming (Setiya 2008; 2009; 2012). Since Anscombe’s thesis isstrictly stronger than these, it follows that they will avoid certainproblems that hers faces. However, it is not clear that such retreatshelp avoid the general problem, and restricting the thesis to moreimmediate occurrences—basic actions, intentions, orattempts—risks losing on the aforementioned feature that makesAnscombe’s view so interesting: the idea that we might bear thesame intimate epistemic connection to something external as we bear toparts of our mental lives (Piñeros Glasscock 2020b).

Views that fall under (ii) have been influentially defended by severalauthors (Grice 1971; Harman 198;1997; Setiya 2007; 2008; 2009; 2012;Velleman 2001; Tenenbaum 2007; Ross 2009; Clark 2020). A popularversion of this view rejects a knowledge condition in favor of abelief condition (Setiya 2007; Velleman 2001; Ross 2009; Clark 2020):if the agent φs intentionally [intends to φ], she believesthat she is φ-ing [believes that she will φ]. Such a view isarguably better supported by some of Anscombe’s own arguments(such as the argument in terms of conversation dynamics above); and itseems to preserve a special place for actions as occurrences that arepublic but to which our minds bear a special epistemic relation.However, it has been argued that such views also suffer from problems,and fail to avoid counterexamples with the same structure asDavidson’s carbon copier, even though they are explanatorilyweaker (Bratman 1991; Paul 2009a; 2009b; Levy 2018). Since authorslike Setiya see the avoidance of counterexamples as a central payoffof the weakenings, it is unclear whether they are worth the costs inexplanatory value.

Finally, views that fall under (iii) aim to show that even if thereisn’t a relation ofentailment between action andpractical knowledge, there might yet be an interesting connectionbetween them. For instance, some authors have argued that agentsnormally orgenerally know what they are doing(Peacocke 2003; O’Brien 2007; Gibbons 2010; Schwenkler 2015;2019; Piñeros Glasscock 2020b); or that the kind of knowledgethat agents have of their intentional action has special properties,such as being first-personal knowledge (Dunn 1998; Moran 2001; 2004;O’Brien 2007; Marcus 2012; Schwenkler 2019).

4.5 The possibility of practical knowledge

Regardless of whether one adheres to the knowledge condition (or someweakened version of the view), it is generally agreed that agentscan have a special kind of knowledge by exercising theirpractical capacities in intentional action. However, what makes ourpractical capacities suitable source of knowledge? Anscombe devotedlittle attention to this question, but an answer to it could be thekey to working out a version of (iii) in the previous section.

Here is a simple answer: A person can know thatp (e.g. thatshe (herself) is walking), on the basis of exercising her will,because when she does so successfullyp is true. Two relatedproblems immediately arise for this simple account. First, truth isinsufficient for knowledge. Minimally, epistemic warrant is alsoneeded, but the simple account does not give even a hint as to howsuch warrant could be acquired through agency (Newstead 2006). Second,there are notorious cases that seem to meet the conditions provided bythe simple answer, but where there isn’t knowledge. One case islucky wishful thinking (Langton 2004), e.g., if partly on the basis ofoptimistic thinking I luckily pull off a jump I would not normallymake. Another is pessimistic thinking (Harman 1986; 1997), e.g., if Itrip partly on the basis of thinking that I will trip. In neither casedo I possess knowledge on the basis of my thoughts, despite thethoughts bringing about the truth of their contents. At best,therefore, the simple answer is incomplete, and must be supplementedwith a story that explains how it is that the characteristic thoughtsof the agent differ from wishful and pessimistic thoughts, such as toprovide epistemic warrant.

An influential account of this sort was provided in foundational workby Velleman (1989). Simplifying somewhat, Velleman argues that humanbeings have a core desire to know themselves. Like any desire, thisone will motivate agents to satisfy it. In addition, they have thecapacities to (a) have thoughts about what they are doing and will do,and (b) have thoughts that are self-referential, e.g. <this verythought won’t make me famous>. Suppose, then, that someonehas the thought <I will go to the store in virtue of thisthought>. Then, given the desire to know herself, the agent will bemotivated to make this thought true. Hence, thought structures of thissort (‘intentions’) will give the agent reasons to believethat what she intends will be true.

Several worries have been raised against Velleman’s view. One isthat it makes dubious empirical claims, theorizing about the mind fromthe armchair. In response, Velleman (2000a) has provided empiricalsupport for his more contentious psychological claim, that humans havea deep desire for self-knowledge. Another worry is that this epistemicmechanism still looks too much like wishful thinking, believing thatsomething is the case just because one wants it to be so (Langton2004; see Setiya 2008; Velleman 2014 for replies). Finally, it isunclear why, if an agent realizes that the content of her intention isnot realized, she must make it true that it is, rather than simplygive up the belief (that she will act in a certain way). After all, wecan pursue the aim of knowing ourselves both by ensuring that beliefsabout ourselves are trueand by giving up beliefs aboutourselves that are false.

Worries of this sort led Velleman to distinguish“directive” from “receptive” cognition(Velleman 2000, ch.7); but it has led others to consider thealternative view that practical knowledge is a standard form ofinferential knowledge (Grice 1971; O’Shaughnessy 1980, 2003;Paul 2009a). On the most sophisticated inferentialist account, due toPaul (2009a), agents take advantage of the special knowledge they haveof their intentions to make inferences about what is happening andwill happen. Given that intentions are reliably executed, suchinferences reliably yield knowledge. A more radical inferentialistalternative, suggested by authors like Carruthers (2011) on the basisof empirical evidence, is that we know our actions on the basis of thesame processes by which we know others’ minds: we essentiallypredict what actions are most likely to happen, given what else weknow about others’ motives and beliefs—it’s justthat we know a lot more about our own minds. (Similar views aboutself-knowledge in general are defended by Gopnik 1993, and have theirorigin in Ryle 1949. For criticisms, see Boyle 2022; Levy 2022.)

Inferentialist accounts give up on a feature that was central toAnscombe’s understanding of practical knowledge, its immediatecharacter (see e.g. O’Brien 2007). However, Paul (2009a) arguesthat the appearance of immediacy can be explained by the fact thatinferences “can take place rapidly and automatically at anon-conscious level, without the mindful entertaining of premises orfeeling of drawing a conclusion” (p.10). Yet, several challengeshave been raised against inferentialist accounts, including: (i) thatthey can’t explain the tight nexus between intentional actionand practical knowledge (Setiya 2007, 2008, 2009); (ii) that theycan’t explain the first-personal character of practicalknowledge (Wilson 2000; Schwenkler 2012); and (iii) that they at bestgive us alienated, observational knowledge (Piñeros Glasscock2021).

There are, finally, several non-inferentialist stories about howpractical knowledge is possible. Some accounts appeal to knowledge-howor skill as the state by which an intention ensures that its contentis not only true but also justified, so as to amount to knowledge(Setiya 2012; Small 2012; Valaris 2021). Another view, due toO’Brien (2007), explains practical knowledge in terms of theexercise of deliberative capacities. The agent knows what she is doingbecause the selection of an action is done via the exercise ofcapacities that narrow options in terms of the practical possibilitiesof the agent. Others take practical knowledge to be inferential, butthe inference in question is practical inference. On this view,practical knowledge is warranted by the practical considerations thatconstitute the agent’s practical reasoning (Harman 1997;Tenenbaum 2007; Ross 2009; Marušić and Schwenkler 2018;Campbell 2018; Frey 2019). Finally, some have tried to show thataccounts of epistemic warrant or entitlement designed to explain howwe can directly believe on the basis of perception might explain howwe can directly believe on the basis of our wills (Peacocke 2003;Newstead 2006; Piñeros Glasscock 2020a). As this brief andincomplete summary indicates, there is not yet anything close to aconsensus about how best to explain the epistemic standing forpractical knowledge.

5. The Ontology of Actions

What are actions? The traditional answer is: they areeventsof a certain sort (e.g. events with a distinctive causal history).That, at any rate, is the letter of the views found in Anscombe(1957), Davidson (1963; 1967a; 1967b; 1985), and much subsequentliterature. However, some scholars have recently argued thatAnscombe’s position is better captured by the claim that actionsareprocesses, and that there are philosophical advantages tothis view. Yet, others take actions to be something else altogether.This section explains what this dispute is about, and explores some ofits implications for other ontological debates such as theindividuation of action. It then considers further important questionsabout the metaphysics of action, such as whether there must be basicactions, and whetherAction constitutes a unifiedcategory.

5.1 Events, processes, and more

There are several reasons to categorize actions as events. A centralone concerns their connection to causation (Davidson 1967a; Goldman1970). Actions are directly implicated in causal relations: modifyingDavidson’s example (pp.4–5), the burglar’s entering myhouse might cause me to turn on the light, which in turn might causehim to be startled. On the widespread assumption that events are theprimary causal relata, it would follow that actions, such as myturning on of the light, are events.

Another argument for the event view is that it explains commoninference patterns. As Davidson (1967b) noted, sentences attributingactions to agents admit of adjectival drop. Thus, a sentence like (3)entails (4), which in turn entails (5):

(3)

Donald buttered the toast in the bathroom at 12am.

(4)

Donald buttered the toast in the bathroom.

(5)

Donald buttered the toast.

Davidson suggested that the best way to account for these inferentialrelations is to assume that at the level of logical form thesesentences quantify over events. So understood, the logical form of(3)–(5) would be as follows:^[6]

(3*)

\(\exists x(\textrm{Buttering}(x) \amp \textrm{By}(x,\textrm{Donald}) \amp \textrm{Object}(x, \textrm{toast})\ \amp \)\(\textrm{Location}(x, \textrm{bathroom}) \amp \textrm{Time}(x,\textrm{12am}))\)

(4*)

\(\exists x(\textrm{Buttering}(x) \amp \textrm{By}(x,\textrm{Donald}) \amp \textrm{Object}(x, \textrm{toast})\ \amp\)\(\textrm{Location}(x, \textrm{bathroom}))\)

(5*)

\(\exists x(\textrm{Buttering}(x) \amp \textrm{By}(x,\textrm{Donald}) \amp \textrm{Object}(x, \textrm{toast}))\)

The entailment relations are then easily explained through theclassical rules for conjunction and existential quantification. Thisanalysis, which has been highly influential in formal semantics,appears to entail that actions are events, entities with aspatiotemporal location (since they admit of spatiotemporalmodifiers), that possess the properties denoted by adverbial modifiers(such as who was engaged in them, or what the object of the actionwas).

Finally, perhaps the most straightforward reason to hold that actionsare events, is that this fits naturally with the way we speak aboutthem. For instance, we say, “The event we observed last nightturned out to be a theft”, or “The murder of that womanwas a sad event”.

Against this view, a number of scholars have recently argued thatactions (in the sense of concern for philosophy of action) are insteadprocesses (Mourelatos 1978; Stout 1997; Hornsby 2012; Steward2012; Charles 2018). To understand this claim, we first need toexplain what the distinction amounts to. We can introduce it at anintuitive level in terms of the aspectual distinction between thefollowing two sentences:

(6)

Donald isbuttering the toast.

(7)

Donaldhas buttered the toast.

(6) refers to an ongoing occurrence in the midst of development. Assuch, many of its properties are still indeterminate and may changeover time. It may be happening in the bathroom in a matter of secondsif Donald stays there; but he could take a break, forget about it, andcontinue on with it several minutes later in the kitchen. Moreover,the manner in which it takes place can change as it occurs: it mayspeed up (if Donald is suddenly in a hurry) or slow down (if Donald isdistracted by a noise), and he may start doing it more mindfully, ordistractedly. Indeed, however Donald isdoing the buttering,it may happen that he never ends uphaving buttered the toast(a nearby scream might cause him to drop it in the toilet halfwaythrough). This is sometimes called the “imperfectiveparadox”: in general, ⌜x is φ-ing⌝ doesnot entail ⌜x has φ’d⌝. By contrast, the eventitself, denoted by (7), cannot speed up or slow down, nor change themanner in which it is done, since it is already complete. This is whyit has a determinate temporal-spatial location in terms of which somehave sought to individuate it (Lemmon 1967; Quine 1985; Davidson1985). By contrast, processes do not have an essentialtemporal-spatial location: the same process of buttering that is nowtaking place at 12:01 could culminate in a minute or in an hour.

The most straightforward reason to think that actions are processes isthat actions appear to have these properties, as is indicated by theexamples used in the previous paragraph (Stout 1997; Steward 2012;Charles 2015; 2018). Thus, one’s action can speed up or slowdown, be done in one way or another at different times in its history,and may culminate at different times. Indeed, an ongoing action maynever be completed.

The connection between imperfective aspect and processes providesfurther impetus for the view that actions are processes (the argumentto follow is based on Michael Thompson’s ideas (2008,122–30), though he rejects the view that actions are processes,understood as particulars (pp.134–7)). After all, it seems essentialto actions that they can enter into rationalizing explanations(Anscombe 1957; Thompson 2008; Wiland 2013; Ford 2015; 2017), and suchexplanations can easily be given in imperfective language. To seethis, consider again Anscombe’s case of a man who operates alever to pump poisoned water to a house, with the plan of killing theinhabitants (Anscombe 1957, §23). We could represent his thoughtsas follows: “I am moving the lever up and downbecauseI am pumping water to the housebecause I am poisoning itsinhabitants.” Indeed, such formulations seem to expresscanonical answers to Anscombe’s special question“Why?” (Thompson 2008; Wiland 2013; Ford 2015). However,we cannot capture the same thoughts without imperfective expressions(Thompson 2008). The train of thought that goes, “I have movedthe lever up and downbecause I have pumped the waterbecause I have poisoned the inhabitants of the house”makes it sound like the man is acting on a conditional promise to movethe lever if the men are killed by his hand. This suggests thatwhereas processes can directly enter into the kinds of rationalizingexplanations definitive of intentional action, events cannot (except,perhaps, derivatively), which in turn suggests that actions areprocesses.

Finally, it has been suggested that the process view can betteraccommodate the type of direct guidance that Frankfurt identified asessential to intentional action (see above, section 2.4). It seemsattractive to explain the nature of this direct guidance in terms ofhow substances in general cause changes by engaging in certainprocesses (Hornsby 2012), or in terms of the different ways in whichan agent can manifest her agency in a process (slower, faster, more orless skillfully) (Charles 2018). And, as Steward (2012) suggests, thismight give a substantial role to the agent in the explanation ofaction. By contrast, since events have settled natures andspatial-temporal properties, it seems that the agent can at bestinteract with them in the indirect way in which she interacts withother objects, such as a car.

It is only recently that an alternative to the event view has beenclearly formulated and defended. As such, much work remains to be donein this area, and even among defenders of the process view there areimportant disagreements. One important disagreement is over whetherprocesses are particulars (Galton 2006; Steward 2012; Charles 2018) ornot (Stout 1997; Crowther 2011; Hornsby 2012; Crowther 2018; cf.Thompson 2008). Another disagreement is about whether a unique thingis a process and an event (at different times) (Steward 2012; Charles2018), or whether the process and the event are distinct things (Stout1997; Crowther 2011; Hornsby 2012; Charles 2015; Crowther 2018).

Regardless of how these questions are answered, a remaining challengeis to explain theunity between processes and events, thefact that there is a non-accidental connection between the process ofbuttering, and the event of one’s having buttered the toast thatresults if the action is successful (Haase 2022). Moreover, it isworth noting that although the process-view is the most importantalternative available to the events-view, other proposals have beenadvanced recently, including the view that actions are thoughts(Rödl 2007; 2011; Marcus 2012; Valaris 2020). For example, Marcusholds that to act intentionally just is to judge that the action is tobe done.

5.2 The Individuation of Action

The example of the pumper displays another important Anscombean thesis(endorsed by Davidson, see section 2.2 above): that a single event caninstantiate different properties in terms of which it can bedescribed. Thus, the same action is at once amoving of thehands, apumping of water, anda poisoning.This was important for Anscombe because she held that actions areintentional only under some descriptions: for instance, even if thepumper’s energetic moves scare a nearby squirrel, the actionwould not be intentional under the descriptionscaring of asquirrel.

The most influential alternative to this “coarse-grained”account is a “fine-grained” account that individuatesactions (and events, more generally) in terms of their properties (Kim1966; 1969; 1973; 1976; Goldman 1970). On this view,A andB are the same action just in caseA has all andonly the properties thatB has; and for each set of suchproperties, there is an event. Since moving one’s hands, pumpingwater, and poisoning are distinct properties, this view entails thatthe pumper’s moving of his hands, his pumping of the water, andhis poisoning of the inhabitants are distinct actions.

Anscombe complained that treating these as different actions would belike treating the author ofDavid Copperfield and the authorofBleak House as different men, rather than a single author,Dickens (Anscombe 1979, 222). Indeed, the fine-grained view hassimilar counterintuitive implications. Consider: the properties ofpumping water, pumping water while smiling, and pumping water at noon,are all different properties. So, the man who pumped water at noonwhile smiling would have engaged in three different pumpings accordingto the fine-grained view.

Moreover, the view threatens to undermine some basic inferences we areinclined to make about actions (Katz 1978). For instance, it seemsobvious that from:

(8)

The table in the room is brown.

We can infer:

(9)

The table in the room = the brown table.

But, similarly, it seems that from:

(10)

The man’s pumping occurred at noon.

We can infer:

(11)

The man’s pumping = The man’s pumping at noon.

However, on the fine-grained view the inference to (11) is invalidsince the two descriptions in (11) must refer to distinct events.Hence the defender of the fine-grained view is forced to reject aseemingly innocuous inference pattern.

These are serious problems, and it is not clear that defenders of thefine-grained view can do more than bite the bullets. However, it hasbeen argued that the coarse-grained account has similarlycounterintuitive implications (Goldman 1970; Thomson 1971). To seewhy, consider the following two sentences (true of the imaginedpumper):

(12)

The man moved his hands before he poisoned the inhabitants.

(13)

The man caused the poisoning of the inhabitants by moving hishands.

We can paraphrase them using gerundival expressions as follows:

(12*)

The man’s moving of his hands happened before the poisoningof the inhabitants.

(13*)

The man’s moving of his hands caused the poisoning of theinhabitants.

Now, suppose we assume the claim that:

(14)

The man’s moving of his hands = the man’s poisoning ofthe inhabitants.

Then, by substitution, we arrive at the absurd:

(15)

The man’s moving of his hands happened before theman’s moving of his hands.

(16)

The man’s moving of his hands caused his moving of hishands.

It is natural to think that (14) is the culprit; but to hold thatclaims such as (14) are false seems to amount to rejecting thecoarse-grained view of action individuation.

One possible response would be to hold that the contexts ⌜φhappens* before ψ⌝ and ⌜φ causes* ψ⌝(the * marks tenselessness) are intensional in the φ and ψpositions (Anscombe 1969). If so, substitution of co-referents maychange truth value in these contexts. Alternatively, one could attemptto explain these results pragmatically: the sentences sound odd in thesame way as it sounds odd to say that “a man married hiswidow’, even though it is true (the man married herbefore she was a widow, of course!) (cf. Anscombe 1979).However, these are controversial semantic theses (for furtherintensionalist treatments, see Achinstein 1975; McDermott 1995;Wasserman 2004; for extensionalist treatments, see e.g., Davidson1967a; Strawson 1985; Rosenberg and Martin 1979; Schaffer 2005; for anexcellent review of research on causal contexts more generally,including pragmatic effects, see Swanson 2012).

A different response is suggested by the view that actions areprocesses. That view enables us to treat action descriptions assometimes characterizing the different stages of the action (cf.Russell 2018). Then, appealing to Anscombe’s insight that weshould treat claims about actions in parallel with claims aboutpersons, we could say that the moving of one’s hands precedesand causes the poisoning in an analogous way as the acorn precedes andcauses the oak. But just as there is a single organism in the lattercase, there is a single action in the former, even though it seems atbest paradoxical to say that I caused myself to exist, or that the oakcaused the acorn.

Finally, the coarse- and fine-grained views obviously do not exhaustthe conceptual landscape. A number of philosophers have offeredindividuation principles stricter than those advanced bycoarse-grained theorists, but laxer than those advanced byfine-grained theorists (e.g. Ginet 1990). Charles (1984), for example,argues that Aristotle would individuate actions in terms ofcapacities. This allows us to say that the moving of one’s handsis the same action as the moving of one’s hands quickly (since asingle capacity is thereby actualized), even though it is a differentaction from the poisoning, which actualizes a different set ofcapacities. The challenge for this view is to provide an account ofthe individuation of capacities independent of the account of theindividuation of actions.

5.3 The Debate Over Basic Action

Consideration of cases like that of the pumper naturally raises aquestion about theirstructure: what kind of shape could sucha rationalizing explanation take? Could it go on forever? To answerthis, consider the pumper once more, and suppose he poisons theinhabitants of the house. It is true, then, that he poisoned theinhabitants of the house by pumping water, and he did this by movinghis hands. Because the poisoning and the pumping are done by doingsomething else, they are called ”non-basic“ actions.However, it has been argued that there must be at least some actionsthat are ”basic’“, done not by doing anything else.Otherwise, we appear to be caught in various forms of a viciousregress.

For example, if to doA one must doB, and to doB one must doC, and so onad infinitum,doing anything would seem to require doing an infinite number ofthings. More worrying, the beginning of action seems to be”logically out of reach“ for the agent, since there isalways something else that she would have to do before she begins todo anything (Danto 1979, 471). Again, it seems that for an agent toknow what she is currently doing, she needs to know how to do thethings by which she does it; but unless there is something that shecan know how to do just by doing it, it will be impossible for her toknow what she is doing at all (Hornsby 2013).

Arguments of this sort convinced most scholars that there must bebasic actions (though see Baier 1971 and Sneddon 2001 for earlydissent). The debate then centered onwhich actions arebasic. Many scholars held that simple bodily movements, like moving afinger or raising an eyebrow, were basic, while others held that theycould be more complex (tying one’s shoes), or that they must besimpler: perhaps only mental actions, or tryings were basic. Afterall, I move my finger by attempting to move it; and we need todistinguish between the attempt and the movement, since sometimes theattempt occurs without the movement (e.g. if my fingers are suddenlyparalized) (Prichard 1945: Hornsby 1980; O’Shaughnessy 1980; seeCleveland 1997, ch.5 for criticism).

As several scholars have noted, part of what is at issue in thisdebate are different notions of basicness, corresponding to differentunderstandings of the clause ”by doing something else“(Baier 1971; Annas 1978; Hornsby 1980). It is common to draw athree-fold distinction: (i) know-how basicness; (ii) causal basicness;and (iii) teleological basicness. An action is know-how basic iffthere is no other (type of) action by which the agent knows how to dothe one in question. An action is causally basic iff there is no other(token) action that causes it. An action is teleologically basic iffthere is no other (token) action by means of which the agent does it.To illustrate in a way that highlights the differences, considerpitching a baseball. Arguably, this action is know-how basic, sincethe pitcher may not know a more basic action by which to do it: ofcourse, the agent may know how to move her hands independently, butshe may be unable to move her hands in the particular way in which shedoes when she throws the baseball unless she were actually throwingthe baseball. Whether the action is causally basic depends on whetherwe think there is another action that causes it, such as thepitcher’s moving of his hands. Finally, and independently of thequestion of causation, the action appears to be teleologicallynon-basic, since the moving of his hands is certainly both a means andan action by which the pitcher pitches. The consensus for many yearswas that there must be basic actions in all three senses.

However, this widespread consensus about teleological basicness hasrecently been called into question by Michael Thompson and otherdefenders of ”naive“ action theory (Thompson 2008,107–119). Thompson considers the case of a person,P,who has pushed a stone from point α to ω. Let β bethe halfway point between α and ω. It seems that ifP pushed the stone from α to ω intentionally,then he pushed the stone from α to β intentionally. Now,let γ be the halfway point between α and β. Onceagain, it seems thatP pushed the stone from α toγ intentionally. And so on. It seems, then, that there willalways be a further action by whichP pushed the stone. Inother words, there is no basic action. Moreover, as a number ofauthors have noted (Small 2012; Lavin 2013), the argument can begeneralized for virtually every action, since it can be presented interms of a series of time-segments (instead of place-segments), andvirtually every action takes place over time. (For criticaldiscussion, see Ford 2018.)

Building on this argument, Lavin (2013) presents a further challengeto the view that there must be (teleological) basic action.Lavin’s argument centers on the relation of the agent to heractions. Consider first a non-basic action, like poisoning theinhabitants of the house. The agent’s relation to this action isitself an agential matter, since the agent poisons the inhabitants bydoing something else intentionally (operating the pump). Now consideran arbitrary basic action,A. By definition, the agentdoesn’t doA by doing anything else. However, this isan action that occurs through time, so, presumably there arehappeningsh₁, h₂, …,h_n by whichA takes place. But sinceh₁, h₂, …, h_n aremere happenings, this means that the agent relates toAnon-agentially. Now, Lavin grants that it may be possible sometimesfor us to relate to our actions non-agentially; but it would bealarming if this was necessarily the case, as defenders of basicaction are committed to hold. It would mean that agents arenecessarily alienated from their actions, in the way labourers arealienated from their labour in Marx’s critique of capitalism. Inturn, Lavin argues that this would make it impossible for agents tohave self-knowledge of their own actions, since self-knowledge isgrounded on our agential relation.

There is a growing literature responding to Thompson’s andLavin’s challenges, both refining the arguments, or presentingobjections to it (Setiya 2012; Hornsby 2013; Lynch 2017; Frost 2019;Small 2019). This is not surprising, since the debate about basicactions has important repercussions for other questions about thenature of intentional action. For example, Lavin (2013) holds thatdefenders of (teleologically) basic action are committed to a”decompositional account“ of agency (see section 1). Afterall, if there are basic actions, we may be able to give an account ofwhat makes something an action in terms of the non-agential relationan agent bears to her basic actions. Moreover, Ford (2017; 2018) notesthat Thompson’s argument suggests a novel way to pursue actiontheory, one that defines action not in terms ofreasons foraction but, in the first instance, in terms of the means by whichan action is pursued.The latter, Ford holds, better captures theagential perspective: in the context of deliberation, what the agentasks isHow to pursue a particular course of action, ratherthanWhy she is doing something. Finally, the debate may haverepercussions for our understanding of the relation between skill andintentional action. For example, both Frost and Small suggest that atthe most fundamental level, our agency depends on our exercise ofpracticalskills by which we enter an instrumental orderwithout consciously representing that order at the level ofpropositional thought (Small 2012; 2019; Frost 2019).

5.4 Making, Acting, and the Varieties of Agency

Nearly all contemporary philosophers treatintentional actionas a unified category. Despite the many differences between moving afinger, running, hammering a nail, fixing a fridge, eating a sandwich,acting justly, keeping a promise, and marrying someone, all of theseare treated as equally belonging to a single type: acting. Theassumption is supported by natural language. After all, these are alllegitimate answers to the question ”What are youdoing?’.

Aristotle provides us with an alternative view that has had immenseinfluence in philosophy. Throughout his writings, Aristotledistinguishes between “making” or “producing”(poíêsis) on the one hand, and“acting proper” (praxis) on the other (an earlyversion of the distinction appears in Plato’sCharmides163a–c). The two are distinguished by their success conditions(EE 5.2/NE 6.2 1139b1–4;EE 5.5/NE6.5 1140b6–7). The success conditions for makings are externalto them: one succeeds at making insofar as something external to themaking obtains (the product). By contrast, the success conditions forproper actions are the actions themselves. This is why we pursue themfor their own sake (ib.). By this standard, the activities ofhammering a nail, or fixing a fridge count as makings, because thehammering is successful insofar as something external takes place: anail is hammered in a wall, or a fridge is fixed. Precisely becausethe success conditions are external, it is possible to succeed atmaking something by luck (EE 5.4/NE 6.41140a17–20). By contrast, Aristotle would regard acting justly,keeping a promise, or marrying someone as proper actions. To succeedat these actions consists in doing the actions well. A coercedmarriage is not a successful marriage. Hence, these actions cannot bedone by luck. This distinction underlies the aforementioneddistinction between two forms of human excellence in the practicalsphere: skill (technê) is excellence at making(EE 5.4;NE 6.4 1140a6–23), and practicalwisdom (phronêsis) is excellence at acting proper(EE 5.5/NE 6.5 1140a25–30 et passim).

Although the distinction is barely mentioned in analytical philosophy,it has influenced other traditions, such as the Marxist one. From hisearliest writings, Marx accepts an Aristotelian threefold analysis oflabour in terms of the labourer, the process of labouring, and itsproduct. Marx implicitly rejects the distinction between action properand production, in favour of a dichotomy of his own between differentforms of productions. This is because for Marx the characteristicactivity of the human species is conscious free labouring: an activitythat has no end beyond itself (it does not seek anything beyond theliving activity that such labouring consists in) (Marx 1844a; 1844b;1867). This is what Aristotle took as the distinguishing feature ofproper actions, done for their own sake. One of Marx’s centralcriticisms of capitalist societies is that it prevents humans fromengaging in such an activity. In capitalist societies, the labourer,the labour process, and the product all become commodities that serveas mere means for the enjoyment of the owner of labour and product(“the capitalist”). Members of capitalist societies are,in this sense, alienated (Marx 1844b; 1867). As such, capitalistsocieties make it impossible for humans to engage in their mostfundamental life activity of free production, an activity that theMarxist tradition came to designate as “praxis” (Petrovic1983), reappropriating the quite different Aristotelian notion.

Perhaps the most influential modern version of a distinction amongtypes of practical activity is drawn by Arendt (1998). Arendtdistinguishes between three kinds of practical activities: labour,work, and action. The most basic of these islabour, whichArendt conceives as simply an extension of our animal lives: a“metabolism” (Marx’s phrase) between the humananimal and the world, characterized by a cycle of consumption and theproduction of goods to be consumed, and aiming at meeting our basicbiological needs (p.69). Since this is a cycle, Arendt suggests thatthere is no sense of speaking here of means and ends: there is no factof the matter as to whether the production of goods is for the sake ofconsumption, or the consumption for the sake of production (p.145;155). Means and ends enter at the next level of practical activity,work (the Aristotelianpoíêsis). LikeAristotle, Arendt takes the aim of working to be the finished work,the product, whether it be a work of art, like a painting, a tool,like a knife, or a way to safeguard living, like a house. The centralimportance of work lies in its ability to produce lasting productsthat lie beyond the activity of the producer (p.136; 144). Arendtcontends that these products can begin to shape an objectiveworld of objects that stands against the humans who producethem. However, the world does not emerge in its fullness except by wayof the third level of practical activity,action (theAristotelianpraxis). Action is the means by which humansreveal themselves in the public sphere, a revelation needed to givereality to a personality that otherwise remains entirely unactualizedin subjectivity. It is thus essentially communicative, and depends onother humans to whom one might make herself known (pp.38–49; 95;202–7); and it depends, given its essential ephemeral nature,for its permanence in the continued existence of a polity that maypreserve words and deeds in more enduring forms, like sculptures andtales. Ungoverned by either the natural laws of labor, or by the normsarising from a particular aim, action is for Arendt unproductive,free, and unpredictable. It is the distinguishing activity of humanbeings as such (p.177; 204–6).

The three-fold distinction serves as the basis for Arendt’scriticisms of both ancient writers, including Aristotle, and modernwriters, including Marx. She criticizes Aristotle both forinconsistently assimilating action too much to work/production in hisanalysis of benefaction as producing a work (ergon) (p.196),and for subordinating it to theory (22–23). She criticizesMarx’s subsumption of practical activity in general under labourfor its failure to provide meaning. She notes that Marx ends in theparadoxical position of concluding that that the aim of labour isfreedom from labour, even though this is the activity he takes asdefinitive of humanity. In other words, Marx ends up concluding thatthe aim of human life is to do away with human life (p.89; 103; 105).For Arendt, however, this is not merely a theoretical deficiency, buta manifestation of a broader social tendency that goes back to Plato:the tendency to try to make action proper into that which isnot—whether work or labour—to control what is essentiallyunpredictable and free.

The problems of subsuming practical activity in general to making findechoes in some contemporary thinkers. For example, Thompson (2008),following Baier (1970) and Mueller (1979), criticizes attempts likeCastañeda’s (1970) and Chisholm’s (1970) ofconstruing actions in terms of a schemas such as ‘bringing itabout thatp’; such propositional complexes, accordingto critics, threaten to undermine the practical form of the thoughtthey mean to capture (cf. Hornsby 2016, Wilson 1980, pp.111–117 forfurther discussion). Arendt herself thought that this tendencyunderlay the attraction of utilitarianism, but she argued that, likeMarxism, that view was incapable of ever giving further meaning to ourpractical endeavours (p.105). Korsgaard concludes with equal severitythat given a distinction between praxis and poíêsis,“utilitarianism is not a moral theory, for utility is a propertyof [productions], not actions” (2009, p.18n26).

Regardless of what one thinks of these arguments, it is evident thatthe question whether practical activity comes in varieties, asAristotle and Arendt thought, is potentially of enormoussignificance.

6. Constitutive Aim

The question of what, if anything, is the constitutive (or formal) aim(or end) of intentional actions is a question about whether there isanything that all actions necessarily pursue, irrespective of theirparticular ends. Some philosophers (Setiya 2016b) deny that there is aconstitutive aim of acting or that there is something that everyaction as such aims at. On this view, there is no such thing as an aimcontained in acting as such; each action just aims at its particularend. On the other hand, many philosophers try to derive importantconsequences for ethics from the idea that action or agency has aconstitutive aim. However, we will leave aside the examinations ofthese claims and focus only on the question as it pertains to thecharacterization of agency. (Cf. Bagnoli 2017; 2022.)

6.1 Motivations and Different Versions of the View

What could motivate the idea that actions have a constitutive aimabove and beyond the particular ends they pursue? An importantconsideration is that, arguably, only by appealing to a constitutiveaim, can we evaluate actions and have a proper standard of practicalreason. Much in the same way that the aim of belief (generally thoughtto be “truth” or “knowledge”) might provide astandard for theoretical reasoning and correct belief, a constitutiveaim of action would provide a standard for practical reasoning andsuccessful action. More specifically, it seems that some actions aresuccessful in achieving their particular ends and yet are cases ofpractical failures in some deeper way, exhibiting what appears likepractical irrationality or at least some form of practical ignorance.Suppose I have dreamt all my life to move to Seattle, and I finallysecured a position in the city. However, as I arrive in Seattle andtry to arrange my life, my life in Seattle is a great disappointment;even though there is nothing important that I found out about Seattlethat I didn’t know already, I completely regret having pursuedthis end. Although I achieved my aim of moving to Seattle, my actionsseem to have failed in an important way; arguably, I manifested myagency in a defective way.

Of course, one can explain my disappointment in many ways that do notseem to presuppose a constitutive aim of action: there were other endsthat I had that conflict with moving to Seattle and I hadn’tfully appreciated this beforehand. Perhaps I no longer care about thethings that made me want to move to Seattle; moving to Seattle was ameans to ends I had abandoned and didn’t realize that it made nolonger sense to pursue this end. But it is unclear that theseobservations will suffice; it seems that none of this might havehappened and yet my move to Seattle was still a practical failure.

Let us take a concrete example: suppose the constitutive aim of actionis happiness (see Frey 2019 for an argument that this is a view heldby Aquinas). On this view, then, every action (directly or indirectly)aims at happiness, and the realization of an end that does not resultin happiness is a shortcoming of my agency. Therefore, if my going toSeattle did not contribute to my happiness, or if, worse, itcontributed to undermining it, then it was a defective case of agency.This failure is often thought to parallel the kind of internal failureinvolved in false beliefs: such beliefs supposedly fail to meet astandard internal to theoretical cognition.

Another, related, way to motivate the idea that action has aconstitutive aim focuses on the standpoint of deliberation. Whendeliberating about what to do, it seems that I need to find an answerto the question “what to do” or “whether toφ” (Hieronymi 2005; 2006; Shah 2008); in the good case, myaction expresses an adequate answer to this question. But how could Igo about answering these questions if action did not have aconstitutive aim; if there’s nothing that could count as thecorrect way of answering this question? Similarly, from the point ofview of action explanation, some answers seem to provide anintelligible explanation of action while others seem to invite thequestion “but why would you aim at (want)that?”If you ask me “Why are we eating the jello?”,“Because it is blue” seems to invite further questions,while “Because I find the taste pleasant” brings theinquiry to an end. Anscombe argues that the search for furtherexplanations ends when we hit a “desirabilitycharacterization”, something that is not just conceived as goodbut “really … one of the many forms of thegood” (Anscombe 1957, §40).

There seems to be a parallel structure in the case of belief: indeliberating about what to believe, it seems that I must be similarlyguided by an ideal of correct belief (Shah and Velleman 2006). Infact, philosophers who accept that there is a constitutive aim ofaction often compare action and belief (Velleman 1992; 1996; Tenenbaum2007; 2012; 2018b; Schafer 2013). Belief is supposed to have truth asits constitutive aim, and just as belief is held, at least in the goodcase, in accordance with this constitutive aim (as Hume 1748 said,“a wise man … proportions his belief to theevidence”), intentional agency is guided by its constitutiveaim.

There are various proposals of what the constitutive aim of an actionmight be. Perhaps the most traditional version of this view is theidea that the good is the constitutive aim of agency, possibly goingback to Socrates (Protagoras 351a–8e;Gorgias467c–8d). The notion of “good” involved here can bevery thin, meaning no more than “considering mattersaright” (Williams 1981) in the realm of practical reason; suchviews are versions of the thesis often called “the guise of thegood” (Tenenbaum 2007; Clark 2010; Schafer 2013). According tothe guise of the good, if I φ intentionally, then I must takeφ-ing to be good. Arguably some other versions of the constitutiveaim of agency are specifications of the thin notion of“good” or “human good” (see Boyle and Lavin2010). Other constitutive aims that have been defended in literatureare self-understanding or autonomy (Velleman 1989; 1992; 1996; 2009),self-constitution (Korsgaard 1996; 2008; 2009), and the will to power(Katsafanas 2013).

6.2 Objections

A number of challenges have been raised in the literature to the claimthat there must be a constitutive aim of action. First, suppose weaccept the causal theory of action: an intentional action just is theeffect of a “primary reason”. On such a view, it seemsthat an intentional action is constituted by its causal antecedents,rather than by a necessary aim that one has in acting. However, causaltheories are not incompatible with constitutivism. Since on theseviews, some of the causal antecedents of the action will be conativestates (like an intention), the question of whether intentional actionhas a constitutive aim will depend on whether the conative state has aconstitutive aim or whether a specific conative state must alwaysfigure on the genesis of intentional action. For instance, inVelleman’s early work (for instance, Velleman 1989), intentionalaction was an action that was caused by a desire for self-knowledge,and the content of such a desire was thus the constitutive aim ofagency. Smith (2013; 2015; 2019) also develops a form ofconstitutivism that endorses the standard story of action.

Setiya raises a couple of important challenges to the idea that actionhas a constitutive aim. According to Setiya (2007), any theory ofaction needs to account for the fact that practical knowledge (or abelief condition in his version; see section 4 of this entry) isessential to intentional action. However, the belief condition seemsto be conceptually independent of any constitutive aim of action, andthus accepting that both are constitutive of intentional actionamounts to postulating an unexplained necessary connection.

Secondly, Setiya (2010) relies on the distinction between anexplanatory reason and a normative reason to argue against the“guise of the good” (see Alvarez 2017 for a detailedaccount of the distinction); his argument there could be extended toother proposals for the constitutive aim of action. An intentionalaction is an action done for anexplanatory reason, namely, areason that explains why the agent acted as she did, inAnscombe’s special sense of the question ‘Why’.However, Setiya points out that an explanatory reason need not be anormative reason; in fact, any reason that the agent believesto be her reason to act can be an explanatory reason, even if theobject of such a reason is not good in any way. But since the reasonsthat explain intentional action need not be good in any way, it seemsfalse that the agent must act only on reasons that she regards to begood in some way, and thus that she aims at the good in acting.

Philosophers have tried to answer these challenges. One can argue thata knowledge or belief condition, to the extent that it is valid, isexplained by the constitutive aim of action. Moreover, perhaps thepossibility of a third-person explanation of an action in terms ofexplanatory reasons whose objects are not good in any way iscompatible with the fact that from the first-person point of view,these objects must have been regarded to be good in some way. So evenif the fact that Rugen kills his father explains why Inigo Montoyakilled Rugen without providing a normative reason for it, it stillmight be the case that avenging his father must have appeared goodto Inigo Montoya in some way if he killed Rugen intentionally(see Tenenbaum 2012).

Another well-known challenge to the idea that actions have aconstitutive aim is David Enoch’s “schmagency”objection (Enoch 2006; 2011); in this context, the objection raisesthe possibility that for any purported constitutive aim, one couldspurn such an aim and merely “schmact” or be a mere“schmagent”—someone who behaves just like an agentexcept for having the constitutive aim of agency. Enoch’sobjection, however, is specifically concerned with attempts to derivenormative consequences from the constitutive aim of action (forfurther discussion, see Bagnoli 2017; 2022).

7. Omission

7.1 Different Ways of Not Acting

The scope of our inactivity is vast; at each moment, there are manythings I don’t do. Right now, I am not competing in theOlympics, not writing poetry, not swimming in the English Channel, notflying over the moon, or taking a journey to the center of the earth.However, none of the things could be plausibly described as cases ofomissions or refrainings; it would be odd if I were told that I wasrefraining from competing in the Olympics or omitting to fly over themoon. Philosophers often describe cases of omissions as cases of myfailing to do something that I was somehow “supposed todo” (Bach 2010). Only some of my omissions are intentional oreven voluntary: if my alarm does not go off and I miss my classbecause I overslept, I omitted to teach but not intentionally. On theother hand, if I fail to show up because I am protesting myuniversity’s salary cuts, my omission was intentional.Intentional omissions and (intentional) refrainings are generallytaken to be the only possible candidates for being instances of agencyamong not-doings (see Vermazen 1985 for an expression of this idea).Thus, we will focus on these cases. The categories of intentionalomissions and refraining are not necessarily identical. If I refrainfrom striking my opponent in a fit of anger, it seems wrong to saythat I omitted to strike her as there is no sense in which I was“supposed to” strike my opponent.

7.2 Agency, Omissions, and Refrainings

Suppose all the Faculty at State University are upset about therecently announced cuts, and each of them express theirdissatisfaction but in different ways: Mary wears a T-shirt that says“No More Cuts”, Terry writes a letter to the local paper,and Larry simply decides not to go to the department’s holidayparty. It seems that in all these cases, the Faculty members aremanifesting their agency—they are all equally expressing theirdissatisfaction with the cuts—even if Larry does so by(intentionally)not doing something. Such cases ofrefrainings and intentional omissions seem paradigmatic instances ofagency and yet they do not seem to be cases of action: after all, theagent did nothing. But how could the absence of an action be amanifestation of agency? One might be tempted to avoid any puzzlingconclusions by simply denying that omissions are absences; by, forinstance, proposing that Larry’s intentional omission consistsin doing whatever acting he didinstead of engaging in theomitted action. So if he goes to the bar instead of going to theholiday party, Larry omits to go to the partyby going to thebar and so his going to the bar and his omitting to go to the partyare the same event. However, this view immediately encountersdifficulties as it seems that I can intentionally omit to do thingswithout engaging in any positive act. I can refrain from laughing atmy enemy’s jokes just by staying still and I can intentionallyomit things even while asleep (Clarke 2014): indeed, instead of goingto the bar, Larry could have omitted to go to the party by simplysleeping through it.

Early attempts to explain how an agent might intentionallynot do something, without claiming that intentional omissionsand refraining are actions, go back at least to Ryle (1973); Ryleargues that negative “actions” are not actions, but whathe calls “lines of actions’, a category that also includesgeneral policies such as ”Take only cold baths“. Morerecently, Alvarez (2013) argues that the fact that omissions andrefrainings can also manifest agency is a consequence of the fact thatthe power to act (intentionally) is a two-way power: a power to eitherdo ornot do something. Thus, when I refrain from driving mycar, I manifest my agency not by engaging in an action, but rather bysettling onnot driving it (See Steward 2012; 2020 forfurther defense of the idea of agency as a two-way power).

7.3 Intentional Omissions and the Causal Theory of Action

If we accept that omissions are absences, or at least that they arenot events, the possibility of intentional omissions seem to present achallenge to the causal theory of action. After all, if agency can bemanifested without any events being present, it is difficult to seehow agency can be explained in the terms of the standard story ofaction (that is, in terms of the causal history of the bodilymovements that manifest our agency). Hornsby (2004) argues that thefailure of the standard causal theory to account for omissions issymptomatic of its more general failure to locate the agent in anaccount of intentional action that reduces agency to causalconnections between non-agential happenings.

There are at least two ways in which causal theorists try to answerthese charges. One possibility is to argue that even thoughintentional omissions are absences, what makes them intentional isthat facts about their causal history are analogous to the facts aboutcausal history that make ”positive actions“ instances ofagency (Clarke 2010; 2014). On this view, just as positive actions arecaused by an intention, intentional omissions are cases in which thenon-obtaining of a certain event is similarly explained by anintention. However, Sartorio (2009) argues that intentional omissionspose a serious challenge even to this broader understanding of thestandard causal theory of action. Sartorio argues that intentionalomissions are often not best explained by other events (such as theformation of an intention), but by thenon-occurrence ofcertain events (the best explanation of why I omitted to help myfriend move might be that Iomitted to form the intention tohelp them, rather than that I did form the intention not to helpthem). Another strategy to make omissions compatible with the standardcausal theory is to try to show that omissions are events, whileavoiding the questionable view that the omission must be identifiedwith what the agent intentionally did at the time of the omission(Payton 2021).

8. Animal Action

From the start, our focus has been on the intentional actions of fullydeveloped rational agents. However, this raises the question: whatabout other beings, such as (non-human) animals? Can they act? If so,do they act in the same way as fully developed humans do? (Similarquestions arise for children and robots, but our focus shall be on thegrowing literature on animal agency.)

At first sight, the question may seem uninteresting: Of course,animals can act! This seems to be a core commitment of our linguisticpractices regarding animals, as we can truthfully assert claims likethe following:

(17)

The cat is stealthily approaching the tree in order to hunt thebird.

(18)

Canela (a dog) wants you to give her a cookie—that’swhy she is following you around.

(19)

The squirrel is digging in the yard because it thinks there arenuts there.

These sentences seem to attribute to animals the capacity to takemeans for remote ends, the capacity to desire objects and act inpursuit of these desires, and the capacity to employ their thoughtsabout their surroundings in the service of such pursuits. Unless weare skeptics about the folk-psychological concepts involved in theseascriptions, then, we should hold that animals are agents (but seeGodfrey-Smith 2003, who holds that these folk concepts may beparticularly problematic when applied to animals). It is notsurprising, then, that Aristotle defined animal life in terms of thecapacity for a type of action, movement in place (DA 432a),or that Kant attributes a faculty of desire to all animals, throughwhich they actualize their representations (KpV9).

Despite all this, even Aristotle hedges on the ascription of action toanimals: although he grants that they are capable of voluntary(hekusion) action (DMA 11, 703b2 et passim;NE 3.1, 1111a), he also says that only mature human beingsare capable of action proper (praxis) (NE 3.1,1111b). This is because action proper requires the capacity fordeliberation, which animals lack. A modern version of this view isdefended by Stoecker (2009), who argues that agency presupposes thecapacity to act on the basis of ”arguments“ understood asgrounds on which one might (reasonably) act. Similar reasons forskepticism about animal agency were influentially advanced by Davidson(1982; 2003). For, as we saw, Davidson takes it that intentionalaction is action for a reason; but acting for a reason requirespossession of beliefs. Yet, Davidson held that ascription of beliefmakes sense only to beings who possess the concept of belief, which inturn requires the capacity for higher-order thought. Since Davidsonassumed that animals possess neither concepts nor the capacity forhigher-order thought, he concluded that animals are not capable ofintentional action. (Davidson, to our knowledge, does not address thequestion whether animals are capable of acting simpliciter. However,he seems committed to saying that animals cannot act at all, giventhat he defines actions in terms of intentional actions: for him anaction is an event that is intentional under a certain description,see Davidson 1971).

We can abstract from these considerations a more general form ofargument for skepticism about animal agency, captured by the followingschema:

1. IfA acts,A must possess features \(F_1, F_2,\ldots , F_n\). [Presuppositions for Agency Requirement]
2. Animals don’t possess \(F_1, F_2, \ldots ,F_n\). [Presuppositions Animals Lack]
3. Therefore, animals do not act.

This schema is useful as a way to categorize sources of skepticismabout animal agency, and different responses offered in theliterature, depending on which premises are called into question.

A prominent way of criticizing the argument is to call premise 1 intoquestion. For example, Steward (2009) criticizes Davidson’s viewthat agency requires the capacity to act for reasons (Premise 1 inDavidson’s argument). Her objection is based on empiricalresearch suggesting that agency ascriptions are developmentally priorto propositional attitude ascriptions. She argues that implicit inthese earlier ascriptions is a less demanding account of agency thatpresupposes more basic object-directed attitudes (as well as othercapacities, such as subjectivity and agential control). Since animalspossess these features, there is an important sense in which they act.Other arguments in a similar vein include Dretske’s (1999)argument to the effect that agency presupposes only the capacity forrepresenting the world (understood, roughly, as a learned responsewhose operations are shaped by the environment through experience),and the idea defended by Korsgaard (2018), Sebo (2017), and Schapiro(2021) that animals act on the basis of simpler, perceptual-like,representations.

Other scholars grant the basic links between agency and reasons ormeans-ends reasoning but question further presuppositions of theargument. For example, some scholars grant that actions must be donefor a reason, but hold that (some) animals meet this condition, sincethey are capable of having non-conceptual thoughts (Hurley 2003); theycan engage in certain forms of inference in virtue of a non-linguisticsensitivity to inferential relations; and at least some of them (likechimpanzees) manifest a distinctive kind of sensitivity to reasonsthat doesn’t presuppose higher-order thought (Glock 2009; Arrudaand Povinelli 2016). Using a similar strategy, Camp and Shupe (2017)grant that action presupposes the capacity to distinctively representmeans and ends but argue that the features presupposed by such acapacity are more minimal than skeptics about animal agency assume:for example, they may include metacognitive resources that keep trackof a state without representing it as such.

Finally, there are scholars who argue—largely based on empiricalfindings—against premise 2 on the grounds that animals possessthe very capacities denied by skeptics of animal agency. For example,Kaufmann (2015) argues that chimpanzees are capable of a fairlysophisticated form of planning that meets the constraints ofBratman’s account of planning agency. They are thus capable ofacting, even though they lack conceptual representations. The questionwhether some animals (and, if so, which) have beliefs has also beenthe subject of debate on the basis of empirical research. While bothearly and recent studies appeared to support the Davidsonian view thatanimals lack beliefs (Heyes and Dickinson 1990; Marticorena et al.2011, Horschler, MacLean, and Santos 2020;), later researchcomplicates the question (de Waal 2016; Krupenye et al. 2016).

Thus far, we have examined ways in which defenders of animal agencycan play defense, by criticizing different parts of the argument foranimal skepticism. When playing offense, defenders of animal agencycommonly appeal to our common ways of speaking and thinking aboutanimals, which, as noted, provide prima facie good grounds to ascribethem agency. In addition, it has been noted that the heightenedconditions on agency commonly used to exclude animals would havecounterintuitive effectsfor human actions. After all, manyof our human intentional actions (such as habitual actions) do notseem to involve higher-order thought, or previous deliberation (a keyinsight that leads Hyman 2015 to distinguish different senses of”acting’).

Moreover, several authors grant that full-fledged intentional humanaction is special, but argue that we must recognize a more basic formof agency for animals. (This appears to be the view favoured byAnscombe (1957), who held that animals could act intentionally,although not in the language-dependent way that humans could, where wecan draw a significant distinction between the action itself and anexpression of intention. See Gustafsson 2016; Marcus 2021). The needto recognize a more basic form of agency can be motivated by notingthat otherwise the development of full-fledged human agency becomesdevelopmentally mysterious, both at the inter- and intra-specieslevel. Thus, unless we can ascribe agency to non-rational animals, itwill be hard to explain how rational capacities might emerge in humansat the evolutionary level; and unless we ascribe agency to humaninfants, it will be hard to explain how conceptual capacities emerge(Cussins 1992; MacIntyre 1999; Lovibond 2006; Steward 2009; Fridland2013).

In light of all these considerations, animal agency skepticism isnowadays a moribund view, with few defenders. However, even grantingthat animals are agents, important questions remain about the natureof this agency, and its connection to intentional or rational agency.Indeed, as scholars continue to investigate the topic in anempirically informed way, we may need to draw further distinctions tocapture the richness of the forms of agency that are manifested acrossdifferent species and stages of development in the animal kingdom.

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Other Internet Resources

• Wilson, George, and Samuel Shpall, “Action”,Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2022 Edition),Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2022/entries/action/>. [This was the previous entry on this topic in theStanfordEncyclopedia of Philosophy – see theversion history.]
• Wasserman, Ryan, 2004, “Is Causation Extensional?”, unpublished paper.
• Action Theory, Andrei Buckareff, University of Rochester
• Action Theory, Élisabeth Pacherie, Institut Jean-Nicod, CNRS

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Acknowledgments

Both authors wish to thank Michael Kirley for his editorialassistance, research of special topics, and for several usefulsuggestions that improved this entry.