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Berent Enç - How We Act: Causes, Reasons, and Intentions

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Berent Enç How We Act: Causes, Reasons, and Intentions
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How We Act: Causes, Reasons, and Intentions: summary, description and annotation

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Talking about action comes easily to us. We quickly make distinctions between voluntary and non-voluntary actions; we think we can tell what intentions are; we are confident about evaluating reasons offered in rational justification of action. Berent En? provides a philosophers sustained examination of these issues: he portrays action as belonging to the causal order of events in nature, a theory from which new and surprising accounts of intention and voluntary action emerge. Philosophers and cognitive scientists alike will find How We Act a provocative and enlightening read.

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En Berent formerly Professor Emeritus University of Wisconsin-Madison How - photo 1
En, Berent , formerly Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin-Madison
How We Act
Causes, Reasons, and Intentions
Publication date 2003 (this edition)
Print ISBN-10: 0-19-925602-0
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-925602-0
doi:10.1093/0199256020.001.0001
Abstract: Attempts to answer the question of whether it is possible to understand agency as realized within a world construed 'naturalistically', that is, in terms of causal relations among events and states of affairs, or whether an adequate ontology requires sui generis acts that are essentially voluntary, such as volitions or agent-causation. Berent En defends the possibility of naturalizing agency via a causal theory of action (CTA). In doing that, he develops his key notion of basic action (Chs 2 and 3); he offers a 'general and original' solution to the problem of causal deviance (Ch. 4); and, he attempts to answer the objection that CTA removes the agent from the picture altogether by offering a purely causal model for the deliberative process that underlies practical reasoning (Ch. 5). Furthermore, the book discusses objections to volitional theories (Ch. 1), intentions and intentional action (Ch. 6), and the compatibility of En's CTA with attractive accounts of autonomy and freedom (Ch. 7).
Keywords: agency,agent-causation,autonomy,basic action,causality,causal deviance,causal theory of action,deliberation,En,freedom,intentions,naturalism,ontology,practical reasoning,volitions
How We Act
end p.i
end p.ii
How We Act
Causes, Reasons, and Intentions
CLARENDON PRESS OXFORD
end p.iii
How We Act Causes Reasons and Intentions - image 2

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Berent En 2003
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First published 2003
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ISBN 0-19-925602-0
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end p.iv
To the memory of my father
end p.v
end p.vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The idea for this book was inspired by the enthusiasm of my students in a seminar I taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1998. Since then I have benefited from the critical input I received from my students in other courses on related topics, and from colleagues who have read different chapters at various stages of incompletion and have helped me with their generous feedback.
The list of the students who have corrected my mistakes and given me new ideas is too long to produce here. But I would like to express my special appreciation to the help given to me by Joey Baltimore, Martin Barrett, Tom Bontly, Sara Chant, Zachary Ernst, Noel Hendrickson, Greg Mougin, Sara Gavrel Ortiz, and Richard Teng.
Among colleagues, I would especially like to express my gratitude to Fred Dretske, who read an earlier version of all of the chapters, and to two anonymous referees of OUP, whose critical input and helpful suggestions helped improve the penultimate draft. In addition, I am deeply indebted to the supererogatory efforts of many of my colleagues who read several of the chapters and provided invaluable critical appraisal. In this connection, I especially thank Ellery Eells, Brie Gertler, Daniel Hausman, Terry Penner, Larry Shapiro, Alan Sidelle, Elliott Sober, and Dennis Stampe.
In addition, papers that form the nucleus of some of the chapters were read at colloquia, and I benefited from the comments I received from the members of the audience at University of Calgary, University of Alberta, King's College London, University of Warwick, and Duke. Special thanks are due to Gven Gzeldere, Mohan Matthen, David Papineau, Michael Luntley, and David Sanford.
Finally, I would like to thank my long-time friend, James A. Jung, for suggesting the title of this book to me, and urging me to pay more attention to John Dewey, and to his views on habit. (I fear his advocacy for Dewey has gone unheeded.)
Throughout the four years from its conception to its conclusion of this project my wife Jennifer Vaughan Jones has been so unconditionally encouraging and supportive that I doubt, without her, I would
end p.vii
have started it; and I am sure, without her, I would not have completed it.
Parts of Chapter were taken from my 'Causal Theories and Unusual Causal Pathways', published in 1989 in Philosophical Studies, 55: 231-61. This has been made possible with kind permission from Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Parts of Chapter were taken from my 'Units of Behavior' published in 1995 in Philosophy of Science, 62: 523-42. The copyright is 1995 by the Philosophy of Science Association. Permission to use this material has been granted by the University of Chicago Press.
The Publisher very much regrets Berent En's untimely death after submission of his typescript, and would like to thank Fred Dretske for his help in overseeing the book through to publication.
end p.viii
CONTENTS
List of Figures
Introduction
Volitions
Introduction
Regress Arguments
Ryle's Regress
Danto's Regress
McCann's Regress
Volitions as Basic Acts
McCann
Ginet
Pink
Foundationalism in Action Theory
Difficulties with Irreducible Basic Mental Acts
Mysteries of Agency Causation
Analogy with Visual Perception
Analogy as Applied to Action
Objections
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