Passive Action and Causalism.

The first half of this paper is an attempt to conceptualize and understand the paradoxical notion of ``passive action''. The strategy is to construe passive action in the context of emotional behavior, with the purpose to establish it as a conceivable and conceptually coherent category. In the second half of this paper, the implications of passive action for causal theories of action are examined. I argue that Alfred Mele's defense of causalism is unsuccessful and that causalism may lack the resource to account for passive action. Following Harry Frankfurt, I suggest an alternative way of understanding the nature of action that can accommodate passive action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]