Psychological versions of the causal theory of action

In Chapter 2 I introduced the idea running through the work of Aristotle, Kant, Anscombe and Davidson, to name a few, that explanation of action involves justifying that action or making it rationally intelligible, and that the appropriateness of such an explanation is a conceptual requirement for talking about action. I talked about justification rather than just about making actions rationally intelligible, arguing that reasons for acting justify action in a weak relativistic sense. But I also suggested in Chapter 3 that some facts, while not counting as reasons for acting, may reveal how the action is justified; they may be facts about what system of justification applies to the action.

Presenting such a fact makes an action rationally intelligible without justifying it; it provides a rationalization, to use Davidson's term, not a justification. I argued that psychological facts – facts about the agent's beliefs and desires and emotions – fall into this category. They make action intelligible by revealing how the action is justified without themselves justifying the action. This chapter is concerned with the role of such psychological states, so I need to consider the wider category of rationalization in addition to the narrower one of justification.

Davidson, unlike Anscombe, also argued that this rationalizing explanation was causal. In other words, reasons for action or reasons that more generally revealed the intelligibility of an action were at the same time causes of action.