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The first half of this module will investigate normative questions in the philosophy of agency, such as: What is it to be fully accountable for one’s own actions? Are some types of action better than others at expressing one’s ‘authentic self’? What is it to be the author of one’s own life? In examining these problems we shall also explore recent work on autonomy and practical reason. The second half of the module will then address the following two questions: What light can be cast on thinking about the mind's place in nature by taking account of the fact that human beings do things for reasons? What idea of causality is needed for human agency to be understood? Much recent debate in philosophy of action has been focused on the causal theory of action. In exploring these questions, we'll contrast the standard causal theory with a different account of agency which has recently gained adherents, and which has its roots in Aristotle.
Lectures: The lectures for this module will be held in **, on Mondays from 2-3pm in the
Spring Term. The lecturers are Dr. Michael Garnett ( m.garnett@bbk.ac.uk
) and Prof.
Jennifer Hornsby ( j.hornsby@bbk.ac.uk
).
Seminars: The seminars for this module will be held in **, on Mondays from 3-4pm in the
Spring Term. They will be led by the lecturers and by **.
Readings: Every week there is one key reading that is the focus of the seminar discussion.
One of the purposes of the seminar is to help you to understand the reading, so do not worry if you have not fully understood the reading in advance. Nevertheless, it is essential that you attempt the seminar reading each week if you are to follow the lecture and to participate in the seminar discussion. In addition, there is ‘additional reading’ listed that will deepen your understanding and help you to get the most out of the module. You are especially advised to cover the additional reading for those topics on which you are planning to write.
Essays (BA): This module is assessed by two essays of a combined total of around 3,000 words. They must be written in response to two of the set questions listed below, except with permission from the module convenor . For details concerning submission of the essay, including deadlines, see the BA Handbook.
Prior to this assessed essay, you may also write up to two essays during the course, taken from the titles below, and receive feedback on them from your seminar leader. These can be useful practice for your eventual assessed essay. You should submit the first such essay by the first seminar after reading week, and the second by one week after the last seminar of term. [Notes: 1) You are always welcome to submit an essay earlier than these dates; 2) the seminar leader should not be expected to comment on the same essay more than once.]
Essay (MA): This module is assessed by one essay of around 3,500 words. It must be written in response to one of the set questions listed below, except with permission from the module convenor . For details concerning submission of the essay, including deadlines, see the MA Handbook.
Moodle: Electronic copies of course materials are available through Moodle, at http://moodle.bbk.ac.uk
. You will need your ITS login name and password to enter.
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Week 1.
The Disappearing Agent
Seminar Reading:
 Velleman, J. D. ‘What happens when someone acts?’,
Mind (1992) 101/403. [Available online at www.jstor.org/stable/2253898 .]
Additional Reading:
 Dennett, D. C. ‘Self-made selves’, Ch. 4 of his
Elbow Room: The varieties of free will worth wanting (The MIT Press, 1984).
 Aguilar, J. H. and Buckareff, A. A. ‘The causal theory of action: origins and issues’, in J.
H. Aguilar and A. A. Buckareff (eds.), Causing Human Actions: New perspectives on the causal theory of action (The MIT Press, 2010).

Ruben, D.-H. Action and Its Explanation (Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 77-98.
Week 2. Locating the Agent: Higher-Order Endorsement
Seminar Reading:
 Frankfurt, H. G. ‘Freedom of will and the concept of the person’,
Journal of Philosophy
(1971). [Available online at www.jstor.org/stable/2024717 .]
Additional Reading:
 Frankfurt, H. G. ‘On the faintest passion’,
Proceedings and Addresses of the American
Philosophical Association (1992) 66/3. Also in his Necessity, Volition, and Love
(Cambridge University Press, 1999). [Available online at www.jstor.org/stable/3130658 .]
 Bratman, M. E. ‘Planning agency, autonomous agency’, in his
Structures of Agency:
Essays (Oxford University Press, 2007).
 Thalberg, I. ‘Hierarchical analyses of unfree action’,
Canadian Journal of Philosophy
(1978) 8/2. [Available online at www.jstor.org/stable/40230748 .]
Essay Question o Critically assess the ‘hierarchical’ approach to agency.
Week 3. Locating the Agent: Rational Endorsement
Seminar Reading:
 Moran, R. ‘Frankfurt on identification: ambiguities of activity in mental life’ & Frankfurt,
H. G. ‘Reply to Richard Moran’, both in S. Buss and L. Overton (eds.), Contours of
Agency: Essays on themes from Harry Frankfurt (MIT Press, 2002).
Additional Reading:
 Watson, G. ‘Free agency’,
The Journal of Philosophy (1975) 72/8. [Available online at www.jstor.org/stable/2024703 .]
 Velleman, J. D. ‘Introduction’, in his The Possibility of Practical Reason (Oxford
University Press, 2000).
 Scanlon, T. M. ‘Reasons and passions’ & Frankfurt, H. G. ‘Reply to T. M. Scanlon’, both in S. Buss and L. Overton (eds.), Contours of Agency: Essays on themes from Harry
Frankfurt (MIT Press, 2002).
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Essay Question o Is there any sense in which our agency is especially expressed or manifested by our rational attitudes?
Week 4. Autonomy and History
Seminar Reading:
 Christman, J. ‘Autonomy and personal history’,
Canadian Journal of Philosophy (1991)
21/1. [Available online at www.jstor.org/stable/40231731 .]
Additional Reading:
 Mele, A. R. ‘Psychological autonomy and personal history’, Ch. 9 of his
Autonomous
Agents: From self-control to autonomy (Oxford University Press, 1995). [Available via
Birkbeck elibrary.]
 Double, R. ‘A compatibilist account of free will’, Ch. 2 of his
The Non-Reality of Free
Will (Oxford University Press, 1991).
 Arpaly, N. ‘Varieties of autonomy’, Ch. 4 of her
Unprincipled Virtue: An inquiry into moral agency (Oxford University Press, 2003). [Available via Birkbeck elibrary.]
Essay Question o Can there be a convincing analysis of agency that does not take into account the history of the agent’s psychological attitudes? If not, why not? If so, what is it?
Week 5. Agency and Moral Responsibility
Seminar Reading:
 Arpaly, N. & Schroeder, T. ‘Praise, blame and the whole self’,
Philosophical Studies
(1999) 93/2. [Available online at www.jstor.org/stable/4320909 .]
Additional Reading:
 Wolf, S. ‘The real self view’, Ch. 2 of her
Freedom Within Reason (Oxford University
Press, 1990).
 Watson, G. ‘The two faces of responsibility’, in his
Agency and Answerability: Selected essays (Oxford University Press, 2004). [Available via Birkbeck elibrary.]
Essay Question: o ‘We are responsible for our conduct because that conduct is ourselves objectified in actions’ (Dewey, quoted in Watson). Discuss.
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Preliminary Reading for Weeks 6-10
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
Rowland Stout, Action (Acumen, 2005): Chapters 1 and 9: ‘Introduction’ and ‘The
Metaphysics of Action’. [Note: this is a useful book: later Chapters are reading for some of the topics that come after Reading Week.]
In addition to the Stout, there are a further five books which could provide useful background reading, and which contain material that you might want to consult when writing essays for submission. As follows:
Aguilar, Jesús H. and Buckareff, Andrei, eds. Philosophy of Action: Five Questions (N.Y: Automatic,
2009).
[Collection of short interviews in which writers on philosophy of action answer five questions; their answers shed light on their own work + the field as a whole.]
Anscombe, G.E.M.
Intention (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957 [2nd edition 1963]; reissued Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000).
[Not an easy book, but very influential, and there’s been a recent resurgence of interest in Anscombe’s views.]
Enç
, Berent. How We act: Causes, Reasons and Intentions , (OUP 2003).
[Useful for a worked-out version of the so-called standard story of action.]
O’Connor, Timothy and Sandis, Constantine (eds.) The Blackwell Companion to the Philosophy of
Action (Oxford: Blackwell, 2010).
[Wide-ranging collection: short individual essays.]
Sandis, Constantine (ed.) New Essays on the Explanation of Action (London: Palgrave, 2008).
[Collection of papers, covering a range of issues in the epistemology and metaphysics of action.]
Week 6.
Some Metaphysical Questions About Agency
Seminar Reading:
 E.J. Lowe, ‘Ontology’, in
A Companion to the Philosophy of Action , eds. T. O’Connor and C. Sandis (Blackwell Companion, Wiley 2010). On moodle .
Additional Reading:

Rowland Stout, Action , Chapter 9: ‘The Metaphysics of Action’.

A.J.P. Kenny, The Metaphysics of Mind
, Chapter 3: ‘The Will’.
Essay Question o Should we think of actions as events? (Consider: (a) Are there two events when someone intentionally raises her arm? (b) Suppose someone gets a book off the shelf by raising her arm, getting the book in her hand, and then lowering her arm? How many events (if any) should we say there are?
Week 7.
Volitionism and Trying to Act
Seminar Reading:

Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (1949), Chapter 3: ‘The Will’.
Additional Reading:

E.J. Lowe, Chapter 5: ‘Action’, in his Subjects of Experience (Cambridge U.P. ’96).
 A.I. Melden, ‘Willing’ The Philosophical Review , 1960 (Vol 69, No. 4, pp.475–484).
On jstor.
 Jennifer Hornsby, ‘Trying to Act’, in
A Companion to the Philosophy of Action , eds.
T. O'Connor and C. Sandis (Blackwell Companion, Wiley 2010). On moodle.
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 Berent Enç, How We act: Causes, Reasons and Intentions (OUP 2003), Chapter 1:
‘Volitions’.
Essay Questions o Can voluntary action be defined in terms of acts of will? o Is every action a (successful) attempt?
Week 8.
Reasons for Acting, and Causation
Seminar Reading:
 Donald Davidson, ‘Actions, reasons and causes’, Journal of Philosophy 1963 (Volume
60, pp. 685–700). On jstor. Also online at: www.uruguaypiensa.org.uy/imgnoticias/961.pdf
Additional Reading:
 Harry Frankfurt, ‘The Problem of Action’,
American Philosophical Quarterly 1978 (Vol.
15, No. 2 pp. 157–162). On jstor.
 Julia Tanney. ‘Why Reasons May Not Be Causes’,
Mind and Language 1995 (Vol 10, pp.
103–126.) On jstor; also online at www.kent.ac.uk/secl/philosophy/articles/tanney/whyreasons.pdf

Don Marquis, ‘Verstehen and Explanation’, Kansas Journal of Sociology 1968 (Vol.4 no.2, pp.79–87.).
On jstor (but hard to find). Also online at: http:// kuscholarworks.ku.edu/dspace/bitstream/1808/4690/1/KJV4N2A4.pdf
Essay Questions o What is meant when it is said that reasons cause actions? Is it true? o What is the force of the ‘because’ in ‘She did it because she believed that —’? (Consider also the ‘because’ in ‘She did it because —’, and ‘She is doing such-and-such because she is doing so-and-so’.)
Week 9. Agency and Causation
Seminar Reading:

Rowland Stout, Action , Chapters 4 and 6: ‘Agent Causation’ and ‘Deviant Causal Chains and Causal Processes’.
Additional Reading:
 I. Thalberg, ‘Do we cause our own actions?’
Analysis 1967 (Vol.27, pp. 196–201).
On jstor.
 Maria Alvarez & John Hyman, ‘Agents and their actions’,
Philosophy 1998 (Vol. 73, pp.
219–245). On jstor.
 Jennifer Hornsby, ‘Agency and Causal Explanation’, In Mental Causation , eds. J. Heil & A.
Mele (Oxford University Press). R
EPRINTED in Philosophy of Action , ed. A. Mele (Oxford
Readings in Philosophy) 1997, 283–307. On moodle.
Week 10. Knowledge in Action
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Seminar Reading:
 Falvey, Kevin. ‘Knowledge in Intention’,
Philosophical Studies 2000 (Vol. 99, pp.21–44).
On jstor.
Additional Reading:

Rowland Stout, Action
, Chapter 7, ‘Acting with an intention’.
 Johannes Roessler ‘Agents’ Knowledge’, in
A Companion to the Philosophy of Action , eds. T. O’Connor and C. Sandis (Blackwell Companion, Wiley 2010). On moodle.
Essay Question o What is the scope and the distinctive source of knowledge that agents ordinarily have of what they are doing?
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