This paper is a critique of the current version of Derk Pereboom’s “disappearing agent argument” against event-causal libertarianism. Special attention is paid to a notion that does a lot of work in his argument—that of settling which decision occurs (of the various decisions it is open to the agent to make at the time). It is argued that Pereboom’s disappearing agent argument fails to show that event-causal libertarians lack the resources to accommodate agents’ having freedom-level control over what they decide. (...) The connection between the disappearing agent argument and the problem of present luck is explored, as is the connection between settling which decision one makes and luck. Pereboom’s disappearing agent argument also is distinguished from another argument with the same name that targets intentional action itself. (shrink)

"Explanation and Understanding" (1971) by Georg Henrik von Wright is a modern classic in analytic hermeneutics, and in the philosophy of the social sciences and humanities in general. In this work, von Wright argues against naturalism, or methodological monism, i.e. the idea that both the natural sciences and the social sciences follow broadly the same general scientific approach and aim to achieve causal explanations. Against this view, von Wright contends that the social sciences are qualitatively different from the natural sciences: (...) according to his view, the natural sciences aim at causal explanations, whereas the purpose of the social sciences is to understand their subjects. In support of this conviction, von Wright also puts forward a version of the so-called logical connection argument. -/- Von Wright views scientific explanation along the lines of the traditional covering law model. He suggests that the social sciences, in contrast, utilize what he calls “practical syllogism” in understanding human actions. In addition, von Wright presents in this work an original picture on causation: a version of the manipulability theory of causation. -/- In the four decades following von Wright’s classic work, the overall picture in in the philosophy of science has changed significantly, and much progress has been made in various fronts. The aim of the contribution is to revisit the central ideas of "Explanation and Understanding" and evaluate them from this perspective. The covering law model of explanation and the regularity theory of causation behind it have since then fallen into disfavor, and virtually no one believes that causal explanations even in the natural sciences comply with the covering law model. No wonder then that covering law explanations are not found in the social sciences either. Ironically, the most popular theory of causal explanation in the philosophy of science nowadays is the interventionist theory, which is a descendant of the manipulability theory of von Wright and others. However, this theory can be applied with no special difficulties in both the natural sciences and the social sciences. -/- Von Wright’s logical connection argument and his ideas concerning practical syllogisms are also critically assessed. It is argued that in closer scrutiny, they do not pose serious problems for the view that the social sciences too provide causal explanations. In sum, von Wright’s arguments against naturalism do not appear, in today’s perspective, particularly convincing. (shrink)

By focusing on the idea that agency involves causal sensitivity to reasons, Rowland Stout shows how agency is one of the most useful ways into the philosophy of mind: if one can understand what it is to be a free and rational agent, then one can understand what it is to be a conscious subject of experience. Some of the questions considered include: Is all action intentional action? Is intentional action characterized by its relation with possible justification? Do beliefs motivate (...) actions or do facts? What is the nature of the causal process of acting? Are intentions independent components in the explanation of action? (shrink)

Worries about mental causation are prominent in contemporary discussions of the mind and human agency. Originally, the problem of mental causation was that of understanding how a mental substance (thought to be immaterial) could interact with a material substance, a body. Most philosophers nowadays repudiate immaterial minds, but the problem of mental causation has not gone away. Instead, focus has shifted to mental properties. How could mental properties be causally relevant to bodily behavior? How could something mental qua mental cause (...) what it does? After looking at the traditional Problem of Interaction, we survey various versions of the property-based problem and look at proposed solutions to them. (shrink)

The paper considers three questions. First, what is the connection between economics and agency? It is argued that causation and explanation in economics fundamentally depend on agency. So a philosophical understanding of economic explanation must be sensitive to an understanding of agency. Second, what is the connection between agency and causation? A causal view of agency-involving explanation is defended against a number of arguments from the resurgent noncausalist tradition in the literature on agency and action-explanation. If agency is fundamental to (...) economic explanation, it is argued, then so is causation. Third, what is the connection between causal explanation and the natural sciences? It is argued that, though the explanations given in economics and other social sciences are causal explanations, they are different in kind from the causal explanations of the natural sciences. On the one hand, then, the causal explanations of the social sciences are irreducible to those found in the natural sciences. On the other hand, the causal relations described by the social sciences are not completely autonomous; they do not float free of, or operate independently from, the causal relations charted by the natural sciences. (shrink)

Das Verb „anfangen“ lässt sich sowohl mit einem Akteur an Subjektstelle als auch subjektlos verwenden. Sogenannte subjektlose Sätze wie „Es fängt zu regnen an“ haben freilich ein grammatisches Subjekt, aber auf die Rückfrage „Wer oder was fängt zu regnen an?“ ist die einzig mögliche Antwort „Es“ unbefriedigend. Das grammatische Subjekt fungiert in solchen Sätzen lediglich als synkategorematischer Ausdruck. Menschliche Akteure können in gehaltvollerem Sinn etwas anfangen, zum Beispiel Streit, oder, wie es bei Kant heißt, „eine Reihe von Begebenheiten“. Mit dem (...) emphatisch beschriebenen Vermögen, „eine Reihe von Begebenheiten ganz von selbst anzufangen“, bestimmt Kant das Anfangen einer Handlung als Vermögen der Erstverursachung und verschafft ihm so die gebührende Fallhöhe. Diese beiden Verwendungen von „anfangen“ markieren die Spannung zwischen dem bloßen Beginnen eines subjektlosen Naturprozesses und dem Vermögen, ein Geschehen aktiv in Gang zu setzen. Ich möchte in diesem Beitrag vier klassische Modelle des Anfangens einer Handlung diskutieren, um ihre wichtigsten Vorzüge und Nachteile miteinander zu vergleichen: die kausale Handlungstheorie, die Theorie der Akteurskausalität, die des mentalen Steuerimpulses und die der noumenalen Kausalität. Klassisch sind die vier Modelle, insofern man sie philosophiehistorisch wie folgt verorten kann: (1) Das humesche Modell: kausale Handlungstheorie, (2) Das aristotelische Modell: Akteurskausalität, (3) Das cartesische Modell: mentaler Steuerimpuls, (4) Das kantische Modell: noumenale Kausalität [...]. (shrink)

This article defends the idea that causal relations between reasons and actions are wholly irrelevant to the explanatory efficacy of reason-explanations. The analysis of reason-explanations provided in this article shows that the so-called “problem of explanatory force” is solved, not by putative causal relations between the reasons for which agents act and their actions, but rather by the intentions that agents necessarily have when they act for a reason. Additionally, the article provides a critique of the principal source of support (...) for the thesis that reason-explanations are causal explanations, namely, Davidson's argument in “Actions, Reasons, and Causes.” It is shown that Davidson's argument for this thesis rests crucially on two mistakes: his definition of intentional action and his ontological prejudice against intentions. (shrink)

This open access book provides an exploration of the consequences of the ontological differences between natural and social objects (sometimes described as objects of nature and objects of thought) in the workings of causal and agency relationships. One of its important and possibly original conclusions is that causal and agency relationships do not encompass all of the dependent relationships encountered in social life. The idea that social reality is contingent has been known (and largely undisputed) at least since Wittgenstein’s “On (...) Certainty”, but social science, and most notably economics has continued to operate on the basis of causal and agency theories borrowed or adapted from the natural sciences. This volume contains essays that retain and justify the partial or qualified use of this approach and essays that totally reject any use of causal and agency theory built on determined facts (closed systems).The rejection is based on the possibly original claim that, whereas causation in the objects of the natural sciences reside in their properties, human action is a matter of intentionality. It engages with critical realist theory and re-examines the role of free will in theories of human action in general and economic theory in particular. (shrink)

Sometimes you make a choice. Whether or not you made it was up to you. The choice was free. But how can this be? A scientific view of the world may leave no room for free choice. Free will literature continually explodes. Yet experts still focus on control or on a power to do otherwise. Sadly, they neglect another intuitive feature of free will: being an underived source or ultimate originator. When acting freely, one is a self-determined, self-directed, sole author (...) of change. Surprisingly, though the literature is replete with this pre-theoretic feature of free will, virtually no one makes rigorous use of it when constructing arguments. Equipped with fresh research, this book contends that agent-causation—currently an unpopular theory—deserves serious reconsideration. Only agent-causation accounts for ultimate origination, and popular objections fail under rigorous scrutiny. This book is tightly argued. It challenges and deepens recent advances in free will scholarship made by Peter van Inwagen, Robert Kane, Carl Ginet, Randy Clarke, Stewart Goetz, Tim O’Connor, and others. (shrink)

Some philosophers argue that Hume, given his theory of causation, is committed to an implausibly thin account of what it is like to act voluntarily. Others suggest, on the basis of his argument against free will, that Hume takes no more than an illusory feature of action to distinguish the experience of performing an act from the experience of merely observing an act. In this paper, I argue that Hume is committed to neither an unduly parsimonious nor a sceptical account (...) of the phenomenology of agency. (shrink)

This essay discusses a cluster of problems for feminist theory and practice which concern responsibility and choice under conditions of oppression. I characterize four major perspectives from which situations of oppression or victimization can be seen and questions about choice and responsibility answered: The Perspective of the Oppressor; The Perspective of the Victim; The Perspective of the Responsible Actor; and The Perspective of the Observer/Philosopher. I compare their strengths and weaknesses and discuss their compatibility.

Ultimately, the only good reason for restricting the freedom of responsible adults is to protect other people's freedom, to increase the overall enjoyment of freedom.

Ultimately, the only good reason for restricting the freedom of responsible adults is to protect other people's freedom, to increase the overall enjoyment of freedom.

The standard event-causal theory of action says that an intentional action is caused in the right way by the right mental states. This view requires reductionism about agency. The causal role of the agent must be nothing over and above the causal contribution of the relevant mental event-causal processes. But commonsense finds this reductive solution to the “agent-mind problem”, the problem of explaining the relationship between agents and the mind, incredible. Where did the agent go? This paper suggests that this (...) challenge against event-causal reductionism is importantly related to debates about fundamentality. It also suggests that extant event-causal answers to the agent-mind problem, ones that suggest that part of an agent’s mind can stand proxy for the agent herself, fail against the challenge. It sketches an alternative reductive view that appeals to entity grounding. This view resolves the commonsense challenge and promises to be theoretically fruitful with respect to other longstanding problems with the event-casual view. The paper concludes with a burden-shifting argument against emergentist agent-causal theories and non-reductive event-causal theories of agency. (shrink)

Given the many marvelous things animals can do and moreover the success we have in employing the intentional stance towards animals, it seems to be almost unthinkable to say that animals could not act at all. Nonetheless, this is exactly what I argue for. I claim that strictly speaking there is no animal action, only behaviour. I defend this claim in three steps. Firstly, I recapitulate some of the weighty grounds that speak in favour of animal agency. Secondly, I explain (...) why I still doubt that animals act. The argument is that the account of agency that I take to be the most attractive one entails that animals can't act. Since this account of agency is non-standard, I spend the bulk of the paper with providing a sketch of what, according to it, actions are. Finally, I explain why it is still so natural and promising to regard animals as agents, although in fact they aren't. As one might put it: of course they act, only strictly speaking they don't. (shrink)

Practical reasons figure in both the justification and the causal explanation of action. It is usually assumed that the agent’s state of believing rather than what they believe must figure in the causal explanation of action. But, that the agent believes something is not a reason in the sense of being part of the justification of what they do. So it is often concluded that the justifying reason is a different sort of thing from the causally motivating reason. But this (...) means that in a causal process of acting the justifying reasons have done their work by the time the agent has the appropriate beliefs and desires. Transforming these into behaviour is not guided by reason. This conception of action in which there is no role for reason in the part of the process where anything actually gets done is not acceptable. So the original assumption that beliefs rather than the believed facts figure in the casual explanation of action should be challenged. (shrink)

Depuis 1963, le causalisme a été l'approche dominante en théorie de l'action. Il est possible, cependant, de distinguer diverses sortes de causalisme. La version dominante, que j'appelle CTA, essaie de trouver une analyse causale de l'action. Une version plus restreinte — le causalismeR — se montre récalcitrante à ce genre d'entreprise et se contente d'essayer d'expliquer en quel sens on peut traiter comme causales les explications par les raisons. J'examine ici les motivations sous-jacentes à CTA, ainsi que plusieurs de ses (...) formulations les plus influentes, et je soutiens que cette approche n'a pas été très heureuse et que le projet, du reste, n'est pas au départ terriblement convaincant. Il y a beaucoup à attendre, en revanche, du causalismeR. (shrink)

A phenomenology of action is outlined, analyzing the structure of volition, kinesthesis, and perception in the experience of action, and, finally, the experience of embodiment in action. The intentionality of action is contrasted with that of thought and perception in regard to the role of the body, and the relations between an action, the experience of acting, and the context of the action are specified.

Problem setting. The structure of the legal life phenomenological model, alongside the social experience and legal values, always contains subjective measurements that reflect legal person’s specific features. In particular, the point is in the legal duties, powers and the capability of legal reasoning. Their consideration provides an opportunity to show the integral phenomenological model of law via restored bonds of all its elements, and also enables us to extend the semantic field of social-philosophical aspect of the research through creating theoretical (...) pre-conditions for studying burning issues and specific manifestations of the modern law. Recent research and publications analysis. In phenomenology the person is traditionally recognized as the essential being, while the process of sense generation ensures, inter alia, contextual opportunities to study law. The contemporary experience of the legal person phenomenological understanding may be complemented by the research into the abilities of the legal person as an element of the legal life phenomenological model. Paper aim. This work aims to study the features of the legal person as a structural element of the legal life phenomenological model. Paper results and discussion. The paper shows that the law lifeworld is deeply rooted in social experience. It confirms that owing to the legal person the law lifeworld is constituted and “extended” with interpretations. Its activity as to the given social experience provides grounds to declare the equality of the following modalities: “be the carrier of legal awareness”, “be a legal agent” and “be a recognized and legally protected value”. These theoretical statements enable us to formulate certain social-philosophical issues of legal standing, and outline the ways of their solving. For instance, there is a problem of the symbolic status of a legal entity, found in its relations with the state and citizens; the issue of possible legal person’s recognition as a value in the conditions of his/her minimalized rights and hypertrophy of the legal duties is considered; the nature of a legal conflict and the mechanism of its solution is studied through recognizing the value of various communicative perspectives; it is stated that the differences between the intentional experiences of a legal person and the person with duties are a precondition to form legal nihilism and ignorance. The legal person is also considered in the context of his or her ability to be engaged in the discourse practices, embedded in the mechanisms of interpersonal constitution of senses inherent in the social being. The purpose of the legal discourse in the modern world is defined as a field to identify problems and “tension zones” in the implementation of liberal values and the rule of law. Following the analysis of the approaches to identifying the legal discourse core, its main strategies were discussed: legal discourse is focused on searching and developing socially important topics and sound arguments, confirming positive suggestions for the solving social problems (after J. Habermas); legal discourse implies the use of the power of language to fight against the arbitrary rule, including that of the legitimate power (М. Foucault); the specifics of the legal discourse are in creating linguistic tools and developing the procedures, owing to which legal enforcement is transferred to the speech space (P. Ricoeur). Conclusion. The study showed that the activity of the person who has his or her own legal opinion is in the fact that their generated texts and individual statements are not limited to the formal logical regulations, but are the means of expressing their social experience, the measure of balancing between the person’s claims and his or her social recognition. (shrink)

Empirical evidence, it has often been argued, undermines our commonsense assumptions concerning the efficacy of conscious intentions. One of the most influential advocates of this challenge has been Daniel Wegner, who has presented an impressive amount of evidence in support of a model of "apparent mental causation". According to Wegner, this model provides the best explanation of numerous curious and pathological cases of behavior. Further, it seems that Benjamin Libet's classic experiment on the initiation of action and the empirical evidence (...) concerning the confabulation of reason explanations provide further support for this view. In response, I will propose an alternative model of "real mental causation" that can accommodate the empirical evidence just as well as Wegner's. Further, we will see that there is plenty of evidence in support of the assumption that intentions are causally efficacious. This will provide us with ample reason to endorse the model of real mental causation. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex has been mistakenly interpreted as a theory of gender, because interpreters have failed adequately to understand Beauvoir's aims. Beauvoir is not trying to explain facts, events, or states of affairs, but to reveal, unveil, or uncover (découvrir) meanings. She explicates the meanings of woman, female, and feminine. Instead of a theory, Beauvoir's book presents a phenomenological description of the sexual difference.

Remarks on the Relations between Neurophysiology and Psychology. In the last decades of Analytical Philosophy, contributions to the so-called mind-body-problem have been suffering by several serious methodological misunderstandings: they have failed, for instance, to distinguish between explanations of particular and strictly general ("necessary") properties and between two important senses of existential statements; and they have overlooked the role conceptual explanations play in the development of science. Changing our methodological premisses, we should be able to put questions like that of the (...) relation between (neuro)physiological and psychological phenomena in a new way - and we should be able to see that such newly understood questions allow answers which evade the pitfalls of both reductionist and holistic positions. The paper tries to illustrate and to defend these contentions by reference to a very elementary example: the rational re-building of our concepts to identify behaviour by which a subject controls the position of his body in space. (shrink)

Remarks on the Relations between Neurophysiology and Psychology. In the last decades of Analytical Philosophy, contributions to the so-called mind-body-problem have been suffering by several serious methodological misunderstandings: they have failed, for instance, to distinguish between explanations of particular and strictly general properties and between two important senses of existential statements; and they have overlooked the role conceptual explanations play in the development of science. Changing our methodological premisses, we should be able to put questions like that of the relation (...) between physiological and psychological phenomena in a new way - and we should be able to see that such newly understood questions allow answers which evade the pitfalls of both reductionist and holistic positions. The paper tries to illustrate and to defend these contentions by reference to a very elementary example: the rational re-building of our concepts to identify behaviour by which a subject controls the position of his body in space. (shrink)

According to explanatory individualism, every action must be explained in terms of an agent's desire. According to explanatory nonindividualism, we sometimes act on our desires, but it is also possible for us to act on others' desires without acting on desires of our own. While explanatory nonindividualism has guided the thinking of many social scientists, it is considered to be incoherent by most philosophers of mind who insist that actions must be explained ultimately in terms of some desire of the (...) agent. In the first part of the paper, I show that some powerful arguments designed to demonstrate the incoherence of explanatory nonindividualism fail. In the second part of the paper, I offer a nonindividualist explanation of the apparent obviousness of belief-desire psychology. I argue that there are two levels of the intelligibility of our actions. On the more fundamental (explanatory) level, the question "Why did the agent do something?" admits a variety of folk-psychological categories. But there is another (formation-of-self) level, at which the same question admits only of answers that ultimately appeal only to the agent's own desires. Explanatory individualism results from the confusion of the two levels. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty’s notion of being motivated or solicited to act has recently been the focus of extensive investigation, yet work on this topic has tended to take the general notion of being motivated for granted. In this paper, I shall outline an account of what it is to be motivated. In particular, I shall focus on the relation between the affective character of states of being motivated and their intentional content, i.e. how things appear to the agent. Drawing on Husserl’s discussion (...) of perceptual awareness, I suggest that the intentional content of states of being motivated has a horizonal structure, in which both affective and perceptual features are implied. In states of being motivated, the agent becomes aware of certain possibilities for action, towards which they feel drawn. This structure is what Merleau-Ponty refers to as the “intentional arc” (1962, 136). (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Highlights of Past Literature Current Work Future Work.

The type-type reductive identity of the mental to the physical was once the dominant position in the mental causation debate. In time this consensus was overturned, largely due to its inability to handle the problem of multiple realizability. In its place a nonreductive position emerged which often included an adherence to functionalism. Functionalism construes mental properties as functional states of an organism, which in turn have specific physical realizers. This nonreductive form of functionalism, henceforth called role functionalism, has faced a (...) number of criticisms itself. Chief among these is the concern that the realizer of the functional role is causally sufficient, so the role property does not make a contribution of its own. In this paper I argue that there is a way for unreduced functional properties to play a role after all. This is done by conceiving of functional properties as higher level functional properties of a macro system which determine that its realizers will play the roles that they play. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Recently, many authors have argued that claims about determinism and free will are situated on different levels of description and that determinism on one level does not rule out free will on another. This paper focuses on Christian List’s version of this basic idea. It will be argued for the negative thesis that List’s account does not rule out the most plausible version of incompatibilism about free will and determinism and, more constructively, that a level-based approach to free will (...) has better chances to meet skeptical challenges if it is guided by reasoning at the moral level – a level that has not been seriously considered so far by proponents of this approach. (shrink)

I argue for constraining the nomological possibility space of temporal experiences and endorsing the Succession Requirement for agents. The Succession Requirement holds that the basic structure of temporal experience must be successive for agentive subjects, at least in worlds that are law-like in the same way as ours. I aim to establish the Succession Requirement by showing non-successively experiencing agents are not possible for three main reasons, namely that they (1) fail to stand in the right sort of causal relationship (...) to the outcomes of their actions, (2) exhibit the wrong sort of epistemic status for agency, and (3) lack the requisite agentive mental attitude of intentionality. I conclude that agency is incompatible with non-successive experience and therefore we should view the successive temporal structure of experience as a necessary condition for agency. I also suggest that the Succession Requirement may actually extend beyond my main focus on agency, offering preliminary considerations in favor of seeing successive experience as a precondition for selfhood as well. The consequences of the Succession Requirement are wide-ranging, and I discuss various implications for our understanding of agency, the self, time consciousness, and theology, among other things. (shrink)

This paper situates Wittgenstein in what is known as the causalism/anti-causalism debate in the philosophy of mind and action and reconstructs his arguments to the effect that reasons are not a species of causes. On the one hand, the paper aims to reinvigorate the question of what these arguments are by offering a historical sketch of the debate showing that Wittgenstein's arguments were overshadowed by those of the people he influenced, and that he came to be seen as an anti-causalist (...) for reasons that are in large part extraneous to his thought. On the other hand, the paper aims to recover the arguments scattered in Wittgenstein's own writings by detailing and defending three lines of argument distinguishing reasons from causes. The paper concludes that Wittgenstein's arguments differ from those of his immediate successors; that he anticipates current anti-psychologistic trends; and that he is perhaps closer to Davidson than historical dialectics suggest. (shrink)

How do reason explanations explain? One view is that they require the deployment of a tacit psychological theory; another is that even if no tacit theory is involved, we must still conceive of reasons as mental states. By focusing on the subjective nature of agency, and by casting explanations as responses to 'why' questions that assuage agents' puzzlement, reason explanations can be profitably understood as part of our traffic in first-order content amongst perspectival subjects. An outline is offered of such (...) an account of reason explanation, one that fully acknowledges the distinctive first-order first-person normative perspective of agency. (shrink)

Many philosophers of action, including Bratman and Mele, conceive intentions functionally, as executive states: intentions are mental states that represent an action and tend to cause this action. In the philosophical tradition (e.g. for Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Leibniz, Kant) another function of intentions, which may be called “volitive”, played a much more prominent role: intentions are mental states that represent what kind of actions we want and prefer to be realised and thus, in a possibly rational way, synthesise our motivational, (...) desiderative, and perhaps affective as well as cognitive attitudes towards this action. This paper argues that intentions must fulfil both functions and then develops a concept of ‘intention’ that integrates both functions. One reason for including the volitive function in the definition of ‘intention’ is that only via this function the value of actions as such is realised, namely to enable the person, the kernel of the self to express herself and to control the world. Various forms of dissociation of the two functions are discussed and a proposal how to deal with such cases in the definition of ‘intention’ is developed. (shrink)

Virtues can be considered to play a causal role in the production of behaviour and so too can our self-narratives. We identify a point of connection between the two cases and draw a parallel between them. But, those folk psychological notions, virtues and self-narratives, fail to reduce smoothly to the underlying human physiology. As a first step towards handling that failure to connect with the scientific framework that is the familiar grounding for our understanding of causation, we consider the causal (...) theory of action, a leading theory of action, which shows how reasons, understood as an appropriate pair of beliefs and desires, can be treated ascausesof action. Davidson’s picture is based on cause as a relation between events, which can have both a description in scientific terms and in folk psychological terms. The character of both virtues and self-narratives is not that of events, even extended ones, so we need to refer to examples of scientific explanation that incorporate structural properties of objects. While we retain the spirit of the causal theory, we wish to guard against any unwarranted optimism that an explicitly scientific explanation for human action lies in our future, drawing on Chomsky’s view that a causal explanation of human actions is likely to remain beyond human science forming capacities. We take a mild-realist view of virtues and self-narratives, in the style of Dennett. We argue that, in spite of that limited form of realism, underlined by Chomsky’s mysterian position in this domain, we still need to frame our explanations of behaviour based on virtues and self-narratives in causal terms. (shrink)

This paper offers an analysis of the logical form of plural action sentences that shows that collective actions so ascribed are a matter of all members of a group contributing to bringing some event about. It then uses this as the basis for a reductive account of the content of we-intentions according to which what distinguishes we-intentions from I-intentions is that we-intentions are directed about bringing it about that members of a group act in accordance with a shared plan.

Cet article montre comment Ricœur a constitué une théorie de la causalité adaptée à sa philosophie pratique. D’abord, on étudie la définition alternative de la causalité qu’élabore Ricœur pour les sciences historiques, caractérisée par la conditionnalité, la processualité et la singularité. Ensuite, on souligne l’effort de justification objective de cette nouvelle catégorie causale par une démarche logico-transcendantale, qui lie les conditions de possibilité d’une connaissance objective de l’action non pas à une subjectivité fondatrice, mais à des dimensions du discours. D’un (...) point de vue épistémologique, la causalité fait l’objet d’un jugement d’imputation singulier, qui joue un rôle intermédiaire entre l’explication structurale et l’explication narrative. D’un point de vue métaphysique, elle permet d’établir un gradient d’abstraction dans l’événementialité, puisqu’elle sert tout particulièrement à expliquer non pas des événement génériques ou virtuels, mais singuliers et propres, qui sont, de ce fait, inscrits dans un contexte riche ; elle dessine ainsi la forme d’un monde d’événements non impersonnels et non atomiques. (shrink)

Cet article montre comment Ricœur a constitué une théorie de la causalité adaptée à sa philosophie pratique. D’abord, on étudie la définition alternative (« non-humienne ») de la causalité qu’élabore Ricœur pour les sciences historiques, caractérisée par la conditionnalité, la processualité et la singularité. Ensuite, on souligne l’effort de justification objective de cette nouvelle catégorie causale par une démarche logico-transcendantale, qui lie les conditions de possibilité d’une connaissance objective de l’action non pas à une subjectivité fondatrice, mais à des dimensions (...) (sémantique, pragmatique, narrative) du discours. D’un point de vue épistémologique, la causalité fait l’objet d’un jugement d’imputation singulier, qui joue un rôle intermédiaire entre l’explication structurale (ou « nomologique ») et l’explication narrative. D’un point de vue métaphysique, elle permet d’établir un gradient d’abstraction dans l’événementialité, puisqu’elle sert tout particulièrement à expliquer non pas des événement génériques ou virtuels, mais singuliers et propres, qui sont, de ce fait, inscrits dans un contexte riche ; elle dessine ainsi la forme d’un monde d’événements non impersonnels et non atomiques. (shrink)

Moore in Ethics, ch. vii, writes – if I understand him right – that our basic experience of free-will resides in our certain feeling, in regard to our past actions, that we could have acted differently if we had so chosen; more exactly, that we should have acted differently if we had so chosen, which precisely means that we could have acted differently. He adds the qualifying adverb ‘sometimes’; I think we may well say always, keeping in mind, of course, (...) that we are only concerned here with ‘actions’ proper, as contrasted with involuntary movements, twitchings, starts, fits, etc., and also with wholly habitual, routine-like movements or manipulations performed without any attention and without the slightest deliberation, and that only such actions are meant here as are within our range of physical or psycho-physical power, which is anyhow implicit in the concept of choice: there is no sense in my saying that I might here and now ‘choose’ to carry this building on my back to Paris, to dismiss the present Government or to continue writing in impeccable Japanese. However, Moore is aware of the clearly meaningful objection that ‘acting as we choose’ would not establish the fact of free-will unless it were also the case that our choice itself is free, in other words that we not only choose to act so instead of acting differently but also choose to choose so instead of choosing differently. He argues that this too is indeed the case, emphasising in this context our experience of the unpredictability, even by ourselves, of our future choices. He concludes, though, on a note of doubt which shows that he is not quite sure in his own mind to have definitively disposed of the objection. (shrink)

Moore in Ethics, ch. vii, writes – if I understand him right – that our basic experience of free-will resides in our certain feeling, in regard to our past actions, that we could have acted differently if we had so chosen; more exactly, that we should have acted differently if we had so chosen, which precisely means that we could have acted differently. He adds the qualifying adverb ‘sometimes’; I think we may well say always, keeping in mind, of course, (...) that we are only concerned here with ‘actions’ proper, as contrasted with involuntary movements, twitchings, starts, fits, etc., and also with wholly habitual, routine-like movements or manipulations performed without any attention and without the slightest deliberation, and that only such actions are meant here as are within our range of physical or psycho-physical power, which is anyhow implicit in the concept of choice: there is no sense in my saying that I might here and now ‘choose’ to carry this building on my back to Paris, to dismiss the present Government or to continue writing in impeccable Japanese. However, Moore is aware of the clearly meaningful objection that ‘acting as we choose’ would not establish the fact of free-will unless it were also the case that our choice itself is free, in other words that we not only choose to act so instead of acting differently but also choose to choose so instead of choosing differently. He argues that this too is indeed the case, emphasising in this context our experience of the unpredictability, even by ourselves, of our future choices. He concludes, though, on a note of doubt which shows that he is not quite sure in his own mind to have definitively disposed of the objection. (shrink)

La philosophie analytique de l'action se réclame du langage ordinaire de l'action comme une des sources de ses data philosophiques. Elle se propose d'en examiner le fonctionnement, d'en extraire les concepts clés, de caractériser les formes de propositions dans lesquelles s'expriment nos actions et notre façon spontanée de les comprendre, d'examiner l'articulation propre aux stratégies d'action et au discours qui les justifie, et de faire des « proposals » pour la construction d'une théorie de l'action. En somme, il s'agit d'ériger (...) le langage ordinaire en instance de contrôle aussi bien sur le plan du traitement de problèmes philosophiques que sur celui de la construction de méta-théories des sciences de l'homme. Ce travail sur le langage de l'action peut revêtir plusieurs fonctions: fonction de clarification ou de détection de confusions, fonction thérapeutique pour guérir le langage de maladies philosophiques, c'est-à-dire des pseudo-problèmes, fonction heuristique pour prescrire une diète appropriée au traitement des perplexités philosophiques qui surgissent « quand le langage tourne à vide, non quand il travaille », pour employer le mot de Wittgenstein. (shrink)