Questions and Some Answers

Abstract

The view of intention and agency sketched in these chapters seems coherent in itself. It also seems to me to accord with the variety of data we have considered. While it is not as unified and systematic as some simpler theories, it attains a comprehensiveness which simpler views lack since simpler theories are often based on a narrower range of cases of action, for instance, on actions undertaken in fully intentionally pursuing conscious plans of action. As well, the present theory of agency is anchored in an activist, naturalist view. I have argued that the dualistic conception of the agent as an all powerful source of volitions is too fantastic to be taken seriously. Ethological ways of thinking should replace the Cartesian model of action. Evolutionary thinking should, together with human developmental studies, make a suitable view of action and agency sensitive to the continuity within all animal activity, from the reactive but controlled to the planned and calculated.

If action in general is pointless, then knowledge also is futile, and one belief is as good as another ... Behavior which is beyond the subject’s control is not action.

C.I. Lewis