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The Influence of Agents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

James D. Wallace
James D. Wallace*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois
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Extract

… We learn from anatomy, that the immediate object of power in voluntary motion, is not the member itself which is moved, but certain muscles, and nerves, and animal spirits, and, perhaps, something still more minute and more unknown, through which the motion is successively propagated, ere it reach the member itself whose motion is the immediate object of volition. Can there be a more certain proof, that the power, by which the whole operation is performed … is, to the last degree, mysterious and unintelligible?

Recent metaphysical theories, which stress the importance of an agent as a sort of cause, raise again the question of where and how in the chain of events involved in voluntary motion the human agent “immediately” exerts his influence. The matter is still every bit as mystifying as Hume suggests. We know that when a human being moves voluntarily, there are events in his central nervous system which are causes of the motion. Of course, nothing whatever need be known about these events in order to move voluntarily. Either human agents produce these events or they do not.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , September 1971 , pp. 45 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1971

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References

1 Hume, D. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Sect. VII. Part I. This is to be found on p. 66 of the Selby-Bigge, edition (Oxford, 1902).Google Scholar

2 See Chisholm, R. M. “Freedom and Action,” in Lehrer, K. ed., Freedom and Determinism (New York, 1966), pp. 11–44Google Scholar and Taylor, Richard. Action and Purpose (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1966).Google Scholar

3 von Wright, G. H. Norm and Action (London. 1963). p. 36.Google Scholar

4 For a logic of action based upon this distinction, see Norm and Action, Chs. III-IV, and von Wright's, “The logic of Action—A Sketch” in Rescher, N. ed., The Logic of Decision and Action (Pittsburgh. 1967). pp. 121–36.Google Scholar

5 Taylor, Charles. The Explanation of Behaviour (London, 1964), pp. 26–27.Google Scholar

6 von Wright, “The Logic of Action—A Sketch,” p. 121.Google Scholar

7 “When I raise my arm ‘voluntarily’ I do not use any instrument to bring the movement about. My wish is not such an instrument either.'’ Wittgenstein, L. Philosophical Investigations (New York, 1953), I,§ 614 (p. 160e)Google Scholar. Translation by G.E.M. Anscombe.

8 Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Sect. VII, Part I, pp. 66–67.Google Scholar

9 Chisholm, “Freedom and Action,” p. 17Google Scholar. Hereafter, this article is cited in the text as “C”.

10 That the causal relation is not transitive when another agent intervenes in this way was pointed out by Professor Donald Davidson in a paper entitled “Agency” read at the Annual Fall Colloquium at the University of Western Ontario in November. 1968.

11 I wish to thank Professor David Shwayder for comments on an earlier version of this paper.