By Bruce Aune (auth.)
Philosophers writing almost about human motion have chanced on it tempting to introduce their topic by means of elevating Wittgenstein's query, 'What is left over in the event you subtract the truth that my arm is going up from the truth that I increase my arm?' The presumption is that anything of specific curiosity is interested in an motion of elevating an arm that isn't found in an insignificant physically move, and the philosopher's activity is to specify simply what this is often. regrettably, such an procedure doesn't take us very a ways, considering the fact that an individual may perhaps safely be acknowledged to elevate his (or her) arm whereas asleep or hypnotized although he (or she) wouldn't be acting an motion within the feel of 'action' with which philosophers are fairly involved. to prevent this type of trouble I shall technique the topic of human motion is a extra educational manner: I shall expound a few vital rival theories of human motion, and introduce the correct matters through commenting seriously on these theories. one of many concerns i ultimately introduce is a metaphysical one. A conception of motion is smart, I contend, basically at the assumption that there are such 'things' as activities (or events). After contemplating a few key arguments concerning the problem I finish that, as concerns at present stand in philosophy, a metaphysically noncommittal perspective towards activities and occasions turns out justified.
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Additional info for Reason and Action
Example text
Although this view might seem highly promising at first glance, it has awkward consequences for the ontological status of actions. Depending on how it is elaborated, it might imply either (a) that actions are abstract entities of some kind (sets, sums or perhaps states of affairs) rather than events in time or (b) that actions do not, strictly speaking, exist. The first alternative would result from acknowledging that actions are entities having components in some sense: they might be sets or mereological sums of mental and physical events, or they might be mental-events-<:ausally-related-to-certainphysical-events, something that would not appear to be an event itself.
The import of what we are saying, when we give such a description, is that the man's body moved in the way it would move if he voluntarily moved it. This nonaction use of locutions like 'He moved his arm' is thus logically secondary; it makes sense only in relation to THEORIES OF ACTION 23 talk about actions proper. Although it is possible to call the movements or changes resulting from our volitional activity 'actions', this practice, according to the Prichardian, is unnecessarily confusing. An action is normally understood as a doing, which is technically an activity.
When I defended Prichard against various objections, I pointed out that his theory must be augmented by prinCiples of act constitution that correspond to Goldman's principles of act generation (see page 16 above). For example, where Goldman claimed that an act of signaling may be generated from a distinct act of moving one's arm, Prichard should say that an act of Signaling may be constituted by an act of moving one's arm. Now, a philosopher espousing a theory of agents would want to adopt principles THEORIES OF ACTION 45 corresponding to those of Goldman and the augmented Prichardian.