A Companion to the Philosophy of Action

Timothy O'Connor, Constantine Sandis

John Wiley & Sons, Jul 5, 2011 - Philosophy - 664 pages

A Companion to the Philosophy of Action offers a comprehensive overview of the issues and problems central to the philosophy of action.

• The first volume to survey the entire field of philosophy of action (the central issues and processes relating to human actions)
• Brings together specially commissioned chapters from international experts
• Discusses a range of ideas and doctrines, including rationality, free will and determinism, virtuous action, criminal responsibility, Attribution Theory, and rational agency in evolutionary perspective
• Individual chapters also cover prominent historic figures from Plato to Ricoeur
• Can be approached as a complete narrative, but also serves as a work of reference
• Offers rich insights into an area of philosophical thought that has attracted thinkers since the time of the ancient Greeks

Contents

• Basic Actions and Individuation: 10
• Trying to Act: 18
• Bodily Movements: 26
• The Causal Theory of Action: 32
• Adverbs of Action and Logical Form: 40
• Refraining Omitting and Negative Acts: 50
• Speech Acts: 58
• Collective Action: 67
• Habitual Actions: 74
• Cambridge Actions: 82
• Volition and the Will: 99
• Desire and Pleasure: 114
• Reasons and Causes: 129
• Motivating Reasons: 145
• Deviant Causal Chains: 159
• Mental Causation and Epiphenomenalism: 174
• What a Difference Emotions Make: 191
• Mental Acts: 209
• Agent Causation: 218
• Agents Knowledge: 236
• Deliberation and Decision: 252
• Addiction and Compulsion: 267
• Rationality: 285
• Free Will and Determinism: 301
• Virtuous Action: 317
• Action and Criminal Responsibility: 331
• Scientific Challenges to Free Will: 345
• Intentional Action in Folk Psychology: 357
• Rational Agency in Evolutionary Perspective: 374
• Action in Cognitive Ethology: 393
• The Prediction of Action: 410
• Plato: 429
• Stoics Epicureans and Aristotelians: 447
• Duns Scotus: 466
• Descartes: 481
• Berkeley: 496
• Hume: 513
• Nietzsche: 528
• Weber: 546
• Ryle: 562
• Chisholm: 578
• Davidson: 598
• Ricœur: 613

About the author

Timothy O’Connor is Professor and Department Chair of philosophy at Indiana University Bloomington, and a member of its Cognitive Sciences program. He has published extensively in metaphysics, philosophy of mind and action, and philosophy of religion. His books include Agents, Causes, and Events: Essays on Indeterminism and Free Will (ed. 1995), Persons and Causes: The Metaphysics of Free Will (2000), Philosophy of Mind: Contemporary Readings (ed. 2003), Theism and Ultimate Explanation: The Necessary Shape of Contingency (2008) and Downward Causation and the Necessity of Free Will (ed. 2010).

Constantine Sandis is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Oxford Brookes University and New York University in London. He is the editor of New Essays on the Explanation of Action (2009) and Hegel on Action (with Arto Laitinen, 2010), and author of The Things We Do and Why We Do Them (2010).

Bibliographic information

• Title: A Companion to the Philosophy of Action; Blackwell Companions to Philosophy
• Editors: Timothy O'Connor, Constantine Sandis
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, 2011
• ISBN: 1444390457, 9781444390452
• Length: 664 pages
• Subjects: Philosophy / History & Surveys / General