Objections to Davidson’s Theory of Agency and Actions ()
ABSTRACT
Davidson’s
theory of agency aims to solve the dilemma that the same action can be both
intentional and not intentional. He explains primitive actions using primarily
bodily movements and argues that event-causality can be described through the
“accordion effect”, but not agent-causality. And Davidson uses reasons as
causes to explain the actions and responds to five objections. In this paper, I
critique Davidson’s argument, pointing out that he ignores certain factors in
the belief-desire model, such as emotions. And his sentence holism has a
problem because individual words that express complete thoughts can explain
actions in language games. As a result, Davidson’s criticism of Wittgenstein is
not reasonable.
Share and Cite:
Zhang, Y. (2023) Objections to Davidson’s Theory of Agency and Actions.
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
11, 355-362. doi:
10.4236/jss.2023.112023.
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