Actions, causes, and supervenience
pp. 113-118
in: Rosaria Egidi (ed), In search of a new humanism, Berlin, Springer, 1999Abstract
The debate between "intentionalists' and "causalists' is still open. Its main points can be summarized in questions such as: are reasons causes? Can we conceive actions as effects of mental causes? According to "intentionalists' we should reply in the negative to both questions; "causalists", on the contrary, maintain that an affirmative answer is possible. Among the first group, Georg Henrik von Wright has argued that the link between reasons and actions is logical or conceptual; in the second group, Donald Davidson has defended the possibility of conceiving reasons as causes of actions. In this paper I present a critical argument concerning the identification of actions with physical (causal) events advanced by Davidson.
