Philosophy of Action Edited by Constantine Sandis (Oxford Brookes University, New York University) |
About this topic
| Summary | The philosophy of action includes topics and issues as diverse as those of action theory, agency, autonomy, criminal liability, free will, decision theory, practical reason, speech acts, motivation, reasons, and intention. So whilst it is a distinct area of enquiry in its own right, many issues in the philosophy of action cannot be addressed independently of philosophy of mind, ethics, metaphysics, legal and political philosophy, philosophy of history, philosophy of language philosophy of science, behavioural science, and cognitive ethology. Conversely, progress in these and other fields often requires a philosophical investigation of agency and action. |
| Key works | The philosophical study of action can be traced back to ancient Greek and Indian philosophy. It is of central importance, for example, to Aristotle 2006, and accounts of action have played a very important role in the work of most of the great philosophers, including Aquinas, Suarez, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Collingwood, and Wittgenstein. The last of these greatly influenced the work of his pupils Norman Malcom, G.H. von Wright, and G.E.M. Anscombe who all wrote about the nature of action and its explanation. Of their works, Anscombe 1957 has proven to be particularly influential, inspiring Davidson 1980, the chief proponent of causalist views about bboth action and reasons throughout the second half of the twentieth century, as well as more recent works such as Thompson 2008, whose 'naive action theory' emphasises the importance of explanation through rediscription, as well as the unfolding of action through time (a topic which also concerned Paul Ricoeur). Both Anscombe and Davidson speak of actions as events, yet this conception has periodically been qualified (see e.g. Hornsby 1980 & Sandis 2012) or challenged (see e.g. Bach 1997 & Dretske 1988). Whilst questions about the causation and explanation of action remain central to the field (see Aguilar & Buckareff 2010 and Sandis 2009 for two recent collections of essays), questions about individuation have (following the linguistic deflationism of Bennett 1988) largely been replaced by an interest in (a) agency and (b) knowledge of action (see O'Connor 2000 and O'Brien 2007 respectively for important examples of such research). Whether (and if so the extent to which) questions about agency are related to the issue of free will is itself a matter of ongoing debate. |
| Introductions | Danto 1973 Davis 1979 Moya 1990 O'Connor & Sandis 2010 Stout 2005 |
|
Show all references |
In this area
