Dynamics in action : intentional behavior as a complex system / Alicia Juarrero.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Juarrero, Alicia.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Act (Philosophy).

Action theory.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 288 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, ©1999.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

What is the difference between a wink and a blink? The answer is important not only to philosophers of mind, for significant moral and legal consequences rest on the distinction between voluntary and involuntary behavior. However, "action theory"--the branch of philosophy that has traditionally articulated the boundaries between action and non-action, and between voluntary and involuntary behavior--has been unable to account for the difference.Alicia Juarrero argues that a mistaken, 350-year-old model of cause and explanation--one that takes all causes to be of the push-pull, efficient cause sort, and all explanation to be prooflike--underlies contemporary theories of action. Juarrero then proposes a new framework for conceptualizing causes based on complex adaptive systems. Thinking of causes as dynamical constraints makes bottom-up and top-down causal relations, including those involving intentional causes, suddenly tractable. A different logic for explaining actions--as historical narrative, not inference--follows if one adopts this novel approach to long-standing questions of action and responsibility.

Notes:

"A Bradford book."

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

ISBN:

0-585-17624-8

0-262-27654-2

OCLC:

44963393