Really Trying or Merely Trying

Abstract

We enjoy first-person authority with respect to a certain class of actions: for these actions, we know what we are doing just because we are doing it. This paper first formulates an epistemological principle that captures this authority in terms of trying to act in a way that one has the capacity to act. It then considers a case of effortful action – running a middle distance race – that threatens this principle. And proposes the solution of changing the metaphysics of action: one can keep hold of the idea that we have first-person authority over what we are doing by adopting a disjunctive account of action.

Keywords:

• Knowledge
• epistemiology
• action
• metaphysics

Notes

1. By ‘proprioceptive awareness’ I simply mean awareness of the body from the inside; this awareness is constituted by various proprioceptive systems – skin receptors, the vestibular system in the inner ear, receptors in the joints, etc. See Eilan, Marcel, and Bermúdez (1995).

2. See Moran (1988).

3. Thus, it is possible to know what one is doing with a radically reduced proprioceptive awareness, see Cole and Paillard (1995).

4. See Crowther (2009).

5. To this it could be added: one might judge that in so acting one is thereby ψ-ing, where the description ‘Ψ-ing’ is non-basic, but this judgement combines first-person awareness with empirical information or belief.

6. Williams (1978, 49).

7. For an actual case of basic action failure, see the vibro-tactile experiment described in Marcel (2003).

8. This is necessary otherwise there will be a regress of tryings, see O’Brien (2012, 166–8).

9. See, for example, Davidson’s climber case (1980, 79).

10. See O’Brien (2007, ch.2).

11. The famous phrase comes from Sellars (1963).

12. This parallel, Peacocke suggests, extends to non-basic actions, which do not fall under entitlement (A). Our knowing what we are doing, when this action is non-basically described, can be compared to knowledge acquired by secondary perception. In both cases the acquired epistemic standing rests additionally upon the epistemic standing of the background belief that informs the judgment.

13. Holton regards this condition as normative rather than necessary because of a case described by Anscombe: ‘a man could be as certain as possible that he will break down under torture, and yet determined not to breakdown’ (1957, 94).

14. See Borg (1970) and Noakes (2003, 280).

15. Heat has the former effect, cold the latter. See O’Sullivan (1984).

16. Here I am appealing to Richard Holton’s (2009) account of the will.

17. The two studies Holton cites here are respectively Baumeister et al. (1998) and Muraven, Baumeister, and Tice (1998).

18. The ‘at least’ flags the fact that this is a simplification; racing also requires, for instance, that one be appropriately responsive to the competitive environment.

19. This might then be thought of as a ‘truncated action’, a mere trying O’Brien (2007, 151).

20. Mischel (1996) cited in Holton (2009, 125).

21. Quoted in Holton (2009, 126).

22. See Lewis (1996).

23. Many thanks to Lucy O'Brien, Jon Pike, Mayur Ranchordas, Bob Stern, an anonymous referee, and to the audiences at the two ‘Philosophy of Running’ events put on by the University of Sheffield, the Open University, and the Royal Institute of Philosophy; see < http://www.philosophyofrunning.co.uk>.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul Faulkner

University of Sheffield, Department of Philosophy, 45 Victoria Street, Sheffield, S3 7QB United Kingdom.

Email: [email protected]