Voluntary Action

Il saggio di Fulvia de Luise – L’involontarietà socratica del male e il macigno della responsabilità platonica. Tra il Protagora e il mito di Er – costituisce un tentativo di ricostruzione della posizione platonica sulla questione della libertà morale, attraverso i movimenti di vera e propria metamorfosi che investono la figura di Socrate nei Dialoghi. Senza proporsi di distinguere ciò che appartenne realmente a Socrate da ciò che Platone gli attribuisce, l’autrice intende porre a confronto due luoghi della rappresentazione platonica in cui il personaggio Socrate prende posizione in merito alla responsabilità individuale, con esiti apparentemente divergenti: il noto passaggio del Protagora in cui Socrate afferma che chi fa il male lo fa involontariamente, a causa dell’ignoranza; la perentoria asserzione contenuta nel mito di Er (Repubblica X), che attribuisce al soggetto umano una responsabilità assoluta nella gestione delle proprie scelte morali. Un’analisi mirata delle strategie rappresentative seguite da Platone nei due dialoghi, dove è sempre presente il filo conduttore del confronto tra Socrate e i poeti, conduce a un’ipotesi di sostanziale continuità e di perdurante socratismo tra i due contesti, in cui la validità della scelta morale resta vincolata al primato del sapere.

In this paper I argue that we may regard Wittgenstein's mature view of the will both as a rigorous adaptation of Schopenhauer's and as the continuation of his early investigations on the nature of the ethical and the psychological will. This means that Wittgenstein is fully committed to develop the consequences and to apply as a test Schopenhauer's insight that any project to capture the will by virtue of experiences and representations and to conceive it as a phenomenon among phenomena is doomed to failure. In section 1, I will introduce the issue of the will such as it appears in the Notebooks 1914-1916 and the Tractatus, and argue that some of the issues he raises regarding the relation of will and body will be continued in Philosophical Investigations, so bridging the gap between his early and his later analysis of the voluntary. In section 2, I discuss Wittgenstein's detailed critique of the model according to which the 'act of will' is a particular phenomenon that can be directly identified by the subject, review the main candidates to occupy that role, and argue why all of them are inappropriate to play it. In section 3, I clear some misunderstandings concerning Wittgenstein's positive view, analyse the constitutive elements that define a grammatical proposition, and apply the latter category to the will. In section 4, I review some of the main problems solved by the non-reductivist reading that I propose. Besides, I draw an analogy between the role played by the will in our language-games and the status of the so-called hinge-propositions. The overarching theses are that Wittgenstein's analysis of voluntary action is not a form of behaviourism, and that ignorance of the prolonged dialogue of Wittgenstein with Schopenhauer originates an aspect-blindness of sorts that deprives us of the most striking features of Wittgenstein's later view.

Dalla notte (omerica) dei tempi la nostra cultura riflette sul problema dell’attribuzione di responsabilità, le cui implicazioni in termini di consapevolezza, intenzione, libertà, costrizione, consenso, volontà sono così complesse da sfuggire a una soluzione univoca, così impegnative che ogni definizione dei termini coinvolti dà luogo a un modo diverso di intendere i soggetti umani, la loro virtù, la qualità dei loro caratteri e delle loro interazioni: cioè, in una parola, a una differente antropologia. A questa unità tematica si è ispirato un progetto di ricerca comune, tra filosofia antica e medievale, con l’obiettivo di indagare le radici e la prima elaborazione di un dibattito secolare, tutt’ora aperto e al centro della riflessione contemporanea internazionale.

A major new social, economic, political and cultural space (actually, a sector of many spaces) we can call the new commons has gradually emerged outside of markets, governments and households. It currently goes by many names and reaches far beyond the recognized and incorporated nonprofit sector to include many additional forms of voluntary assembly and organized action. This space is legally defined and is the domain of fundraising, volunteering, advocacy and other forms of collective behavior. It includes associations, groups and clubs but also constitutionally protected assembly - not only public gatherings but also parades, festivals, places like the Market in Philadelphia, and a diverse variety of forms of collective behavior including crowds, street corner societies, jazz and art 'scenes' and, of course, online and digital 'communities' and 'commons' of many types. The common thread characterizing all of these diverse activities is that they are 'new' commons - legally enabled and protected, (as opposed to the old commons of history that were traditional, customary and without legal protections, which made them highly vulnerable to 'enclosure'. These new commons include not only social but also cultural organizations including social movements, social problems and diverse other 'knowledge commons'.

These new commons have been studied under many different names in many different disciplines and research fields, but they share certain commonalities. They are legally protected and enabled. They function voluntarily on the basis of common resource pools for the achievement of common purposes. Among the effects of these new commons are the 'natural' emergence of social capital, common identity formation for participants and the formation, defense and projection of norms, values and practices.

New commons are an important component of civil society, basic to the idea of philanthropy as practicing the love of the human condition, and offer one possible pathway to future development of democratic society and culture.

This is a revised edition, now featuring Creative Commons licensing and a complete list of changes from the first edition.

'Not just a "club for girls" but "a women's movement": the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), citizenship and voluntary action in Britain during the interwar years'

The history of the women’s movement, female activism and voluntary action in the decades following the 1928 Equal Franchise Act has featured a wide variety of women’s organisations and key campaigns.  These histories include post-suffrage feminist societies, women’s sections of the established political parties, women citizens’ associations (WCAs) and working-class organisations such as the Women’s Co-operative Guild (WCG) (Caine 1992, Scott 1998 & Pugh 2000).  More recently this scholarship has expanded to include a wider variety of women’s groups, including professional societies, religious groups and mainstream voluntary women’s organisations (Andrews 1997, Moyse 2009 & Beaumont 2013).  As Kirsta Cowman has observed, the inclusion of a more diverse range of women’s organisations, some openly rejecting a traditional feminist agenda, has broadened the size and scope of the interwar women’s movement considerably (Cowman 2010).

In 1928 the YWCA welcomed the introduction of the universal suffrage by declaring that women in Britain were now entitled to the full political privileges of citizenship.  This paper will explore the way in which the YWCA, previously omitted from histories of the British women’s movement, sought to educate and inform its members about the rights and duties of democratic citizenship.  The involvement of the YWCA in citizenship education and its role in campaigning for the citizenship rights of women will be assessed, with a particular focus on the rights of women workers.  Despite its reluctance to be identified as overtly feminist, the YWCA was determined to ensure that women had access to social and economic rights within a democratic society.  The paper will conclude by arguing that the voluntary action of the YWCA on issues pertaining to women’s everyday lives in the interwar years demands that the association be recognised as part of ‘a women’s movement’.


Dr Caitríona Beaumont
London South Bank University
beaumoca@lsbu.ac.uk

Il saggio di Fulvia de Luise e Irene Zavattero - Agire responsabilmente. Aspetti di un problema dall’Antichità al Medioevo – costituisce l’introduzione al volume La volontarietà dell’azione tra l’Antichità e il Medioevo, di cui le medesime studiose sono co-curatrici. Il saggio racchiude le linee guida seguite nell’elaborazione dell’opera, ripercorrendo i concetti principali che le curatrici e i diversi autori hanno indagato per seguire la complessa evoluzione della problematica della responsabilità tra l’Antichità e il Medioevo.
Dalla notte (omerica) dei tempi la nostra cultura riflette sul problema dell’attribuzione di responsabilità, le cui implicazioni in termini di consapevolezza, intenzione, libertà, costrizione, consenso, volontà sono così complesse da sfuggire a una soluzione univoca, così impegnative che ogni definizione dei termini coinvolti dà luogo a un modo diverso di intendere i soggetti umani, la loro virtù, la qualità dei loro caratteri e delle loro interazioni: cioè, in una parola, a una differente antropologia. A questa unità tematica si è ispirato un progetto di ricerca comune, tra filosofia antica e medievale, con l’obiettivo di indagare le radici e la prima elaborazione di un dibattito secolare, tutt’ora aperto e al centro della riflessione contemporanea internazionale.

It is nearly universally agreed among commentators that according to Aristotle's account of voluntary action in the Nicomachean Ethics (NE), only voluntary actions are blameworthy. I argue for a qualified rejection of this assumption: some actions that Aristotle counts as blameworthy do not meet the criteria for voluntariness set out in NE 3.1. However, in NE 3.5 and elsewhere, one finds a broader conception of voluntary action, and it is true that for Aristotle an action must be voluntary on this broader conception in order to be blameworthy. While the narrow conception only counts actions that are under the agent's direct control as voluntary, the broader conception includes also actions that are under the agent's indirect control. The compresence of these two conceptions in the NE is not simply a matter of sloppiness on Aristotle's part. Rather, he has good philosophical reasons for employing both.

When looking to identify the basic ingredients of criminal responsibility, reference is standardly made to a voluntary act requirement (VAR). We blame a defendant (D) for what she has done or (perhaps) failed to do where such doing or failing to do is proscribed by law; we do not punish mere thoughts or character. However, despite the continued appeal of the VAR in abstract principle, the precise definitions and restrictions entailed within it are not always clear, and its usefulness in preventing inappropriate criminalisation is openly (and in many cases correctly) challenged. Principally, and crucially, the VAR has received sustained attack in recent years from critics within the philosophies of action, highlighting its descriptive and normative shortcomings. It is contended that such criticism is misplaced. This article provides defence to a stripped-back definition of the VAR, distinguishing the general definition of action in philosophy from the definition of action within the criminal law, and seeking to identify and preserve a doctrinally workable model of the latter.

Resumen: El presente trabajo explora la posibilidad de obtener y defender una concepción particular de los derechos sociales a partir de la teoría del título válido de Robert Nozick. Se sostendrá que dicha teoría ofrece varios caminos hacia un Estado más que mínimo. Aquí nos detendremos en uno de ellos, que se desarrolla a partir del concepto de “voluntariedad”. Para ello, después de impugnar el concepto estrecho de voluntariedad adoptado normalmente por los filósofos libertarios, se introduce la noción de “acto mixto” de Aristóteles, que refleja las condiciones bajo las cuales los agentes de hecho contratan. Se sostendrá que la celebración de acuerdos con voluntad mixta plantea una serie de problemas a la teoría del título válido, problemas que sólo pueden ser remediados introduciendo pautas distributivas. Estas pautas deberían conducir a un Estado subsidiario y a combinar la teoría de Nozick con criterios suficientaristas de distribución en favor de los necesitados.

Abstract: This paper explores the possibility of obtaining and defending a particular conception of social rights based on Robert Nozick´s Entitlement theory. I will sustain that this theory provides several paths towards a more than minimal State. Here, I will
focus on one which was developed by applying the concept of "voluntary exchange" as a starting point. For this purpose, after questioning the narrow concept of “voluntary action” normally adopted by libertarians, we will then introduce Aristotle´s notion of
"mixed actions" which reflects the conditions under which agents in fact undertake contracts. We will argue that forging agreements based on mixed actions poses a series of problems for the entitlement theory, dilemmas that can only be remedied by introducing distributive patterns. These patterns should lead to a subsidiary State and the combination of Nozick´s theory with sufficientarist criteria regarding distribution in favor of the most needy members of society.

Can one be fooled into believing that one intended an action that one in fact did not intend? Past experimental paradigms have demonstrated that participants, when provided with false perceptual feedback about their actions, can be fooled into misperceiving the nature of their intended motor act. However, because veridical proprioceptive/perceptual feedback limits the extent to which participants can be fooled, few studies have been able to answer our question and induce the illusion to intend. In a novel paradigm addressing this question, participants were instructed to move a line on the computer screen by use of a phony brain–computer interface. Line movements were actually controlled by computer program. Demonstrating the illusion to intend, participants reported more intentions to move the line when it moved frequently than when it moved infrequently. Consistent with ideomotor theory, the finding illuminates the intimate liaisons among ideomotor processing, the sense of agency, and action production.

[Accepted at Apeiron] Plato’s ​Timaeus ​contains an argument that vice is involuntary. Here I present an interpretation of that argument and, upon doing so, relate the underlying conception of voluntariness to that found in Aristotle’s ​Eudemian Ethics​. I argue that in the ​Timaeus​, for something to be voluntary it must be caused by the agent’s intellect (​nous​) in a certain way. This idea, in turn, relies on an identification of the agent with her intellect: the reason that what is voluntary must be caused by the agent’s intellect is that what is voluntary is what is the agent herself is responsible for. The conception of the voluntary in the ​Eudemian Ethics differs less radically than one might think. There too Aristotle wishes to respect the idea that there is an important connection between what is voluntary and what is caused by our rational capacities, but he differs in how he fills out the relevant rational capacities.

In 1862 Middlesbrough was heralded by Gladstone as a ‘remarkable place, the youngest child of England’s enterprise…an infant Hercules’. In under a century the town expanded from having been a tiny hamlet with only 25 inhabitants in 1801 to one exceeding 90,000 by 1901 and approaching 140,000 thirty years later. Central to Middlesbrough’s growth was the establishment of the town’s iron industry, which went on to dictate the economic, political and social development of the town in the ensuing decades, with the town’s ironmasters sitting on the town council, providing the first Member of Parliament and gifting to the town its first public park and urban institutions.

However, the last quarter of the nineteenth century has been seen as a period that heralded a decline in participation by British urban elites in the towns and cities that housed their businesses as they withdrew from leadership in the urban sphere and adopted a more leisurely, gentrified lifestyle. Recent work has however, challenged the extent of this elite withdrawal and it is the intention of this paper to argue the period instead saw a reconfiguration of industrialist engagement with the Victorian Boom Town rather than a decline. Taking Middlesbrough as a case study, it will be shown that through leadership of voluntary organisations, patronage of company-driven initiatives and continued involvement with municipal authorities, the town’s steel magnates played a crucial role in the fabric of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century manufacturing town alongside the petite bourgeoisie and working-class organisations that emerged during this period.

Abstract: Cognitive neuroscience aspires to explain how the brain produces conscious states. Many people think this aspiration is threatened by the subjective nature of introspective reports, as well as by certain philosophical arguments. We propose that good neuroscientific explanations of conscious states can consolidate an interpretation of introspective reports, in spite of their subjective nature. This is because the relative quality of explanations can be evaluated on independent, methodological grounds. To illustrate, we ...

A major new social, economic, political and cultural space (actually, a sector of many spaces) we can call the new commons has gradually emerged outside of markets, governments and households. It currently goes by many names and reaches far beyond the recognized and incorporated nonprofit sector to include many additional forms of voluntary assembly and organized action. This space is legally defined and is the domain of fundraising, volunteering, advocacy and other forms of collective behavior. It includes associations, groups and clubs but also constitutionally protected assembly - not only public gatherings but also parades, festivals, places like the Market in Philadelphia, and a diverse variety of forms of collective behavior including crowds, street corner societies, jazz and art 'scenes' and, of course, online and digital 'communities' and 'commons' of many types. The common thread characterizing all of these diverse activities is that they are 'ne...

This article examines records and correspondence generated by patriotic societies such as the British Society of the Red Cross, the Victoria League, and the South Australian Soldiers' Fund, to understand how volunteers expressed their identity through wartime contributions. Local chapters of voluntary societies were supervised by regional, national, and even international offices, but these hierarchies were by no means rigid. Examining how the members of individual societies negotiated with directives to centralise and collectivise their efforts provides new insights into the relationship between individuals on the home front and the war overseas.

A major new social, economic, political and cultural space (actually, a sector of many spaces) we can call the new commons has gradually emerged outside of markets, governments and households. It currently goes by many names and reaches far beyond the recognized and incorporated nonprofit sector to include many additional forms of voluntary assembly and organized action. This space is legally defined and is the domain of fundraising, volunteering, advocacy and other forms of collective behavior. It includes associations, groups and clubs but also constitutionally protected assembly - not only public gatherings but also parades, festivals, places like the Market in Philadelphia, and a diverse variety of forms of collective behavior including crowds, street corner societies, jazz and art 'scenes' and, of course, online and digital 'communities' and 'commons' of many types. The common thread characterizing all of these diverse activities is that they are 'ne...

To many it seems obvious that normativity or justification depends upon desire. Few answers to the question, ‘Why should I?’ seem more natural than ‘Because I want to,’ and if we are told, ‘You should do this,’ there is something natural about the objection, ‘But I don’t want to, so why?’ I believe that the very nature of normativity can be comprehensively explained in terms of desire: the mysterious ‘force’ of value, reasons, and obligation are explicable by appeal to the ‘force’ of our motivating psychological states. This desire-based normativity (DBN) thesis faces serious difficulties, however, that seem insuperable to most sophisticated minds who contemplate them. I remain convinced that DBN is correct, although as yet unvindicated. This paper seeks to lay the cornerstone of what could prove a successful strategy, sketching an Argument from Voluntary Response that is based on the autonomous character of our experience of normative authority and the voluntary character of our re...

The feeling of controlling events through one's actions is fundamental to human experience, but its neural basis remains unclear. This ‘sense of agency’ (SoA) can be measured quantitatively as a temporal linkage between voluntary actions and their external effects. We investigated the brain areas underlying this aspect of action awareness by using theta-burst stimulation to locally and reversibly disrupt human brain function. Disruption of the pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA), a key structure for preparation and initiation of a voluntary action, was shown to reduce the temporal linkage between a voluntary key-press action and a subsequent electrocutaneous stimulus. In contrast, disruption of the sensorimotor cortex, which processes signals more directly related to action execution and sensory feedback, had no significant effect. Our results provide the first direct evidence of a pre-SMA contribution to SoA.

El trabajo se ocupa de hacer una análisis de las clasificaciones hechas por Aristóteles de las acciones como voluntarias, involuntarias y 'mixtas' en la Ética Eudemia y en la Ética Nicomaquea. Este análisis sirve para rastrear el sentido en que se habla de "mixtura" de las acciones mixtas: se presentan las propuestas de interpretación de lo voluntario como "intencional" o "racional" defendidas por Terrence Irwin y David Charles, y se muestra la insuficiencia de esta aproximación en relación con las acciones hechas por coacción y las acciones no-voluntarias. En segundo lugar, se presentan las propuestas que sitúan la voluntariedad en línea continua con afirmaciones provenientes de los tratados piscológicos como el De Anima y físicos como el De Motu, defendidas por Martha Nussbaum, Rosalind Hursthouse y Susan S. Meyer. Este rastreo deriva en la afirmación de que los aspectos emotivos (el displacer, la lamentación o la contrariedad) no son apenas 'residuos' de la acción que procede del carácter moral del agente, sino que son constitutivos y necesarios de éste, y determinan el 'nivel' de voluntariedad de las acciones.
(Este texto fue entregado como monografía de grado para aspirar al título de Filósofa de la Universidad Nacional en 2009. Fue dirigida por Alfonso Correa Motta, Ph.D y evaluada por Germán Meléndez Acuña, Ph.D)

Most juridical systems recognize intentional non-actions - the failure to render assistance - as intentional acts by regarding them as in principle culpable. This raises the fundamental question whether intentional non-actions can be distinguished from simply not doing anything. Classical GLM analysis on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data reveals that not doing anything is associated with resting state brain areas whereas intentionally non-acting is associated with brain activity in left inferior parietal lobe and left dorsal premotor cortex. By means of pattern classification we quantify the accuracy with which we can distinguish these two mental states on the basis of brain activity. In order to identify brain regions that harbour a distributed, overlapping representation of voluntary non-actions and the decision not to act we performed pattern classification on brain areas that did not appear in the GLM contrasts. The prediction rate is not reduced and we show that the prediction relies mostly on brain areas that have been associated with action production and motor imagery as supplementary motor area, right inferior frontal gyrus and right middle temporal area (V5/MT). Hence our data support the implicit assumption of legal practice that voluntary non-action shares important features with overt voluntary action.

Range of types of transnational organization
Inter-organizational linkages
Inter-organizational network roles
Conclusions and policy implications
Annex 1: List of organizations questioned
Annex 2: Some functions performed prior to the establishment of an inter-organizational relationship
Annex 3: Some network roles
Annex 4: Network action strategy in a transnational setting

My reinterpretations of Libet’s results have received support from most commentaries published in this issue. Libet’s arguments against my alternative hypotheses are contested. Latency depends on intensity. Integration of intensity and duration explains the Minimum Train Duration. Analogies of Libet’s timing of intentions with control (flash-lag-like) experiments indicate biases of opposite signs, according to intramodal or intermodal results. Rosenthal’s view of nonconscious intentions (or sensations) becoming conscious after a delay is favored. Compatibilist free will is discussed.