I'm just sitting around doing nothing

on exercising intentional agency in omitting to act

Andrei A. Buckareff

pp. 4617-4635

in: Wiebe van der Hoek, Wesley H. Holliday, Wen-fang Wang (eds), Logic, rationality and interaction (LORI-5), Synthese 195 (10), 2018.

Abstract

In some recent work on omissions, it has been argued that the causal theory of action cannot account for how agency is exercised in intentionally omitting to act in the same way it explains how agency is exercised in intentional action. Thus, causalism appears to provide us with an incomplete picture of intentional agency. I argue that causalists should distinguish causalism as a general theory of intentional agency from causalism as a theory of intentional action. Specifically, I argue that, while intentional actions may best be understood as the causal products or outcomes of causings, we should identify exercises of intentional agency with causal processes. With a causalist account of intentional agency sketched, I respond to the challenge to causalism from omissions. I argue that when an agent intentionally omits there is a causal process that has a zero-sum outcome. But the causal process is sufficient to make it true that the agent exercises intentional agency in intentionally omitting.