Buddhist Reductionist Action Theory

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Siderits
Keyword(s):  
Action Theory ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Mental Event ◽  
Ultimate Truth ◽  
Two Truths ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Prior Intention ◽  
Psychological Determinism ◽  
Conventional Truth

This essay develops the theory of action presupposed by Buddhist Reductionists. Their account uses the theory of two truths to reconcile the folk theory of human action with the Buddhist claim that there are no agents. The conventional truth has it that persons are substance-causes of actions, and the willings that trigger actions are exercises of a person’s powers in light of their reasons. According to the ultimate truth, there are no persons, only causal series of bundles of tropes. An action is a bodily or mental event in one such series that has the occurrence of a prior intention event as its cause. Facts about causally connected psychophysical elements explain the utility, and thus the conventional truth, of claims about persons as agents. This two-tier account of human agency makes possible a novel approach to making attributions of moral responsibility compatible with psychological determinism.

The Two Truths

2020 ◽  
pp. 91-100
Author(s):  
Nicolas Bommarito
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Ultimate Truth ◽  
Philosophical Idea ◽  
Two Truths ◽  
Conventional Truth

This chapter analyzes the two truths. Buddhists care deeply about getting at the truth and as a result have thought a lot about what truth is. One of the most important philosophical ideas to emerge from Buddhism is that of the two truths. Though it is more commonly known as the two truths, it could also be called the Two Realities. What is really true, not just within a set of conventions, is called ultimate truth. This does not entail that conventional truth is always bad or to be abandoned. Conventional truth can be useful as long as it does not blind one to what is really happening. This idea plays two different roles in Buddhism: One is as a philosophical idea about the nature of reality; the other is as an interpretive strategy to make sense of a variety of Buddhist texts.

The DBO theory of action and distributed cognition

2012 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tuukka Kaidesoja
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Scientific Understanding ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Alternative Approach

The DBO (Desires, Beliefs and Opportunities) theory of action proposed by analytical sociologists aims to provide an action-theoretical basis for building explanatory theories in sociology. Peter Hedström claims that the DBO theory is realistic because it does not make assumptions that are known to be false or seriously incompatible with the current scientific understanding about the nature of human action and cognition. This article nevertheless aims to show that the DBO theory is not only incomplete but also that its background assumptions are unrealistic, in the sense that they do not fit with the distributed nature of action-related cognition, which has recently become a growing topic of interest in cognitive sciences. The author also indicates that the neglect of the distributed and embodied aspects of cognition in the DBO theory leads to various biases in the process of constructing mechanism-based explanations in social sciences. Finally, an alternative approach to action theory is sketched on the basis of this critique.

Alternatives

2020 ◽  
pp. 112-138
Author(s):  
Holly M. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Action Theory ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
Future Work

Consequentialists have long debated (as deontologists should) how to define an agent’s alternatives, given that (a) at any particular time an agent performs numerous “versions” of actions, (b) an agent may perform several independent co-temporal actions, and (c) an agent may perform sequences of actions. We need a robust theory of human action to provide an account of alternatives that avoids previously debated problems. After outlining Alvin Goldman’s action theory (which takes a fine-grained approach to act individuation) and showing that the agent’s alternatives must remain invariant across different normative theories, I address issue (a) by arguing that an alternative for an agent at a time is an entire “act tree” performable by her, rather than any individual act token. I argue further that both tokens and trees must possess moral properties, and I suggest principles governing how these are inherited among trees and tokens. These proposals open a path for future work addressing issues (b) and (c).

Action semantics reasoning about functional programs

1997 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 557-589 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. B. LASSEN
Keyword(s):  
Functional Programming ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
Specification Language ◽  
Process Theory ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Functional Program ◽  
Action Semantics ◽  
Functional Part

This paper develops the functional part of a theory of action semantics for reasoning about programs. Action notation, the specification language of action semantics, is given an evaluation semantics, and operational techniques from process theory and functional programming are applied in the development of a versatile action theory. The power of the theory is demonstrated by means of action semantic proofs of functional program equivalences.

Action

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Hornsby
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Study ◽  
General Account ◽  
The Status ◽  
Freedom And Responsibility

Philosophical study of human action owes its importance to concerns of two sorts. There are concerns addressed in metaphysics and philosophy of mind about the status of reasoning beings who make their impact in the natural causal world, and concerns addressed in ethics and legal philosophy about human freedom and responsibility. ‘Action theory’ springs from concerns of both sorts; but in the first instance it attempts only to provide a detailed account that may help with answering the metaphysical questions. Action theorists usually start by asking ‘How are actions distinguished from other events?’. For there to be an action, a person has to do something. But the ordinary ‘do something’ does not capture just the actions, since we can say (for instance) that breathing is something that everyone does, although we don’t think that breathing in the ordinary way is an action. It seems that purposiveness has to be introduced – that someone’s intentionally doing something is required. People often do the things they intentionally do by moving bits of their bodies. This has led to the idea that ‘actions are bodily movements’. The force of the idea may be appreciated by thinking about what is involved in doing one thing by doing another. A man piloting a plane might have shut down the engines by depressing a lever, for example; and there is only one action here if the depressing of the lever was (identical with) the shutting down of the engines. It is when identities of this sort are accepted that an action may be seen as an event of a person’s moving their body: the pilot’s depressing of the lever was (also) his moving of his arm, because he depressed the lever by moving his arm. But how do bodies’ movings – such events now as his arm’s moving – relate to actions? According to one traditional empiricist account, these are caused by volitions when there are actions, and a volition and a body’s moving are alike parts of the action. But there are many rival accounts of the causes and parts of actions and of movements. And volitional notions feature not only in a general account of the events surrounding actions, but also in accounts that aim to accommodate the experience that is characteristic of agency.

scholarly journals No facts without perspectives

Synthese ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramiro Glauer ◽  
Frauke Hildebrandt
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Causal Theory ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Basic Fact ◽  
Causal Theory Of Action ◽  
De Re ◽  
De Dicto ◽  
Conceptual Confusion

AbstractPerner and Roessler (in: Aguilar J, Buckareff A (eds) Causing human action: new perspectives on the causal theory of action, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 199–228, 2010) hold that children who do not yet have an understanding of subjective perspectives, i.e., mental states, explain actions by appealing to objective facts. In this paper, we criticize this view. We argue that in order to understand objective facts, subjects need to understand perspectives. By analysing basic fact-expressing assertions, we show that subjects cannot refer to facts if they do not understand two types of perspectivity, namely, spatial and doxastic perspectivity. To avoid conceptual confusion regarding different ways of referring to facts, we distinguish between reference to facts de re and de dicto.

scholarly journals Is Davidson's Theory of Action Consistent?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert D Murray
Keyword(s):  
Human Action ◽  
Causal Theory ◽  
Donald Davidson ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Causal Connection ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Causal Theory Of Action ◽  
Small Industry ◽  
Common Objection ◽  
Train Of Thought

A theory of human action should provide an account of the connection between reason and action when an agent acts for a reason, and it should provide an account of the explanatory force of explanations of actions. On the causal theory of action, the connection between reasons and actions is that of event causality and explanations of actions are modeled on ordinary causal explanations, where events are explained by citing other events as their causes. A once common objection to the causal theory had it that reasons cannot be causes, since explanations of actions do not fit reason and action into a nomic nexus expressed by laws or law-like generalizations. Against this train of thought, Donald Davidson defends a version of the causal theory by arguing that the view that the connection between reasons and actions is that of event causality and the view that explanations of actions do not fit reasons and actions into a nomic nexus are compatible. Davidson's theory generated a small industry of criticism focusing on the implications of his version of the causal theory for the nature of the causal connection between reasons and actions.

scholarly journals Is Davidson's Theory of Action Consistent?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert D Murray
Keyword(s):  
Human Action ◽  
Causal Theory ◽  
Donald Davidson ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Causal Connection ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Causal Theory Of Action ◽  
Small Industry ◽  
Common Objection ◽  
Train Of Thought

A theory of human action should provide an account of the connection between reason and action when an agent acts for a reason, and it should provide an account of the explanatory force of explanations of actions. On the causal theory of action, the connection between reasons and actions is that of event causality and explanations of actions are modeled on ordinary causal explanations, where events are explained by citing other events as their causes. A once common objection to the causal theory had it that reasons cannot be causes, since explanations of actions do not fit reason and action into a nomic nexus expressed by laws or law-like generalizations. Against this train of thought, Donald Davidson defends a version of the causal theory by arguing that the view that the connection between reasons and actions is that of event causality and the view that explanations of actions do not fit reasons and actions into a nomic nexus are compatible. Davidson's theory generated a small industry of criticism focusing on the implications of his version of the causal theory for the nature of the causal connection between reasons and actions.

Recognition of Inter-Class Variation of Human Actions in Sports Video

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akila.K
Keyword(s):  
Action Recognition ◽  
Wavelet Packet ◽  
Human Action Recognition ◽  
Recognition System ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Human Actions ◽  
Linear Discriminant ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Current Events ◽  
Rule Set

Abstract Background: Human action recognition encompasses a scope for an automatic analysis of current events from video and has varied applications in multi-various fields. Recognizing and understanding of human actions from videos still remains a difficult downside as a result of the massive variations in human look, posture and body size inside identical category.Objective: This paper focuses on a specific issue related to inter-class variation in Human Action Recognition.Approach: To discriminate the human actions among the category, a novel approach which is based on wavelet packet transformation for feature extraction. As we are concentrating on classifying similar actions non-linearity among the features are analyzed and discriminated by Deterministic Normalized - Linear Discriminant Analysis (DN-LDA). However the major part of the recognition system relays on classification part and the dynamic feeds are classified by Hidden Markov Model at the final stage based on rule set..Conclusion: Experiments results have shown that the proposed approach is discriminative for similar human action recognition and well adapted to the inter-class variation

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