The Individuation of Action

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The Individuation of ActionAuthor(s): Alvin I. GoldmanSource: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 68, No. 21, Sixty-Eighth Annual Meeting of theAmerican Philosophical Association Eastern Division (Nov. 4, 1971), pp. 761-774Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2024949 .

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THE INDIVIDUATION OF ACTION 76I

question requires, among other things, a fuller analysis of the concept of a determinable than I know of. However, it is not clear that such principles themselves are devoid of informative content. A relevant feature of the partially quoted statements by Russell and Kemeny is the tacit quantification over something like determinables which is deceptively concealed by such little phrases as 'one definite way' and 'what it will be'.

When these notions are analyzed with sufficient care to fit them for incorporation into a reasonably precise explication of the thesis of Laplacian determinism, it is highly likely that we shall discover a content which, because of its rich and complex ontological import and its apparent roots in intuitions that many regard as "purely logical," deserves to be called metaphysical. I conclude that at least a substantial part of the ontological and metaphysical burden of the thesis of Laplacian determinism is borne by its component claim that the universe is omnitemporally determinate with respect to at least some determinables.

KENT BENDALL Wesleyan University

THE INDIVIDUATION OF ACTION * T HE problem of act individuation was introduced into current philosophical discussion by G. E. M. Anscombe,1 who asked the question:

Are we to say that the man who (intentionally) moves his arm, operates the pump, replenishes the water-supply, poisons the inhabitants, is performing four actions? Or only one? (45)

This is an example of a larger problem, the problem of when, in general, act A is the same as act A'. Miss Anscombe offers no solu- tion to this general problem, no general criterion of act identity. But her remarks concerning this example can be examined with profit. She answers her question as follows:

In short, the only distinct action of his that is in question is this one, A. For moving his arm up and down with his finger round the pump handle is, in these circumstances, operating the pump; and, in these circumstances, it is replenishing the house water-supply; and, in these circumstances, it is poisoning the household (46). * To be presented in APA symposium of the same title, December 27, 1971. Com-

mentators will be Judith Jarvis Thomson and Irving Thalberg; see this JOURNAL, this issue, pp. 774-781 and 781-787, respectively. The University of Michigan has provided funds which make it possible to publish this article at its present length.

1 Intention (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957).



762 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

The 'is' here is clearly the 'is' of identity; what Anscombe intends to assert is that the man's moving his arm up and down = the man's operating of the pump = the man's replenishing of the water supply - the man's poisoning of the inhabitants.

The order in which these putative identities are presented is significant. Anscombe herself is aware of this, for she speaks of the four descriptions as forming.

... a series, A-B-C-D, in which each description is introduced as dependent on the previous one, though independent of the following one.2

The existence of a natural ordering here is confirmed by considering a rearrangement of the elements. The following arrangement is clearly jumbled: "Replenishing the water supply is (in these circumstances) operating the pump; and it is (in these circumstances) poisoning the inhabitants; and it is (in these circumstances) moving his arm up and down." Note, in particular, an interesting asymmetry. Although it is fairly natural to say that moving his arm up and down "is" replenishing the water-supply, it is less natural to say that replenishing the water-supply "is" (in these circumstances) moving his arm up and down.

The existence of a natural ordering is an embarrassing fact for Anscombe's position. The ordering is readily explained if we grant that the descriptions designate distinct acts which stand in a certain asymmetric relation to one another. But if they all designate the same act, whence arises the ordering? Admittedly, there are natural orderings among descriptions that name the same object. A natural ordering exists among the descriptions '1 + 1', '2 + O', '3 - 1', '4 - 2', etc., though they all designate the number 2. In Anscombe's case, however, unlike the numerical case, the ordering is imposed not by the descriptions themselves, but rather by the world. If the man's behavior had been different, a different ordering would be required. Had his arm been resting on the pump, he might have moved his arm up and down by operating the pump (with his other arm). And to express this fact, a different sort of ordering among the descriptions would be appropriate. There is reason to suspect, therefore, that Anscombe's descriptions are not in fact descriptions of the very same action, that the 'is' it seems natural to employ here is not the 'is' of identity.

The use of the preposition 'by' provides additional, and more

2 Ibid., p. 45. Anscombe seems to associate this series with the man's intentions. But the same series would be appropriate even if the man did not have all the intentions Anscombe ascribes to him.



THE INDIVIDUATION OF ACTION 763

conclusive, evidence for the same point. It is true to say that the man poisons the inhabitants by replenishing the water supply, that he replenishes the water supply by operating the pump, and that he operates the pump by moving his arm up and down. As used here, the preposition 'by' seems to express a relation that holds between acts, e.g., between an act of replenishing the water supply and an act of operating the pump (in that order). Now if Anscombe is right in claiming that the man's operating of the pump is identical with his replenishing of the water supply, then any relation that holds between these acts in one direction must hold between them in the opposite direction. Moreover, the relation must hold between each of these acts and itself. But though it is true to say that the man replenishes the water supply by operating the pump, it is false to say that he operates the pump by replenishing the water supply. (Similarly, it is false to say that he moves his arm up and down by operating the pump, or that he replenishes the water supply by poisoning the inhabitants.) Moreover, it would be odd to say that the man operates the pump by operating the pump. The by-relation, then, seems to be an asymmetric and irreflexive relation. Since no such relation can hold between a given thing and itself, we must conclude that the acts in this example are not identical.

There may be an initial tendency to confuse the by-relation with the causal relation, for in many cases the by-relation holds between a pair of acts in virtue of a causal relation holding between one of the acts and one of its consequences. This confusion must be avoided. Suppose that I push the button and this causes the bell to ring. There is a causal relation that holds between my pushing of the button and the bell's ringing, but no by-relation holds between this act and this consequence. In virtue of the causal relation, though, it is true to say that I ring the bell by pressing the button. Thus, the by- relation holds between my ringing of the bell (i.e., my causing the bell to ring) and my pushing of the button. The causal relation, however, does not hold between these two acts of mine (in either direction).

Although many instances of the by-relation depend upon causal relationships, many do not. The by-relation holds between John's signaling for a turn and John's extending his arm out the window, and it holds between John's fulfilling of his promise and John's returning of the book. In neither of these cases, though, does the by- relation obtain in virtue of a causal consequence. The existence of a certain convention makes it true that John signals by extending his arm, and the existence of a certain background condition (viz.,




that John promised to return the book) makes it true that he fulfills his promise by returning the book.

It is instructive to think of the by-relation in diagrammatic terms. In Anscombe's case we can capture the force of the by-relation by drawing a column of circles, the lowest of which represents the man's moving his arm up and down and the upper nodes of which represent the other acts. (See Figure 1.) A vertical line (or, later, a diagonal line) indicates that the upper circle represents an act that bears the by-relation to the act represented by the lower circle. As the diagram suggests, the by-relation is not only asymmetric and irreflexive, but also transitive.

( the man's poisoning of the inhabitants

the man's replenishing of the water supply

the man's operating of the pump

the man's moving his arm up and down

Figure 1

Although Anscombe's example can be represented with a single column of circles, a complete treatment of the sorts of relations that hold between acts requires more complex diagramming. Specifically, we must admit the possibility of tree-shaped diagrams, with branches going off in different directions. Suppose that Boris squeezes his finger, thereby pulling the trigger, thereby firing the gun, thereby killing Pierre, thereby preventing Pierre from divulging the party's secrets, thereby saving the party from disaster. By killing Pierre, he also drives Pierre's lover to suicide. The by-relationships here do not permit a single column of acts. Although Boris drives the lover to suicide by killing Pierre and saves the party from disaster by killing Pierre, he does not save the party from disaster by driving the lover to suicide; nor does he drive the lover to suicide by saving the party from disaster. This case is shown in figure 2.

Boris's saving the party from disaster 0 o Boris's driving Pierre's lover to

Boris's preventing Pierre from o suicide divulging the party's secrets

Boris's killing of Pierre

Boris's firing of the gun

Boris's pulling of the trigger

Boris's squeezing his finger ! Figure 2




These simple examples place in clear relief the most important kinds of relationships that are ignored by Anscombe's view on act identity. Not only does her treatment of such acts neglect the asymmetry of the by-relation, but it also ignores the distinctiveness of the relation that obtains between a pair of acts that bear the by- relation to a common act, though not to each other.

The problem confronting Anscombe's view on act individuation is equally a problem for other writers. Donald Davidson's treatment of particular cases, for example, is substantially the same as Ans- combe's. In "Actions, Reasons and Causes" Davidson writes:

I flip the switch, turn on the light, and illuminate the room. Un- beknownst to me I also alert a prowler to the fact that I am home. Here I do not do four things, but only one, of which four descriptions have been given.3

Unlike Anscombe, however, Davidson has buttressed his position with considerable argumentation. Moreover, in another paper, "The Individuation of Events,"4 Davidson proposes a general criterion of act individuation. (Strictly speaking, it is a criterion of event individuation, but it is intended to hold for acts as well, since actions are a species of events.) The general criterion is this:

(1) Events are identical if and only if they have exactly the same causes and effects.

I do not believe that sameness of causes and effects is a sufficient condition for act identity. But I have no quarrel with the claim that it is a necessary condition; indeed, assuming that being a cause of E and being an effect of E are genuine properties, its being a necessary condition follows from the indiscernibility of identicals. What I wish to stress, however, is that Davidson's treatment of particular cases of putative act identity founders on his own general criterion. Apparently, many pairs of acts he would class as identical do not have exactly the same causes or do not have exactly the same effects.

Let us look first at effects. Consider Boris's act of pulling the trigger and his act of killing Pierre. Then consider the event that consists of the gun's firing. Clearly, Boris's pulling of the trigger causes this event. But does Boris's killing of Pierre cause it? Cer- tainly

(2) Boris's killing of Pierre caused the gun to fire seems to be false; at any rate, it sounds extremely odd. If it is,

' This JOURNAL, LX, 23 (Nov. 7, 1963): 685-700, p. 686. 4 In N. Rescher et al., eds., Essays in Honor of Carl G. Hempel (Dordrecht:

Reidel, 1969), pp. 216-234.




indeed, false, then by appeal to (1) we must conclude that Boris's pulling of the trigger 5 Boris's killing of Pierre.

A possible reply to this difficulty has already been hinted at: although (2) sounds odd, it might be argued, it is nonetheless true. But how can this reply be justified? A clue is provided in a passage where Davidson says: "To describe an event as a killing is to describe it as an event (here an action) that caused a death."5 This suggests the view that

(3) Boris's killing of Pierre is to be paraphrased as

(4) the action of Boris's that caused Pierre's death If this paraphrase were correct, then presumably (3) and (4) would be co-referential. It could next be argued that the referent of (4), and hence of (3) as well, is Boris's squeezing his finger. Since Boris's squeezing his finger caused the gun to fire, it would then be con- cluded that (2) is true.

Can it be established that (4) is a correct paraphrase of (3)? It might be noted, with this in mind, that sentences

(5) Boris killed Pierre and

(6) There is an action of Boris's that caused Pierre's death are "virtually" equivalent. (I say virtually equivalent because one can cause Pierre's death without killing him, e.g., by getting someone else to shoot him. But for our purposes this point can be ignored.) Now if (3) and (4) were derived from (5) and (6) by the same transformation, there would be reason to think that they are paraphrases of each other, or at least co-designative. However, they are not so derived: although (3) is a gerundial nominalization of (5), (4) is not a gerundial nominalization of (6). Moreover, even the suggested principle is unsound. Not all gerundial nominalizations of equivalent sentences are co-designative. For example, although 'Effect E occurred' and 'Something caused E to occur' are equivalent, their respective nominalizations: 'Effect E's occurring' and 'Something's causing E to occur', are not co-designative. There is not much reason to believe, then, that (4) is a good paraphrase of (3), nor that (3) and (4) are co-referential. Of course, if (3) cannot be construed as (4), one wants to know how it should be construed. I shall return to this question below.

Let me turn now to the requirement that identical actions have the same causes. Davidson clearly wants to regard the following

5 Ibid., p. 229. Also see Davidson's paper "Agency," in R. Binkley, R. Bronaugh, and A. Marras, eds., Agent, Action, and Reason (Toronto: University Press, 1971), pp. 3-25.




simultaneous actions as identical: John's singing, John's singing loudly, and John's singing off key. This seemingly innocuous view, however, runs into difficulties. John's singing loudly, let us suppose, is partly caused by his being angry, but his being angry does not at all cause his singing off key. Similarly, his singing off key is partly caused by his having a sore throat, but his having a sore throat is not at all a cause of his singing loudly. According to (1), therefore, John's singing off key # John's singing loudly.

Two replies are open here. First, one might say that, contrary to appearances, John's singing loudly is caused by his having a sore throat, and his singing off key is caused by his being angry. How can these contentions be supported, however, without relying on the dis- puted identity of the acts in question (or on the dubious assumption that John's being angry = his having a sore throat)? Secondly, one might reply that the effect of John's having a sore throat is not the "entire" action of singing off key, but simply one aspect, feature or property of it, viz., its being off key. Similarly, the effect of his being angry is not the entire action, but simply its being loud. This reply raises important questions concerning the conception of an action. What things are "constitutive" of an action and what things are mere aspects or properties of it? If something causes the direction of an arm movement, does it cause the action itself, or merely one feature of it? However one answers this question, one is forced to admit that some of the terms in causal relations are things that consist in something's having a certain property: either John's having the property of singing loudly, or his action's having the property of being loud. Once the need for such particulars is recognized, the conception of an act I wish to recommend receives additional support. But this runs ahead of the story.

Let us mention one final problem for the Anscombe-Davidson mode of act individuation. This is the temporal problem, which has been raised by Lawrence Davis' and by Judith Jarvis Thomson.7 Suppose that John shoots George at noon but George does not die of his wounds until midnight. It is true that John killed George and that he killed him by shooting him; but is the killing the same as the shooting? Though it is clear that George's death occurs twelve hours after John shoots him, it seems false to say that George's death occurs twelve hours after John kills him. But if the death follows the shooting, but not the killing, by twelve hours, the shooting and the killing must be distinct.

6 "tIndividuation of Actions," this JOURNAL, LXVII, 15 (Aug. 15, 1970): 520-530. 7 "The Time of a Killing," ibid., LXVIII, 5 (March 11, 1971): 115-132.




Davidson discusses thlis sort of problem in "The Individuation of Events." He points out that we may easily know that an action is a pouring of poison without knowing that it is a killing; so we may be unprepared to describe the action as a killing until the death occurs. But the problem is not an epistemic one. Even after the death has occurred, and we know it has occurred, it still sounds wrong to say that it occurred twelve hours after the killing. Davidson goes on to suggest that there may be a tendency to confuse an event described in terms of an effect with an event described in terms of a "terminal state" (e.g., 'his painting the barn red', the referent of which is not over until he has finished painting the barn red). But what grounds does one have for supposing that we are confused when we think that John's killing of George is not over until George dies.? There is a conflict here between a pre-analytic intuition and a theory. Though it is possible to protect the theory by calling the intuition confused, it is just such intuitions that must be used in testing the theory. Moreover, the intuition that John's killing of George does not precede George's death by twelve hours is just the sort of intuition that sheds doubt on the view that phrases like (3) can be paraphrased according to the model of (4). If 'John's killing of George' just means "the act of John's that caused George's death," why does it strike us as false to say that John's killing of George preceded the death by twelve hours? Why does this seem false even when we know that the shooting caused the death and that it preceded the death by twelve hours?

Sufficient reasons have now been given for regarding the Ans- combe-Davidson pattern of act individuation as inadequate. But although their particular identity claims are mistaken, or at least highly questionable, it does not follow that Davidson's general criterion for act identity is incorrect. I have indicated my doubts that (1) provides a sufficient condition for act identity; but even if (1) were correct, it would not be wholly satisfactory. Ideally, a criterion of act identity should not merely be "correct"-if that were enough, why not be content with Leibniz's law as a criterion of act-identity? A further desideratum of such a criterion is that it lay bare the nature, or ontological status, of an act. Although Davidson's causal criterion tells us something of ontological im- portance about actions-viz., that they are terms in causal relations-there is more to be said.

The formulation of a fully adequate criterion of identity, then, requires a better understanding of the ontological status of an act. To attain this understanding, I suggest we begin by considering




ordinary action sentences. A satisfactory analysis of action sentences, I believe, requires the notion of an act type (roughly, what others have called a "generic" action). The usefulness of this notion derives from various sources. Frequently we wish to say that the same act is performed on more than one occasion, e.g., that John did the same thing as Oscar, or that John performed the same act today as he did yesterday. The act in question here cannot be an "individual" or "concrete" act, for an individual act cannot occur at different times, nor can two persons be agents of the same individual act (neglecting the possibility of collective actions). The notion of an act type is also needed in talking about ability. If I say that there is an act that John, but not Oscar, has the ability to perform, I do not assert the existence of any "concrete" action; for I do not imply that John has performed an act that Oscar is unable to perform. My statement is best construed as asserting the existence of an act type which John, but not Oscar, has the ability to perform.

An act type, as I construe it, is simply an act property, something that an agent exemplifies. When we say, "John weighed 170 pounds" or "John was bald," we ascribe to John the property of weighing 170 pounds or the property of being bald. Similarly, I suggest, when we say "John signaled for a turn" or "John killed George," we ascribe act properties or act types to John: the property of signaling for a turn or the property of killing George. To ascribe an act type to someone is to say that he exemplified it. If John and Oscar perform the same act, they exemplify the same act type. If John has the ability to wiggle his ears, he has the ability to exemplify the property of wiggling one's ears. Admittedly, there is a difference between exemplifying a property, in general, and performing an act. This difference, I believe, is to be analyzed in terms of what causes the exemplifying of the property. If I sneeze as a result of the usual causes, I exemplify the property of sneezing, but I do not perform an act. If sneezing is under my voluntary control, however, and if I exercise this control by sneezing on purpose, then I have performed an act of sneezing.

How adequate is the approach to action sentences that I am recommending? Davidson has argued that an analysis of the logical form of action sentences must account for the fact that 'Sebastian strolled through the streets of Bologna' entails 'Sebastian strolled'.8 According to my analysis, however, each of these sentences ascribes

8This point was first raised by Davidson in "The Logical Form of Action Sentences," in N. Rescher, ed., The Logic of Decision and Action (Pittsburgh: University Press, 1967).




an act property to a person. This seems to imply that these sentences are to be parsed, respectively, as 'Bs' and 'Ss', where 's' stands for 'Sebastian', 'Bx' for 'x strolls through the streets of Bologna' and 'Sx' for 'x strolls'. If these are unstructured pred- icates, however, how is the entailment ensured?

Recent wvork by Romane Clark' and Terence Parsons'0 suggests how to handle the problem. (A related suggestion is made by Roderick Chisholm.") On the Clark-Parsons approach to predicate modification, a predicate modifier is construed as an operator which maps a property expressed by one predicate onto a new property. 'Slowly', for example, is an operator which, when attached to the predicate 'x drives', yields a new predicate, 'x drives slowly', that expresses the property of driving slowly. Clark suggests that for standard modifiers (excluding "negators" such as 'nearly'), a principle of predicate detachment holds. Let an initial segment of a predicate be either a "core" predicate or the result of prefixing a modifier operator to an initial segment. Then any predicate P implies any initial segment of itself Q-that is, any statements P* and Q* that result from P and Q by uniformly filling in the term positions are such that P* entails Q*. With this rule of detachment, it is easy to see that the predicate 'x strolled through the streets of Bologna' implies 'x strolled', hence that 'Sebastian strolled through the streets of Bologna' entails 'Sebastian strolled'.

Given this technique for representing the logical form of sentences with predicate modifiers, we may continue to regard such sentences as ascribing act types to persons. Of course, since strolling through the streets of Bologna is a different property from the property of strolling (though perhaps in some sense "constructed from" the latter property), the two sentences in question ascribe different act types to Sebastian. However, nobody can exemplify the first of these act types without also exemplifying the second at the same time.

We have introduced the notion of an act type, but our main inter- est is in "individual" acts, i.e., acts that have a particular agent, that occur at a particular time (or during a stretch of time), and that serve as terms in causal relations. Obviously these cannot be act types, which are universals. Let us call these individual, or particular, acts "act tokens." Since an act token is standardly designated by a nominalized form of an action sentence and since

9 "Concerning the Logic of Predicate Modifiers," Nois, iv, 4 (November 1970): 311-335.

10 "The Logic of Grammatical Modifiers," Synthese, xxi (1970): 320-334. 1 "States of Affairs Again," N,ois, v, 2 (May 1971): 179-189.




an action sentence associated with such a nominalization asserts that a person exemplifies a certain act property, it is natural to view the designatum of such a nominalization as an exemplifying of an act property by a person. Thus, John's jumping ten feet is an exemplifying by John of the property of jumping ten feet. And Boris's killing of Pierre is an exemplifying by Boris of the property (act type) of killing Pierre. Moreover, since the act type of killing Pierre is distinct from the act type of pulling the trigger, it seems natural to say that Boris's exemplifying of the act type of killing Pierre is distinct from Boris's exemplifying of the act type of pulling the trigger.

Since, in general, the same person can exemplify the same act type on different occasions and since we want to count these exemplifyings as distinct, we should incorporate the temporal element into our characterization of an act token. We may say, then, that an act token is an exemplifying of an act type by a person at a time (or during a stretch of time).12 Actually, even this characterization is not quite complete, because a person may be the agent of two or more exemplifyings of the same act type at the same time. If, at time t, John points with his right hand and points with his left, then he is the agent of two simultaneous act tokens of pointing. This problem can be dealt with by specifying the way in which an act token is performed, in this case, either with the right hand or with the left. For simplicity, however, this refinement will be ignored in what follows.

We are now in a position to state a criterion for the individuation of act tokens that reflects their ontological status:

(7) For any act token A and any act token A', where A is the exemplifying of X by X at t and A' is the exemplifying of 4t' by Y at t', A = A' if and only if X = Y, q = A,, and t = t'.

la My conception of an act token bears a close resemblance to the account of an (individual) event given by Jaegwon Kim in "On the Psycho-physical Identity Theory," American Philosophical Quarterly, iII, 3 (July 1966): 22 7-235, in "Causes and Events: Mackie on Causation," this JOURNAL, LXVIII, 14 (July 22, 1971): pp. 426-441, and in "Causation, Nomic Subsumption, and the Concept of Event," forthcoming; and R. M. Martin, in "On Events and Event-descriptions," in J. Margolis, ed., Fact and Existence (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969). The distinction between an act type and an act token is also considered by Charles Landes- man, in "Actions as Universals: An Inquiry into the Metaphysics of Action," American Philosophical Quarterly, vi, 3 (July 1969): 247-252. Although Landes- man rejects the term 'act-token', his concept of an "action-exemplifying fact" is very close to my notion of an act token.

My theory might be brought even closer to that of Kim and Martin by con- struing act types not as relational properties (e.g., killing George) with objects or patients "built in," but rather as two-term (or n-term) relations (e.g., killing) which an agent and patient jointly exemplify (or which an agent exemplifies "with respect to" a patient).




This criterion obviously has the consequence that many of the acts equated by Anscombe and Davidson are classed as distinct. In light of the problems that were raised for the Anscombe-Davidson approach, this is a welcome consequence.

It must be emphasized, however, that although our criterion yields a multiplicity of acts where the Anscombe-Davidson approach yields just one, there can still be different descriptions of the same act token. Like any entity, an act token can be referred to by a variety of nonsynonymous expressions. Just as an act token may have many descriptions, it may exemplify many properties. John's operating of the pump (at t) exemplifies the property of being caused by a certain desire and the property of causing the inhabitants to be poisoned. This act token does not exemplify the property of operating the pump, however. We must distinguish between the property expressed by 'x operates the pump' and the property expressed by 'x is an operating of the pump'. The former is exemplified by John, not by John's operating of the pump (at t). The latter is exemplified by John's act, but not by John. In my terminology, the latter is equivalent to 'x is a token of the type, operating the pump,' and this predicate can be true only of an act token not of a person.

The distinction between exemplifying a property and being a token of a property is very important. To say of an act token that it is a killing of George is not, on my view, to assert that it exemplifies the property of causing George's death; rather, it is to say that it is a token of the act type, killing George. Now, although John's shooting of George exemplifies the property of causing George's death, it is not a token of the act type, causing George's death. There is just one act type of which it is a token, viz., shooting George.13 Thus, although John's shooting of George is an action of John's that causes George's death, it is not a killing of George.

Our criterion of individuation has the virtue of distinguishing acts in a manner that accommodates the by-relation, as well as the causal and temporal properties of acts. The multiplicity of acts that it countenances, however, may seem ontologically objectionable. Since an agent may exemplify indefinitely many act types at one time, he may be the agent of indefinitely many simultaneous act tokens. Is this an unacceptable consequence? This multiplicity of acts may appear to credit a person with too many accomplishments. But the degree of accomplishment of an agent is not to be measured

13 We might relax our requirement to allow John's singing off key to be a token of the type singing as well as of the type singing off key. This relaxation would not imply, however, that John's killing of George is a token of the type, slooting George.




by the number of his acts. Whether someone "gets a lot done" in a day is determined by what he does, not by the number of his act tokens. A different sort of objection to the criterion is that it fails to provide an explicit method for counting actions: it implies the existence of indefinitely many act tokens, no particular number of them. This concern betrays a confusion. A criterion of individuation need not provide a method of counting. One can provide a criterion of identity for patches of red or for pieces of wood (e.g., "occupies exactly the same place at the same time") without pro- viding a principle for counting patches of red or pieces of wood. We do not need a criterion of numerosity of heed Quine's precept, "No entity without identity."''4

Although the ontological commitments of our analysis may look unattractive at first glance, its ontological virtues must not be over- looked. Instead of treating actions (or events) as a primitive or irreducible category, our account reduces act tokens to persons, act properties, and times. This supports the Aristotelian-Straw- sonian ontology in which substances are primary, and events and states of affairs are derivative. If ontological parsimony is, as I believe, primarily a matter of the number of kinds of entities countenanced, rather than the number of instances of a given kind that are countenanced, then the view of action I propose fares very well on the dimension of parsimony. Ultimately, of course, an analysis of action cannot be assessed purely in terms of ontological parsimony, but must be judged by its general fruitfulness in theory construction. On this count too, I believe, our approach proves its mettle.'5

The mere multiplicity of acts countenanced by our theory is not so troublesome. It would be a serious flaw, however, if we were unable to account for the important unity among the acts in, say, the pumping case, a unity which is rightly stressed by Anscombe and Davidson. But our own theory is perfectly capable of capturing the unity that one senses here. Instead of conceiving of it in terms of the relation of identity (which has the disadvantage of being symmetrical and reflexive), we capture it in terms of the by-relation (or a relation that closely approximates the by-relation). Using our diagrammatic conception, we think of this unity in terms of a single act tree, where each of the nodes on the tree represents either a "basic" act or an act that bears the by-relation to a single "basic" act.

14 This point is made by Davidson in "The Individuation of Events," op. cit. 15 See my A Theory of Human Action (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall

1970).



774 TIE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

John's deterring a pedestrian from 0 John's convincing his examiner that crossing the street he is a competent driver

John's getting his hand wet O John's signaling for a turn

(:) John's extending his arm out the window

0 John's extending his arm

Figure 3

Strictly speaking, the set of distinct acts we want on a single act tree cannot be ordered by the ordinary "by" locution. According to our criterion of individuation, John's singing (at t) and John's singing loudly (at t) will be distinct acts; but we would not ordinarily say either that John sings "by" singing loudly or that John sings loudly "by" singing. This problem can be handled by introducing a slightly broader relation, which I have called level generation, under which the ordinary by-relation is subsumed. I have tried to analyze the notion of level generation elsewhere, and cannot review it here.'6 I believe, however, that the inclusion of the additional cases does not upset our diagrammatic conception. For example, the pair of acts con- sisting in John's extending his arm and John's extending his arm out the window can be neatly and naturally fitted onto an act tree as shown in Figure 3.

The analysis I have sketched, then, satisfies two fundamental desiderata. First, it slices the units of action thinly enough to accommodate the by-relation. This need has been felt by a number of philosophers who have drawn a distinction between basic and nonbasic actions, but my theory allows for a stronger ordering of acts than a mere dichotomy. Secondly, we make use of this ordering to introduce the notion of an act tree, and we use this notion to explicate the unity among the diverse acts in, say, Anscombe's pumping case or Davidson's switch-flipping case.

ALVIN I. GOLDMAN The University of Michigan

INDIVIDUATING ACTIONS * M ISS ANSCOMBE had imagined a man replenishing the water supply of a house by operating a pump. She thinks that, in the circumstances, it would be true to say

16 Cf. chapter II, ibid. * To be presented in an APA symposium on The Individuation of Action,

December 27, 1971, commenting on Alvin I. Goldman's article of the same title, this JOURNAL, this issue, pp. 761-774.



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The Individuation of Action

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