Courses of conduct

This chapter begins with an argument nearly everyone will reject as unsound. The chapter rejects it too. What is far less obvious, however, is exactly what is wrong with the argument. Despite skeptical challenges from both sides, the chapter tentatively concludes that the best solution to this problem consists in construing some instances of behavior as a course of conduct rather than as a discrete set of acts and omissions. When behavior consists in a course of conduct, it is a complex that consists in both acts and omissions. Attempts to pigeon-hole such behavior as either an act or an omission without regard to the complex in which both play a part are bound to produce philosophical distortion and normative confusion.