Frederick Stoutland

Whereas the belief-desire model maintains that reasons for action either are or depend on reasons which consist in the agent's own beliefs and desires, I contend that reasons for action, whether taken normatively or explanatorily, are states of affairs. I defend this view by reference to non-deliberative responses to states of affairs agents encounter directly – stopping for a stop sign or answering a knock at the door, for instance–actions which I take to be common, to presuppose no specific attitudes on the part of agents, and to be basic to all action.

Michael Bratman’s new book is a very good piece of work. Clearly written, philosophically sophisticated, and admirably fair to contrary points of view, it is worthy of both attentive study and careful critique. Its first sentence, “We are planning agents”, states its theme, which is developed in thirteen previously published papers plus an introduction. The first paper examines the difference between believing a claim and merely accepting it for some reason, while the next two discuss the stability intentions must have to fulfill their function, the main issue being whether it would be reasonable to change an intention even if nothing has changed since we formed it, Bratman’s aim being to articulate principles of rationality which would apply regardless of our ends or conceptions of the good.

The main claim of the paper is that there are irreducibly social agents that intentionally perform social actions. It argues, first, that there are social attitudes ascribable to social agents and not to the individuals involved. Second, that social agents, not only individual agents, are capable of what Weber called “subjectively understandable action.” And, third, that although action (if not merely mental) presumes an agent’s moving her body in various ways, actions do not consist of such movements, and hence not only individual persons but social groups are genuine agents. We should be pluralists about individuation, rejecting both individualism and collectivism by granting that social agency is neither more nor less ultimate, well-founded, or basic than non-social agency.

The reasons-causes debate concerns whether explanations of human behavior in terms of an agent's reasons presuppose causal laws. This paper considers three approaches to this debate: the covering law model which holds that there are causal laws covering both reasons and behavior, the intentionalist approach which denies any role to causal laws, and Donald Davidson’s point of view which denies that causal laws connect reasons and behavior, but holds that reasons and behavior must be covered by physical laws if reasons explanations are to be valid. I defend the intentionalist approach against the two causalist approaches and conclude with reflections on the significance of the debate for the social sciences.