Choice: The Essential Element in Human Action (Routledge Library Editions: Free Will and Determinism) - Softcover

Donagan, Alan

 
9781138704145: Choice: The Essential Element in Human Action (Routledge Library Editions: Free Will and Determinism)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1138704148 ISBN 13: 9781138704145
Publisher: Routledge, 2018

Synopsis

This book, first published in 1987, investigates what distinguishes the part of human behaviour that is action (praxis) from the part that is not. The distinction was clearly drawn by Socrates, and developed by Aristotle and the medievals, but key elements of their work became obscured in modern philosophy, and were not fully recovered when, under Wittgenstein’s influence, the theory of action was revived in analytical philosophy. This study aims to recover those elements, and to analyse them in terms of a defensible semantics on Fregean lines. Among its conclusions: that actions are bodily or mental events that are causally explained by their doers’ propositional attitudes, especially by their choices or fully specific intentions; that choice cannot be reduced to desire and belief, and hence that the traditional concept of will as intellectual appetite must be revived.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author

Alan Donagan

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

Publisher
Routledge
Publication date
2018
Language
English
ISBN 10 
1138704148
ISBN 13 
9781138704145
Binding
Paperback
Edition number
1
Number of pages
210

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780710211682: Choice: The Essential Element in Human Action (Studies in Philosophical Psychology)

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  0710211686 ISBN 13:  9780710211682
Publisher: Routledge, 1987
Hardcover