This essay discusses some of the points Davidson makes in his work about the connection between reason and action.
IIntroduction
Donald Davidson’s essay about the causes of human actions is very obscure and difficult. He is attempting to find psychological reasons for actions, including physical actions, and in reading his theories I wonder if it is actually necessary (or possible) to provide a justification for every action.
We’ll consider that in the following discussion, in addition to examining other questions, such as whether or not one type of explanation can apply to all actions; and if such an explanation can be found, what its value might be.
IIDiscussion
The first sentence of David’s essay sets out what he’s trying to do. He asks “What is the relation between a reason and an action where the reason explains the action by giving the agent’s reason for doing what he did?” I’m going to spend some time here, because we have to understand this basic principle. Perhaps putting it in concrete terms will help. Let’s ask, “What is the relation between my wanting to throw a ball and throwing that ball, where wanting to throw the ball explains my action of throwing it, by giving my wanting to throw the ball as the reason for throwing it.” This is still difficult and somewhat circular reasoning, but it reveals that there is some validity to the idea of their being a connection between reason and action.
The Essay on Affirmative Action – Why It Should Be Reinstated
This paper discusses Affirmative Action and why it should not have been curtailed. (5 pages; 2 sources; MLA citation style)IIntroductionRarely has a public policy caused the outcry associated with Affirmative Action. By wrong labeling Affirmative Action a “quota system,” opponents have succeeded in overturning or curtailing the program in many areas.This paper looks at the reasons why Affirmative ...
In order to find the reason for the action, Davidson says it’s not enough to say merely that it appealed to the person who performed it; we must identify what in particular about the action appeal to the agent. I believe that it is in this area that we can begin to make the psychological connection; when we identify what specifically motivates the agent. The reasons for action can be as varied as desires, wantings, urges, promptings, and moral views; they may even include private goals. Because such things as desires and urges are (or can be) unconscious, we can conclude that these may fall into the category of psychological explanations for actions.
Some of the features of the psychological explanation are, as I’ve mentioned, the wantings and urgings that prompt the action. Davidson makes a fascinating observation here, and that is the fact that someone may have a desire to do something—even a life-long, deep-seated desire to do it—without ever once believing that the action contemplated will be practical, or worth doing. (He gives the example of a man who wants to drink paint.) Such desires are interesting, but are insufficient to explain the “features” of this explanation. What Davidson envisions, as I understand it, is a way to determine a “first cause” for an action. This “first cause” (my term) is based upon two precepts: first, the agent performing the action must see it as a “pro” action—something about the contemplated action appeals to him. And second, he has to believe that his action is “of that kind.” Again I come up against Davidson’s circular reasoning, but what I think he means is that the action the agent is thinking of doing is one which must seem to him to be a “pro” action—one that has something about it that appeals to him. The concepts so closely intertwined that it’s difficult to try to separate them.
Davidson apparently agrees with Aristotle’s attempt to explain all actions by characterizing them as “wants”; for Aristotle, wanting is a “causal factor” in explaining the connection between reason and action. (When we discuss formulating a theory that can be applied to all actions, it still remains general. There is no one theory that can explain actions as widely divergent as shooting one’s neighbor and changing the litter box; that is, I don’t believe it’s possible to formulate a theory that would cover every instance.) We are instead looking for a reasonable explanation of the general connection between reason and action, and Aristotle finds it in the concept of “wanting,” with which Davidson agrees. That is, we can find much of the motivation for a person’s action, no matter what that action might be, if we understand the desire that caused him to perform the action.
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Carl Hempel’s “covering law” model of explanation states essentially that an explanation for an event can be drawn from a set of general laws or, in the case of the social sciences, universal hypotheses. Hempel claims the study of history is not generally associated with the search for general laws governing historical events. However, history is a discipline within which the theory of “covering ...
The value of this explanation for all actions is that it enables us to finally begin to understand the “’mysterious connection’ between reasons and action.” This explanation, Davidson says, is supported by some philosophers and disregarded by others; he mentions Hampshire in particular as one who dislikes it. His reason for the dislike is his feeling that there is no compelling explanation as to why a “want” must appear in every statement with regard to the cause of an action, and if it cannot be uniformly applied, the theory must fail.
Davidson is trying to provide insight into the connection between an action and the reason for that action. Does it make sense? Yes and no. It makes sense as far as the obvious fact that human actions have reasons; that is, the agent who performs the action has a reason for doing so, even if that reason is obscure, nonsensical, or perhaps completely insane. People don’t do things in a vacuum—even an impulse to hurl a rock through a window consists of two parts: the impulse and the action itself, and the impulse has a “want” somewhere within it, even if the “want” is only half-formed, or unacknowledged.
But the reasoning is so subtle that it sometimes seems circular: we do things because we want to do them so we do them. It takes judicious sorting, and several readings, to begin to make sense of Davidson’s work.
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The view that reason is the superior principle and it causes an action is a fallacy. Having said this, Reason alone can never cause action. What really causes an action is a Passion to act according to what you desire to do. Reason however can be a passion’s or desire’s guide to discover the connection of the causes and effects. Reasoning as is what takes place in our mind and works in terms of ...
IIIConclusion
Davidson’s essay is as difficult as it is interesting. In the final analysis, I believe he is offering a reasonable model for understanding the connection between reason and action (Aristotle’s “want”) but the debate will surely continue.
