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Actions and De Re Beliefs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Thomas McKay*
Affiliation:
Syracuse University

Extract

I want to present some evidence that facts about de re attitudes or causal facts are important in the explanation of actions. In particular, I will argue that an attempt by Ernest Sosa and Mark Pastin [4] to give a scheme for explaining intentional actions fails. By adding either de re or causal locutions we can devise a more adequate schema for explaining action, but their analysis had been designed to eliminate de re locutions from explanations of intentional action. Showing the failure of their analysis does not, of course, show that de re or causal elements are required in these explanations, since it does not rule out the possibility of alternative explanatory schemes. But the centrality of de re or causal elements is supported by the inadequacy of their attempts to dispense with them.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC 1984

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References

[1] Feldman, RichardActions and De Re Beliefs,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 8 (1978) 577-82CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[2] Lewis, DavidAttitudes De Dicta and De Re,’ Philosophical Review 87 (1979) 513-43CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[3] Perry, John The Problem of the Essential Indexical,’ Nous 13 (1979) 321CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[4] Sosa, Ernest and Pastin, MarkA Rejoinder on Actions and De Re Belief,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 11 (1981) 735-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar