The purpose of this paper is to defend the view that the bodily actions of men typicaly involve a mental action of voliton or willing, and that such mental acts are, in at least one important sense, the basic actions we perform when we do things like raise an arm, move a finger, or flex a muscle.

These questions provide the impetus for the detailed discussions of ontology, human agency, and everyday psychological explanation presented in this book.

The dissertation develops a conception of action based on the concept of practical task-responsibility rather than on the concept of intention. It answers two problems. First, it grounds the distinction between an action and a mere happening, thus meeting Wittgenstein's challenge to explain what is the difference between an agent's raising her arm and her arm rising? Second, it grounds the distinction between acting for a reason and acting while merely having a reason, thus meeting Davidson's challenge to give an (...) account of the explanatory force of reasons. ;One source of resistance to an account of action in terms of normative expectations rather than in terms of intentions comes from explanatory individualism. The explanatory individualist argues that it is ultimately the intentional attitudes of the agent rather than normative expectations of other people that are relevant to the way in which we explain one another's actions, and that they ought to figure in the account of the nature of action. I defend explanatory nonindividualism, according to which we sometimes act on our own intentions and desires but sometimes on the normative expectations and desires of others . Explanatory nonindividualism is fortified by a selectional account of the explanatory force of reasons. I demonstrate that Davidson's challenge can be met by identifying reasons with selectional criteria rather than with causes. ;In response to Wittgenstein's challenge, I propose that we understand what it is to be an action not in terms of a performance being intentional under a description, but in terms of it being reasonable to expect a performance of the agent under some description. Only one concept of reasonableness is necessary to make the distinction between actions and mere happenings, and I explicate that concept. In addition to accounting for actions that are intentional under some description, the account also captures cases that are not so straightforwardly captured by that criterion . Moreover, cases of so-called basic wayward causal chains are excluded from qualifying as actions. (shrink)

This chapter raises the question of how far some recent philosophy of action assists in explicating the moral psychological notions that are of concern in jurisprudence. The focus of the overall argument is on a distinction used by Antony Duff in his Intention, Agency and Criminal Liability — a distinction, Duff says, between ‘a broader and a narrower conception of intention’. It is doubtful that the distinction can do the work that Duff wants it to. Duff rests as much upon (...) it as he does only because of a certain optimism: he hopes that conceptual analysis of intention may reveal what many of the interesting questions about mens rea really turn on, and so deliver the goods for the criminal lawyer. But this hope is vain. The chapter begins with some basic philosophy of action. A presentation of an account of actions which highlights some essential conceptual connections, and which introduces the concept of attempt into the framework, can provide a setting for a clear view of Duff's distinction. Exposition of this material takes up the first part of the chapter. This is brought into relation with issues in criminal liability in the second part, where its connection with the notions of actus reus and mens rea is shown. The third part explains and argues for the view taken of Duff's distinction, which differs from his. The remainder of the chapter considers how far an understanding of the concept of intention can take the criminal lawyer. (shrink)

Book synopsis: Criminal law has been described as a species of political and moral philosophy; whether that can be said to be true is not at all certain, but criminal law can be the subject of philosophical study. The aim of this book is to explore some of the philosophical foundations of the criminal law. The distinguished English and North American contributors to this volume have all produced original and sparkling essays which will command attention.

In this paper I advance an alternative to Davidson’s conception of reasons that preserves the spirit of Davidson's account of effective reasons while avoiding a problem posed by a familiar species of intentional action - roughly, action done for its own sake, or what I shall call intrinsically motivated action.

This paper is an analysis of the concept "Mistake in Performance," a phrase first coined by Miss Elizabeth Anscombe in her monograph On Intention. The author shows that examples of a mistake in performance are nothing but cases of ordinary mistakes of judgment. The only difference between the two is that in cases of mistake in performance the agent acts on the basis of an erroneous judgment, that is, he fails to do what he intended to do.