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Action as a form of temporal unity: on Anscombe’s Intention

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Douglas Lavin Open the ORCID record for Douglas Lavin [Opens in a new window]
Douglas Lavin*
Affiliation:
Philosophy Department, University College London, Gower Street, London, UK
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Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to display an alternative to the familiar decompositional approach in action theory, one that resists the demand for an explanation of action in non-agential terms, while not simply treating the notion of intentional agency as an unexplained primitive. On this Anscombean alternative, action is not a worldly event with certain psychological causes, but a distinctive form of material process, one that is not simply caused by an exercise of reason but is itself a productive exercise of reason. I argue that to comprehend the proposed alternative requires an account of the temporality of events in general. An event does not simply have a position in time, but is itself temporally structured. With the inner temporality of events in view, the Anscombean conception of action as a specifically self-conscious form of temporal unity is made available for critical reflection.

Keywords

ActionAnscombeeventintentionpractical reasonprocesstime
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 45 , Issue 5-6: Special Issue: Belief, Action, and Rationality over Time , December 2015 , pp. 609 - 629
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2015

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