Essays on Actions and Events

This collection contains Donald Davidson's 1980 collection of "Essays on Actions and Events", including two additional essays. In this investigation of the nature of human action, Davidson argues for an ontology which includes events along with persons and other objects. Certain events are identified and explained as actions when they are viewed as caused and rationalized by reasons these same events, when described in physical, biological, or physiological terms, may be explained by appeal to natural laws. The mental and the physical thus constitute irreducibly discrete ways of explaining and understanding events and their causal relations. Among the topics discussed are: freedom to act weakness of the will the logical form of talk about actions, intentions, and causality the logic of practical reasoning Hume's theory of the indirect passions and the nature and limits of decision theory. The introduction, cross-references, and appendices emphasize the relations between the essays and explain how Davidson's views have developed.

Review from other book by this author `...these intriguing views are ingeniously argued and fruitfully provocative.' Philosophy., Review from previous edition 'it must be said that this is one of the most impressive works of analytical philosophy to appear for a good many years.', Review from previous edition 'it must be said that this is one of the most impressive works of analytical philosophy to appear for a good many years... The positions adopted are argued for with an extraordinarily sustained seriousness and determination... the work will become, and deserves to become, a classic in its field.'

Donald Davidson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. Donald Davidson is Willis S. and Marion Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. He was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard, completing his Ph.D. in classical philosophy after serving in the US Navy from 1942 to 1945. Before coming to Berkeley in 1981, he was Professor at Stanford, Princeton, Rockefeller, and the Universityof Chicago. He is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.