How I Spent My Summer Defending-or-Defeating Anscombe: Anscombian Action Theory and the Possibility of Logically Complex Actions

Abstract

This paper attempts to bridge the divide between action theorists who work in a conceptual terrain shaped primarily by Donald Davidson and Michael Bratman and action theorists who work in a conceptual terrain shaped primarily by G.E.M. Anscombe. In it, I consider a feature of action that has only been discussed by the Anscombe camp: the means-end structure of actions in their unfolding over time. Then, I draw out an implication of this feature: that actions can involve structure which is logically complex (that is, can involve means taken to a logically complex end). Next, I argue that numerous arguments made by philosophers in the Davidson-Bratman camp involve the tacit assumption that this is false, considering four such arguments--by Bratman, Kieran Setiya, Hugh McCann, and Richard Holton--in some detail. Given that structure is a neutral desideratum that any theory of action should account for, I argue that this assumption renders these arguments faulty and is evidence that these philosophers' inattention to structure has radically circumscribed the conceptual space in which they operate. I conclude with some lessons about the importance of future exchanges between these two camps of action theorists.