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  1. Explicating Agency: The Case of Visual Attention.Denis Buehler - 2023 - Philosophical Quarterly 73 (2):379-413.
    How do individuals guide their activities towards some goal? Harry Frankfurt once identified the task of explaining guidance as the central problem in action theory. An explanation has proved to be elusive, however. In this paper, I show how we can marshal empirical research to make explanatory progress. I contend that human agents have a primitive capacity to guide visual attention, and that this capacity is actually constituted by a sub-individual psychological control-system: the executive system. I thus illustrate how we (...)
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  • The disappearing agent as an exclusion problem.Johannes Himmelreich - 2024 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 67 (6):1321-1347.
    The disappearing agent problem is an argument in the metaphysics of agency. Proponents of the agent-causal approach argue that the rival event-causal approach fails to account for the fact that an agent is active. This paper examines an analogy between this disappearing agent problem and the exclusion problem in the metaphysics of mind. I develop the analogy between these two problems and survey existing solutions. I suggest that some solutions that have received significant attention in response to the exclusion problem (...)
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  • What is ‘mental action’?Yair Levy - 2019 - Philosophical Psychology 32 (6):971-993.
    There has been a resurgence of interest lately within philosophy of mind and action in the category of mental action. Against this background, the present paper aims to question the very possibility, or at least the theoretical significance, of teasing apart mental and bodily acts. After raising some doubts over the viability of various possible ways of drawing the mental act/bodily act distinction, the paper draws some lessons from debates over embodied cognition, which arguably further undermine the credibility of the (...)
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  • Confessions of a Deluded Westerner.Michael Brent - 2018 - Journal of Buddhist Ethics 25:689-713.
    In this paper, I aim to make two general points. First, I claim that the discussions in Repetti (2017) assume different, sometimes conflicting, notions of free will, so the guiding question of the book is not as clear as it could be. Second, according to Buddhist tradition, the path to enlightenment requires rejecting the delusional belief in the existence of a persisting self. I claim that if there is no persisting self, there are no intentional actions; and, if there are (...)
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  • Trying Cognitivism: A Defence of the Strong Belief Thesis.Avery Archer - 2018 - Theoria 84 (2):140-156.
    According to the Strong Belief Thesis (SBT), intending to X entails the belief that one will X. John Brunero has attempted to impugn SBT by arguing that there are cases in which an agent intends to X but is unsure that she will X. Moreover, he claims that the standard reply to such putative counterexamples to SBT – namely, to claim that the unsure agent merely has an intention to try – comes at a high price. Specifically, it prevents SBT (...)
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  • The atoms of self‐control.Chandra Sripada - 2021 - Noûs 55 (4):800-824.
    Philosophers routinely invoke self‐control in their theorizing, but major questions remain about what exactly self‐control is. I propose a componential account in which an exercise of self‐control is built out of something more fundamental: basic intrapsychic actions called cognitive control actions. Cognitive control regulates simple, brief states called response pulses that operate across diverse psychological systems (think of one's attention being grabbed by a salient object or one's mind being pulled to think about a certain topic). Self‐control ostensibly seems quite (...)
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  • From My Arm Rising to Me Raising It: a Taxonomy of Behaviors and Actions.Joana Rigato - 2019 - Kairos 22 (1):132-160.
    Human behavior can range from automatic and even unconscious bodily movements to very elaborate and rational decisions. In this paper I develop a taxonomy based on the empirical analysis of the phenomenology associated with selected instances of different forms of behavior. The transition from sub-actional behavior to proper actions is shown to take place when the agent intervenes actively in the causal process leading from her mental states to the bodily movement by exercising her power to form intentions to act. (...)
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  • Agent Causation, Realist Metaphysics of Powers, and the Reducibility Objection.Davis Kuykendall - 2021 - Philosophia 49 (4):1563-1581.
    To address what I call the “Uniformity”, “Capriciousness”, and “Reducibility” objections, recent agent-causation theories hold that agent-causation is a type of substance causation. Substance causation consists in substances producing effects by exercising or manifesting their powers. Importantly, these versions of agent-causation assume a realist metaphysics of powers, where powers are properties of substances that can exist unmanifested. However, the realist theories of powers that agent-causal theories have relied upon explicitly hold that powers—rather than their substances—are causes. Substances are merely derivative (...)
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  • Causation and Free Will in Early Buddhist Philosophy.Paul Bernier - 2020 - Buddhist Studies Review 36 (2):191-220.
    Free will and determinism have recently attracted the attention of Buddhist scholars who have defended conflicting views on this issue. I argue that there is no reason to think that this problem cannot arise in Buddhist philosophy, since there are two senses of ‘free will’ that are compatible with the doctrine of non-self. I propose a reconstruction of a problem of free will and determinism in Early Buddhism, given a) the assumption that Buddhist causation entails universal causal determinism, and b) (...)
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  • Real Free Will.von Wachter Daniel - manuscript
    Many authors hold that we cannot have the kind of free will that we seem to have. This article spells out and defends that kind of free will. Most libertarians hold that a free action involves a probabilistic process at some stage. Like the compatibilists, I hold that this is not only not required for free will but even reduces or excludes freedom. But contrary to the compatibilist and contrary to most libertarians, I claim that free will requires that we (...)
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  • Intentional agency.Lilian O'Brien - 2022 - In Luca Ferrero (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Agency. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 109-117.
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