Philosophy of Action

(4 Credits)

Human beings, and perhaps other kinds of creatures, are agents. We are not merely a locus of events in the world; sometimes, we make things happen. Many kinds of objects can have causal consequences, as when a rock rolls down a hill and hits a tree, and many different kinds of organisms are capable of self-movement, as when a dog blinks its eyes. But agents like us bring about effects in the world intentionally: we can hit a tree with a rock on purpose, and wink as well as blink. The concern of this course is to think about what it means to be this kind of rational, autonomous agent: what capacities must a creature have and exercise in order to be an agent determining itself to perform an intentional action? In Wittgenstein's vivid image, we want to know "what is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?"