J. David Velleman on Philosophy of Action

David Velleman explores how the human condition is itchier than that of a dog, and reflects on how philosophy of action begins at home.

Who coughed?

Just when you think that the worst of your cold is over, you get a cough. Lying in bed, you suddenly feel an insistent tickle and an overwhelming urge to clear your throat. A single cough appeases the urge, but just briefly: a minute later it’s back, more insistent than before.

You fight the urge, and you inevitably lose. But you find yourself losing in various ways. Sometimes the urge becomes so insistent that you decide – this once, you tell yourself – to give in and cough. Sometimes, though, a cough simply escapes you, even as you’re straining to withhold it.

It’s a homely, even distasteful example, I’ll admit, but it has the virtue of familiarity. You’ve probably managed to avoid the addictive drugs, the demonic hypnotists, and the mad neurosurgeons, but you’re bound to have spent a night with post-nasal drip.

The example has the further virtue of introspective clarity. Lying there in the silence and the dark – eyes tearing, tonsils quivering – you devote every particle of attention to the battle between your will and an urge that threatens to overwhelm it. And in the occasional moments of relief, you get to examine the difference between the coughs that you’ve coughed and the coughs that, as it seems, have coughed themselves.

So the night isn’t a total loss, after all: it’s an opportunity for field work in the philosophy of action.

In some sense, of course, all of the coughs are yours. If your bedmate rolls over and says accusingly, "You coughed!", you’re in no position to deny it. There was unmistakably a cough, someone must have coughed it, and no one else is around.

Yet when a cough forcibly escapes you despite your every effort to contain it, it is more like something that happens to you than something that you do. Or, rather, it's more like the things you do that aren't entirely your doing – things like stubbing a toe, starting at a noise, or blushing.

So if the accusation "You coughed!" is meant to attribute the cough to you as your doing, then you can indeed deny it – not perhaps by saying "I did not", but rather by saying "I didn’t mean to" or "I couldn’t help it" or something of the sort. And now a homely cough has raised further philosophical questions, about what you're responsible for and when you should be excused.

That's what I like about the philosophy of action: it begins at home. The philosophical questions that pique my curiosity tend to be questions about what it's like to be a person. These questions focus philosophical attention on the stuff of everyday life – specifically, the stuff that makes the everyday life of persons different from that of other creatures, such as cats and dogs.

Your dog, for example, doesn't struggle against his impulses in the way that you sometimes struggle against the urge to cough. Or, rather, your dog struggles against his impulses only when you have commanded him not to act on them, and then the struggle is really between the force of his impulses and the force of your command.

Unlike your dog, you have self-command, the capacity not just to be influenced in opposition to your impulses but to set yourself in opposition to them. And having this capacity means that your impulses don't settle your practical agenda. Whereas your dog just scratches wherever it itches, your every itch raises a question: "Shall I scratch?"

In a sense, then, the human condition is itchier than that of a dog, since every stimulus to action brings with it a stimulus to practical thought. This aspect of our condition is the topic of The Possibility of Practical Reason. It's a topic as profound as the difference between ourselves and the beasts, and as homely as scratching an itch, or giving in to a cough.

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