Action and aberration.

• Author: Hornsby, Jennifer
• Position: Symposium: Act & Crime

INTRODUCTION

In what follows I come up with a definition of "an action" that is the core of one account of the concept of action. The account will not be unfamiliar; it is presented here as an alternative to that which Michael Moore presents in Act and Crime.(1) I shall show that Moore can accept my proposed definition, which indeed fits neatly with some of the pieces of his own account, and that he has nothing to lose from endorsing my account, which is capable of doing all the work that he asks of his own. In a sense, then, my project is conciliatory. I do not expect to win Moore's immediate agreement, however, because his account incorporates a number of claims that my alternative shuns. I shall argue that these additional claims of Moore are the products of a pervasive confusion, and of a spurious reductionism.

I proceed by tracing a rapid and rather devious path through Act and Crime, looking at ten topics in turn. My intention is to steer such a course that the definition of "an action" that I favor emerges from points that Moore and I agree about, and such a course that areas left dark by Moore become illuminated in the setting of the familiar account. In an Appendix, I respond to the criticisms that Moore makes of my own position in the philosophy of action.

1. BASICNESS

   The thesis of chapter 11 of Moore's book, announced in its chapter title, is "the identity of complex actions with basic acts."(2) This is puzzling. Assuming, as Moore does, that what is basic is not complex, it is very obvious that no complex action is the same as any basic one. The identities actually defended in chapter 11 are those approved by proponents of the so-called coarse-grained account of actions" individuation.(3) Moore rightly puts me on the list:(4) like Moore, I think that when Smith kills Jones by moving his finger against the trigger, for instance, the action that is Smith's moving of his finger against the trigger is the same as that which is Smith's killing of Jones. But I could not think this if I wanted to say, as Moore does, that Smith's killing of Jones is a complex action, while Smith's moving of his finger is a basic one.

   Moore had plans to avoid the inconsistencies that his claims of identity bring. A footnote early on in Moore's book states that "in Ch[apter] 11 ... [t]he basic/complex distinction ... becomes a distinction between two sort [sic) of description of acts, not between two sorts of action."(5) This statement does not take away the puzzle, however. When Moore introduces the distinction, he is very insistent that it is a distinction among actions;(6) if it really were to undergo a change, we should expect to be aware of this when it happens; yet we read in vain to discover the transmutation.(7) In any case, the announced change in the distinction is not all that is needed to remove Moore's inconsistencies. However the term "basic" works, it cannot straightforwardly apply to any item that "complex" also applies to, given that no basic item is a complex one; it makes no difference to this point what sort of items are meant to be basic.

   I think that Moore's footnote is symptomatic of difficulties one is bound to meet if one tries to adhere to treating a basic/nonbasic distinction as a distinction among actions. It is not that Moore's distinction is required somehow to turn into a different one, but that "basic" should not have been supposed to apply to particulars (to events, to actions) in the first place. Moore ought never to have arrived in a position from which it follows that m which is basic is the same as k which is not basic.

   To appreciate what Moore's distinction really is, it is best to set aside the technical "act-types" and the formal "descriptions," in order to be able to say in ordinary terms what basicness is about. Thus, the thought that we "simply" raise our arms(8) or that we raise our arms "just like that" captures the idea that there is nothing else we do by doing which we raise our arms:(9) raising one's arm is usually basic, because it is something one usually does not do by doing something else. "Being basic" then appears to be a property of things we do.(10)

   Moore takes "being basic" to be a property of actions because he confuses these with things we do: he confuses what he calls particular acts with what he calls types of act. He speaks of acts (where I have spoken of things we do), and he assumes that a particular act is an item in a category of events.(11) But calling something that someone does "a particular act" cannot turn it into an item that is a particular.(12) The acts, or things, that people do plainly are not particulars. Raising one's arm is one such thing; it could hardly be a particular, being something that any number of people can do, and something that anyone can do any number of times. "Raising one's arm" does not denote any event. What occurs at a time is someone's raising of her arm. A person's doing something, not the thing she does, is the unrepeatable item(13)--the event (the item of the sort about which questions about individuation get asked).

   In order to settle a question in a particular case about which of the things then done was the basic one, it has to be known what was actually done by doing what else in that case. So we have to acknowledge that things done are not basic tout court.(14) This is why one has to say that raising one's arm is usually basic. In the unusual case in which someone raises her left arm by lifting it with her right arm, there is something else she does by doing when she raises her left arm, so that raising the left arm is not then the basic thing. This shows a need to relativize the application of "basic" to particular actions. But it does not show that actions are what "basic" applies to. "Basic" applies, on any occasion (relative to the action there was on that occasion), to that thing, among those that the agent did then, which she did otherwise than by doing something else.(15) And any thing to which "nonbasic" then applies is of course a different thing that she did. (Or, using "act" for what is done: any nonbasic act is different from the basic one.

2. INDIVIDUATION

   When it is understood how "basic" works, "basic" can be used in asking questions about actions' individuation. The central question at issue between proponents of so-called coarse-grained and fine-grained accounts is whether a person who does two things, where one is less basic than the other (so that she does the one by doing the other), is thereby the agent of just one action.(16) If this were a question about the things the person did, then the answer would plainly be No: one thing a person did is not the same as another thing she did. A proponent of the so-called coarse-grained view does not advance Moore's absurd claim--that various different things done by a person are identical--but the claim that where a person does one by doing another, her doing the one is the same as her doing the other.

   Defenses of the fine-grained account have relied to a great extent upon the confusion of the things we do with our actions.(17) What Moore's work demonstrates is that if one does not mind the contradictions, then the confusion can be combined with the coarse-grained account.

   Of course Moore is not alone in making the confusion.(18) And of course he does not always make it.(19) (If he were always to make it, he would be unable to recognize actions as items in a category of particulars or of events.) On almost every page of Act and Crime, however, Moore uses some phrase to speak of something someone did, and forthwith takes himself to have referred to a particular. In the area of "basicness," it is evidently important not to do this, because of the readiness with which contradictions flow. But the distinction between the particulars that are actions and the things that people do is the crux of the account of individuation that Moore accepts, and it must be resolutely maintained in all areas.

3. ACTUS REI

   The example in Part I showed Moore's confusion operating in two different directions. On the one hand, it led him to apply the predicate "basic" to actions when it does not properly apply to them. On the other hand, it led him to refuse to apply the predicate "basic" to things done when (relative to actions) it does properly apply to them. A further example of the confusion's operating so as to obscure things done is shown in Moore's treatment of criminal liability.

   Moore says that a person is criminally liable if he has "done an act that instantiates a type of action prohibited by some statute."(20) But one could just as well say that a person is criminally liable if he has done something prohibited by statute. Moore's circumlocution is seen to be superfluous when it is recognized that the things people do line up with types of action. An account of actus rei can then be rather simple. Among the things people do, actus rei are prohibited ones. Actus rei are simply a species of things done-a species determined by criminal statutes and deserving their Latin name by virtue of that.

   Actually, it is not only Moore's reluctance to distinguish actions from things people do which leads him into complications over criminal liability. He wants an account of actus rei in which a general mens rea requirement, which he calls the "act requirement," is built into the idea of actus reus. He builds in one himself as a part of the circumlocutory detour through "act which instantiates a type," speaking there of types of "action," and using "action" to put the "act requirement" in place. But a mens rea requirement (if desired) could be built in without the circumlocution, by saying that an actus reus is done if and only if there is an action that is someone's doing some criminally prohibited thing. This account has the effect Moore wanted, of ensuring that the notion of "an action" is always implicit when any actus reus is said to be done.(21)

   Whether the introduction...