Dualism in Action

Summary

We know what one dualist account of human action looks like, because Descartes gave us one. I want to explore the extent to which present-day accounts of physical action are vulnerable to the charges that may be made against Descartes’s dualist account. I once put forward an account of human action, and I have always maintained that my view about the basic shape of a correct ‘theory of action’ can be combined with a thoroughgoing opposition to dualism. But the possibility of the combination has been doubted, and it will remain doubtful until we have a better understanding of what makes an account objectionably dualistic. In this paper, I hope to deflect some of the criticisms aimed against what I shall call my account, and to show that when they are turned onto their proper path their actual target is some physicalist accounts.