Synchronous Events in By-Sentences

Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 18 (3):351-357 (2003)
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Abstract

It has been suggested in the literature about actions that one can honour the philosophical intuition lying behind Davidson’s argument for the Anscombe Thesis (the claim that by-sentences --sentcnccs used to report actions of the general form: ‘A X-ed by V-ing’-- involve two descriptions of the same action) without accepting the argument’s conclusion. The suggestion in question is to interpret by-sentences as referring to two synchronous but different actions of the same agent. I argue that this suggestion, together with two plausible semantic principles about the naming of events and a reasonable metaphysical principle about the constitution of events, leads to certain ontological commitments which are hardly acccptable. My conclusion is then that in order to deny the Anscambe Thesis what must be done is to show that Davidson’s intuition is wrong.

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David Pineda
University of Girona

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References found in this work

The logical form of action sentences.Donald Davidson - 1967 - In Nicholas Rescher (ed.), The Logic of Decision and Action. University of Pittsburgh Press. pp. 81--95.
Events and Their Names.Jonathan Bennett - 1988 - Oxford University Press UK.
.J. Annas (ed.) - 1976
Under a description.G. E. M. Anscombe - 1979 - Noûs 13 (2):219-233.

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