Hugh J. McCann

In a recent issue of Analysis I gave a critique of some arguments made by Di Nucci concerning the so-called Simple View – the view that an agent performs an action intentionally only if he intends so to act. In turn Di Nucci offers a reply that concentrates on two points. The first has to do with a group of examples, one having to do with waking a flatmate, and the others with routine actions such as shifting gears while driving. I rejected these examples, arguing that it is not at all obvious that in them the Simple View is violated. Additionally, I pointed out that these are not cases of agents doing something they thought they could not do, and so have no direct bearing on the issues of practical rationality that motivate Bratman's treatment of the Simple View, which Di Nucci is concerned to defend . Di Nucci accepts this second point. He claims, however, that I failed to understand the dialectic of his argument. ….

To readers familiar with action theory as it was done thirty years ago, this book will strike a familiar chord. It presents an account of action of the sort that typified the ordinary language movement: fundamentally logical-behaviorist in its theory of mind, negatively disposed toward mental acts, anti-causalist in its account of explanation by reasons, and compatibilistic in its view of freedom. The object is to show that the ordinary concept of action is secured at the observational level, and so is not endangered by causal accounts of mental or neurological antecedents of behavior.

Recent empirical work calls into question the so-called Simple View that an agent who A’s intentionally intends to A. In experimental studies, ordinary speakers frequently assent to claims that, in certain cases, agents who knowingly behave wrongly intentionally bring about the harm they do; yet the speakers tend to deny that it was the intention of those agents to cause the harm. This paper reports two additional studies that at first appear to support the original ones, but argues that in fact, the evidence of all the studies considered is best understood in terms of the Simple View.

I have defended the view that God’s complete sovereignty over the universe, which requires that he be creatively responsible for our decisions, is compatible with libertarian free will. William Rowe interprets me as holding that this is entirely owing to God’s being timelessly eternal, and argues that God’s decisions as creator would still be determining in a way that destroys freedom. His argument overlooks an important part of my view-an account of creation according to which God’s will as creator does not stand as an independent determining condition of our own. I try here to clarify that account, and to show that Rowe’s criticisms leave it untouched.

Libertarian treatments of free will face the objection that an uncaused human decision would lack full explanation, and hence violate the principle of sufficient reason. It is argued that this difficulty can be overcome if God, as creator, wills that I decide as I do, since my decision could then be explained in terms of his will, which must be for the best. It is further argued that this view does not make God the author of evil in any damaging sense. Neither does it impugn my freedom. God’s creative activity does not put in place any secondary causes that determine my decision; and his will does not stand as an independent determining condition either, since it is fully expressed in my decision alone

This book offers an extended argument that the existence of contingent things is grounded in and hence accounted for by a paradigm existent, which is none other than existence itself—in effect, the ipsum esse subsistens of traditional philosophical theology. Much of the focus is on the nature of contingent existence, which the author contends is a genuine determination of real individuals, though not a property in the usual sense. This implies rejection of a number of other accounts of individual existence, which are refuted in detail in the first five chapters. Chapter 2 argues that existence is not a first-level property of things that have it; in particular, it is not a property that divides a realm of Meinongian objects into those that exist and those that do not. Chapter 3 is directed against theories according to which an entity and its existence are one and the same. These are rejected on the ground that they must either misrepresent contingent things as necessarily existing or deny that contingent existence is anything at all, which violates our intuition that to say a contingent thing exists is to attribute something to it, even if not an ordinary property. Chapter 4 is dedicated to showing that contingent existence is not a second-order property—that is, a property of properties. General statements of existence may perhaps be understood as second-order statements about what properties are instantiated. Singular claims, however, cannot be understood in this way; for to treat a statement like “Socrates exists” as second order commits us in the end to haecceities, which the author rejects, as either violating the distinction between abstract and the particular, or committing us in turn to the identity of indiscernibles, which faces powerful objections. Finally, the view that individual existence is a matter of being contained by some relevant domain is rejected in chapter 5 because, among other reasons, it leads to the manifestly false result that the maximum world, which contains all other existents, does not itself exist.

According to one view of english nominals, imperfect nominals designate facts, and perfect nominals, events. it is argued here that this is mistaken. of imperfect nominals only "that"-clauses are fact designators; imperfect gerundive nominals are to be classed with perfect nominals as event designators. there are, however, two conceptions of events, arising from two different conceptions of time. the events designated by imperfect gerundives are to be conceived as spread out in time, divisible into parts, and such that the same event may receive multiple descriptions. the events named by perfect nominals differ. they persist through time, rather than being extended in it, they do not divide into temporal parts, and obey strict conditions of identity. this position is argued for on the basis of linguistic evidence, as well as analysis of the conceptions of time involved. implications of the view for a number of philosophical problems are pointed out and briefly explored

Contrary to Dretske's view, treating actions as causal complexes wherein inner states produce external results does not permit us to claim that even if their components are caused, the actions are not. What triggers the initial element of a causal sequence causes the sequence itself, so whatever might cause the relevant inner state would also cause the action. Dretske's claim that the failure of my agency to extend to the results of actions I induce in others is owing to the "sensitivity" of those results' causal antecedents is also mistaken. Such sensitivity attends the results of my own actions without undoing my agency

In this volume, the sixth in Blackwell's Great Debates in Philosophy series, Smart and Haldane discuss the case for and against religious belief. The debate is unusual in beginning with the negative side. After a short jointly authored introduction, there is a fairly extended presentation of the atheist position by Smart. Haldane then offers an equally extended defense of theism. The authors respond to one another in the same order, and the book concludes with a brief co-authored treatment of antirealism, which both reject. The discussion is broad-ranging, in part reflecting the size of the topic. It addresses the existence of God and the problem of evil, along with related issues having to do with God's nature and his involvement with the world: necessary being, eternity versus sempiternity, the relation between divine sovereignty and human freedom, and the possibility of miracles. But there is also discussion of subjects having to do with revealed religion, such as the reliability of scripture, and the roles of faith and reason in the life of the believer. The fact that the book commences with the case for atheism also contributes to its scope, since without a specific version of theism on which to focus, Smart has to aim broadly. The result is that topics that might otherwise have been ignored—moral arguments, and Pascal's wager, to cite two—are at least broached, though not pursued.

Some authors reject what they call the "Simple View"---i.e., the principle that anyone who A's intentionally intends to A. My purpose here is to defend this principle. Rejecting the Simple View, I shall claim, forces us to assign to other mental states the functional role of intention: that of providing settled objectives to guide deliberation and action. A likely result is either that entities will be multiplied, or that the resultant account will invite reassertion of reductionist theories. In any case, the account must drive a wedge between intention and practical rationality, by forbidding agents to intend goals it is rational to seek. Worse yet, the states it "substitutes" for intention turn out to be subject to the same constraints that prompted the substitution, and hence are indistinguishable from intention in the very respect in which they are alleged to differ. Thus, I shall argue, there is no evidence to justify such supposed distinctions, and the Simple View is to be preferred.

Two important aspects of O’Connor’s Theism and Ultimate Explanation are explored. The first is whether God’s existence should be considered ontologically necessary. I suggest that although existence is essential to God, it is not a matter of ontological necessity. The second is whether prior to creating God deliberates about what universe or universes to create. I argue that he does not, that to say he does is to mistake creation for a kind of manufacturing. Implications of these claims regarding divine sovereignty are briefly discussed.

This book comprises eleven essays in the philosophy of action, six of which were previously published. The book has a fairly extensive index. The essays are arranged in four groups. The first group contains two essays on the individuation of action. The second contains four essays that argue for the view that what makes an event an action is, not how it is caused, but that it is, or begins with, a volition, “an intrinsically actional” mental event. The third contains three essays that defend the view that free and responsible action is incompatible with determinism, largely by arguing for a noncausal account of reasons explanation of action. The final group contains two essays on intention formation and rationality; the first argues that it is sometimes rational to form intentions that are inconsistent with each other or with one’s beliefs; the second argues that an important sort of practical reasoning has as its conclusion the forming of an intention for action, rather than the adopting of a belief as to what one should do.

In these essays, Hugh J. McCann develops a unified perspective on human action. Written over a period of twenty-five years, the essays provide a comprehensive survey of the major topics in contemporary action theory. In four sections, the book addresses the ontology of action ; the foundations of action ; intention, will, and freedom; and practical rationality. McCann works out a compromise between competing perspectives on the individuation of action ; explores the foundations of action and defends a volitional theory; argues for a libertarian view of both the formation and the execution of intention; and considers the question of consistency in rational intentions, as well as the relationship between practical and theoretical reasoning. -/- Among the original features of McCann's work are his defense of both fine- and coarse-grained actions and his arguments for a noncausal theory of the relation between intention and action. He also suggests that intentions need not be consistent, either with each other or with beliefs about success. And he contends that intention formation is an intrinsically ratiocinative procedure, distinct from reasoning about what action would be best

When Booth moved his finger, thereby firing a gun, thereby killing Lincoln, did he perform three discrete actions, or were there relations of identity or inclusion among them? Most treatments of this problem have tended to assume there is but one sort of entity properly to be called an action, and hence that one answer to this question must be established to the exclusion of all others. And the favored answer has been that Booth's actions are not discrete, or indeed even overlapping, but identical. It is possible, however, to adopt a more conciliatory spirit, in which a place is sought for talk of discrete or fine-grained actions in cases like this, as well as for entities of the coarser sort most have favored.

Responsibility for an action requires what Professor McCann calls an exercise of legitimate agency of the part of an agent, a necessary condition for which is libertarian freedom. Free decisions are to be explained teleologically, not causally. Agent causation cannot account for the existence of a free decision, but neither does event causation account for the existence of determined events. The problem of accounting for the existence of a free decision is therefore of a piece with the problem of accounting for the existence of the world itself. All of this, like a related line of argument by Professor McCall to which you can turn, is a long way from what seems to me the continuing arguableness of determinism and the unavoidableness of the proposition that both Incompatibilism and Compatibilism about freedom are false. But we all need to remember, with Cromwell, in our own bowels if not by those of Christ, that we may be mistaken. I guess that given the proportion of false to true views in the world, we need to remember it is arguable that we are all more likely to be mistaken. -- T.H.