Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Power and Causal PossibilityAuthor(s): Douglas WaltonSource: Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Dec., 1973), pp. 281-284Published by: Canadian Journal of PhilosophyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40230443 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 11:33

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Canadian Journal of Philosophy is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toCanadian Journal of Philosophy.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.28 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 11:33:31 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY Volume III, Number 2, December 1973

Power and Causal Possibility

DOUGLAS WALTON, University of Winnipeg

In 'Can and Might' (this Journal, vol. 1, no. 1, September, 1971, pp. 87-92), Professor K. W. Rankin has presented three arguments that purport to refute the equivalence (E), 'A (an action) is causally possible for P (a person) if and only if A is within P's power'. The first two arguments are attributed to Richard Taylor (Action and Purpose, Prentice-Hall, 1966, pp. 53-59), and the third is Professor Rankin's own. I will argue that none of these three arguments effectively refutes the above equivalence. My arguments are not to be construed as simply a rebuttal of Professor Rankin's paper since (a) he also appears to have some doubts about Taylor's arguments and (b) I refrain from comment on other aspects of his paper except these three arguments. I conclude with some general remarks on (E).

Argument 1: The Paralyzed Finger We are asked to imagine the case where through paralysis, I lose

control of my muscles, but my finger still moves from time to time. According to Taylor, if these motions of my finger are "uncaused" then the statement 'My finger might move and it might not' would be true while the statement 'My finger can move' is false. This situation presumably provides a counter-example against (E) since here it is causally possible for my finger to move but it is not within my power to move my finger. My rejoinder to this argument is simply to observe that it is not a counter-example at all. What is causally possible is the statement 'My finger moves', but (assuming that it is not within my power to move my finger), the statement 'I move my finger' is not causally possible. Hence there is no single action or event that fulfils both descriptions 'causally possible' and 'not within my power'; it is only the shift from 'My finger moves' to 'I move my finger' which makes it appear so. Using the modal verb can, we could consistently describe Taylor's situation by saying that my finger can move but I can't move it. Thus (E) is preserved. Rankin, however, observes that Taylor wishes to maintain that the motion of the paralyzed finger is an action and not merely a "happening," and, allegedly to substantiate this, a second example is presented.

281

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.28 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 11:33:31 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

D. Walton Power and Causal Possibility

Argument 2: The Roulette Wheel

We are to imagine a situation where I decide that whether or not I will move my finger depends on a roulette wheel showing odd or even (assuming, I suppose, that there is no zero on the wheel). Further, we are asked to suppose that "once I have made my decision I cannot change it" (Rankin, p. 88). Hence once my decision has been made, it is no longer in my power or up to me whether I move my finger or not, whereas what I do is not just a happening, since it depends on my decision. And hence the action of my moving my finger, while causally possible at a time before the ball on the roulette wheel comes to rest, is not within my power. It would be true to say 'I might move my finger and I might not' but false to say 'I can move my finger', and therefore (E) fails to hold.

My response to this argument is to focus on the key statement "once I have made my decision I cannot change it." The use of the modal verb 'cannot' here makes this statement problematic. The key question is, as I see it 'What does this 'cannot' mean there?' Let us make two passes at the meaning of this 'cannot', each of which entails making the case under scrutiny more specific. I will argue that, under both inter- pretations, the argument fails to refute (E). Whether other interpreta- tions are possible that may save the argument is a question that I will leave open, though it seems to me unlikely any will be found.

First Pass. The 'cannot' expresses a clear case of "causal" or "phy- sical" possibility. Here we envision the case where some fantastic physical apparatus such as a system of steel rods, springs and switches, is hooked up to my hand in such a way that if the ball falls in an even slot in the roulette wheel my finger is forced to move, whereas if the ball falls in an odd slot my finger is held rigid. Clearly in this case it is inaccurate to describe the situation by asserting that I move my finger (say, in the case where the ball falls in an even slot). Here we have the same difficulty as in the paralyzed finger example. What is causally possible is not the statement 'I move my finger' but the statement 'My finger moves'- a barely perceptible but highly significant shift. Hence (E) is not affected by this case.

Second Pass. The meaning of 'cannot' is relaxed so that it need not denote strict "physical" or "causal" impossibility. Here when I say that once I have made my decision I cannot change it, I might mean that I am compulsively strong-willed and psychologically unable to refrain from sticking to my decisions. But the problem here is that as long as the "inability" does not express a strict "causal" or "physical" impossi- bility, it will always remain true that, in the paradigm sense, my moving my finger will be within my power. Hence, again, (E) remains unaffected.

Of course it remains possible that a defender of this argument may be able to further specify a conceivable situation that may go between this Scylla and Charybdis, but this seems to me unlikely because, fundamentally, the problem with the entire argument is that it is circular: in order to refute (E), which contains the terms 'power' and 'causal possibility', it posits a situation that is described using the modal verb

282

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.28 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 11:33:31 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

D. Walton Power and Causal Possibility

'cannot', a verb that is obviously much too intimately tied to our intuitions about power and causal possibility.

Argument 3: Do- Ray- Me- Fah

Rankin asks us to consider a situation where two individuals each sing exactly one of two notes that each can sing where the individuals are near enough to each other for the notes to blend into chords. Individual A, on a given occasion, must sing either Doh or Ray, but not both; individual B must sing either Me or Fah but not both, on the same occasion. "Thus it is causally contingent1 whether A sings in consort with B the chords Doh- Me or Doh- Fah. But it is not up to him whether he sings Doh- Me rather than Doh- Fah, or vice versa. That much is up to B." (Rankin, p. 91). Now, as in the two previous arguments, my immediate response is to ask what action purports to be simultaneously causally possible (contingent) and not within the power of an agent. Candidates that might be suggested by the quotation above are 'A's singing in consort with B the chords Doh- Me or Doh- Fah', 'A's singing Doh- Me rather than Doh- Fah', or perhaps simply 'A's singing Doh- Me'. But the difficulty here is that, to be accurate, A does not sing Doh- Me (or for that matter Doh- Fah). A and B are the joint authors of this action. And therefore the fact that this action, the singing of Doh- Me, is not within the power of A does not affect (E) in the least, since the singing of Doh- Me is not an action of A's that is causally possible. It is not an action of A's at all. Here we have the very same difficulty as with Taylor's examples. A similar problem arises again in this example if we consider the singing of Doh- Me or Doh- Fah as a joint action of A and B; here the action is within the power of the 'joint agent' A- cum - B and hence (E) is again unaffected.

General Remarks

The difficulties we have posed for these three arguments may be judged by some readers to be relatively trifling. Surely, one might think, it should be simple to generate a counter-example to (E) that is impervious to such cavils. In reply to this, I would like to make two observations. First, the type of difficulty exemplified by the above arguments has been recently shown to be endemic to the Philosophy of Action by Anscombe, Davidson and others.2 I suggest therefore that these difficulties may not be superficial. Any given action is susceptible of an indefinite number of descriptions, and therefore it may be more felicitous in Action Theory to predicate action concepts to act-descrip- tions rather than actions. An analogous situation exists in work on probability where talk about the probability of the occurrence of an event is translated into talk about the probability of a proposition being true. Second, such a shift in the language of Action Theory might

1 There has been a shift from causal possibility in (E) to causal contingency here, but I take this not to be of immediate crucial significance for our purposes here.

2 See, for example the Symposium on the Individuation of Action in The Journal of

Philosophy, vol. LXVIII, no. 21, 1971.

283

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.28 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 11:33:31 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

D. Walton Power and Causal Possibility

radically affect the sense of the problematic expression 'causally possible' that occurs in (E). For example we might think of a proposition as causally possible if and only if it is true in a possible world relative to the actual world at a time t (perhaps relative to an individual a). The potentialities of these lines of approach are well known, but the

important thing to observe about (E) is that interpretations of it might vary widely with interpretations of the problematic expression 'causally possible'. Here "counter-examples" at the Rankin-Chisholm type may be

premature, given the vagueness of (E), unless the expression 'causally possible' is further explicated.

Nevertheless, the sort of counter-example that Taylor and Rankin

appear to want may be constructed as follows. Let us assume that my hand is placed in the sort of fantastic apparatus we earlier countenanced in such a way that if a red button is pushed, my finger is held absolutely immobile, whereas if a green button is pushed freedom of movement is restored. Let us further assume that I have no access to this panel of buttons, but Jones does. Then, at some time t, we will have a situation where it is not within my power to move my finger but there it is causally possible that I move my finger. It is not within my power because Jones can prevent it by pushing the red button, but it is causally possible since it is both causally possible that (a) Jones pushes the green button, and (b) I move my finger at t. This example overcomes our earlier

objections since the action in question is an action of mine, namely, my moving my finger.

The reactions of action theorists to this example should be in-

teresting, but for various reasons, some of which I have suggested above, I would not expect them to reflect much unanimity. In closing, let me draw attention to one puzzling aspect of this example. Let us assume that Jones pushes the green button at time t - A, and then, at t, I move my finger. According to the Rankin-Taylor type of interpretation of the example, it was not within my power to move my finger right up to time t (since Jones could have pressed the red button during this time). But then, exactly at t, it became "within my power" to move my finger, since presumably, if I actually do x, then x must be within my power (at the time I did it). Previous to t, moving my finger was not within my power. But then at t, when I actually moved my finger, it became "within my power."

January 1972

284

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.28 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 11:33:31 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions