Book contents
- Negative Actions
- Negative Actions
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Action and Ontology
- Chapter 2 The Problem of Negative Action
- Chapter 3 Mere Manifestations of Agency?
- Chapter 4 The Logical Form of Negative Action Sentences I
- Chapter 5 The Logical Form of Negative Action Sentences II
- Chapter 6 The Logical Form of Negative Action Sentences III
- Chapter 7 Realizer-Functionalism and the Metaphysics of Events
- Chapter 8 Objections
- Conclusion
- References
- Index
Chapter 5 - The Logical Form of Negative Action Sentences II
A Neo-Davidsonian Approach
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2021
- Negative Actions
- Negative Actions
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Action and Ontology
- Chapter 2 The Problem of Negative Action
- Chapter 3 Mere Manifestations of Agency?
- Chapter 4 The Logical Form of Negative Action Sentences I
- Chapter 5 The Logical Form of Negative Action Sentences II
- Chapter 6 The Logical Form of Negative Action Sentences III
- Chapter 7 Realizer-Functionalism and the Metaphysics of Events
- Chapter 8 Objections
- Conclusion
- References
- Index
Summary
In this chapter, I develop a sophisticated Neo-Davidsonian approach to negative action sentences that can accommodate and explain the behaviour of adverbs discussed in Chapter 4, while still treating those sentences as quantifying over negative actions qua events. On this approach, negative action sentences quantify over events that play a certain role, which I call the ‘ensuring’ role: to say that x omits to φ, or refrains from φ-ing, is to say that some behaviour of hers ensures that she doesn’t φ (at the relevant time). I provide a detailed account of what this ensuring role is, and argue that it can be played by ordinary events. If this approach is correct, then we have the means to reject Deflationism, and with it the thought that (at least some) negative actions aren’t events.
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- Negative ActionsEvents, Absences, and the Metaphysics of Agency, pp. 112 - 137Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021