On Performing and Explaining Linguistic ActionsAuthor(s): Quentin SkinnerSource: The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 82 (Jan., 1971), pp. 1-21Published by: Blackwell Publishing for The Philosophical QuarterlyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2217566 .Accessed: 05/03/2011 07:49

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THE

PHILOSOPHICAL

QUARTERLY VOL. 21 No. 82 JANUARY 1971

ON PERFORMING AND EXPLAINING LINGUISTIC ACTIONS1

BY QUENTIN SKINNER

I To utter any serious utterance is both to say something and to do some-

thing. The speaker-as J. L. Austin put it in his classic formulation of this now familiar point2-can thus be doing something in saying what he

says, and not just as a consequence of what is said. Any agent who utters a serious utterance (in speaking or writing) can thus be said, in appropriate circumstances, to perform a type of voluntary action. The question I wish to raise is whether this fact can be shown to have any special bearing upon the analysis of the concept of voluntary action itself. The answer I wish to

suggest is that if (as I shall assume) the things we do with words can genuinely be regarded as forms of social behaviour, then the analysis of this class of

(linguistic) actions can in fact be used as a means of reassessing two pre- vailing theories in the philosophy of action : one concerned with the nature and description of actions, the other with the appropriate method of ex-

plaining them. Austin eventually isolated five types of so-called " illocutionary " act

which can be performed by a speaker in saying something. There are two rather strictly convention-governed types "verdictives " (concerned with

1I am very much indebted to Professor B. A. O. Williams for reading and com- menting on successive drafts of this paper. He suggested the approach followed in the first half, and saved me from some serious misunderstandings as well as over- statements, although he is not to be held responsible for any that remain. I am also very grateful to Mr. John Dunn and Professor J. W. Yolton for their comments on an earlier draft.

2J. L. Austin, How to do things with Words, ed. J. O. Urmson (Oxford, 1962), p. 94. Hereafter cited by page only.

2 QUENTIN SKINNER

giving verdicts) and " commissives " (concerned with committing the speaker to a course of action). But there are also three more conversational types, and it will be these less strictly convention-governed cases on which I shall concentrate : " exercitives " (such as entreating or warning) ; " behabitives " (such as complimenting); and "expositives" (such as informing). The relations between these classes of action and the concept of action as I wish to discuss it can now be brought out in a single example. I choose to con- centrate on the " exercitive " case of warning, since both Strawson (in his extension of Austin's general theory)3 and Austin himself (in How to do things with Words) have treated this as the paradigm case of an illocutionary (as opposed to a " perlocutionary ") act. Consider then the following ex- ample : the case of a policeman who sees a skater on a dangerous pond and utters to the skater the serious utterance 'The ice over there is very thin '. (This is actually one of Strawson's examples.) Here the speaker says some- thing and the words mean something. Austin's further point, however, is of course that the speaker can also mean something in uttering an utterance with such a meaning. The relations between the meaning of the utterance and the question of how the speaker means the utterance to be taken are not perhaps entirely clarified in Austin's account. But there can be no doubt that two implications-both of them crucial to my own subsequent argument-can now be drawn from this example.

The first is that if it is now said that what the policeman is doing in saying " The ice over there is very thin " is warning the skater, this is to provide, at least in the standard case of speaking with such illocutionary force, an account of the speaker's intentions. This seems closely analogous, moreover, to the account which H. P. Grice has given of the relations be- tween intentions and meaning.4 An understanding, that is, of the nature of the illocutionary act performed by the speaker in uttering his given utterance seems analogous (perhaps equivalent) to an understanding of what Grice originally called " non-natural " meaning-at least if we construe that concept, as Grice himself now wishes to do,5 as referring to the meaning of a speaker's utterance of a given utterance. And an understanding of such non-natural meaning-that is, an " uptake " of what the speaker, in uttering his given utterance, may have meant, or a specification of what Grice now wishes to call the "utterer's occasion-meaning "-does seem equivalent in turn (whatever may be true of " timeless meaning ") to an

3P. F. Strawson, "Intention and Convention in Speech Acts", The Philosophical Review 73 (1964), pp. 439-51.

4H. P. Grice, "Meaning ", The Philosophical Review 66 (1957), pp. 377-88. 6H. P. Grice, "Utterer's Meaning and Intentions ", The Philosophical Review 78

(1969), pp. 147-77, greatly extends and refines Grice's 1957 discussion of " non-natural " meaning, treating this in turn " as an attempt to define the notion of utterer's occasion- meaning " (p. 150). Grice's article has appeared since the completion of my own script. I have thus retained his original term 'non-natural meaning', although I have of course followed his new distinction (p. 149) between 'utterer's occasion-meaning' and ' utterance-type occasion-meaning' and his identification of 'non-natural meaning' with the former category.

ON PERFORMING AND EXPLAINING LINGUISTIC ACTIONS 3

understanding of what the speaker intended to do in uttering his given utterance.

The second implication concerns the exact sense-which this example now illustrates-in which saying something can count as a case of performing a voluntary (linguistic) action. For granted that the circumstances are suitable, the policeman's utterance of his utterance actually constitutes the action of warning the skater. And this applies equally to such cases as

complimenting, entreating, informing and so on, in a list of explicit perfor- mative utterances extending (Austin assures us) to the third power of ten. To identify in such a case the nature of the illocutionary force co-ordinate on a given occasion with the ordinary meaning of the given utterance is

equivalent to understanding the nature of the (linguistic) action performed by the speaker in uttering his given utterance.

II I now turn to consider the possible impact of these considerations upon

the current discussion of two general issues in the philosophy of action. My first concern is with the descriptive element in the concept of action. Here I wish to re-examine two theses which both seem to have become generally accepted in recent discussions. The first states that the locution primitive for the concept of action is that of something being caused to happen. If a given episode in which an agent is doing something is to be classified as a case of action, it is said, then it must be possible to redescribe the episode in the form of the locution 'A bringing it about that p ', where A stands for the agent and p the result of 9ing, where 9 in turn signifies a verb of action, such verbs being defined in turn as those which are applicable as answers to questions of the form 'What is A doing ? '.

I shall assume that what the proponents of this claim wish to assert is that it states a necessary condition for applying the concept of action. It is true that the condition has sometimes been treated as "the essential feature " of action, and thus as the means of distinguisihing the things we do from the things that happen to us. It is also true that the condition has sometimes been represented by critics as an attempt to give the " definition of an act ", as a claim that if the primitive locution can be applied this must mean that the episode in question is an action.6 But these appear to be misunderstandings. They certainly represent an unjustifiably strong way of putting the point. Consider for example the case of a skater on thin ice who brings it about in skating that he falls into the water. The episode can certainly be described as a case of A bringing it about that p, but we should hesitate to call it the description even of an unintended action on the part of the skater. I think it is usually clear, however, that it is only

6For these claims see respectively Alan R. White, ed., The Philosophy of Action (London, 1968), p. 11 ; John Ladd, " The Ethical Dimension of the Concept of Action ", The Journal of Philosophy 62 (1965), p. 640; A. I. Melden, Free Action (London, 1961), p. 23.

4 QUENTIN SKINNER

the converse claim which the proponents of this thesis wish to make on behalf of the primitive locution-the claim that if A is ying, A is performing a voluntary action only if A in ying is thereby bringing it about that p. And it is of course in this form that the thesis has become generally accepted.

The other thesis I wish to re-examine states the set of conditions which must be met by any verb of action q such that if it is true that A is ping it will equivalently be possible to redescribe the episode in the form of the locution agreed to be primitive for action. It has of course been a weakness of much recent discussion about the nature of action that this further ques- tion has not always been raised, so that the primitive locution has often been introduced-as it is, for example, by Bennett, Chisholm, White and others7-without any explicit justification, and without any account of the conditions for applying it. It has also been a feature, however, of several recent studies both that this lacuna has been recognized, and that a particular method has been developed specifically to elucidate the conditions such that, when they are met, it will follow from the fact that A is ying that A is thereby bringing it about that p.

These conditions, it is said, can (and can only) be derived from a study of the tense logic of verbs of action. The progressive refinement of this essentially Aristotelian insight has served to yield a number of distinct categories into which verbs of action can be classified, all with an evident purchase upon the philosophical analysis of voluntary action. There is

Ryle's distinction between "task " and "achievement " verbs; Vendler's distinction between "states" and "achievements" on the one hand and ' activities " and " accomplishments " on the other; and Kenny's isolation of the concept of a "performance ", which he distinguishes both from " states " and " activities ". It has further been claimed that the con- ditions under which this basically syntactical concept of a " performance " can be applied are equivalent to the conditions such that if it is true that A is (ing, then it follows that the episode can be redescribed in the form of the locution agreed to be primitive for action. Kenny's most essential claim, in fact, is that for any case in which it is true to say that A is (ing, and in which the verb of action 9 passes the tests for being classified as a " performance " verb, it will equivalently be true to say that A is thereby bringing it about that p.8 Again, this thesis has been extensively discussed and refined (by Potts, Taylor, Evans and others9), and appears to have become quite generally accepted.10

7See Daniel Bennett, "Action, Reason and Purpose ", The Journal of Philosophy 62 (1965), p. 85; Roderick M. Chisholm, "The Descriptive Element in the Concept of Action ", The Journal of Philosophy 61 (1964), p. 615; White, op. cit., p. 2.

8Anthony Kenny, Action, Emotion and Will (London, 1963), pp. 177, 182. Here- after cited by page only.

9See Timothy C. Potts, " States, Activities and Performances ", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplement 39 (1965), pp. 65-84; C. C. W. Taylor, " States, Activities and Performances ", loc. cit., pp. 85-102; C. O. Evans, " States, Activities and Performances ", The Australasian Journal of Philosophy 45 (1967), pp. 293-308.

l?See, for example, the citation of these conditions in White, op. cit., pp. 3-4 and

ON PERFORMING AND EXPLAINING LINGUISTIC ACTIONS 5

All these philosophers are in essential agreement, moreover, about the nature of the conditions which must be met if an episode in which A is

ying is to be classed as a "performance ". (I shall follow this neologism, rather than Vendler's proposal to speak of " accomplishments ", since it has gained wider currency.) First, the sentence reporting that A is ying must take a singular or distributed plural form of grammatical object.11 (For example, 'The policeman is warning the skater' rather than 'The

policeman is warning skaters', which would describe an " activity " rather than a "performance ".) Next, the verb of action ( must pass a basic

grammatical test which isolates rather than merely applies to "perfor- mance " verbs: the test that if it is said that A is (ing B (for example, warning B), this must imply (as it does in this case) that A has not yed B

(has not warned B) rather than (as with "activity" verbs) that A has yed B (Kenny, pp. 172-3). Finally, the report of the episode must pass five "criterial" tests (Kenny, pp. 176-8 and 183-4). The first two can be

represented by saying that whereas " activities " can go on for a time, it is characteristic of " performances " that they take time, and can be done either quickly or slowly. (For example, it takes time to issue a warning, and we can imagine an emergency in which A might not have enough time to warn B.) The next criterial test states that "performances ", unlike " activities ", can always be either complete or incomplete. (For example, A might start to warn B and be cut off, in which case A may not succeed in performing the given action. But this situation cannot arise if A in ying is merely engaged in an " activity " such as running.) Finally, any " perfor- mance" can both have a purpose and be commanded. (For example, A can without absurdity and for a purpose be ordered: " Warn B ! ".)

To summarize and apply these purely exegetical remarks: I have now said that if A is warning B (or complimenting, entreating, informing and so on), then A is performing a voluntary (linguistic) action; and I have now shown that the action which A takes in warning B meets all the conditions for being classified as a "performance ". (This will equally be found to

apply, in suitable sentences, to the case of A complimenting or entreating or informing B, and so on.) So it follows, according to the theory I am con-

sidering, that any case in which A is ying B, and ying is warning (or compli- menting and so on), will be a case in which it will equivalently be true to

say that A is thereby bringing it about that p. The only truth, however, which this form of analysis seems to yield so

far about warning, complimenting and so pn is that these verbs of action are capable of being put through a passive transformation. If A is ying B and ying is warning, then it is undoubtedly but also trivially true to say

their deployment in Richard Taylor, Action and Purpose (Englewood Cliffs, 1966), pp. 104, 107, 111-2.

l1Here and in stating the " criterial " tests I follow Evans's refinements of the tests for " performances ".

6 QUENTIN SKINNER

that A in ying B (warning B) will thereby be bringing it about that p (that B is in fact warned). If the analysis is to be rescued from this triviality it is obvious that some independent value must be assigned to the 'p ' which is said to be brought about whenever a "performance " takes place. It is

perhaps a methodological weakness of certain existing discussions about " performances " that they have scarcely emphasized the crucial importance of this point or treated it in a very systematic way. It is certainly possible, however, to gain from an analysis such as Kenny's an account of the features of the situation which it is said must necessarily be brought about as the result of a "performance ".

The essence of Kenny's claim is in fact that ' p' must designate some new and discernibly changed state of affairs which is the result of A's action

(pp. 177-8). In the case of "intensional" (psychological) "performances" the change which must take place is in A, the subject of the action. To say that a " performance " is " intensional " is thus to say that when the agent acts and brings about a change, " the change is in the subject and not, save

per accidens, in the object " of the action (p. 196). In the case of any " perfor- mance" which is not just psychological, however, the change which it is said must be brought about is not in A (the subject of the action) but in B (the patient or object of the action). In any such " performance " it is said to be essential that " after the action is over, the patient must have

changed " (p. 181). There must be some state " newly true of the patient " which "must be different from its state before the event " (p. 181). And the change which is thus brought about will be a difference which we can " inspect " and submit to " examination " (p. 180), a difference for example in the properties, the position, or the nature of B, the object of A's action

(p. 178). The value being assigned to 'p' in the case of these ordinary, non-psychological " performances " is thus that when A ps B, the state of B which A is thereby said to bring about must be such that " after the event B should have changed " in some evident and corresponding way (p. 180).

The thesis I now wish to argue is that once these accounts of " perfor- mances " are rescued from tautology in this way, they can be shown to be founded upon a mistake. Once the value being assigned to 'p ' is clarified, it can be shown that no necessary equivalence exists at all between reports that A is ping B and reports that A is bringing it about that p. I shall continue, in trying to make good this claim, to concentrate on the some- what complex but central case in which the (linguistic) action which A per- forms in ping B is in fact that A warns B. I believe the same case could

equally well be argued, however, for any of the other cases of linguistic action I have mentioned.

I turn first to consider the situation in which A might truly be said to have brought it about that p (that B has been warned), where 'p ' duly has the value required by Kenny's type of analysis. A might for example have

brought it about that B was caused to act in such a way that B successfully

ON PERFORMING AND EXPLAINING LINGUISTIC ACTIONS 7

avoided some potential danger. We can certainly say of such a situation that B has been warned, and we may expect this to be reflected in some state newly true of B which represents the result of a warning having been issued to B. Now according to the theory I am considering, any situation of which it can be said that A is (ing B, where (ing is a " performance ", will be a situation of which it can equivalently be said that A is bringing it about that p. So it must follow, according to these accounts, that if A has in fact brought it about that p-as in the present example-then A must have (ed B (warned B) and thereby brought it about that p (that B was in fact caused to act in such a way as to avoid some potential danger). But this does not necessarily follow at all. It is possible for A to bring about such a result without issuing any warning himself or indeed performing any linguistic action at all. The policeman might for example succeed in bringing it about that the skater on the dangerous pond is duly warned merely by signalling to another policeman to warn the skater of the potential danger. It will certainly be true to say of this situation that the skater has been warned, and that A (the first policeman) has brought it about that p (that the skater has duly been warned). But it is not equivalently true, and in this case it is not true at all, to say that A (the first policeman) (ed B (warned the skater) in any way required by the existing accounts of ( performances ".

This failure of equivalence can of course be rectified by an expansion of

'p '. If the "p " which the first policeman has to bring about in (ing B (warning the skater) is that the skater is warned by himself, the policeman, then the loss of equivalence in this case between qing and bringing it about that p is certainly restored. But this does not really meet the difficulty. It merely seems to remove the alleged point of converting such a report to the effect that A has done something into a report that A has brought about a result. The alleged point of such a conversion is that the latter form of

description should yield what Kenny (p. 185) calls a more " fundamental " description of the action. But the simplest version of this allegedly more fundamental description in the present case is that "The policeman is bringing it about that he, the policeman, is warning the skater ". This

report, however, of what the policeman brings about not only fails to add anything to the original description of his action. It actually represents a repetition, in a syntactically clumsier form, of exactly the original report of what the policeman was doing. The price in this case of restoring the equivalence between ying and bringing it about that p is thus that the analysis of the action simply moves in a circle-a result which might be thought to cast a quite general doubt on the status being claimed for the locution said to be primitive for voluntary human action.

The main point I wish to make in criticism of the existing attempts to apply the concept of a " performance " to elucidate the concept of voluntary action is the converse of the claim I have now argued. I have argued that

8 QUENTIN SKINNER

there are cases of " performances " in which it can be true that A is bringing it about that p without its being equivalently true that A is (ing B. I now wish to argue that there can be cases in which A is genuinely (ing B, and in which the verb of action q passes all the tests for being a " performance " verb in a suitable sentence, but in which A in (ing B is not thereby bringing it about that p, according to any value of 'p' assigned in the existing discussions about "performances ".

I begin by reverting to the dichotomy laid down in Kenny's account between intensional and non-intensional "performances ". It is clear that the linguistic actions with which I am concerned cannot be said to fall on the intensional side of this dichotomy, if intensionality is heuristically defined (as in Kenny's account) as that property peculiar to psychological events. If A is warning B, for example, this involves something more than a change merely in A's affective or cognitive state, as when A is hating or remembering B. And if A in warning B does something more than bring about a change merely in his own mental condition, this can scarcely be said to happen merely per accidens. The attempt to do something more seems on the contrary to reflect the standard intention of any agent who performs such a linguistic action.

The peculiarity, however, of the linguistic " performances " with which I am concerned is that they not only fail in this way to assimilate to the class of intensional " performances ". They also fail to meet the conditions for being classed as ordinary non-intensional " performances " as well. They pass all the tests, as I have shown, which have been laid down for the isola- tion of " performances ". And yet it does not follow that the result of A (ing in these types of case can be represented either as a change essentially in the agent A or as a change in B, the object of A's action, in any sense required by the existing discussions of " performances ".

I shall consider six different ways in which it might be argued that a

genuine linguistic " performance " can take place, in which A is authentically (ing B, but in which no corresponding change is thereby brought about by A in B's state or activity. The speaker might first of all fail at a purely locutionary level to bring about any change in the object of his warning. It might happen (1) that A is warning B but that B does not hear the words of warning; or (2) that B hears the words but does not understand their meaning. Next, the speaker might fail at the illocutionary level and in consequence fail to bring about any change in B's state or behaviour. It might happen (3) that A is warning B, that B hears the words and under- stands their meaning, but that B misunderstands their intended illocutionary force. An important example of this type of failure, which Austin did not discuss but which can certainly arise, would be the situation in which the conventions (social as well as linguistic) are such that A's intention (to warn or compliment B and so on) is incapable of being assessed by B as being a case of that intention.l2 If A then compliments B, for example, in

12For a discussion of this and other cases of oblique and non-avowable illocutionary

ON PERFORMING AND EXPLAINING LINGUISTIC ACTIONS 9

such a situation, he may thereby bring it about only that B takes him to have had the intention to perform some wholly different action-the in-

tention, perhaps, to flatter or defer to B, possibly even to ridicule him. A second type of failure at this illocutionary level, which Austin does discuss, might happen (4) when B hears, understands and correctly grasps the intended illocutionary force of A's utterance, but (incorrectly) believes that A's warning was not seriously intended. The utterance might be taken, that is, as a mock performance-a case of parodying, joking or otherwise

only pretending to warn, compliment and so on. Finally, the speaker may still fail in 9ing to bring it about that p even when his locution and its intended illocutionary force are both fully understood. There could be a situation (5) in which A believes there is a danger to B and points it out, but fails to persuade B of the danger and so fails to bring about any change in B's state or alteration of his behaviour. There could also be a situation

(6) in which A believes there is a danger to B and points it out, in which B also believes there is a danger to himself, but in which A still fails thereby to bring about any change in B's state or behaviour, simply because B is

reckless, so that A's warning has no effect upon B's will. I shall now consider and try to meet two objections which might possibly

be levelled against the claim that these are all cases of genuine " perfor- mances" which nevertheless do not involve the bringing about of any change in the object of the action. It might first of all be pointed out (quite fairly) that the lack of equivalence between ying and bringing it about that

p in these cases rests very much on the fact that (to put it colloquially) it is not altogether up to A, the agent in these cases of linguistic action, whether or not in ping he does bring about a change in the state of B, the object of his action. It might thus be objected that all these cases show is that

linguistic or other inter-personal actions are very peculiar cases of action, in which the power of agent causality is unusually restricted or diminished.

This objection depends in turn, however, on assuming that any voluntary action must be a case in which the successful bringing about of an intended result is entirely up to the agent, and depends merely upon his will. But it is not even characteristic of the most basic " performances " that the

changes capable of being brought about by the agent are in fact entirely up to him in the sort of way that would be required to sustain this objection. Consider for example the following reported episode : " Mary is cutting the cake ". This is an unambiguous case of a simple performance. It is indeed offered as such in Kenny's account (p. 172). If it is true that Mary is qping B (cutting the cake), then it will be equivalently true that Mary is bringing it about that p (that the cake is in a cut state). Yet it is clear even in this case that there could be restrictions upon the power of the agent, such that

Mary fails in trying to q to bring it about that p. It does not seem, there-

acts, see my own article, " Conventions and the Understanding of Speech Acts ", The Philosophical Quarterly 20 (1970), pp. 118-38.

10 QUENTIN SKINNER

fore, that there is any important distinction to be drawn between this type of simple " performance " and the type I am considering, over the question of whether the achievement of the result said to be intrinsic to the description of the action as a " performance " is in fact entirely up to the agent.

The second and more serious objection, however, might consist of ques- tioning whether the six episodes I have described really constitute cases in which the " performance " of A warning B can be said to have taken place at all. It might be claimed that these are not really cases of A warning B, but are merely cases of A trying to warn B. And if this objection is now tested against the six types of asymmetry I have cited it certainly appears to have some purchase. It seems more or less certain, at least with cases (1) and (2), that the correct description of the episode must after all be that A is trying (but failing) to warn B. There still seem good grounds for doubting, however, whether it would be true to say of any of the other cases that they should be described as cases of A trying to warn B rather than as cases of A warning B. It seems unquestionable, at least in cases (5) and (6), that the objection cannot be sustained. Here the speaker A utters an utterance with the form and intended force of a warning to B, which B correctly understands and of which B gains " uptake " as a warning. If B disbelieves the warning, or else believes but fails to heed it, then A un- doubtedly fails to bring about that there is any state of activity "newly true " of B as a result of the warning having been issued to him. But there can be no doubt in both these cases that A still did warn B. It would undoubtedly be correct for A to report of episode (5) "I warned him but he took no notice ", or of episode (6) "I warned him but he refused to take any notice ". It is at least not clear, moreover, that it would be mistaken in cases (3) and (4) to insist on a similar point. In case (3) the failure to bring about a change in B's state might be due to nothing more than B's " non-playing " (in Austinian parlance) of A's warning (or compliment and so on) as a means of registering his disapproval of it. It might thus seem quite appropriate to say of such a case that A did warn B (or compliment him and so on) but that B refused to " take " (but did not fail to grasp) the warning. Similarly in case (4) the failure is solely due to B's misunder- standing of how seriously the warning was intended. Again, it might thus seem quite appropriate to say that A did warn B (since B did gain "up- take " of the warning as a warning) but that this had no effect upon B because-as we do in fact say-he treated the warning as a joke.

The objection, therefore, that these asymmetric cases can be dismissed as cases of A merely trying to q B and failing to bring it about that p does not hold generally. The break between attempting to perform and success- fully performing the relevant action seems to come at some point between case (1) and case (6). I am not concerned with the question of exactly where this break occurs. All I am concerned to claim is that it is unquestionable with cases (5) and (6), and at least arguable with cases (3) and (4), that A

ON PERFORMING AND EXPLAINING LINGUISTIC ACTIONS 11

is definitely ping B (warning B), even though A is definitely failing thereby to bring it about that p (that any corresponding change takes place in B's state or behaviour).

If these are genuine asymmetries, two implications can now be said to follow from the argument I have presented. The first is that the value of 'p' seems to have been incorrectly stated in the existing discussions of "performances ". It is of course true that if A succeeds in bringing it about by issuing a warning to B that B is thereby put on his guard, then B has certainly been warned by A. If any of the cases (3) to (6) are genuine cases of A warning B, however, it follows that this condition of bringing about a change in B does not have to be met for the concept of warning to have

application. It is only necessary, for A to have warned B, that A should have given notice of the fact to B that B is in some potential danger. The same applies to the other cases of linguistic action I have mentioned. If A succeeds in bringing it about in complimenting B that B is in fact flattered, then B has certainly been complimented by A. As the O.E.D. puts it, however, it is only necessary, if it is to be said that A is complimenting B, that A should be addressing B " with formal expressions of civility ". So too with A entreating B. If A brings it about in entreating B that B is in fact prevailed upon to act in some way, then B has certainly been entreated by A. But it is only necessary (as the O.E.D. again puts it), if it is to be said that A is entreating B, that A should be " pleading " with B. And so too with A informing B. If A brings it about in informing B that some item of knowledge is in fact gained by B, then B has certainly been informed by A. But it is only necessary (to appeal to the authority of the O.E.D. once more), if it is to be said that A is informing B, that A should be " issuing instruction " to B.

The value which I have now stated for ' p ', however, renders the formula 'A bringing it about that p' unnecessary in these cases. If "A warning B " (or complimenting and so on) can simply be a matter of A pointing out to B that B is in potential danger, it becomes merely otiose, and nothing is gained at all, if we insist on saying that A is thereby " bringing it about that he is pointing out to B that B is in potential danger ". Once this is granted, however, a second and more general implication can be said to follow from the argument I have presented. It is that some doubt must attach to the claim that the formula 'A bringing it about that p' can really be regarded after all as " palmary for the description of voluntary action "

(Kenny, p. 152). This is not to deny, of course, that there are voluntary actions which fit the description of being episodes in which an agent brings about a result. The point is rather that even when we are armed with this locution, we are left confronting something elusive about the concept of action itself. It can readily be shown that the locution does not state a sufficient condition for applying the concept of action: for an agent, as I have shown, can also be causally connected in the required sense with the

12 QUENTIN SKINNER

things that happen to him. I have now sought to argue that the locution also fails to state even a necessary condition for applying the concept of action: for the situation which A brings about in (ing B, in the various cases of linguistic action I have considered, is simply the situation in which A is indeed ping B, and is not necessarily to be represented as some further change in the object of A's action which can be represented as the result of the action.

III I now turn to consider the possible significance, for the question of how

voluntary actions are to be explained, of the account of linguistic action which I have now tried to set out and defend. I wish in particular to con- sider this account in the light of the traditional thesis-the thesis both of Aristotle and of Hobbes, which has again been re-stated in the course of the very recent reaction against Wittgensteinian philosophical psychology- to the effect that " the relation between a reason and an action when the reason explains the action by giving the agent's reason for what he did " is " a species of ordinary causal explanation ". This is Davidson's intro- duction to his classic reformulation of the traditional position.l3 The same general commitment has also been announced in a large number of other recent studies (by Ayer, Berofsky, Hamlyn, Maclntyre, Yolton and others),14 all of whom have sought to establish the same general conclusion by showing that when either a motive or an intention is cited (as they are " in the normal way ", as Ayer puts it, p. 9) as a means of explaining an action, then " the relations between intentions, volitions and emotions on the one hand and action on the other, is causal, not logical " (Yolton, p. 26). The way is thus left open to insisting, as many of these philosophers want to do, that (as MacIntyre puts it, p. 224) " the dependence of the concept of human action upon the concept of intention does not exclude the possibility of causal explanation from the realm of human action ". The general significance of this line of argument is of course that it appears to hold out some hope for a fully causal and predictive science of human action. It has already been concluded, indeed, by some of the less cautious of these philosophers, that there is " nothing about the concept of action which lifts human behaviour out of the realm of causal explanation ".15

13Donald Davidson, " Actions, Reasons and Causes ", The Journal of Philosophy 60 (1963), p. 685.

14A. J. Ayer, " Man as a Subject for Science ", in Philosophy, Politics and Society, Third Series, ed. Peter Laslett and W. G. Ruiciman (Oxford, 1967), pp. 6-24; B. Berofsky, " Determinism and the Concept of a Person ", The Journal of Philosophy 61 (1964), pp. 461-75; D. W. Hamlyn, " Causality and Human Behaviour ", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplement 38 (1964), pp. 125-42 ; Alasdair MacIntyre, " The Antecedents of Action ", in British Analytical Philosophy, ed. Bernard Williams and Alan Montefiore (London, 1966), pp. 205-25; J. W. Yolton, " Agent Causality ", The American Philosophical Quarterly 3 (1966), pp. 14-26. All citations hereafter by page only.

15G. Madell, " Action and Causal Explanation ", Mind 76 (1967), p. 34. My italics.

ON PERFORMING AND EXPLAINING LINGUISTIC ACTIONS 13

I now wish to argue that in the face of such claims the special features of linguistic action take on a further significance. I begin by reverting to the brute facts about my basic example: the policeman uttering to the skater the utterance 'The ice over there is very thin '. So far I have de- fended two theses about this situation. First, the episode thus described might in suitable circumstances be correctly redescribed by saying " The policeman is warning the skater ". And secondly, what this unique (illocu- tionary) redescription of the episode further reveals is what the policeman in uttering his utterance intended or (in Grice's sense) non-naturally meant. I now wish to illustrate and defend two further theses about such illocutionary redescriptions. First, that when the facts about such an episode are capable of being redescribed in the unique form in which the intended illocutionary force of the utterance is revealed, this provides not merely a redescription but also a mode of explanation of the given episode. And secondly, that although such explanations function by citing reasons, these cannot in this case be construed as causes of which the corresponding actions are effects.

Consider the situation in which the policeman's utterance is heard by a puzzled bystander who for some reason fails to grasp the policeman's inten- tion in uttering this utterance. The bystander might of course be puzzled by various features of the episode. But one request for an explanation might undoubtedly take the form of the question 'Why did he say that? ' (or more exactly, 'Why did the policeman utter that given utterance ? '). And one reply, providing an explanation of the policeman's action, might be ' He said it to warn the skater' (or more exactly, 'The policeman's reason for uttering that given utterance was to point out the potential danger to the skater of skating where the ice is very thin '). The illocutionary redescription serves as an explanation of the action.

There seems no doubt, moreover, that there must at least be a standard case in which it is correct to speak of such illocutionary redescriptions as supplying explanations of at least some puzzles about such types of action. For it is one thing if the bystander understands what A's utterance to B itself means, so that he may be capable of giving an account of what A said. But it is quite another and further thing if the bystander understands what A's utterance of an utterance with that meaning was itself intended to mean on the given occasion, so that he may be able to give an account of why A said what he said. Colloquially, what this further information ex- plains about A's action is its point.

There also seems no doubt about the manner in which valid explanations can be supplied by means of such illocutionary redescriptions : they cite a reason for A's performance of his action. To know that A in a given instance meant to warn B is to know that if A was acting intentionally in the ordinary way, then one at least of his reasons for uttering his given utterance must have been to point out to B that he regarded B's situation as being one of potential danger. But it can scarcely be said that to cite such a reason is

14 QTUENTIN SKINNER

equivalent to citing a cause of A's action. The explanation is supplied from a grasp of the conventions governing the illocutionary force attaching to the utterance itself. It is supplied, that is, simply from an understanding of what A meant, in the non-natural sense of understanding not just what the utterance meant (for it is not even essential that the utterance itself should in that sense have any meaning at all) but of understanding what it conven- tionally means to utter an utterance with such a meaning. To know the answer to this further question is to know how the speaker intended his utterance to be taken. And this in turn is to know the intentions of the speaker in uttering that given utterance. And this in turn is to know why he uttered that utterance. And this is to have an explanation of the (linguistic) action.

The independence of such explanations from causality, however, has now been overstated. The explanation of why A uttered his given utterance is not merely a matter of citing the convention that to utter a particular utterance can count in suitable circumstances as a case of warning someone. It is a matter of citing this convention and of assuming that the speaker both knew of this convention and intended to follow it in the given case. This is to concede, however, that in order to complete even these con- ventional types of explanation a further condition which is at least arguably causal needs to be added-the condition that the agent should first have attained a knowledge of the relevant conventions and should then have formed the intention to act according to these intentions in the future.

It still seems possible, however, to distinguish the type of reason- explanation with which I am concerned, which consists of focusing primarily on the agent's intentions in his actions, from the type of reason-explanation which focuses primarily on the agent's cognitive and affective states prior to action, linking these by inductive generalization to the performance of certain sorts of action. The type of conventional explanations with which I am concerned precisely functions by appealing not to inductive generaliza- tions but rather by appealing to the conventions which may seem to apply in the situation to be explained. It is true that the convention which thus serves to explain the action must still be psychologically linked to the agent who performs the action. It remains true, however, that the primary focus in this type of explanation lies in the elucidation of conventions rather than in the elucidation of the agent's mental states. It is not essential to allude directly to these states at all in order to provide a conventional explanation of an action which, while partial, inferential and so highly fallible, may nevertheless be illuminating and correct. It still seems possible, therefore, to vindicate the sole claim I am concerned to make : that the recovery of a conventional (illocutionary) redescription, by pointing to the intentions of an agent in the performance of a given action, still possesses in itself a measure of explanatory force.

It must be admitted, however, that this primary role which I have

ON PERFORMING AND EXPLAINING LINGUISTIC ACTIONS 15

assigned to recovering the agent's intentions in order to explain his (linguistic) actions has usually been quite explicitly rejected by the theorists and prac- titioners of precisely those disciplines in which the argument might be thought to apply most significantly. I have in mind those disciplines- such as literary criticism and the various forms of intellectual history- which are essentially concerned with the analysis of complex utterances and the explanation of their special features. It happens that one of the pieces of conceptual bric-a-brac which the practitioners of these disciplines have been taught to handle with reverence has been the argument exposing the alleged "intentionalist fallacy ". And so it has frequently been insisted that it is possible to establish the " general irrelevance of intentions "16 in any attempt to interpret and explain the complex utterances (such as literary or philosophical works) to which such critics and historians character- istically devote their attention.

This argument, however, appears to have been mounted in a somewhat confused way. Those who have argued against the relevance of intentions have tended to assume that to ask about an author's intentions must necessarily be equivalent to asking about " what made him write ",17 and that an author's intentions in his works must thus be ranked " amongst the factors that caused those works to come into being ".18 And those who have sought to defend the need to grasp an author's intentions in his works have tended to assume that this task must consist of showing the relevance, in explaining the special features of his works, of " the artist's personal interests, problems, life-history and psychic peculiarities ".19 It is not sur- prising, therefore, that it has come to seem a fairly decisive objection against this latter view to point out that it is surely " completely irrelevant " to the understanding of a work to know, say, that it may have been composed "primarily in order to make money ".20

This alleged exposure of the intentionalist fallacy, however, scarcely seems to constitute a very relevant threat to the argument I have attempted to present. Despite the claims being made for them, neither of these argu- ments really bears at all on the question of an author's intentions in writing his given works. Both the arguments are in fact addressed to the question of whether an author's motives in writing (such as the desire for gain or other ' psychic peculiarities ") can be said to be relevant to the understanding of

his works. Once this essential distinction has been drawn, moreover, be- tween the study of an author's motives in writing and the study of his intentions in writing, my general argument can then be applied to show

16John Kemp, " The Work of Art and the Artist's Intentions ", The British Journal of Aesthetics 4 (1964), p. 151.

7W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., The Verbal Icon (New York, 1958), p. 4. 18Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics (New York, 1958), p. 17. 19Richard Kuhns, " Criticism and the Problem of Intentions ", The Journal of

Philosophy 57 (1960), p. 14. 20Kemp, loc. cit., p. 150.

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that (whatever may be true of motives) the recovery of an author's intentions in writing is not merely relevant but essential in any attempt to explain the special features of his works.

Consider for example the case (the rare case) of the critic who has in fact asked, as the central question of a study about Milton, " What did Milton mean in Paradise Lost ? ".21 It is evident that this is not (or not merely) a question about what the words of the poem may mean. It is also (or rather) posed as a question about what Milton, in writing such a

poem and so in using words with such meanings, may (in Grice's sense) have non-naturally meant. But this is a question which asks in effect for the (illocutionary) redescription of the complex of (linguistic) actions which Milton, in writing the poem, may be said to have performed. I have already shown, however, that to ask such a question is precisely to ask about the agent's intentions in uttering his given utterance. And I have sought to argue that to answer such a question will be to provide a valid and indispen- sable (not of course complete) guide to assessing why the agent said what he said or wrote what he wrote. It follows, therefore, that if my general argument is correct, it contains an implication of some practical importance : that it must actually be an exegetical duty, and not a fallacy at all, for critics and historians to concentrate on attempting to recover the intentions of speakers or writers in the performance of these complex types of (linguistic) action.

I shall now consider and try to deal with two possible objections which might be raised against the entire line of argument I have sought to present. It might be objected (to revert to my basic example) that the bystander could still be wholly unsatisfied with the claim that the policeman's action has been explained, since he may in asking for the explanation already have known that the policeman's utterance had the form and the intended force of a warning. This suggests, however, a corroboration rather than an objec- tion to my basic argument. It suggests that there may be two valid forms of reply which may be given in answer to a simple request for the explanation of such an action. One such reply clearly does consist of treating the question as a request to be told why the policeman should have wanted (at all) to utter his given utterance, granted that the utterance itself is correctly assessed as having the intended force of a warning. The other consists, however, of treating the question not as a request to be told why the police- man might have wanted to, but merely why he did, utter the given utterance. The first type of answer provides an explanation by turning to the affective states of the agent and seeking to discover what might have prompted the

policeman to want to warn the skater. It may well be, moreover, that the desire (whatever it was) that functioned as the motive for acting should be treated as a cause of the policeman's resulting action. My essential conten- tion, however, is that whatever may be said about the concepts involved

21A. J. A. Waldock, Paradise Lost and its Critics (London, 1961), p. 1.

ON PERFORMING AND EXPLAINING LINGUISTIC ACTIONS 17

in this type of explanation, the other type may already have served to pro- vide some explanation of the policeman's given action simply by recovering the illocutionary redescription of the action itself. This objection, in short,

might be answered by claiming that there can be a case in which to ask in this way for the explanation of the action may be to ask a fundamentally ambiguous question.

The second objection, however, might be that even if such linguistic actions are open to this mode of explanation, this again suggests only that

they must constitute a very special case, and should not be used to illustrate

any more general thesis about the explanation of action. But this objection would, I think, be misconceived. For the fact is that the illocutionary features of linguistic actions, on which I have so far concentrated, seem by no means to be confined to this class of actions. It can readily be shown that a range of ordinary physical actions exhibit similar illocutionary features.

(There is no doubt, incidentally, that Austin would have sanctioned this extension of his concept of " illocutionary " force. While his own main concern was to contrast illocutions with locutions, he explicitly mentions

(p. 118) that certain illocutions are invariably performed non-verbally.) As an illustration of this extension of my argument, consider the list of

possible explanations for a given action which Ayer draws up in conceding that a given set of bodily movements can according to context represent a

variety of actions. Ayer takes the example (pp. 10-11) of someone drinking a glass of wine, which can in different circumstances represent " (1) an act of self-indulgence, (2) an expression of politeness, (3) a proof of alcoholism, (4) a manifestation of loyalty, (5) a gesture of despair, (6) an attempt at

suicide, (7) the performance of a social rite, (8) a religious communication, (9) an attempt to summon up one's courage, (10) an attempt to seduce or

corrupt another person, (11) the sealing of a bargain, (12) a display of pro- fessional expertise, (13) a piece of inadvertence, (14) an act of expiation, (15) the response to a challenge ". Now it has sometimes been argued that the possibility of such radical lack of correlation between physical move- ments and actions already rules out any possibility that such episodes can be brought under causal forms of explanation. But while such disjunctions may certainly suggest that the criteria for applying certain action concepts may be in dispute, they scarcely seem to bear upon the question of whether the corresponding episodes may be causally explained. And if my present thesis is valid, this way of putting the point may in any case be beside the

point. The point-if the aim is to set limits to the application of causality- is rather that the list itself continues to leave unresolved a confusion be- tween two types of situation : those in which the performance of the given action does not, and those in which it does, bear some conventional (non- natural) meaning or (illocutionary) force.

It is true that this response to the objection is rather hard to make

good in terms of Ayer's particularly elaborate and eccentric list. It is not

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clear that the explicans in either (3), (5) or (13) even yields an explanation of anything that could be called a voluntary action. And it is not clear how the explicans in either (6), (10) or (12) is even to be understood. It is hard to see, that is, how any of these answers could be offered as possible explana- tions for the action simply of drinking a glass of wine. It must also be con- ceded that it does seem possible to insist more or less certainly with (1),(2), (7) and (9) that it would not make much sense to ask what the agent in performing his given action of drinking the glass of wine might have meant. Or if such a question is asked it seems to resolve into a question about the agent's motives. And Ayer is then able to mount a strong case for saying that such motives function as the causes of actions. (I do not think it has yet been made clear how this form of causality is supposed to operate. But I do not wish or need for my present purposes to engage with that argument.) This still seems to leave us, however, with (4), (8), (11), (14) and perhaps (15). The explanation in all these cases, pace Ayer's apparent confusion between motives and intentions, does seem to take the form of a redescription which directs us not primarily to the agent's motives but rather to his intentions in performing the given action of drinking the glass of wine. It does seem possible, that is, at least in these cases, to arrive at a reason for the agent's action by recovering the unique illocutionary redescription of the action itself, in terms of which the agent's performance of it can be shown non-naturally to mean something. It follows, even in these non- linguistic types of case, that an understanding of what the agent may have intended in performing his given action can still serve as a mode of ex- plaining why that particular action was performed, even when the action itself consists only of going through certain appropriate physical movements.

As a final caution, it is perhaps worth distinguishing the claim I have now sought to argue from two further claims which are current in the philosophy of action. First, it does not follow from the claim I have made about the meaning of actions that what " distinguishes a mere bodily move- ment from an action " is " the meaning of that movement ".22 I have rather sought to argue that it is in part because, in the required sense, it often does not make sense to ask for the meaning of an action, that, when it does, the recovery of this meaning can sometimes constitute a mode of explanation of the action. And secondly, it does not follow from my em- phasis on recovering the intentions of individual agents that the explanation of action should essentially be treated as an ad hoc enterprise in contrast with law-like causal explanations.23 If there were any interesting contrast to be drawn at this point (I do not think there is) it might rather be argued that it is the nomological mode of explanation which contains something more like an ad hoc element. For it is undoubtedly possible, and often

22May Brodbeck, " Meaning and Action ", Philosophy of Science 30 (1963), p. 309. 23This contrast is urged in A. R. Louch, Explanation and Human Action (Oxford,

1966), pp. 3-5 and passim.

ON PERFORMING AND EXPLAINING LINGUISTIC ACTIONS 19

necessary, to provide causal explanations without being in a position to state the relevant covering laws. But it is hard to see how the citation of an agent's intentions in acting can be explanatory unless the agent's be- haviour appears to be of a recognizable, classifiable character: not neces- sarily rule-governed, but necessarily conventional at least in the sense of suggesting comparisons and possible inferences about the way in which the agent might himself be able to characterize and account for why he was doing what he was doing.

I am not concerned here with the further question of the determinants of the distinction I have now sought to draw, within the class of voluntary actions, between those which do and those which do not possess this element of what might be called institutional significance. My concern so far has only been to establish the significance of the claim that there is such a distinction to be drawn. And if this claim has by now been sufficiently made out, and the possible objections to it sufficiently met, my final concern will now be to trace out two ways in which I believe my thesis has application in the current debate about the explanation of action.

The first application arises in connection with certain current doctrines about the relations between redescribing and explaining actions. It is some- times claimed (as Ayer puts it, p. 16) that " merely to redescribe a pheno- menon is in no way to account for it ". Against this type of claim, however, I have now sought to argue that for at least one class of actions there can be a unique form of redescription which, by recovering the illocutionary force of the action, is thereby capable of serving as a mode of explanation. It is also claimed that even if redescriptions can be explanatory, this can only be because they enter into causal explanations. Thus it is said (for example by Davidson, p. 692) that "we can't infer, from the fact that giving reasons merely redescribes the action and that causes are separate from effects, that therefore reasons are not causes ". It is even said that the relation between a convention and an action must be regarded as causal when the one is cited to explain the other. " The only way " (as Ayer for example puts it, pp. 22-3) " in which the social context enters the reckon- ing " is as part of the agent's motivation. There is thus said to be nothing in the claim that " actions need to be understood in terms of their social contexts " from which it " follows that the performance of the action is not causally explicable ". Against these types of claim, however, I have now sought to argue that there can be a unique form of illocutionary redescription which recovers what an agent in acting may non-naturally have meant, and which is thus capable of giving an explanation by giving the agent's reason for acting, but which does not consist of recovering anything that could be regarded as a cause of which the action was an effect.

This first application of my thesis, moreover, can readily be corroborated for the case of ordinary physical actions as well as linguistic actions. Con- sider, for example, item (4) on Ayer's list of possible explanations for the

20 QUENTIN SKINNER

agent drinking the glass of wine : that it could be a manifestation of loyalty. On the one hand, it may be that an understanding of the desire or other affective state which may have prompted the agent to want to swear loyalty is assimilable to an understanding of the cause of which his drinking the glass of wine was the effect. On the other hand, such an understanding seems quite separate from an understanding of the fact that the agent may already have meant to swear loyalty (rather, say, than to seal a bargain) simply in drinking the glass of wine, just as the policeman in my basic example meant to warn the skater simply in uttering his given utterance. And while the first of these forms of explanation may be, the second cannot be, assimilable to a causal model. For while the citation of the agent's desire or motive may plausibly be regarded as equivalent to citing a causal condition necessary and sufficient to bring about the resulting action, the citation of the agent's intention in acting is equivalent to citing the non- natural meaning of the action itself, and is thus a matter of citing a feature -not a condition-of the given action.

The second application of my thesis concerns the current doctrines about the relations between motives and intentions in the explanation of actions. If an illocutionary redescription can serve as a mode of explanation, but merely by citing the agent's intention (not his motive) in performing his given action, then it is arguable that the relations between motives, inten- tions and actions must have been mis-stated both by those philosophers who have wished to assert and by those who have wished to deny that intentions must function as causes of actions. Those who have sought to insist on the " internal " or logical relations between all affective states and actions have sometimes based their case, as for example Melden seems to do, on a misdescription of the agent's motives for action. The citation of a motive is treated as the means of " giving a fuller characterization of the action ".24 Here the concept of a motive seems to be mistakenly assimilated to the agent's intentions in acting. Those who have sought, on the other hand, to insist on the contingent character of all such relationships have sometimes based their case, as for example both Davidson and MacIntyre seem to do, on a misdescription of the agent's intentions in action. Here the concept of an intention in acting seems to be mistakenly assimilated to the contingent antecedent conditions for the occurrence of the given action. This conflation appears particularly clearly in Davidson's account, which first cites the claim that "a person knows his own intentions in acting infallibly ", and then argues that even if " your knowledge of your own reasons for your actions is not generally inductive ", this cannot be held to " show the knowledge is not causal ", since " you may be wrong about which motive made you do it ".25 Both sides in the debate thus seem to be com-

24A. I. Melden, op. cit., p. 88. 25Davidson, loc. cit., p. 699. My italics. For similar assimilations of intentions to

the contingent antecedents of action, see MacIntyre in op. cit., pp. 224-5 ; B. N. Flem- ing,

" On Intention ", The Philosophical Review 73 (1964), p. 320.

ON PERFORMING AND EXPLAINING LINGUISTIC ACTIONS 21

mitting the same mistake. The source of the confusion might perhaps be characterized as a failure to recognize that motives in acting, but not inten- tions in acting, imply wants. The confusion itself seems to consist, on both sides, of confusing the sense of intentionality which serves to characterize actions and their illocutionary force with such affective states of the agent as his motives, desires and generically the wants that prompt (and perhaps cause) his actions. It certainly seems strange that the same concept, that of intention, should be capable of being applied in these two quite different ways. My sole concern, however, has been to try to consider the significance rather than the undoubted curiosity of this fact.

It will be clear by now that my thesis occupies a middle ground which has, I think, been generally overlooked in current discussions about the

explanation of action. Those philosophers who have (correctly, I believe) emphasized the importance of intentions and conventions in the study of

voluntary human action often write as though it follows that the attempt to apply causal models to such actions must be a confusion, even a "per- nicious confusion "; that it must in any case be " wholly irrelevant "; and that the whole vocabulary of causality ought accordingly to be " expunged " from the discussion of voluntary action, on the grounds that " no non-

teleological account is valid " in " the account of our behaviour implicit in our ordinary language ".26 Conversely, those philosophers who have insisted (again correctly, I believe) on the impossibility of such an exclusion often write (as I have indicated in the case of Ayer, Davidson and others) as

though it follows that intentions and conventions must necessarily be treated as causes of action. I have sought to argue that neither of these implications follows, and that both are in fact mistaken. To accept that actions may be causally explained, which I have not sought to deny, does not entail

accepting that every successful explanation of an action must be causal in form; but to insist that there can be valid non-causal explanations of actions, in the way I have sought to argue the case, does not entail saying anything to conflict with an ultimate belief in a neuro-physiologically based determinism.

Christ's College, Cambridge.

26For these four claims, see respectively Louch, op. cit., p. 238; A. I. Melden, op. cit., p. 184; Raziel Abelson, " Because I Want To ", Mind 74 (1965), p. 541; Charles Taylor, The Explanation of Behaviour (London, 1964), p. 54.