On the question of the conclusion of a piece of practical reasoning, few have been willing to follow Aristotle's lead. He said the conclusion was an action. These days, the conclusion is usually described either as a proposition about what one ought to do, or as a psychological state or event, such as a decision to do something, an intention to do something, or a belief about what one ought to do. Why favor these options over the action-as-conclusion view? By (...) far the most oft-repeated answer is that these views, unlike Aristotle's, can accommodate the case in which a conclusion is drawn but not acted upon. The conclusion cannot be an action, it is said, because it is possible to reach a conclusion about what to do without doing the action. My thesis is that this objection fails, and that as a consequence no radical departure from Aristotle's proposal is warranted. (shrink)

This article explores the possibility of naturalized theory of action. It distinguishes ontological naturalism from conceptual naturalism, and asks whether a defensible theory of action can be either ontologically or conceptually naturalistic. The distinction between conditions for an ontology and conditions for a concept receives support from Donald Davidson's identification of two modes of explanation for action: rational and physical causal explanation. Davidson's action theory provides a naturalized ontology for action theory, but not a naturalized concept of intentional action. This (...) article raises doubts about Davidson's basis for such one-sided naturalism. It examines some conditions for a mode of explanation, in order to clarify whether an intentional mode of explanation might have ontological significance and thus raise problems for ontological naturalism. The article argues for the central role of certain instrumental factors in explanatory strategies, whether naturalistic or intentional; and it casts doubt on Jaegwon Kim's recent argument that intentional psychology and neuroscience are mutually exclusive as explanatory strategies. A key lesson is that variable end-dependent reasons are our only wherewithal in the evaluation of explanatory strategies. In this sense, our explanatory strategies are ultimately instrumental and perspectival. The article draws out the implications of this lesson for naturalized action theory and for psychological explanation. It opposes any suggested monopoly on explanation from the physical sciences. (shrink)

Duncan MacIntosh has argued that David Gauthier's notion of a constrained maximization disposition faces a dilemma. For if such a disposition is revocable, it is no longer rational come the time to act on it, and so acting on it is not (as Gauthier argues) rational; but if it is not revocable, acting on it is not voluntary. This paper is a response to MacIntosh's dilemma. I introduce an account of rational intention of a type which has become increasingly and (...) independently prominent in the literature, and argue that, on this account, rational and voluntary constraint is possible. (shrink)

RésuméDuncan Macintosh a soutenu que l'idée d'une disposition à imposer des contraintes à la maximisation, qu'a défendue David Gauthier, fait face à un dilemme. Car si cette disposition est révocable, il n'est plus rationnel de s'y conformer quand vient le temps d'agir, et agir en conformité avec elle n'est done pas un comportement rationnel; mais si elle n'est pas révocable, agir en conformité avec elle n'est pas un comportement volontaire. Cet article se veut une réponse au dilemme de Macintosh. Je (...) recours pour cela à un type d'approche de l'intention rationnelle qui est — indépendamment — devenu de plus en plus saillant dans la littérature, et je soutiens que dans cette approche, une contrainte rationnelle et volontaire est possible. (shrink)

Margaret Gilbert has argued that an agreement is not exchange of promises, since no such exchange plays all the roles she claims are distinctive of agreements. After briefly discussing the notion of intention and the principles governing intentions, I argue that a certain type of exchange of intentions — in which one person forms a conditional intention to act if the other does, and the other forms an unconditional intention to act on the presumption that the first will do what (...) they have said — plays all these roles, and so conclude that an agreement is in fact an exchange of intentions. (shrink)

This is a review of Kathrin Gluer's Donald Davidson: A Short Introduction. A dispute about the grounding of the Principle of Charity is discussed, and some resources Davidson has for responding to a criticism of his theory of action.