Intentional Action

Abstract

The project of analyzing intentional action has been out of favor for some time. In part this is due to exhaustion over details—accounts are usually subject to very technical problems or elaborate counterexamples. This chapter builds build on the earlier accounts of control and non-deviance to offer a new account of intentional action. This account builds on Mele and Moser’s influential work, and goes beyond it in some ways. After offering the account, this chapter considers a range of ancillary issues and problem cases. It discusses, for example, side-effect cases, senseless movements, the role of belief and knowledge in intentional action, and action theoretic versions of systematic Gettier cases. Finally, it turns to issues of reductionism that motivate some rejections of causal theories of action. The upshot is that anti-causalists have a new account to contend with, and one that has answers to the problems often thought to be damning for causalism.