We provide an account of chimpanzee-specific agency within the context of philosophy of action. We do so by showing that chimpanzees are capable of what we call reason-directed action, even though they may be incapable of more full-blown action, which we call reason-considered action. Although chimpanzee agency does not possess all the features of typical adult human agency, chimpanzee agency is evolutionarily responsive to their environment and overlaps considerably with our own. As such, it is an evolved set of capacities (...) for goal-directed behavior, which solves problems that chimpanzees naturally encounter. Thus, it ought not be understood as a deficient instance of human agency. (shrink)

This paper discusses the integrated approach to the semantics and pragmatics of language developed in my Making It Explicit . The core claim is that there are six consequential relations among commitments and entitlements that are sufficient for a practice exhibiting them to qualify as discursive, that is, as a practice of giving and asking for reasons, hence as one conferring genuinely conceptual content on the expressions, performances, and statuses that have scorekeeping significances in those practices. I divide the six (...) consequential relations into two groups, the fundamental-semantic and the social-pragmatic, and I characterise the complex interactions between them. The bold and potentially falsifiable overall claim is that any practice that exhibits this full six-fold structure will be interpretable in a broadly Davidsonian sense: roughly, mappable onto ours in a way that makes conversation with us possible. (shrink)

It is normally assumed that there is only one kind of purposive action. This article argues that there are two kinds of purposive action, which require different models of explanation. One kind of action is done without awareness of reasons; another kind of action is done because the agent is aware of reasons for that action. The argument starts by noting that philosophers disagree about what explains action. Some claim that actions are explained by impersonal facts, such as facts about (...) how things should be or have been historically (e.g. Millikan, Stout). Others claim that actions are explained by mental states, such as beliefs and desires (e.g. Davidson, Velleman). These philosophers are usually regarded as offering conflicting accounts of one thing. However, they are best understood as giving accounts of different models of action-explanation. Neither model fits every case, so there are at least two kinds of purposive action. (shrink)