The Free Will Show Episode 54: Action Explanations with Megan Fritts
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Mar 6, 2023 Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Megan Fritts, discusses non-causal theories of action explanation. Topics include the critique of utilitarianism, the superiority of structural explanations, interpretations of the practical syllogism, and addressing Davidson's Challenge.
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Motivation: Ethics Requires Action Theory
- Megan explains she moved into action theory after finding ethics needed a robust account of agency.
- Bernard Williams' critique of utilitarianism motivated her to study what good human agency requires.
Causal View: Reasons As Causes And Rationalizers
- Action explanations often cite mental states that both represent the world and motivate behavior.
- Causal theorists hold these mental states must both cause and rationalize actions to count as genuine explanations.
Davidson's Challenge To Non-Causal Accounts
- Davidson's challenge questions non-causal explanations by noting agents have many potential reasons they don't act on.
- He argues explanation needs something more than rationalization to connect the actual reason to the action, plausibly a causal link.