Doership

Doership is the status of an agent as the author of an action. In the philosophy of action, it concerns who is the source of an act and thus eligible for praise or blame. Doership is not the same as mere causation; something may cause an event without being its intentional author. For example, a person who consciously chooses to press a button is the doer of that action, whereas a falling rock that accidentally triggers a mechanism is not.

Debates about doership often distinguish actuation by reasons and deliberation from automatic or involuntary processes. Some theories appeal to agent causation or to the possession of stable first-order and second-order desires, arguing that the action is the agent’s only if it follows from the agent’s reasons or if the agent could have endorsed it through higher-order volitions. Others focus on control and freedom from external compulsion, with a stronger emphasis on voluntary control as the mark of doership. In cases of coercion, addiction, or impairment, many accounts hold that doership is diminished or cannot support full moral responsibility.

Doership also has practical implications beyond philosophy. In law and ethics, it informs judgments of responsibility, guilt, and praise. Collective doership addresses whether a group can be the doer of an action when several agents share intention. The study of doership thus spans normative questions about blame and responsibility and descriptive questions about how people attribute actions to agents in everyday life.