This is a welcome reprint of a book that continues to grow in importance.

This essay has two goals. The first is to define the behavioristic study of natural events and to classify behavior. The second is to stress the importance of the concept of purpose.Given any object, relatively abstracted from its surroundings for study, the behavioristic approach consists in the examination of the output of the object and of the relations of this output to the input. By output is meant any change produced in the surroundings by the object. By input, conversely, is (...) meant any event external to the object that modifies this object in any manner. (shrink)

That a science of human conduct is possible, that what any man may do even in moments of the most sober and careful reflection can be understood and explained, has seemed to many a philosopher to cast doubt upon our common view that any human action can ever be said to be truly free. This book, first published in 1961, into crucially important issues that are often ignored in the familiar arguments for and against the possibility of free action. These (...) issues are brought to light and examined in some detail. (shrink)

What is the relation between a reason and an action when the reason explains the action by giving the agent's reason for doing what he did? We may call such explanations rationalizations, and say that the reason rationalizes the action. In this paper I want to defend the ancient - and common-sense - position that rationalization is a species of ordinary causal explanation. The defense no doubt requires some redeployment, but not more or less complete abandonment of the position, as (...) urged by many recent writers. (shrink)

Breaking new ground in the debate about the relation of mind and body, David Armstrong's classic text - first published in 1968 - remains the most compelling and comprehensive statement of the view that the mind is material or physical. In the preface to this new edition, the author reflects on the book's impact and considers it in the light of subsequent developments. He also provides a bibliography of all the key writings to have appeared in the materialist debate.

This paper is an attempt to re-interpret some of the results of contemporary studies of action and explanation by philosophers who may loosely be called 'post-Wittgensteinian', e.g. G. E. M. Anscombe, A. Kenny, A. I. Melden. One of the themes which recurs in these' discussions is that of the non-contingent connection between desires, intentions, etc., and the actions which we explain by them — although not all the authors concerned understand this in the same way, and many would not accept (...) the term 'non-contingent connection'. The thesis that there is a non-contingent connection between, e.g., desire and action is strongly contested, and I attempt in this paper to show (a) that our language for the factors which we cite in explaining action, desires, intentions (Sect. II), feelings (Sect. III), sensations (Sect. IV), etc. is inescapably dispositional in a strong sense, i.e. that it characterizes these factors as disposing us to act in certain ways. But I argue (b) that this does nothing to show that these factors are not causes of the actions they explain (Sect. I). The seeming oddity of causes which are non-contingently linked with their consequences is explained when we see (c) that the account of action embedded in our ordinary language is teleological, i.e. refers us ultimately to the inclinations of the subject, and intentional (Sects. V and VI). (shrink)

I Two Traditions. Scientific inquiry, seen in a very broad perspective, may be said to present two main aspects. One is the ascertaining and discovery of ...

This paper develops and draws the consequences of an etiological analysis of goal-directedness modeled on one that functions centrally in Charles Taylor's work on action. The author first presents, criticizes, and modifies Taylor's formulation, and then shows his modified formulation accounts easily for much of the fine-structure of teleological concepts and conceptualizations. Throughout, the author is at pains to show that teleological explanations are orthodox from an empiricist's point of view: they require nothing novel methodologically.

With a new chapter This new edition of Herbert Fingarette's classic study in philosophical psychology now includes a provocative recent essay on the topic by ...

We are witnessing at present a substantial efflorescence of the view that there are and must necessarily be fundamental differences between the methods—and especially the types of explanation—appropriate to the social sciences on the one hand and those appropriate to the natural sciences on the other. New and ever more subtle arguments seeking to re-establish a Geisteswissenschaften vs. Naturwissenschaften distinction are flowing from scholarly presses in ever greater volume. The works cited in footnote one are a mere sample just of (...) recent books which, while diverse to the point of contradiction in some respects, have as their common underlying theme the defense of such a methodological duality. (shrink)