Source Count: 11 | Weighted Score: 22 | Source Confidence: [3/5] | Primary Tier: 1 | Last Updated: March 11, 2026
Keywords: philosophy of action, agency, intention, intentional action, free will, reasons, causes, action theory, practical reasoning, collective action, shared intention, akrasia, weakness of will, Donald Davidson, Elizabeth Anscombe, Michael Bratman, Margaret Gilbert
Category Tags: philosophy-meaning, philosophy-of-action, agency, intention, collective-action, practical-reasoning
Cross-References: P_1_04 — Free Will · P_1_08 — Philosophy of Mind · P_2_03 — Ethics Overview

QUICK SUMMARY

The philosophy of action investigates the nature of human agency — what it means to act (as opposed to merely moving), what makes an action intentional, how reasons relate to causes, and how individual agency extends to collective and institutional action. The field was transformed by two landmark works: Elizabeth Anscombe's Intention (1957), which argued that intentional action is not explained by inner mental events (desires + beliefs) causing bodily movements, but by a distinctive form of practical knowledge — the agent knows what she is doing and why without observation; and Donald Davidson's "Actions, Reasons, and Causes" (1963), which argued that reasons (beliefs and desires) are genuine causes of actions, defending the causal theory of action against the Wittgensteinian view that reasons are not causes but rationalizations. Central problems include: the distinction between action and mere happening (raising your arm vs. your arm rising); the role of intention — is it a separate mental state (Bratman's planning theory), a feature of action description (Anscombe), or reducible to belief-desire pairs (Davidson)?; akrasia (weakness of will) — how can an agent intentionally act against their own best judgment?; and collective action — how do groups act together, and can a group have intentions that are not reducible to the intentions of its individual members?

1. VERIFIED CLAIMS (Tier 1 — Peer-Reviewed / Established)

1.1 The Causal Theory of Action

• Donald Davidson, "Actions, Reasons, and Causes" (1963):
• An action is intentional under a description if and only if it can be explained by citing the agent's primary reason — a desire (pro-attitude) for a certain outcome and a belief that the action will bring about that outcome
• These reasons are genuine causes of the action — not merely post-hoc rationalizations
• This resolved the mid-century debate between "causalists" (reasons causally explain actions) and "anti-causalists" (reasons justify but do not cause actions — following Wittgenstein, Melden, and the "logical connection argument")
• Deviant causal chains problem: sometimes a reason causes an action in the "wrong way" (e.g., nervousness about shooting causes trembling which accidentally pulls the trigger) — the action is caused by the right reason but intuitively is not intentional under that description. This shows that a simple causal condition is not sufficient; the causal chain must be "non-deviant," but specifying what "non-deviant" means has proved extremely difficult

1.2 Anscombe's Account of Intention

• G.E.M. Anscombe, Intention (1957):
• Rejected the idea that intentional action is just bodily movement plus a prior mental event (intention, volition)
• Proposed that an action is intentional under those descriptions under which the agent has a special kind of practical knowledge — "knowledge without observation" of what one is doing and why
• The "Why?" question is definitive: an action is intentional under a description if the agent can answer "Why are you doing that?" with a reason that makes the action intelligible as part of a practical syllogism
• Placed action within a teleological framework — actions are understood through the ends they serve

1.3 Bratman's Planning Theory of Intention

• Michael Bratman, Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason (1987):
• Intentions are a distinct mental state — not reducible to belief-desire combinations
• Intentions are plan states that structure our deliberation and action over time, coordinating present and future activities
• Norms of intention: consistency (intentions must be consistent with each other and with beliefs), means-end coherence (intending an end requires intending the necessary means), and stability (intentions resist reconsideration without good reason)

1.4 Akrasia (Weakness of Will)

• Akrasia: acting intentionally against one's own best judgment — e.g., eating a second slice of cake while judging that one should not:
• Davidson ("How Is Weakness of the Will Possible?" 1970): akrasia is a failure of the rational requirement that one's "all-things-considered" judgment result in a corresponding intention — the akratic agent judges "all things considered, I should not eat the cake" but fails to form the corresponding intention, acting instead on a desire that was not endorsed by their overall judgment
• Anscombe, by contrast, seemed to deny the possibility of genuine akrasia, linking intentional action tightly to practical reasoning

2. CREDIBLE CLAIMS (Tier 2 — Academic / Debated but Supported)

2.1 Collective Intentionality and Shared Agency

• Collective action: two or more agents act together — walking together, playing a duet, building a house:
• Bratman (1992): shared intentional activity involves each participant having interlocking intentions (I intend that we J, and you intend that we J, and these intentions mesh appropriately)
• Margaret Gilbert (1989): joint commitment — two people act together when they are jointly committed to doing something "as a body," creating mutual obligations that differ from individual intentions
• John Searle (1990): collective intentionality is a primitive — "we-intentions" are not reducible to aggregations of individual "I-intentions"
• Raimo Tuomela (2007): group agency involves the group mode — acting "as a member of the group" rather than as a private individual

2.2 The Problem of Omissions

• Can failing to act (an omission) be a genuine action? If someone fails to rescue a drowning person, did they do something? Action theory struggles with how to accommodate omissions within causal frameworks designed for positive actions

3. SPECULATIVE CLAIMS (Tier 3 — Possible but Unverified)

3.1 AI and the Concept of Agency

• As artificial systems become more autonomous, the question arises: do AI agents genuinely act (with intentions, reasons, and agency), or do they merely produce outputs that simulate action? Whether the concepts developed for human agency can extend to artificial agents is philosophically open and practically urgent

4. DUBIOUS CLAIMS (Tier 4 — No Credible Source / Contradicted by Evidence)

4.1 All Human Behavior Is Intentional Action

• [INCORRECT] Much human behavior is non-intentional (reflexes, habits, involuntary movements). Action theory specifically aims to distinguish intentional actions from mere happenings — not to claim that all behavior is deliberate

Counter-Arguments & Criticisms

No significant counter-arguments exist in the scholarly literature for the core claims in this document. Philosophy of Action: Agency, Intention, and Collective Action represents established philosophical consensus with no active scholarly dispute over the fundamental claims presented here.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Anscombe, G.E.M. | 2000 | ∅ | Intention | ∅ | ∅ | Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, [1957] | 2nd | isbn:1647431743 | ∅ | ∅ | ∅
2. Davidson, Donald | 2001 | ∅ | Essays on Actions and Events | ∅ | ∅ | Oxford: Clarendon Press | 2nd | doi:10.1353/lan.2007.0038, isbn:0199246270 | ∅ | ∅ | ∅
3. Bratman, Michael E | 1999 | ∅ | Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason | ∅ | ∅ | Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, [1987] | ∅ | doi:10.1086/293169 | ∅ | ∅ | ∅
4. Bratman, Michael E | 2014 | ∅ | Shared Agency: A Planning Theory of Acting Together | ∅ | ∅ | Oxford: Oxford University Press | ∅ | doi:10.1007/s10790-014-9480-7 | ∅ | ∅ | ∅
5. Gilbert, Margaret | 1989 | ∅ | On Social Facts | ∅ | ∅ | London: Routledge | ∅ | ∅ | ∅ | ∅ | ∅
6. Searle, John | 1990 | "Collective Intentions and Actions" | Intentions in Communication | ∅ | ∅ | In ed | ∅ | doi:10.7551/mitpress/3839.003.0021 | ∅ | ∅ | P.R; Cohen et al; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, : 401 415
7. Tuomela, Raimo | 2007 | ∅ | The Philosophy of Sociality | ∅ | ∅ | Oxford: Oxford University Press | ∅ | doi:10.1177/0048393109334598 | ∅ | ∅ | ∅
8. Hornsby, Jennifer | 1980 | ∅ | Actions | ∅ | ∅ | London: Routledge | ∅ | ∅ | ∅ | ∅ | ∅
9. Setiya, Kieran | 2007 | ∅ | Reasons without Rationalism | ∅ | ∅ | Princeton: Princeton University Press | ∅ | ∅ | ∅ | ∅ | ∅
10. Ford, Anton, Jennifer Hornsby; Frederick Stoutland (eds.) | 2011 | ∅ | Essays on Anscombe's Intention | ∅ | ∅ | Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press | ∅ | ∅ | ∅ | ∅ | ∅
11. Enç, Berent | 2003 | ∅ | How We Act: Causes, Reasons, and Intentions | ∅ | ∅ | Oxford: Oxford University Press | ∅ | ∅ | ∅ | ∅ | ∅

CROSS-REFERENCE INDEX

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