Essentially Intentional Action Types

Author(s):  
Kirk Ludwig

Chapter 6 lays groundwork for explaining what a constitutive rule is and how they underwrite certain important forms of constitutive agency by giving an analysis of the concept of a certain category of essentially intentional action type, and locating it in a taxonomy of essentially intentional action types. It begins with an overview of essentially intentional action types. Next it analyzes one sort of essentially intentional action type as involving two components, a requirement that a certain activity pattern be instantiated and a requirement that it be instantiated intentionally, focusing on tic-tac-toe as an example. It distinguishes these sorts of essentially intentional action types from those defined by an intentionally pursued goal. It discusses briefly essentially intentional primitive action types, and then takes up a puzzle about intending to perform essentially intentional action types. It concludes with a taxonomy of essentially intentional action types by way of summary.

Author(s):  
Kirk Ludwig

Chapter 7 first analyzes the concept of a constitutive rule in terms of essentially intentional activity patterns. Then it defines a form of constitutive agency in terms of that. Finally, it contrasts the account with John Searle’s. The rules of chess are constitutive rules. Following them brings into existence a type of activity that would not exist otherwise. The rules define an activity pattern that can be instantiated unintentionally. The rules are followed when it is instantiated intentionally. Thus constitutive rules are constitutive relative to an activity type defined as the intentional instantiation of a pattern of activity. Constitutive rules make available a form of constitutive agency in which what an agent does intentionally contributes constitutively to bringing about an essentially intentional activity type. Searle says constitutive rules have the form ‘X counts as Y in C’. But these instead define certain moments in activities governed by constitutive rules.


Author(s):  
Karin Nisenbaum

The concluding chapter draws on the story of Rosenzweig’s near conversion to Christianity and return to Judaism to explain why, for Kant and his heirs, what is at issue in reason’s conflict with itself is our ability to affirm both the value of the world and of human action in the world. The chapter explains why Rosenzweig came to view the conflict of reason as the manifestation of a more fundamental tension between one’s selfhood and one’s worldliness, which could only be dissolved by understanding human action in the world as the means by which God is both cognized and partly realized. To make Rosenzweig’s ideas more accessible, the chapter compares them with contemporary interpretations of Kant’s views on the nature of practical knowledge and (intentional) action. It also shows how the book’s take on the issues that shaped the contours of post-Kantian German Idealism can help us see that the conflict of reason can be regarded as the underlying concern that recent competing interpretations of this period share.


Author(s):  
Michael P. DeJonge

If, as Chapter 12 argues, much of Bonhoeffer’s resistance thinking remains stable even as he undertakes the novel conspiratorial resistance, what is new in his resistance thinking in the third phase? What receives new theological elaboration is the resistance activity of the individual, which in the first two phases was overshadowed by the resistance role played by the church. Indeed, as this chapter shows, Bonhoeffer’s conspiratorial activity is associated with what he calls free responsible action (type 6), and this is the action of the individual, not the church, in the exercise of vocation. As such, the conspiratorial activity is most closely related to the previously developed type 1 resistance, which includes individual vocational action in response to state injustice. But the conspiratorial activity differs from type 1 resistance as individual vocational action in the extreme situation.


Author(s):  
Severin Schroeder

One aspect of Schopenhauer’s doctrine that the world is will, which can be assessed independently of his more ambitious metaphysical ideas, is the claim that our own agency provides us with a full understanding of causation which then permeates and structures our experience of the world in general. In this chapter, the author argues that this claim can be defended against Hume’s well-known objections because they are based on a volitional theory of voluntary action, which Schopenhauer rightly rejected. Schopenhauer quite plausibly located an immediate experience of causation between at least some kinds of motives and our consequent actions. However, he was wrong in suggesting that this experience might be the source of our understanding of causation since intentional action already presupposes that understanding and cannot provide it. It is more plausible to argue that an understanding of causation is derived from our bodily encounters with material objects.


Author(s):  
Deborah Tollefsen

When a group or institution issues a declarative statement, what sort of speech act is this? Is it the assertion of a single individual (perhaps the group’s spokesperson or leader) or the assertion of all or most of the group members? Or is there a sense in which the group itself asserts that p? If assertion is a speech act, then who is the actor in the case of group assertion? These are the questions this chapter aims to address. Whether groups themselves can make assertions or whether a group of individuals can jointly assert that p depends, in part, on what sort of speech act assertion is. The literature on assertion has burgeoned over the past few years, and there is a great deal of debate regarding the nature of assertion. John MacFarlane has helpfully identified four theories of assertion. Following Sandy Goldberg, we can call these the attitudinal account, the constitutive rule account, the common-ground account, and the commitment account. I shall consider what group assertion might look like under each of these accounts and doing so will help us to examine some of the accounts of group assertion (often presented as theories of group testimony) on offer. I shall argue that, of the four accounts, the commitment account can best be extended to make sense of group assertion in all its various forms.


1987 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. René Durán ◽  
Juan Carlos Castilla ◽  
Doris Oliva

The rocky shore of central Chile is heavily harvested by mariscadores de orilla and skin-divers, but their catches are not considered in the fishery statistics. The aim of the present paper is to estimate the intensity of human predation and annual catch of each of the species taken at Las Cruces, Central Chile. The activity pattern of both categories of collectors demonstrate a temporal grouping. The observation of mariscadores de orilla and skin-divers in 3 sectors of fringe totalling 1,500 m of rocky shore during 12 months allowed us to estimate the annual catch per species caught (kg per year).


Author(s):  
Sascha von Behren ◽  
Tim Hilgert ◽  
Sophia Kirchner ◽  
Bastian Chlond ◽  
Peter Vortisch

Topoi ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonja Schierbaum

AbstractAny account of intentional action has to deal with the problem of how such actions are individuated. Medieval accounts, however, crucially differ from contemporary ones in at least three respects: (i) for medieval authors, individuation is not a matter of description, as it is according to contemporary, ‘Anscombian’ views; rather, it is a metaphysical matter. (ii) Medieval authors discuss intentional action on the basis of faculty psychology, whereas contemporary accounts are not committed to this kind of psychology. Connected to the use of faculty psychology is (iii) the distinction between interior and exterior acts. Roughly, interior acts are mental as opposed to physical acts, whereas exterior acts are acts of physical powers, such as of moving one’s body. Of course, contemporary accounts are not committed to this distinction between two ontologically different kinds of acts. Rather, they might be committed to views consistent with physicalist approaches to the mind. The main interpretative task in this paper is to clarify how Scotus and Ockham explain moral intentional action in terms of the role and involvement of these kinds of acts respectively. I argue that Scotus’s account is close to contemporary, ‘Anscombian’ accounts, whereas Ockham’s account is incompatible with them.


Author(s):  
Junli Liu ◽  
Panli Cai ◽  
Jin Dong ◽  
Junshun Wang ◽  
Runkui Li ◽  
...  

The spatiotemporal locations of large populations are difficult to clearly characterize using traditional exposure assessment, mainly due to their complicated daily intraurban activities. This study aimed to extract hourly locations for the total population of Beijing based on cell phone data and assess their dynamic exposure to ambient PM2.5. The locations of residents were located by the cellular base stations that were keeping in contact with their cell phones. The diurnal activity pattern of the total population was investigated through the dynamic spatial distribution of all of the cell phones. The outdoor PM2.5 concentration was predicted in detail using a land use regression (LUR) model. The hourly PM2.5 map was overlapped with the hourly distribution of people for dynamic PM2.5 exposure estimation. For the mobile-derived total population, the mean level of PM2.5 exposure was 89.5 μg/m3 during the period from 2013 to 2015, which was higher than that reported for the census population (87.9 μg/m3). The hourly activity pattern showed that more than 10% of the total population commuted into the center of Beijing (e.g., the 5th ring road) during the daytime. On average, the PM2.5 concentration at workplaces was generally higher than in residential areas. The dynamic PM2.5 exposure pattern also varied with seasons. This study exhibited the strengths of mobile location in deriving the daily spatiotemporal activity patterns of the population in a megacity. This technology would refine future exposure assessment, including either small group cohort studies or city-level large population assessments.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 366-376
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Tonetti ◽  
Federico Camilli ◽  
Sara Giovagnoli ◽  
Vincenzo Natale ◽  
Alessandra Lugaresi

Early multiple sclerosis (MS) predictive markers of disease activity/prognosis have been proposed but are not universally accepted. Aim of this pilot prospective study is to verify whether a peculiar hyperactivity, observed at baseline (T0) in early relapsing-remitting (RR) MS patients, could represent a further prognostic marker. Here we report results collected at T0 and at a 24-month follow-up (T1). Eighteen RRMS patients (11 females, median Expanded Disability Status Scale-EDSS score 1.25, range EDSS score 0–2) were monitored at T0 (mean age 32.33 ± 7.51) and T1 (median EDSS score 1.5, range EDSS score 0–2.5). Patients were grouped into two groups: responders (R, 14 patients) and non-responders (NR, 4 patients) to treatment at T1. Each patient wore an actigraph for one week to record the 24-h motor activity pattern. At T0, NR presented significantly lower motor activity than R between around 9:00 and 13:00. At T1, NR were characterized by significantly lower motor activity than R between around 12:00 and 17:00. Overall, these data suggest that through the 24-h motor activity pattern, we can fairly segregate at T0 patients who will show a therapeutic failure, possibly related to a more active disease, at T1. These patients are characterized by a reduced morning level of motor activation. Further studies on larger populations are needed to confirm these preliminary findings.


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