Dynamics in Action

This text argues that a mistaken, 350-year-old model of cause and explanation - one that takes all cause to be of the push-pull, efficient cause sort, and explanation to be prooflike - underlies theories of action. It proposes a framework for conceptualizing cause based on complex adaptive systems.

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What is the difference between a wink and a blink? The answer is important not only to philosophers of mind, for significant moral and legal consequences rest on the distinction between voluntary and involuntary behaviour. However, "action theory" -the branch of philosophy that has traditionally articulated the boundaries between action and non-action, and between voluntary and involuntary behaviour - has been unable to account for the difference. Alicia Juarrero argues that a mistaken, 350-year-old model of cause and explanation - one that takes all causes to be of the push-pull, efficient cause sort, and all explanation to be prooflike - underlies contemporary theories of action. Juarrero then proposes a new framework for conceptualizing causes based on complex adaptive systems. Thinking of causes as dynamical constraints makes bottom-up and top-down causal relations, including those involving intentional causes, suddenly tractable. A different logic for explaining actions - as historical narrative, not inference - follows if one adopts this novel approach to long-standing questions of action and responsibility.