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초록

An agent is considered to face a set of options at the moment they are about to act. While this phenomenon seems to be an important feature that distinguishes actions from non-actions, the question of what it means to have a set of options has been largely overlooked in philosophical discussions of action. This paper, taking ‘common-sense psychology’ and its systematic counterpart, ‘decision theory,’ as its theoretical background, take up this neglected task. It criticizes a few of traditional views on options, and then proposes a new perspective. The main claim is that having options should be recognized as a third mental element, distinct from and irreducible to beliefs and desires, that determines actions. Roughly speaking, having options can be formally characterized as a partition of belief space and, intuitively, it is a matter of ‘deliberative stance’ that one takes toward one’s own actions. Additionally, this paper demonstrates that this view offers new insights into a puzzle concerning actions, which will provide a further support for this new perspective.

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