We think less than we think. My thesis moves from this suspicion to show that standard accounts of intentional action can't explain the whole of agency. Causalist accounts such as Davidson's and Bratman's, according to which an action can be intentional only if it is caused by a particular mental state of the agent, don't work for every kind of action. So-called automatic actions, effortless performances over which the agent doesn't deliberate, and to which she doesn't need to pay attention, constitute exceptions to the causalist framework, or so I argue in this thesis. Not all actions are the result of a mental struggle, painful hesitation, or the weighting of evidence. Through practice, many performances become second nature. Think of familiar cases such as one's morning routines and habits: turning on the radio, brushing your teeth. Think of the highly skilled performances involved in sport and music: Jarrett's improvised piano playing, the footballer's touch. Think of agents' spontaneous reactions to their environment: ducking a blow, smiling. Psychological research has long acknowledged the distinctiveness and importance of automatic actions, while philosophy has so far explained them together with the rest of agency. Intuition tells us that automatic actions are intentional actions of ours all the same (I have run a survey which shows that this intuition is widely shared): not only our own autonomous deeds for which we are held responsible, but also necessary components in the execution and satisfaction of our general plans and goals. But do standard causal accounts deliver on the intentionality of automatic actions? I think not. Because, in automatic cases, standard appeals to intentions, beliefs, desires, and psychological states in general ring hollow. We just act: we don't think, either consciously or unconsciously. On the reductive side, Davidson's view can't but appeal to, at best, unconscious psychological states, the presence and causal role of which is, I argue, inferred from the needs of a theory, rather than from evidence in the world. On the non-reductive side, Bratman agrees, with his refutation of the Simple View, that we can't just attach an intention to every action that we want to explain. But Bratman’s own Single Phenomenon View, appealing to the mysterious notion of 'motivational potential', merely acknowledges the need for refinement without actually providing one. So I propose my own account of intentional action, the 'guidance view', according to which automatic actions are intentional: differently from Davidson and Bratman, who only offer necessary conditions in order to avoid the problem of causal deviance, I offer a full-blown account: E's phi-ing is intentional if and only If phi-ing is under E's guidance. This account resembles one developed by Frankfurt, with the crucial difference that Frankfurt – taking 'acting with an intention' and 'acting intentionally' to be synonymous – thinks that guidance is sufficient only for some movement being an action, but not for some movement being an intentional action. I argue that, on the other hand, Frankfurt's concept of guidance can be developed so that it is sufficient for intentional action too. In Chapter One I present and defend my definition of ‘automatic action’. In Chapter Two I show that such understanding of automatic actions finds confirmation in empirical psychology. In Chapter Three I show that Davidson's reductive account of intentional action does not work for automatic actions. In Chapter Four I show that the two most influential non-reductive accounts of intentional action, the Simple View and Bratman's Single Phenomenon View, don't work either. And in Chapter Five I put forward and defend my positive thesis, the 'guidance view'. Also, in the Appendix I present the findings of my survey on the intentionality of automatic actions.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2008. / "Graduate Program in Philosophy." Includes bibliographical references (p. 769-771).

No description available.

Thesis advisor: Oliva Blanchette / This dissertation is a synthetic exercise in philosophy and theology, proceeding from the perennial question: "What is the specific difference between sacrament and superstition?" It answers that the difference lies in the order of revelation. Sacraments are a form of revealed praxis, and only the divine guaranty of revelation distinguishes them from other forms of human action, including superstitious action. Revelation takes shape in historical sensible signs demanding human interpretation, such as inspired scripture. These revealed signs also include precise human actions, however, in the form of the prescriptions of sacramental praxis. As the words of Scripture do not signify merely human intentions, but express the divine will, so sacramental action signifies a divine intention, not a purely human intention, in the form of this precise praxis. Sacraments, therefore, far from attempting some kind of natural purchase on the supernatural, in fact demand the opposite: the surrender of the human to the divine will, the admission of human insufficiency. This answer is based on a theological appropriation of Maurice Blondel's philosophical investigation of human action in his early philosophical work Action (1893), in which he rehabilitates the question of the supernatural on a properly philosophical footing by establishing a hypothetical necessity for a supernatural complement to human action. Blondel and Aquinas, therefore, both find the point of heterogenous insertion for the supernatural in human subjectivity: in the virtues for Aquinas, in voluntary human action for Blondel. The dialectic of Action (1893) hinges on the phenomenon of superstitious action, which functions as a middle term in the dialectic. Superstition for Blondel corresponds to an attempt at human `self-sufficiency': actively placing in a finite object of the will the transcendent perfection that can only be received passively as gift from outside the natural order, by insertion of a heterogenous factor in the human action. Given that human action is irreducible in Blondel's philosophy and even thought itself is a form of action, so superstition works its way into all forms of human practice, including intellectual pursuits like philosophy and theology, giving rise to `closed' and self-sufficient philosophical and theological systems. Moreover, Blondel audaciously turns Kant's accusation of superstition against sacraments around, arguing that it is the extreme rationalists, not the unlearned devout, who are guilty of the most insidious form of superstition by effectively fetishizing their own thought, finding there the completion that Blondel's dialectic demonstrates to be impossible in the natural order. Sacramental action, by contrast, since it requires submission of human to divine will and the admission of human insufficiency, it is at the very antipodes of superstition. The theological appropriation of Blondel's philosophy provides a heuristic in sacramental theology, since it entails that the supernatural efficacy of the sacraments cannot be attributed, even partially, to the natural efficacy of human action. It is hard to see how post-conciliar theories of `symbolic efficacy' avoid superstition, therefore, since they attempt to find in natural human action the heterogenous supernatural that cannot be reduced to the merely naturally perceptible. / Thesis (STD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

<p>This study focuses on a series of foundational stylistic and formal innovations in eighteenth-century and Romantic literature, and argues that they can be cumulatively attributed to the distinct challenges authors faced in representing human action and the will. The study focuses in particular on cases of “acting against better judgment” or “failing to do what one knows one ought to do” – concepts originally theorized as “akrasia” and “weakness of the will” in ancient Greek and Scholastic thought. During the Enlightenment, philosophy increasingly conceives of human minds and bodies like systems and machines, and consequently fails to address such cases except as intractable or incoherent. Yet eighteenth-century and Romantic narratives and poetry consistently engage the paradoxes and ambiguities of action and volition in representations of akrasia. As a result, literature develops representational strategies that distinguish the epistemic capacities of literature as privileged over those of philosophy.</p><p>The study begins by centering on narratives of distempered selves from the 1760s. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions and Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey narrate cases of knowingly and weakly acting against better judgment, and in so doing, reveal the limitations of the “philosophy of the passions” that famously informed sentimental literature at the time. These texts find that the interpretive difficulties of action demand a non-systematic and hermeneutic approach to interpreting a self through the genre of narrative. Rousseau’s narrative in particular informs William Godwin’s realist novels of distempered subjects. Departing from his mechanistic philosophy of mind and action, Godwin develops the technique of free indirect discourse in his third novel Fleetwood (1805) as a means of evoking the ironies and self-deceptions in how we talk about willing. </p><p>Romantic poetry employs the literary trope of weakness of will primarily through the problem of regretted inaction – a problem which I argue motivates the major poetic innovations of William Wordsworth and John Keats. While Samuel Taylor Coleridge sought to characterize his weakness of will in philosophical writing, Wordsworth turns to poetry with The Prelude (1805), revealing poetry itself to be a self-deceiving and disappointing form of procrastination. More explicitly than Wordsworth, John Keats identifies indolence as the prime symbol and basis of what he calls “negative capability.” In his letters and poems such as “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles” (1817) and “Ode on Indolence” (1819), Keats reveals how the irreducibly contradictory qualities of human agency speak to the particular privilege of “disinterested aesthetics” – a genre fitted for the modern era for its ability to disclose contradictions without seeking to resolve or explain them in terms of component parts.</p> / Dissertation

Four concepts are considered in relation to the question: can an illuminating characterization of the social sciences be given in terms of one concept of a relatively natural kind of thing? Weber's concept of 'social action' provides neither a general characterization, nor an important partial account, or so I argue after examining its relation to collectivity concepts, to suicide studies, and to standard desiderata for scientific concepts. I next assess the notion of 'meaningful'action. Peter Winch claims that such action is always 'social' in some sense, because it involves rule-following and rules f presuppose' a social setting. I consider the nature of Winch's Wittgensteinian arguments about rules; two senses in which all action might be 'social' emerge; however, were 'social actions' in either sense the focus of a science, it would not therefore aptly be called a social science, the senses of 'social' here being too weak. I turn next to what I allege is Durkheim's basic notion of a 'social fact' , roughly, that of a way of acting which 'inheres in' and is 'produced by' a social group. I present a highly articulated reconstruction of this notion: a 'collective practice', Pr, of a social group, G, will "be a 'Durkheimian social phenomenon', according to this revised conception, if and only if either Pr or another collective practice of G provides members of G who conform to Pr with a 'basic' reason for so conforming. A central element in my account of collective practices is a notion of 'group common knowledge' derived from David Lewis. I finally undertake a detailed critique of David Lewis's account of conventions and of the 'co-ordination problems' Lewis claims underlie conventions; I argue for a kind of account different in form from Lewis's, in which conventions are not, and do not necessarily involve, 'regularities' in behaviour. The Durkheimian notion is judged the best joartial characterization of a social science considered. Its presupposition of the notion of a social group is, I argue, no flaw. I conclude with a general theory of 'socialness', and hence of social science, based on my judgements about the four concepts considered.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Queensland, 2003. / Includes bibliography.

This thesis interweaves two strands of inquiry, one educational, the other philosophical. The educational inquiry is seeded by the need to understand both embodiment and learning within experiences of place in education. The second strand is prompted by Evernden’s insight that the environmental crisis is a ‘crisis of being’ (1985). Evernden argues that our perceived separation from the world is at the root of the environmental issues we face. Highlighting the role that ‘place’ might have in both these inquiries, I examine the educational and philosophical debates around place, drawing especially on place-based education (Gruenewald & Smith, 2008), and phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty, 1968). Arguments from within these literatures indicate that experiences of, and in, place hold the potential to reexamine what it means to be part of the world, here, now. Three key research questions emerge from my examination of the literature: 1 – what role do experiences of place have in education? 2 – what is the ontology of place? and 3 – how does place affect thinking and learning? This third question is the meeting point of the philosophical and educational threads of the inquiry, and also reflects back on the process of the inquiry itself. Given the focus of these questions on the lived experience of place, phenomenology is chosen as a suitable methodology. However, I argue that the full potential of phenomenological research can only be met through a more participative and experiential approach. Drawing on literature on participative research, grouped under the term ‘action research,’ (Reason & Bradbury, 2001), a series of collaborative phenomenological research workshops were run in 2009 and 2010 with two groups of practicing educators. Descriptions of experiences of place and place-based education, from within the workshops and the participants’ workplaces, were distilled into themes by the groups. These themes served two purposes: the first was to explore the possibilities of place-based education in various working contexts, an inquiry which was completed during the workshops. The second was to seed a phenomenological investigation into the ontology of place, exploring questions from the philosophical debate on place. This second part of the inquiry was completed by myself. Both groups felt place-based education revealed aspects of place taken for granted or un-explored. This was summed up by one participant in the phrase ‘bringing place to life.’ The participants’ understandings of the different aspects of placebased education including the pedagogy involved, and the possible outcomes, show how place-based education was understood and applied in different contexts. The phenomenological analysis which builds on the participants’ understandings, describes a contrast between un-examined place and the intimate and immersive experience that can occur when place is ‘brought to life.’ The final part of the thesis explores in further depth the role of the mind in ‘bringing place to life,’ putting forward the idea of mind as a phenomenon which can adopt different scales. When learning and thinking on the same scale as the body, the mind is brought to place, and the dualism between mind and body breaks down. ‘Thinking in place’ is put forward as a way of understanding both the experience of learning in context, and the phenomenological immersion of both body and mind in place. The conclusions explore the implications of this research for the various fields touched on in the study: educational approaches such as environmental education, philosophical approaches to place, and research methodologies.

<p>Traditional approaches to the empirical research of human action, rational choice theory dominant amongst them, have implicitly adopted philosophical pre-suppositions about human action that are untenable and in need of correction. In this project, I seek to both (a) diagnose these problems by showing that rational choice theory is insufficiently attentive to both the question of what agents are and of what kind of world they occupy, and (b) overcome these problems by offering a conception of practical reason that is more "realistic" in that it incorporates a philosophically convincing account of world and of the practical agent's relation with it. To that end, I develop a conception of praxis that is centered on the idea that practical agents act within and toward practical horizons rather than exercising a faculty of choice within stable decision spaces.</p> / Dissertation

When facing a dilemma about what to do, rational agents will often encounter a conflict between what they ought to do, morally speaking, and what they most want to do. Traditionally we think that when there is a moral imperative for an agent to do something, even if she does not want to do it, she nevertheless ought to do it. But this approach inevitably fails to be able to explain why agents often choose to do what they most want, in many cases flouting such moral imperatives. The purpose of this thesis is to offer a plausible alternative to this way of understanding these deliberative dilemmas. I argue that communitarian moralism, the account according to which genuine moral imperatives are only imperatives on communities, rather than agents, and according to which agents’ moral conduct is necessarily bound up with her particular preferences, projects and commitments, is the most plausible way to understand dilemmas in which agents must choose between doing moral and self-interested actions.