Action theory (philosophy)

Action theory (philosophy)
Action theory (or theory of action) is an area in philosophy concerned with theories about the processes causing willful human bodily movements of a more or less complex kind. This area of thought involves epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, jurisprudence, and philosophy of mind, and has attracted the strong interest of philosophers ever since Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (Third Book). With the advent of psychology and later neuroscience, many theories of action are now subject to empirical testing.
Philosophical action theory, or the philosophy of action, should not be confused with sociological theories of social action, such as the action theory established by Talcott Parsons. Nor should it be confused with activity theory.
Overview
Basic action theory typically describes action as intentional behavior caused by an agent in a particular situation. The agent's desires and beliefs (e.g. my wanting a glass of water and believing that the clear liquid in the cup in front of me is water) lead to bodily behavior (e.g. reaching across for the glass). In the simple theory (see Donald Davidson), the desire and belief jointly cause the action. Michael Bratman has raised problems for such a view and argued that we should take the concept of intention as basic and not analyzable into beliefs and desires.
Aristotle held that a thorough explanation must give an account of both the efficient cause, the agent, and the final cause, the intention.
In some theories a desire plus a belief about the means of satisfying that desire are always what is behind an action. Agents aim, in acting, to maximize the satisfaction of their desires. Such a theory of prospective rationality underlies much of economics and other social sciences within the more sophisticated framework of rational choice. However, many theories of action argue that rationality extends far beyond calculating the best means to achieve one's ends. For instance, a belief that I ought to do X, in some theories, can directly cause me to do X without my having to want to do X (i.e. have a desire to do X). Rationality, in such theories, also involves responding correctly to the reasons an agent perceives, not just acting on wants.
While action theorists generally employ the language of causality in their theories of what the nature of action is, the issue of what causal determination comes to has been central to controversies about the nature of free will.
Conceptual discussions also revolve around a precise definition of action in philosophy. Scholars may disagree on which bodily movements fall under this category, e.g. whether thinking should be analysed as action, and how complex actions involving several steps to be taken and diverse intended consequences are to be summarised or decomposed.
Scholars
Aristotle
Thomas Aquinas
David Hume
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Friedrich Nietzsche
Max Weber
Talcott Parsons
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Hannah Arendt
Jürgen Habermas
Paul Ricoeur
G. E. M. Anscombe
Robert Audi
Jonathan Bennett
Maurice Blondel
Michael Bratman
Hector-Neri Castañeda
David Charles
August Cieszkowski
Michel Crozier
Jonathan Dancy
Donald Davidson
Daniel Dennett
William H. Dray
Fred Dretske
Ignacio Ellacuría
John Martin Fischer
Harry Frankfurt
Arnold Gehlen
Carl Ginet
Alvin I. Goldman
Sam Harris
Carl Hempel
Jennifer Hornsby
Rosalind Hursthouse
John Hyman
Hans Joas
Robert Kane
Anthony Kenny
Jaegwon Kim
Christine Korsgaard
Tadeusz Kotarbiński
Loet Leydesdorff
John McDowell
Alfred R. Mele
Elijah Millgram
Ludwig von Mises
Thomas Nagel
Lucy O'Brien
Derk Pereboom (philosopher)
Juan Antonio Pérez López
Brian O'Shaughnessy
Joseph Raz
Thomas Reid
Raymond Reiter
Alfred Schütz
Constantine Sandis
John Searle
Scott Sehon
Wilfrid Sellars
Michael Smith
Baruch Spinoza
Galen Strawson
Charles Taylor
Richard Taylor
Judith Jarvis Thomson
David Velleman
Candace Vogler
Georg Henrik von Wright
R. Jay Wallace
Susan Wolf
Xavier Zubiri
See also
Praxeology
Free will
Cybernetics
References
Further reading
Maurice Blondel (1893). L'Action - Essai d'une critique de la vie et d'une science de la pratique
G. E. M. Anscombe (1957). Intention, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
James Sommerville (1968). Total Commitment, Blondel's L'Action, Corpus Books.
Michel Crozier, & Erhard Friedberg (1980). Actors and Systems Chicago: [University of Chicago Press].
Donald Davidson (1980). Essays on Actions and Events, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Jonathan Dancy & Constantine Sandis (eds.) (2015). Philosophy of Action: An Anthology, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford.
Jennifer Hornsby (1980). Actions, Routledge, London.
Lilian O'Brien (2014). Philosophy of Action, Palgrave, Basingstoke.
Christine Korsgaard (2008). The Constitution of Agency, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Alfred R. Mele (ed.) (1997). The Philosophy of Action, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
John Hyman & Helen Steward (eds.) (2004). Agency and Action, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Anton Leist (ed.) (2007). Action in Context, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin.
Timothy O'Connor & Constantine Sandis (eds.) (2010). A Companion to the Philosophy of Action, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford.
Sarah Paul (2020). The Philosophy of Action: A Contemporary Introduction, London, Routledge.
Peter Šajda et al. (eds.) (2012). Affectivity, Agency and Intersubjectivity, L'Harmattan, Paris.
Constantine Sandis (ed.) (2009). New Essays on the Explanation of Action, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
Constantine Sandis (ed.) (2019). Philosophy of Action from Suarez to Anscombe, London, Routledge.
Michael Thompson (2012). Life and Action: Elementary Structures of Practice and Practical Thought, Boston, MA, Harvard University Press.
Lawrence H. Davis (1979). Theory of Action, Prentice-Hall, (Foundations of Philosophy Series), Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
External links
The Meaning of Action by Various Authors at PhilosophersAnswer.com
Free will
Subfields of metaphysics
Metaphysics of mind
Neuroscience
Ontology
Theory of mind
Epistemological theories