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ACTS AND INTENTIONS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2013

John Hyman
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Abstract

What is the difference between the changes in your body that you yourself cause personally, such as the movements of your legs when you walk, or your lips when you speak, and the ones you do not cause personally, such as the contraction of your heart, or your foot bobbing up and down when your legs are crossed? Since the seventeenth century, most philosophers have said that will or intention makes the difference. I reject this answer and propose an alternative that doesn't just apply to animals capable of having intentions, but to all agents with functionally differentiated parts.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Think , Volume 13 , Issue 36 , Spring 2014 , pp. 11 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2014 

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References

Notes

1 Davidson, Donald, ‘Agency’, in Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: OUP, 1980)Google Scholar, 43.

2 Descartes, R., Les Passions de l'Ame, in Selected Philosophical Writings, trans. & ed. Cottingham, J. et al. (Cambridge: CUP, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, §17.

3 Reid, T., Essays on the Active Powers of Man, ed. Haakonssen, K. & Harris, J. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 2010)Google Scholar, 31; Bentham, J., An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. Burns, J.H. & Hart, H.L.A. (Oxford: OUP, 1996)Google Scholar, ch.8, §5.

4 Essays on Actions and Events, 44f.

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6 Smith, J. Maynard and Szathmáry, E., The Origins of Life (Oxford: OUP, 1999)Google Scholar, 135.

7 Shakespeare, Henry VIII, iii.2; quoted in Darwin, Charles, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, fourth edition (Oxford: OUP, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 37.

8 Locke, J., An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Woolhouse, R. (London: Penguin, 1997), 4.10.19Google Scholar.