76 Some Schools of Social Theory and Philosophy in whlch struggles, or exploitative *>«*^£ ^ the distribution of scarce resources is not made clear. Fourth, Habermas's appeal to psychoanalyse as of theory and practice for the social sciences as a whole has a definite attractiveness, because it seems to embody each of the features to which he draws attention: the mediation of interpretation' by 'explanation', involving the aim of furthering the rational autonomy of the analysand through dialogue with the analyst Yet there are obvious difficulties with this, which Habermas has acknowledged.60 Psychoanalysis seems a rather poor model for critical theory, since the relation between analyst and patient is after all a markedly skewed and even authoritarian one; once more, however, Habermas uses only an 'idealized' version of it. More relevant here is that psychoanalytic therapy is an encounter between individual persons, entered into voluntarily, in which hermeneutic and nomological analysis appear only in the form of uncovering hidden motives. Important as this may be, it give us little clue as to how to connect the explication of human action with the structural properties of social institutions. I do not want to claim that the discussion offered in the preceding sections is exhaustive: I wish to use it only as a backdrop against which to develop the format of the rest of this study. Among the important issues raised by the various traditions or schools of thought I have examined, but not adequately resolved by any one of them, are the following: problems of agency and the characterization of action; problems of communication and hermeneutic analysis; problems of the explanation of action within the framework of sociological method. The remainder of the book is concerned with their further explication. 2 Agency, Act-identifications and Communicative Intent A great deal of writing by British and American philosophers, often strongly influenced by the work of the later Wittgenstein even where critical of it, has been concerned with the 'philo sophy of action' In spite of the voluminous character of this literature, its yield has been rather slight. As treated by Anglo-American authors, the 'philosophy of action' mostly shares the limitations of post-Wittgensteinian philosophy as a whole, even where the writers in question are not close disciples of Wittgenstein and substantially diverge from at least certain of his views: in particular a lack of concern with social structure, with institutional development and change. This gap is more than a legitimate division of labour between philosophers and social scientists; it is a weakness that rifts deep into philosophical analyses of the character of human agency. A more immediate reason, however, for the confusing nature of the recent literature in the philosophy of action is a failure to separate out various issues which need clearly to be distinguished from one another. These are: the formulation of the concept of action or agency; the connections between the concept of action and that of intention or purpose; the characterization (identification) of types of act; the significance of reasons and motives in relation to agency; and the nature of communicative acts. 78 Agency, Act-identifications, Communicative Intent Problems of agency It is clear that laypeople, in the course of their day-to-day lives, constantly refer to, or make use of, notions of agency in some way or another - although it is important to emphasize that only in certain instances or contexts (for example, in courts of law) are they likely to be able to give, or be interested in giving, accounts of why or how they do so in abstract terms. People regularly decide about 'responsibility' for outcomes, and monitor their conduct accordingly, as well as basing their responses upon accounts/justifications/excuses offered by others. A different assessment of, and reaction to, a person's conduct is deemed appropriate where someone 'couldn't help' what happened from where he or she 'could help' it. A person who falls ill, for example, may successfully make claims upon others for unusual solicitude, and take time off from ordinary duties. Falling ill is recognized as something which cannot be helped (in Western culture at least, although not universally). But different responses are appropriate if the individual is adjudged to be not really ill', or merely 'feigning' illness in order to receive the sympathy of others or to escape from rightful responsibilities. That the boundary line between these is not clear-cut is shown by the ambiguous character of hypochondria, which may be regarded by some as something a person can help, and byotnen as something for which she or he is not to be held responsible, in so far as they regard 'hypochondria' as a medical syndrome doctors may Qf course draw different dividing lines from those accepted by others. Such ambiguities or blurrings between conduct for which agents are deemed responsible, and hence as Potentially open to bej asked for justifications, and that ^cognized as 'out of their hands' sustain various forms of manoeuvre or ^ either seek to escape sanctions upon what they do, or conversely claim a particular icome as an accomplishment of their own. In legal theory, a person m 5e treated as responsible for an act, even though that individual did not realize what he or she Z* VT, °r mean to contravene any law. The person is regarded culpable if lt is adjudged that he or she 'should have known', as a citizen ACt~identifications' Communicative intent 79 haPPen that the ner^ ^ did Was ille§al- °f course>il maY unction altogether § lgnorance all°ws him or her to escape Punishment (where' frf Pr°Cures a reduction in the individual a Potion to know 'wh mStance' he or she is held not to be in ~ lf he or she is h; any comPetent person should know' ^certainly, is a visito??08^ aS 'mentally ®\ or, rather more be ^miliar with its law \ i COUntrv' and cannot be expected to a formalization of ev h this resPect> leSal theory represents 'gnorant of a giVen peryday Practice, where avowals that one is sanly allow escape fr>nsequence of one's doings will not neces-that everyone is some- to imply that it is mechanical, something tna FQf behaviour in one; and it is simply mistaken to describe a p ^ Qr does. this way if it is something that someone 'maK ^ drop the One can see from this, I think, that we would &r the pr0per contrast between actions and movements al g ^e tne person, unit of reference for an analysis of action has ^ ^ Tf we the acting self. There is a further matter reia ^ suppose that use the terminology of 'movements' we ten ^ observation descriptions couched in such a form represen ^ ^ That is language in a way in which 'action descriptio ^&metlts can be to say, we tend to presume that, while m actions involve directly observed and described, descriptions example, further processes, inference or 'interpretatio ^ ^ there 'interpreting the movement in the light ot a . observe really is no basis for such a presumption. ^ ^voluntary') actions just as immediately as we observ ^ ^ ,s taken movements; each equally involves 'interpretsti * ^ be cOUched to mean that descriptions of what is observed n ofetical terms, in expressions which presuppose (divergent) the ^ have sup. An extraordinarily large number of PniloS°P centred upon posed that the concept of action is essentially behaviour'. that of intention: that it must refer to 'Purp°S regard of the Such a presumption appears in two guises: (1) 1 ^ cnarac-concept of action generically; (2) in regard scrutiny, tenzation of types of act. But neither view witnsi ^ the As far as (1) is concerned, it is enough to p°in theref0re notion of intention logically implies that of action, a q{ ^ presupposes it, rather than vice versa. As an insu ^ phenomenological theme of intentionality, one can an actor cannot 'intend'; she or he has to intend to ^ thing. Moreover, of course, as everybody admits, there things that people do, that are brought about tnroug Agency, Act-identifications, Communicative Intent 81 agency, which they do not do intentionally. The case of act-identifications I shall discuss in more detail subsequently, shall just categorically assert here that the characterization n action-types is no more logically derivable from intention in ^ the notion of action as such. However, we must be car separate the question of the general character of ag^yout by that of the characterization of types of act; this is Pointe hUo. Schutz, but is ignored in most Anglo-Saxon wntings m ^ougJj sophy of action. Action is a continuous flow of ive ^ ces, experience'; its categorization into discrete sectors ^ or the depends upon a reflexive process of attention of the a ' ef j regard of another. Although in the first part ot tn* £rth j have not bothered to follow a strict differentiation, ^ as shall refer to identified 'elements' or 'segments { shall acts, distinguishing these from 'action' or 'agency , everyday use to refer generically to the lived-through Pr°ces* crops Up conduct. The idea that there are 'basic actions , Wmistake whicn in various forms in the philosophical literature, is a ^ ^ acts derives from not observing a distinction between a^\zation 0f an To talk of 'raising one's arm' is as much a catego another resi-act as to talk of 'performing a blessing'; here ^^ovement'.2 due of the misleading opposition of action with acrua/ or I shall define action or agency as the strem ^ (he contemplated causal interventions of c°W°r notion of agency ongoing process of events-in-the-world. Theand when speaking connects directly with the concept of PraXl^human practices, as of regularized types of act I shall talk ot ^ analyticai to the an ongoing series of 'practical activities • ^ ^ied otherwise concept of agency: (1) that a person 'couiaj m of events-in-and (2) that the world as constituted by a ^ QUt a pre-process independent of the agent d(fs done otherwise is determined future. The sense of 'could m ^ aspects ot it manifestly a difficult and controversial o ^ ^ But it * will be explored in various sections ^ had no choice , evidently not on a par with the usual locu tconstraint» or obh-etc, and therefore with Durkheim s soeim ^ ^ ocCupatlon to gation'. A man who is obliged by the du ^ same situation stay in his office on a sunny day is no ^ bfoken both as one who is obliged to stay in his 82 Agency, Act-identifications, Communicative Intent his legs. The same goes for forbearance, which involves the contemplation of a possible course of action - that which is refrained from. But there is one significant difference. While an ongoing stream of activity may, and very frequently does, involve reflexive anticipation of future courses of action, this is not necessary to the concept of action itself. Forbearance does, however, presuppose cognitive awareness of possible courses of action: it is not the same as simply 'not doing' things one could have done. Intentions and projects • r lent terms, although I shall use 'intention' and 'purpose' as equiva_ between them. everyday English usage recognizes distmc ^ ^ whouy inten-'Purpose' in such usage, unlike 'intention , 1 . of a person tional term in the phenomenological sense- se> seems to be acting 'with purpose', or 'purposefully • V ^hich intention related to 'resolve' or 'determination' in away tQ refer to is not, implying that we tend to use the form confined to day-longer-term ambitions, while intention is m ject' to refer to-day practices.3 I shall, however, use the_ te ^ bQoky to such ambitions (for example, that of wnting ^ h&ve donCi It is mistaken to presume, as some pniios ^ ive Gf which that only those types of act can be called p ^ everyday actors themselves tend to ask for eXPlanat,1(^hat since we do not lives. Thus it has sometimes been claimed l ^ for example, usually ask someone to say what her intentio ^ ^ said t0 be in putting salt on her dinner, such behaviour c ^q such an intentional. Yet we might very well be inC*ine,cUlTl powder; and enquiry were she sprinkling her meal with ta is unfamiliar, someone from another culture, where the cus ,g Tf we might ask what the purpose of putting salt on ^ because it are not inclined to ask about it, this is certain y ^ ^ already makes no sense to pose such a question, but bee ^ most know, or assume that we know, what her purpos ' rf be mundane forms of day-to-day conduct can ^therwise it called intentional. It is important to stress this, sine conduct might be tempting to suppose that routine or naDi Agency, Act-identifications, Communicative Intent 83 intention PUrposive (as Weber tended to do). However, neither "-mind orjr pr°JeCtS should be equated with consciously held-aware of an 7 towards a goal - as if an actor must be stream of act?"1 l°r She is seeking to a"ain. Most of the reflective in this °h Constitutes everyday conduct is pre-'knowledge' I sn- v^a^' PurPose does, however, presuppose which theavS, hne as 'intentional' or 'purposive' any act Particular qmiitv S (belie^s) can be expected to manifest a macle me of by th °UtCOme' and in which this knowledge is outcome. Note h °rder to Prodllce this clliality or a Problem to b °WeVer' that tnis presupposes a resolution of identification* 6 approached later: that of the nature of act- uations. Some further points: 1 For of f™1"? t0 be PurPOsive, agents do not have to be capable ormulatlng the knowled . as an abstract pro- position, nor does it have to be the case that such 'know-jeage is valid. thinV°Sf 'S certainly not limited to human action. I do not Ztu TinX °r aPP^Priate to hold that the concept can be anirl i'k l° C°Ver a^ sort Of homeostatic system. But much nimal behaviour is purposive according to the conceptualization I have made. . Tn^°Se ?annot be adequately defined as some (for example, Touhnin) have suggested as dependent upon the «P£^ « yarned procedures'* While it is true that all P»gS **tact. as I use the term, involves learned (knowledge that is applied to secure outcomes), there f*° responses, such as conditioned reflexes, which learned but not purposive. The dislocation of purpose from agency can be showni" two ways: that agents may achieve their intentions what tnj fended to do, but not through their agency; and thaw ^ ^ tional acts characteristically bring about whole ^ as consequences, which are quite legitimately toDei » ^em. doings of the actors but were not actually intena ' in_ The first case is of little interest: it merely ™^en tended outcome came about through some fortunate, u 84 Agency, Act-identifications, Communicative Intent tecondT thr°Ugh the interven^n of the agent as such. The Si T^' 1S °f great ^cance to social theory, ous forms O C°Knsecíuences of intended acts' may take vari-and iiwMiiH a u u the intended occurrence is not achieved, or outcoml behavlour of *e actor produces another outcome, iedge' annl d C°me about either because the 'know" come that k ^ t means' is erroneous or irrelevant to the out-circumstan1S SOl!5ht' or because he or she is mistaken about the Another?" *** taken t0 cal1 for the use of that 'means' brings about 6 the acnievement of what was intended also switches o^the h!k?! °L °ther consequences. A person who a prowler5 Al * muminate the room perhaps also alerts although not - Grtmě the ProwIer is something the person did, Predominate .8 she tended to do. The examples which called the 'a^ PhlIosopriicaI literature of what has also been N°tice that ^°rdlon teffecť of action are of this simple kind, trary one (if by which I mean the inter-may be relevant to^8 °f different purposes or projects. An act undertaking if a 3 number of intentions which the actor has in modes of activity T?ect embodies a whole range of intentional [s an act which re\T W?tině of a sentence on a sheet of paper book. lates also directly to the project of writing a rThe ^^ation of acts 11 is generally accented u such conduct has W • m°St students of human conduct that which occurrences TT***'* or is 'meaningful', in a way in formulation of this sort .I1natUral world are not. But a crude natural world is meaning?, SUffice" For i{ is evident that the 8 ul to us - and not just those aspects of Agency, Act-identifications, Communicative Intent 85 nature which have been materially transformed and 'humanized'. We seek, and normally manage, to render the natural world 'intelligible' just as we do the social world - indeed, in Western culture the grounding of this intelligibility rests precisely upon the 'inanimate' character of nature, as determined by the operation of impersonal forces. It is often supposed that there is some kind of radical break between what is demanded in questions which ask for a clarification of the intelligibility of a happening and what is required in questions which ask for an explanatory, particularly a causal, account of that happening. And obviously there are differences. But they are not as clear-cut as one might be led to believe. To answer a question such as 'What was that sudden flash of light?' with the 'meaning' of the phenomenon - 'sheet lightning' - is at the same time to locate it within a scheme of likely aetiological accounts. The identification of the event as 'the occurrence of sheet lightning' takes for granted at least a rudimentary understanding of a relevant causal backdrop - one of a different sort to that presupposed by an answer like 'A message from the Great Spirit'. The frames of meaning whereby we make sense of events are never purely 'descriptive', but are closely interwoven with more thoroughgoing explanatory schemes, and the one cannot be cleanly prised loose from the other: the intelligibility of such descriptions depends upon these assumed links. The intelligibility of nature and natural events is accomplished by the construction and sustaining of frames of meaning from which the interpretative schemes whereby everyday experience is assimilated ana 'handled' are derived. This is true of both laypeople and scientists; although in each case it would be a seno u.error to exaggerate the internal unity of such ^ames (cf. be ow pp. 149ff). The understanding of descriptions l^^^tS" gent frames of meaning - their mediation - in regard to the natural world is already a hermeneutic problem. The difference between the social and natural world is that the latter does not constitute itself as 'meaningful': the meanings it has are produced by human beings in the course of their practical life and as a consequence of their endeavours to understand or explain it for themselves. Social life - of which these endeavours are a part - on the other hand, is produced by its 86 Agency, Act-identifications, Communicative Intent component actors precisely in terms of their active constitution and reconstitution of frames of meaning whereby they organize their experience.6 The conceptual schemes of the social sciences therefore express a double hermeneutic, relating both to entering and grasping the frames of meaning involved in the production of social life by lay actors, and to reconstituting these within the new frames of meaning involved in technical conceptual schemes. I shall deal with some of the complicated issues raised by this at various later points in the book. But it is worthwhile pointing out at this juncture that the double hermeneutic of the social sciences places them in a quite different position to that of natural science in one basic respect. The concepts and theories produced in the natural sciences quite regularly filter into lay discourse and become appropriated as elements of everyday frames of reference. But this is of no relevance, of course, to the world of nature itself; whereas the appropriation of technical concepts and theories invented by social scientists can turn them into constituting elements of that very 'subject-matter' they were coined to characterize, and by that token alter the context of their application. This relation of reciprocity between common sense and technical theory is a peculiar, but eminently interesting feature of social investigation. The problem of the characterization of action-types immediately comes up against the difficulties posed by the double hermeneutic, and hence I shall first of all concentrate mainly upon he identification of acts within everyday conceptual frames, turning later (in the last chapter) to the relation between these and the technical concepts of social science. Uueries which prompt identifications of the meaning of events in nature, whether among lay observers or among scientists, are not of a unitary kind: that which is being asked for in the question What is happening?' is relative to, first, the interests that stimulate the enquiry, and, second, the level or type of knowledge already possessed by the enquirer (cf. Wittgenstein on ostensive definitions). The object or event exists or happens; out the characterization of it demanded in a query (it is not important here whether this is a question asked of another or ot oneself) is dependent upon the above two considerations. 1 he called-for answer to the question 'What have you got there?' Agency, Act-identifications, Communicative Intent 87 may be, in some circumstances, 'A book'; in another context it may be The new book by X'; or 'An object of a certain and definite mass'. All might be true characterizations, but there is no single one which is simply correct, the others being mistaken: it all depends upon the circumstances in which the query comes about. The same thing holds in regard to queries oriented to identifications of human acts rather than of natural occurrences or objects. No end of trouble has been brought about by the tendency of philosophers to presume that the question 'What is X doing?' has a unitary answer; or that all answers to it must have a similar logical form. (In this respect it is definitely not the same as the question 'What is X intending to do?') For it soon becomes apparent that there are many possible responses to such a question: someone may be said to be 'bringing down a metal implement on wood', 'chopping logs', 'doing his job', 'having fun', etc. Since all of these are act-identifications, the philosopher then either looks for what they all have in common, or seeks to show that only some are 'correct' or 'valid' act-identifications and the others are not.7 Yet all of these characterizations can be quite correct descriptions of what is going on - although, depending upon the context in which the query is formulated, only certain of them will be ^Ppropnate. Picking up which is precisely one of the subtle skills which lay actors master as a routine characteristic of ^f»*^™£ and active production of, everyday interaction (and which tney are able to manipulate to produce humour, irony, etc.). It is evident that assumptions about purposiveness are as deeply intertwined with our characterizations ot acts as belieis about the causal features of impersonal forces are with our characterizations of natural events. Nevertheless, only a fairly restricted class of act-identifications logically presupposes that the type of doing must be intentional - such as suicide . Most acts do not have this feature, that they canno be done unintentionally. Of course, enquiries into an agent i conduct which seek not merely to characterize it inte hgibly but to penetrate to the individual's 'reasons' or 'motives for what he or she does, certainly have to involve deciding what he or she was intending to do. 88 Agency, Act-identifications, Communicative Intent The rationalization of action Ordinary English usage tends to elide distinctions between 'what-' and 'why-questions1. One might, in the appropriate context, ask either 'Why did that light suddenly flash across the sky?' or 'What was that sudden flash of light across the sky?' as equivalent sorts of enquiry; the answer 'It was sheet lightning' could be an acceptable one in either case. Similarly, act-identifications often serve as adequate responses to why-questions referring to human conduct. A person unfamiliar with British military procedure, seeing a soldier stiffly raising his hand to his forehead, might ask either 'What is he doing?1 or 'Why is he doing that?'; to be informed that this is the mode of saluting in the British army might be enough to clarify the puzzle - that is to say, supposing the person were already familiar enough with what 'armies', 'soldiers', etc are Distinctions between 'purposes', 'reasons' and 'motives' are also tuzzy in everyday discourse; these terms are quite often interchangeable. 'What was her purpose in doing that?' can be equivalent to 'What was her reason for doing that?' or 'What was her motive for doing that?' Most of those who have written Zftt If1 °SOPuy °f action are interested in arriving at clearer ditterentiabons between these concepts than those recognized in cSfd? T* Ut the distinctions they have made by no means tho^l the less' some such distinctions are necessary; nose propose to set out here develop the definition of inten- conduct invT" uhiGh 1 have alreadV established. Purposive a virtu , i thC nation of 'knowledge' so as to produce know Id J Tl°me °r Series of outcomes To be sure, this is WhlCh ,S But specification of which of an what tJZ ® mtentional necessarily involves establishing Tre AntParreterS °f the knowledge which she or he applies I, °m, e.xPre**s this by saying that what is intentional m v knl fCSCnptl°n' is not intentional under another. A man may know, tor example, that he is sawing a plank, but not that he is sawing Smith's plank.* Since it is analytical to the concept Of an intended act that the agent 'knows' what he is doing, he cannot in this circumstance be said intentionally to have sawn Agency, Act-identifications, Communicative Intent 89 Smith's plank, even though he definitely did saw the plank on purpose and the plank was indeed Smith's. This is so even if the actor had temporarily forgotten the plank belonged to Smith at the time he was sawing it, and remembered afterwards. Human beings can provide us, directly or inadvertently, through what they say, with more or less clear-cut boundaries between which of their doings may be correctly called purposive, and which not; it is much more difficult to know where to draw such boundaries in the case of animal behaviour, where what 'knowledge' the animal applies has to be inferred. The terms 'intention' and 'purpose' as such are rather misleading, or can easily become so, since they imply that the flux of the actor's life-activity can be clearly cut up into strings of intended outcomes. Only in rare circumstances does a person have a clear-cut 'end' in mind which organizes the energies unequivocally in one direction - for example, when the individual is set on winning a competitive game which, while he or she is playing it, completely absorbs the attention. In this sense the adjectives 'intentional' and 'purposive' are more accurate than their noun-forms. The purposive content of everyday action consists in the continual successful 'monitoring' by the actor of her or his own activity; it is indicative of a casual mastery of the course of day-to-day events that actors normally take for granted. To enquire into an actor's purposes for what he or she does is to enquire into in what ways, or from what aspects, the person is monitoring his or her involvement in the course of events in question. One's life-activity does not consist of a strung-out series of discrete purposes and projects, but of a continuing stream of purposive activity in interaction with others and with the world of nature; a 'purposive act', like act-identifications more generally, is only grasped reflexively by the actor, or isolated conceptually by another agent. It is in these terms that what I have referred to as the 'hierarchy of purposes has to be understood; human agents are able to monitor their activities as various concurrent flows, most of which (as Schutz says) are 'held in stasis' at any point in time, but which the actor is 'aware' of, in the sense that he or she can recall them to mind as relevant to a particular event or situation that crops up. What holds for 'intentions' and 'purposes' also applies to 90 Agency, Act-identifications, Communicative Intent 'reasons'; that is, it is really appropriate to speak of the rationalization of action against the background of the agents' reflexive monitoring of their conduct. To ask for the reason for an act is to cut conceptually into the flow of action, which no more involves a strung-out series of discrete 'reasons' than it does such a series of 'intentions'. I have argued that purposive conduct may be usefully thought of as the application of 'knowledge' to secure certain outcomes, events or qualities. To enquire into the rationalization of such conduct, I shall say, is to enquire into (1) the logical connection between various forms of purposive act, or projects, and (2) the 'technical grounding' of the knowledge that is applied as 'means' in purposive acts to secure particular outcomes. In spite of the overlap between the notions of 'purpose' and 'reason' in everyday usage, it is useful to separate out, in sociological analysis, various layers of enquiry which lay actors make into each other's activities. Where an actor's behaviour, 'what he is doing', is puzzling, another will first of all seek to make his behaviour intelligible by characterizing it meaningfully. However, she may be satisfied that she knows what the other is doing and wish to ask what his purpose was in doing it, or if he aid what he did intentionally at all (which may alter her initial characterization of the act, particularly where she is concerned 3,attri uti°n of moral responsibility: then 'killing' may deenrihmUr.der,)- But she may wish to penetrate still more mean, « I" * the ending' of what the actor did, which ^Ztt^Z^ ft" to**** °»d *° empldcal .R m°mtoring of his activities, actioni™5' hence be defined as grounded principles of of their , ? agems 'keeP in tonch with' as a routine element an ex lot rX'Ve monito™g <* their behaviour. Let me offer umbreTaMs 7 **** (cf' PP- 34-5): "putting up an Til™ 1 m uraCterization of ^ act; a person's intention in rivenhi '8 bC eXpressed as 't» keep dry'; and the reason obiect hli k 'ng aS the awareness that a suitably shaped KJ?*" the head will keep the rain off. A 'principle 1- ,ns 1 C°nStitu,es an explanation of why a particular means ,s the correct', ■proper' or 'appropriate' one to achieve a given outcome, as specified by a particular act-identification. Agency, Act-identifications, Communicative Intent 91 Expectation of the rationalization of 'technical effectiveness' in the reflexive monitoring of conduct is complemented by the expectation of logical consistency within what I have previously referred to as 'hierarchies of purpose': this is an integral feature of the rationality of action, because what is an 'end' (purpose) in relation to one act-identification may also be a 'means' within a broader project. In everyday life, agents' reasons, whether proffered directly or inferred by others, are clearly adjudged as 'adequate' in relation to the accepted parameters of common sense - of what is conventionally accepted in particular defined contexts of action. Are reasons causes? This is one of the most hotly debated issues in the philosophy of action. Those who say reasons are not causes argue that the relation between reason and agency is a 'conceptual' one. There is no way, they claim, of describing what reasons are without referring to the conduct which they rationalize; since there are not two independent sets of events or states - that is, 'reasons' and 'actions' - there cannot be any question of the existence of any sort of causal relation connecting them. Authors, on the other hand, who have wished to make a case for the causal potency of reasons have looked for some way to establish their separation, as events, from the behaviour to which they relate. The matter obviously depends in some substantial part upon the notion of causality; I think it would be true to say that most of the contributions to the debate have been made, explicitly or otherwise, within a framework of Humean causality. A detailed discussion of the logic of causal analysis is impossible to undertake within the confines of this study, and here I shall dogmatically assert the need for an account of agent causality, according to which causality does not presuppose 'laws' of invariant connection (if anything, the reverse is the case), but rather (1) the necessary connection between cause and effect, and (2) the idea of causal efficacy. That action is caused by an agent's reflexive monitoring of his or her intentions in relation to both wants and appreciation of the demands of the 'outer1 world, supplies a sufficient explication of freedom of conduct for the needs of this study; I do not therefore oppose freedom to causality, but rather 'agent causality' to 'event causality'. 'Determinism', in the social 92 Agency, Act-identifications, Communicative Intent hn™TS' !hen FeferS to any theoreticaJ scheme which reduces human act,on solely to 'event causality'.9 the rľŕľ that ta,k °f 'reasons' can be misleading, and that intrinsiľto Ír110" °fCOnduct is a basic feature of the monitoring beings N° &- reflexive behaviour of human actors as purposive I have de°W| ^ concePtua,ization of these matters which the nhen °Pied' purP°siveness is necessarily intentional, in tions of glCal f6"86 ~ that is' ']°gicaiIy' tied to descriP" since this r f°S1Ve ^ ~ but the rationalization of action is not, rationalizations° ^ princiPIed grounding of such acts. The agency in tv' cor,duct expresses the causal anchoring of within the on ^ pUrposes to tne conditions of their realization saying reasonf""8 °f day"r°-day Iife- Rather than simply that rationalizaľ're °T be' causes' ir ls more accurate to say the purposiveness" 7 l!^ CaUSaI exPression of the grounding of edge of the social ^ agent in self-knowledge and in knowl-ment of the actirf self' material worlds which are the environ- I shall use 'mot' • f action. The conn f l° lefer to the wants which prompt personality is a ^ct,0n of motivation to the affective elements of motives often hav * °ne' ?nd is recognized in everyday usage; these are at the saG names' ~ fear, jealousy, vanity, etc. - and emotions. Everythľ16 t™6 COmmon'y regarded as the 'names' of the awareness of th" ***** dealt WÍth SO far ÍS 'accessible' t0 formulate theoretical ^l!^" "0t in the sense that she °r he Ca" °ut in the sense that ^ °r he does what she or he doeS' her or his testimony ■ that she or he is not dissimulating, conduct is the most ^ ^ purpose and reasons for her or his source of evidence - .lmportant, if not necessarily conclusive, motivation. As I sh H lL This does not hold in the case of where actors are aw-ir fC the term' jt c°vers both instances behaviour is influejľ& *| heir wants, and also those where their consciousness; since F by sources riot accessible to their hood that the revealin f' WC haVe to reckon with the likeli-by the agent. The'not theSC sources may be actively resisted that of motive; 'interest0'" °f interesi stands in close relation to or events that facilitate th** be SÍmply deíined as anľ outcomes no interests without wa t - fufilment of agents' wants. There are n s. but since people are not necessarily Agency, Act-identifications, Communicative Intent 93 aware of their motives for acting in a particular way, they are not necessarily aware of what, in any given situation, their interests are either. Neither, of course, do individuals inevitably act in accordance with their interests. Further, it would be wrong to suppose that intentions are always convergent with wants: a person may intend to do, and do, things which he or she does not want to do; and may want things that he or she does not intend to instigate any course of action to attain.10 Meaning and communicative intent So far, I have been concerned only with problems of the 'meaning' of doings. When, in ordinary English usage, we refer to purposiveness we often talk about what a person 'means to do'; just as, in reference to utterances, we talk about what he or she 'means to say'. From this it would seem to be but a short step to the proposition, or the assumption, that to 'mean something' in doing is the same as to 'mean something' in saying. Here Austin's notions of illocutionary acts and illocutionary forces have done perhaps as much harm as good. Austin was struck by the fact that to say something is not always simply to state something. The utterance, 'With this ring I thee wed', is not a description of an action, but the very action (of marrying) itself. If, in such instances, to mean something in saying is ipso facto to mean something in doing, it would seem as though there is a single and sovereign form of meaning which does not necessitate making any differentiation between doing something and saying something. But this is not so. For virtually all utterances, with the exception of involuntary exclamations, cries of pain or ecstasy, have a communicative character. Some sorts of verbal communication, including ritual utterances such as 'With this ring I thee wed', are proclamatory in form, but this does not affect the point. In such cases the utterance is both a 'meaningful act' in itself, and is at the same time a mode of communicating a message or a meaning to others: the meaning in this case being perhaps something of the order 'the union of marriage is hereby sealed and made binding', as understood by the marital pair and others present on the scene. 94 Agency, Act-identif,cat,ons r The mp, • ' Communicative Intent ,ne meaning of urte have one) can thus ,1^™ as communicative ac communicative acts' (if they Pie be di acts- A communicative acT; * - ation of action as Particular one of an actor's purJZ IT,Whkb an actor's Pl*P™> °r 2 °" '"formation to the achievement of pass- corn '° be solely o 'Ch ',nformation', of course, does ■npt.sed wjthin an a prepositional sort, but can be an act " * ^^wTn °* influe»ce others <° so Tr? ~ l°methmg which JUSt as utterance may be both btemT?in8 Wh'^ is dl - and a Communicative act', imnrpcc/ 6fforts ^at act" may a,so have communicative S °nf °n others fro! ,? make to create specific sorts of Goffman TQ °W a* wen « ?UCS Whicn they e"Sineer their c^ * " *e writings of Erving again this dn Un,Cati°n with th Panng and contrasting such many other f not det'act frn ? c°nveyed in utterances. But ^nse. There i"mS °f acti«n are « ? P°,nt: Ch°Pp,ng W°°d' Md whal someon SUm> a diff communicative acts in this (including mat; 'S doin8 When**!1106 between making sense of ma^g senTe"oft ^ Frances" °F he ^presented by a^ Grice> Sear,e and concentration on Lgenstem's \<2 °,der theories of meanly had som i^entai ^ and by Austin's 00016 Conseque^s0fwords, has undoubt- • 'here is an obvious Agency, Act-identifications, Communicative Intent 95 convergence between recent work in the philosophy of language and the ideas developed by Chomsky and his followers on transformational grammars. Both see language-use as a skilled and creative performance. But in some philosophical writings the reaction against the assumption that all utterances have some form of propositional content has led to an equally exaggerated emphasis in which 'meaning' comes to be regarded as exhausted by communicative intent. In concluding this section, I want now to show that the work of the authors mentioned at the beginning of the previous paragraph leads us back to considerations given great prominence by Schutz and Garfinkel: the role of 'common-sense understandings', or what I shall later refer to as taken-for-granted mutual knowledge, in human social interaction. The most influential analysis of meaning as communicative intent ('non-natural meaning') is that given by Grice. In his original formulation, Grice put forward the view that the statement that an actor S 'meant so-and-so by X' is usually expressible as 'S intended the utterance X to produce an effect upon another or others by means of their recognizing this to be his intention'. But this will not do as it stands, he later pointed out, because it may include cases which would not be examples of (non-natural) meaning. A person may discover that whenever he or she makes a certain sort of exclamation another collapses in agony, and once having made the discovery, intentionally repeats the effect; if, however, when the first person makes the exclamation, the other collapses, having recognized the exclamation, and with it the intention, we should not want to say that the exclamation 'meant' something. Thus Grice reaches the conclusion that the effect which S intends to produce 'must be something which in some sense is within the control of the audience, or that in some sense of "reason" the recognition of the intention behind X is for the audience a reason and not merely a cause'.11 Various ambiguities and difficulties have been exposed in this account by critics. One of these is that it seems to lead to an infinite regress, in which what S, intends to produce as an effect upon S2 depends upon Si intending S2 to recognize his or her intention to get S, to recognize his or her intention to get S2 to recognize his or her intention ... In his later discussion, Grice 96 Agency, Act-identifications, Communicative Intent claims that the possibility of such a regress creates no particular problems, since in any actual situation the refusal, or incapacity, of an actor to proceed very far along the line of regressive knowledge of intentions will impose practical limits.12 But this is not very satisfactory, since the problem of regress is a logical one; the regress can only be escaped, I think, by introducing an element that does not directly figure in Grice's own discussions. This element is precisely that of the 'common-sense understandings' possessed by actors within shared cultural milieux -or, to adopt a different terminology, what one philosopher has called 'mutual knowledge'. (He says in fact that the phenomenon has no accepted name, and that hence he has to coin one.)13 There are many things that an actor will assume or take for granted that any other competent agent will know when he addresses an utterance to her, and he will also take for granted that the other knows that he assumes this. This does not, I believe introduce another infinite regress of 'knowing that the other knows that one knows that the other knows...'- The infinite regress of 'knowing that the other knows one knows...' n?h l\u Y ln Stme8ic circumstances, such as a poker game, in which the people involved are trying to out-manoeuvre or out- ^ors°nett:m0tker: Und here * is a practical problem for the socHl J ?f/^ a l0gical one to puzzle the philosopher or know ' 'C~n-sense understanding' or mutual volve W I"™1 10 the the^y of communicative intent in-(Minl . Wh* anv ^mpetent actor can be expected to know both hetelf °"IPr°perties °f competent actors, including hrsituu! ^ i^u1' and °the^ ^ second, that the particu-"o he to who Ch aCt°r 1S at a ^en time, and the other Zamll 5 7 f UttCrance is addressed, together comprise tionTf define TC,flC type of circumstance to which the attribute v.Vw h" °f ComPctence is therefore appropriate, ine view has been strongly urged bV Grice and others, that TslTthT mtent ^ the "^Lenta. form of 'meaning', in und^ZiH* 87mg 3 Satisfactory account of it will allow us to »n «tt, r \ ^muean,n8' (what ^ actor means in making an utterance) ,s the key to explicating 'X-meaning' (what a specific mark or symbol means) " 1 want to deny that this is Agency, Act-identifications, Communicative Intent 97 so. 'X-meaning' is both sociologically and logically prior to 'S-meaning'. Sociologically prior, because the framework of symbolic capacities necessary to the very existence of most human purposes, as these are acted upon by any individual person, presupposes the existence of a linguistic structure which mediates cultural forms. Logically prior, because any account which begins from 'S-meaning' cannot explain the origin of 'common-sense understandings' or mutual knowledge, but must assume them as givens. This can be made clear by looking at certain philosophical writings that mesh fairly closely with and have similar shortcomings to, Grice's theory of meaning.15 One such account, trimmed to its essentials, runs as follows. The meaning of a word in a linguistic community depends upon the norms or conventions which prevail in that community, to the effect that 'the word is conventionally accepted to mean P'. A convention can be understood as a resolution of a coordination problem, as the latter is defined in game-theory. In a co-ordination problem, two or more people have a shared end that they wish to bring about, to do which each has to select from a series of alternative, mutually exclusive means, lne means selected have no significance in themselves save max, combined with those chosen by the other or others they serve to bring about what is mutually desired; the mutual responses o the actors are in equilibrium when there is an ^l^ce cd outcomes, regardless of what means are used suppose two groups of individuals, one of whom is used to drmng^onfoe left, the other of whom is accustomed to ^^^^ come together to form a community in a new ternto ■. The co ordination problem is that of achieving *e outcome that every one drives on the same side of the road. ThereXrevervone equilibria that represent successful outcome, where everyone drives on the right-hand side of the road, f*^™^ drives on the left, and in terms of the initial p^ lem of the co-ordination of actions, each is "J^8?"^; The significance of this is; that t ^^^^ municative ntent might be tied in vvuu j-^t^n nroblem - at least, in so tar as actors invo ved in a co-ordination promem , ,