Abstract

This thesis addresses a basic question in the philosophy of action: what distinguishes intentional from nonvoluntary action? Traditional discussion surrounding this question is largely a debate between those who propose some special state of or process in consciousness as an essential feature of intentional action , and those who deny this. I present a version of feeling theory that is responsive to certain problems with the view which its other contemporary proponents seem generally to ignore. ;Chapter I examines the feeling theories of Hobbes, Locke and Hume, and turns up important confusions and vaguenesses in their accounts, especially in regard to the question of the relation between desire and will. I find in Hume's doctrine of the "calm passions" the prospect of a solution, not only to the problem of specifying the desire-will relation , but also the paramount problem of specifying the nature of volition. The chapter ends with a sketch of an account of volition as "unarticulated" or word-poor thought. ;Chapter II attempts to answer the empirical objection to feeling theory, which simply denies the universal presence of a special action-oriented consciousness in intentional action; and it considers a common misreading of feeling theory according to which volitions or "acts of will" are actions of will. Chapter III addresses the conceptual objection, raised by Richard Taylor, that the formula "action-equals-volition-causing-motion" fails to capture the element of "control" essential to intentional action. The concept of a volition as a species of thought that, notwithstanding its understated quality, is capable of bearing complex propositional content, and of motivating correspondingly complex action, is shown to meet the criticisms offered here. ;Chapter IV focuses on the attempt of the phenomenologist Pfander to describe the inner experience of action. A justification for the use of metaphor is presented, and the limits of such an approach are conceded. Chapter V takes up the Wittgensteinian challange to mentalism generally, and proposes a "foundationalist" treatment of the admittedly various uses of the language of action. ;Chapter VI surveys some of the contemporary literature relevant to feeling theory: Davidson, Nagel, Frankfurt, Dennett, Goldman , and a few others. While much attention has been given to defending the causal hypothesis concerning the relation between volition and motion, considerably less attention has been given to specifying the nature of volition in such a way as to bring out the attractiveness of the concept. That is my aim