Abstract
In Part I of this book we carried out a thorough investigation of the basic structure of the contents of practical thinking, and in Part II we studied practical thinking as a psychological phenomenon characterized by a peculiar form of internal causality. In Part III we take our inquiries further into the world and consider the involvement of practical thinking with reality. In Chapter 12 we examine the structure of the effects wrought out by practical thinking, and in Chapter 13 we consider the degree of reality, i.e., the place in the whole fabric of reality, of practical noemata and their elements.
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References
The asterisks in this sentence indicate that the pronouns they attach to are quasi-indicators, i.e., are used to attribute to Agens demonstrative reference to time, place, and himself. See the materials mentioned in Chapter 6, note 5 and the text in Chapter 6 pertaining to note 5.
In developing this conception of events as particulars I have been influenced by Donald Davidson’s ‘The Logical Form of Action Sentences’, in Nicholas Rescher, ed., The Logic of Decision and Action (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1967); 81–95.
See also his Donald Davidson’s ‘Events as Particulars’, Nous 4 (1974): 25–32, and
Donald Davidson’s ‘Eternal vs. Ephemeral Events’, Nous 5 (1971): 333–349.
A related notion of basic action has been proposed by Arthur Danto in ‘Basic Actions’, American Philosophical Quarterly 2 (1965): 141–148.
For useful critical examinations of Danto’s views see Myles Brand, ‘Danto on Basic Actions’, Nous 2 (1968): 187–190,
and Frederick Stoutland, ‘Basic Actions and Causality’, The Journal of Philosophy 65 (1968): 467–475. For valuable wide-ranging discussions on problems concerning the criteria for identifying basic actions and the types of abilities that on some views are said to be basic actions,
see Annette Baier, ‘The Search for Basic Actions’, American Philosophical Quarterly 8 (1971): 161–170,
and Jane R. Martin, ‘Basic Actions and Simple Actions’, American Philosophical Quarterly 9 (1972): 59–68.
In an interesting normative characterization of action David Rayfield has generalized this condition of possible intendingness to other persons than the agent: “(ii) someone, not necessarily [the agent], could on some occasion decide to run [which is his paradigm example at the juncture]”. See his ‘Action’, Nous 2 (1968): 131–145.
See John Vollrath, ‘When Actions Are Causes’, Philosophical Studies 27 (1975): 329–339, for a nice discussion of examples showing how a person’s interest in timing an action can vary with context.
This view is held by Donald Davidson. See his essays mentioned in note 2. It is held by Charles Daniels, from whom I learned much in our conversations on the nature of action in 1969–70. In his The Evaluation of Ethical Theories (Dalhousie: University of Dalhousie Press, in the Philosophy in Canada Monography Series, 1975), he develops very nicely the reversed contrast between action and perception: both have a time lag (the former toward the future, the latter toward the past) between doing [or perceiving] and what is done [or perceived].
See Jonathan Bennett, ‘Shooting, Killing, and Dying’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2 (1973): 315–323. Vollrath, op. cit., also emphasizes the posthumous histories of initial acts.
For this view see Judith Jarvis Thomson, ‘The Time of a Killing’, The Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971): 115–132,
and Lawrence Davis, ‘Individuation of Actions’, The Journal of Philosophy 67 (1970): 520–530.
See also John Woods, ‘The Formal Ontology of Death’, forthcoming in Douglas Walton and John Woods, eds., Understanding Death.
These are illuminating papers, and so is Vivian M. Weil and Irving Thalberg, ‘The Elements of Basic Action’, Philosophia 4 (1974): 111–138 in which they develop an account intermediary between Davidson’s and Goldman’s.
See H-N. Castañeda, ‘Individuation and Non-identity’, American Philosophical Quarterly 12 (1975): 131–130, for distillation of the meta-physical issue of genuine individuation.
For a sustained and charming attack on Davidson’s view that Agens’ shooting Smith is the same action as Agens’ killing Smith, see Alvin Goldman, A Theory of Human Action (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1970), Chapter 1. Goldman’s views that those two acts are connected by level generation, which is a very intimate relationship, requiring co-temporality, is very much the same as the claim that they are the same act.
The fact that an event can have different properties that are relevant in different contexts has given rise to views that equate actions in different ways with propositions or properties or abstract sets of entities. Some valuable papers propounding such views are: (1) Jaegwon Kim, ‘Events and their Descriptions: Some Considerations’, in Nicholas Rescher, ed., Essays in Honor of Carl G. Hempel (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1970),
(2) Roderick Chisholm, ‘Events and Propositions’, Nous 4 (1970): 15–24;
(3) R. Chisholm, ‘States of Affairs Again’, Nous 5 (1971): 179–189;
(4) Wilfrid Sellars, ‘Actions and Events’, Nous 7 (1973): 179–202;
(5) Neil Wilson, ‘Facts, Events and Their Identity Conditions’, Philosophical Studies 25 (1974): 303–321.
See also Georg Henrik Von Wright, Norm and Action (New York: The Humanities Press, 1963, Chapter 2);
and Charles Landesman, ‘Actions as Universals: An Inquiry into the Metaphysics of Action’, American Philosophical Quarterly 6 (1969): 247–252.
See H-N. Castañeda, ‘Identity and Sameness’, Philosophia 5 (1975): 121–150, and
H-N. Castañeda ‘Thinking and the Structure of The World’, Philosophia 4 (1974): 3–40.
See previous note.
I agree with Davidson again: “The mention of ‘descriptions’ is obviously a gesture in the direction of ontology; but there can be no serious theory until we are told what descriptions are, and how attributions of attitude refer to them”, in Eternal vs. Ephemeral Events, p. 341.
See note 11 above. “Thinking and the Structure of the World” contains an appropriate theory of proper names, predication, existence, and propositional attitudes.
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© 1982 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Castañeda, HN. (1982). Events and the Structure of Doing. In: Castañeda, HN. (eds) Thinking and Doing. Philosophical Studies Series in Philosophy, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9888-5_12
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