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In Defense of a Non-Causal Account of Reasons Explanations

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Abstract

This paper defends my claim in earlier work that certain non-causal conditions are sufficient for the truth of some reasons explanations of actions, against the critique of this claim given by Randolph Clarke in his book, Libertarian Accounts of Free Will.

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Notes

  1. That a desire's causing an action (in the right sort of way) can be enough to make the desire a reason for which the agent acted (without the agent's having an intention about the desire) is shown most clearly, perhaps, by cases where the agent lacks the concepts necessary to have an intention (or any other propositional attitude) about a desire, as would, e.g. a pre-lingual infant or an animal. Clarke mentions such cases: "… it is not evidently impossible that an agent act on a certain desire and yet lack the concept of a desire an hence be incapable of having the sort of second-order intention in question" (Clarke 2003, p. 23).

References

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  1. Sage School of Philosophy, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA

    Carl Ginet

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  1. Carl Ginet
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Correspondence to Carl Ginet.

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Ginet, C. In Defense of a Non-Causal Account of Reasons Explanations. J Ethics 12, 229–237 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-008-9033-z

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