Seminar 2

Question

How, if at all, should discoveries about habitual processes inform attempts to solve The Problem of Action?

Reading

Davidson (1971)

Note: if you follow the link in the references, you will get to a collection of Davidson’s essays called Essays on Actions and Events. The reading is the chapter of that book with the title ‘Agency’ (likely Chapter 3 on pp. 43–62).

This seminar’s question also requires reading set for previous seminars:

Dickinson (2016)

And of course you can find more reading in the lecture notes.

Preparation

Please follow the instructions for Seminar Tasks.

Lecture Notes

Where to Find the Reading?

In some cases the reference section of the lecture notes already includes a link to help you find the reading.

If there is no link in the lecture notes, start by searching for the title (and, if that fails, by title and authors) on google scholar. If this fails, the library has resources. If those fail, please check first with others on the course. If you still have problems, you may email your seminar tutor.

Ask a Question

Your question will normally be answered in the question session of the next lecture.

More information about asking questions.

Glossary

The Problem of Action : What distinguishes your actions from things that merely happen to you? (According to Frankfurt (1978, p. 157), ‘The problem of action is to explicate the contrast between what an agent does and what merely happens to him.’)

References

Davidson, D. (1971). Agency. In R. Binkley, R. Bronaugh, & A. Marras (Eds.), Agent, action, and reason, (pp. 3–25). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/0199246270.001.0001

Dickinson, A. (2016). Instrumental conditioning revisited: Updating dual-process theory. In J. B. Trobalon & V. D. Chamizo (Eds.), Associative learning and cognition (Vol. 51, pp. 177–195). Edicions Universitat Barcelona.

Frankfurt, H. G. (1978). The problem of action. American Philosophical Quarterly, 15(2), 157–162.