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Mental causation and rational agency.

紀錄類型:	書目-語言資料,手稿 : Monograph/item
正題名/作者:	Mental causation and rational agency./
作者:	Murray, Peter Rozum.
面頁冊數:	1 online resource (273 pages)
附註:	Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 77-02(E), Section: A.
Contained By:	Dissertation Abstracts International77-02A(E).
標題:	Philosophy. -
電子資源:	click for full text (PQDT)
ISBN:	9781339080321

Mental causation and rational agency.
Murray, Peter Rozum.

Mental causation and rational agency. - 1 online resource (273 pages)

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 77-02(E), Section: A.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--The University of Chicago, 2015.

Includes bibliographical references

My dissertation addresses a widespread worry about the possibility of rational agency, of acting for reasons. Rational agency, the worry goes, constitutively involves one's mind's having movements of one's body as physical effects, but if we can't explain how one's mind has effects in the physical world, then we can't make sense of rational agency. I argue, however, that the worry rests on a mistaken, if orthodox, view of the role of causation in rational agency. On the orthodox view, being intentional is an extrinsic, non-essential property that certain movements of an agent's body count as having in virtue of their causal origin in her mind. However, while intentional actions no doubt have causal antecedents---perhaps even mental causal antecedents---that fact, I argue, is not constitutive of their being intentional actions. A proper understanding of the explanatory work that is done in agent's-reasons explanations of intentional actions---namely, I argue, that they function to explain an intentional action's kind, not its occurrence---shows that what is constitutive of intentional actions being the intentional actions they are is their rationally-ordered, means-end structure. Being intentional, on my account, is an intrinsic, essential feature of intentional actions, and antecedent episodes of rational deliberation about what to do, and subsequent intentional actions of doing what was decided upon, are related not as cause and effect, but as relatively earlier and later stages of a unitary process of rational action. My view thus defuses the direct threat to the intelligibility of rational agency that is posed by the putative need to explain how the mind can cause bodily movements, because acting for a reason is not constituted by such a causal transaction on my view.

Electronic reproduction.
Ann Arbor, Mich. :
ProQuest,
2018

Mode of access: World Wide Web

ISBN: 9781339080321Subjects--Topical Terms:

559771
Philosophy.
Index Terms--Genre/Form:

554714
Electronic books.

Mental causation and rational agency.
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520 $a My dissertation addresses a widespread worry about the possibility of rational agency, of acting for reasons. Rational agency, the worry goes, constitutively involves one's mind's having movements of one's body as physical effects, but if we can't explain how one's mind has effects in the physical world, then we can't make sense of rational agency. I argue, however, that the worry rests on a mistaken, if orthodox, view of the role of causation in rational agency. On the orthodox view, being intentional is an extrinsic, non-essential property that certain movements of an agent's body count as having in virtue of their causal origin in her mind. However, while intentional actions no doubt have causal antecedents---perhaps even mental causal antecedents---that fact, I argue, is not constitutive of their being intentional actions. A proper understanding of the explanatory work that is done in agent's-reasons explanations of intentional actions---namely, I argue, that they function to explain an intentional action's kind, not its occurrence---shows that what is constitutive of intentional actions being the intentional actions they are is their rationally-ordered, means-end structure. Being intentional, on my account, is an intrinsic, essential feature of intentional actions, and antecedent episodes of rational deliberation about what to do, and subsequent intentional actions of doing what was decided upon, are related not as cause and effect, but as relatively earlier and later stages of a unitary process of rational action. My view thus defuses the direct threat to the intelligibility of rational agency that is posed by the putative need to explain how the mind can cause bodily movements, because acting for a reason is not constituted by such a causal transaction on my view.
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