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Prichard on Causing a Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2017

Jonathan Dancy*
Affiliation:
The University of Texas at Austin

Abstract

This paper starts by considering an interesting argument of H.A. Prichard’s against the view that to act is to cause a change; the argument is that causing is not an activity. The argument is important because of the recent emergence of an ‘agent-causation’ view according to which actions are the causing of changes by agents. I suggest a way of responding to Prichard’s argument, and then, profiting from one of his own conclusions, turn to consider the relation between neurophysiological changes and the causation of bodily movement by the agent. I make a suggestion about the proper way to understand the relation between the neurophysiological changes, the bodily movements and the action.

Type
Papers
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2017 

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References

1 Alvarez, M. and Hyman, J., ‘Agents and their Actions’, Philosophy 73 (1998), 219–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Prichard, H.A., ‘Acting, Willing, Desiring’, in Moral Writings (ed.) MacAdam, J. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 272–81, at 272–3Google Scholar.

3 ‘Acting, Willing, Desiring’, 277.

4 ‘Agents and their Actions’, 230.

5 Aune, B., ‘Prichard, Action, and Volition’, Philosophical Studies 25 (1974), 97116 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at page 98.

6 Lowe, J., Personal Agency (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 7.3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 See her Intention (Oxford: Blackwell, 1957), §30Google ScholarPubMed.