How Do We Ever Get Up? On the Proximate Causation of Actions and Events

Many candidates have been tried out as proximate causes of actions: belief-desire pairs, volitions, motives, intentions, and other kinds of pro-attitudes. None of these mental states or events, however, seems to be able to do the trick, that is, to get things going. Each of them may occur without an appropriate action ensuing. After reviewing several attempts at closing the alleged “causal gap”, it is argued that on a correct analysis, there is no missing link waiting to be discovered. On the counterfactual account of singular causation, the onset of belief or desire may perfectly well cause an action, although no kind of mental antecedent is ever a causally sufficient condition for a specific kind of action to occur.