The Metaphysics of Action: Trying, Doing, Causing

✍ Scribed by David-Hillel Ruben

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 354
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

In this book, the author provides an account of three central ideas in the philosophy of action: trying to act, acting or doing, and one’s action causing further consequences. In all three cases, novel theories of these phenomena are offered: trying to act is not a particular mental or physical act but can be explained using conditionals; that action is not the same as causing something to happen; and in the case of a special but important subset of actions, for example the opening of a window, the action is identical to the event of the window’s opening. A result of this last account is that it places actions out in the world, sometimes far removed in time and space from the actor’s body. The world is full of action; actions do not just exist in the many little islands of space and time that all of our bodies inhabit. In the final chapter, Ruben describes and discusses a skeptical challenge to the idea that we can ever know whether or not someone else has acted, rather than just passive events having happened to that person.

✦ Table of Contents

Preface
Contents
1: Introduction
Bibliography
2: The Physical Action Theory of Trying
What’s in the Chapter
Introduction
The Physical Action Theory of Trying: The Multiple-Realisability Claim
The Physical Action Theory of Trying: The Token-Token Identity Claim
The Mereological Sum Strategy
The Physical Action Theory and Problems of Action Failure
The Denial of Naked Trying
Conclusion
Bibliography
3: Trying in Some Way
What’s in the Chapter
Introduction
Davidson’s Argument
A Note on Davidson’s Logical Form Proposal
Adverbial Qualification
Types of Mode Adverbs
The Opacity of ‘Try’
Mode Adverbs of Manner
Adverbs of Speed
Adverbs Outside the Opaque Context: Speed, Place, and Time
Adverbs of Degree of Effort and Frequency
Naked Trying: Mode Adverbs of Manner, of Speed, and of Frequency and Degree
Spatial and Temporal Qualification of Naked Trying
Another Consideration
Metaphysical Significance
Apparent Counterexamples
References Back
Causation
Evaluations and Objects of Attitudes
The Law: The Conduct Element in Attempts
Conclusion
Bibliography
4: A Conditional Theory of Trying
What’s in the Chapter
(A) A General Argument Against Trying Particulars
(B) The Conditional Theory of Trying
Time and (CTT)
Some Further Clarifications
Objections to (CTT)
Bibliography
5: Causing and Doing
What’s in the Chapter
Intrinsic Events
Causative Alternation
The Paraphrase Thesis
Failure of the Biconditional RHS to LHS for Ergative Verbs
Remoteness and Partiality
A Cause, the Cause
David Lewis on Doing and Causing
DT: The Derivation Thesis
Bibliography
6: Doing and Causing
What’s in the Chapter
Causation: Extensionality
Returning to (CA)
The One-Particular View
The One-Particular View and Act Individuation
Real Change and Cambridge Change
More on Actions and Times
Austere Theory and Intrinsic Events
The First Argument: The Action Causation Argument
The Second Argument: The Time of an Action Argument
A Note on Non-ergative Action Verbs
Bibliography
7: Causing in Some Way
What’s in the Chapter
Is ‘Cause’ an Action Verb?
Some Remarks on the Verb ‘To Cause’
Causing and Action Theory
An Argument for Causings?
Instrumentals
Alvarez’ Ingenious Solution
Problems for the Solution
The One-Particular View and the Rejection of (PR)
Bibliography
8: Regress Issues and Action Scepticism
What’s in the Chapter
Regress?
Standard Theory and Causing Actions
Explanation of Actions and Explanation of Intrinsic Events
A Vicious Regress?
Our Knowledge of the Actions of Others
Comparing W and W*
In Which World Are We?
Epilogue
Bibliography
Bibliography
Index