Christian Carbonell

Is acting intentionally and acting voluntarily the same thing? Or are they different phenomena? Do intentional and voluntary actions involve each other in any sense? Or are they utterly unrelated? Answers to these questions can be found, with different degrees of explicitness, in the work of Ryle (2009 [1949]), Anscombe (2000 [1957]), Gordon (1966), Kenny (1976), Williams (1990, 1993), Queloz (2022), and others. Here I focus on one of the most important responses to be found in the recent literature, due to John Hyman (2015, 2016). More specifically, I focus on the epistemic aspects of his main argument, which appear to be deeply underdeveloped. In effect, Hyman contends that acting intentionally is not identical nor involves acting voluntarily. However, while he defines voluntary action as action that is not done out of compulsion or ignorance, the only argument he offers in favour of his contention relies exclusively on considerations about compulsion. As he puts it, “an act is not done voluntarily if the agent is compelled to do it by a sufficiently grave threat, despite the fact that an act of this kind is done knowingly and intentionally” (Hyman 2015, p.76). Consequently, whether ignorance can have equal effects remains an open question. In this paper, I try to close that question and demonstrate that, from an epistemic perspective, intentional and voluntary action are distinct and yet related phenomena.

In this paper I offer a systematic account of actions of trust and inquire into their cognitive motivation. I first develop the distinction and relationship between attitudes and actions of trust, and then assess Paul Faulkner's thesis that the Humean model cannot explain the cognitive motivation of some actions of trust under circumstances of uncertainty. While I will accept his diagnosis, I will contend that a weaker version of the Humean model could provide this explanation. My proposal will be an attempt to show why some doxastic characteristics of trust would allow for this analysis. In particular, I will show how the nature of the reliance relation, which constitutes actions of trust, requires that trustors believe in the possibility of accomplishing their intentions by means of the trusted party’s collaboration. I will argue that this means-end belief can cognitively motivate trust even in situations where the trustor is uncertain as to whether the trusted party will prove trustworthy.