This paper presents a dual intention model (DIM) of demonstrations as actions to show the agentive nature of demonstrations. According to the DIM, demonstrations are complex actions that contain as components at least three elements: an abductive intention, a deictic intention, and a basic ostensive act of indication. This paper unpacks these three components and discusses their roles from the viewpoint of the philosophy of action and the philosophy of language. It also shows how the DIM applies in selected practical (...) examples and explains the merits of the model in the context of other views on demonstrations and demonstratives. (shrink)

The book introduces Tadeusz Kotarbiński’s philosophy of action into the mainstream of contemporary action-theoretical debates. Piotr Makowski shows that Kotarbiński–Alfred Tarski’s teacher and one of the most important philosophers of the renowned Lvov-Warsaw school—proposed a groundbreaking, original, and (in at least a few respects) still fresh perspective in action theorizing. The book examines and develops Kotarbiński’s ideas in the context of the most recent discussions in the philosophy of action. The main idea behind Kotarbiński’s action theory—and thus, behind this book—is (...) the significance of the philosophical investigations of the general conditions of effectiveness, efficiency, and economy of intentional actions. Makowski presents and reinterprets Kotarbiński’s views on these dimensions of our activities and sheds new light on the most important areas of action theory. (shrink)

The paper explores the topic of organizational routines from a philosophical vantage point to see how the philosophy of action may help improve its understanding in organizational research. The main goal is to show the distinctive complexity of the intentional picture of routines. In this respect, the paper clarifies the interrelations between psychological habits and routines and describes similarities and differences between them. It also highlights the special place of mindfulness as a psycho-cognitive mechanism of action meta-control in intentional explanations (...) of routine complexity. (shrink)

This article argues that such large-scale cases of crowd behavior as the Mexican Wave ( La Ola) constitute forms of shared intentionality which cannot be explained solely with the use of the standard intentionalistic ontology. It claims that such unique forms of collective intentionality require a hybrid explanatory lens in which an account of shared goals, intentions, and other propositional attitudes is combined with an account of the motor psychology of collective agents. The paper describes in detail the intentionalistic ontology (...) of La Ola and discusses the conditions of cooperation it meets. The discussion allows the author to defend the view that large-scale collective intentionality can be based on automaticity to a significant degree: to properly understand such phenomena like La Ola, the idea of probabilistically interpreted decisions and propensities to act should give way to the automatic aspects of behavior. This paves the way for future studies in the philosophy of action to fully recognize the role of automatic performances at the level of collective actions just as they do for individual actions. (shrink)