RAZÃO E INTERPRETAÇÃO: DONALD DAVIDSON E A CONCEPÇÃO PÓS-ÉTICA DA AÇÃO E RACIONALIDADE

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (103) ◽  
pp. 219
Author(s):  
Waldomiro José Da Silva Filho
Keyword(s):  
Causal Explanation ◽  
Donald Davidson ◽  
Analytical Philosophy ◽  
Human Actions ◽  
Contemporary Debate

A publicação, em 1963, de “Action, Reason, and Causes” foi uma das mais radicais e profícuas contribuições ao debate contemporâneo sobre razão, racionalidade e explicação da ação humana. O seu argumento era que a explicação da ação mediante razões ou pressupondo racionalidade constitui uma explicação causal, sendo as razões causas da ação. Ao defender esta tese que se opunha tanto ao racionalismo clássico e ao empirismo quanto às correntes hegemônicas da Filosofia Analítica na década de 60, Davidson abriu novos caminhos para a investigação sobre a racionalidade de crenças e ações. Ele deslocou o foco de perguntas como “O que faz com que uma ação ou crença seja racional ou irracional?” para a pergunta “O que há na ação, no pensamento e na linguagem que os torna interpretáveis?”.ABSTRACT: The 1963 publication of “Action, Reason, and Causes” was one of the most radical contributions to the contemporary debate about reason, rationality, and explanation for human actions. The argument put forward by the author was that since the reasons are the causes of the action, explaining actions through reasons or presupposing rationality constitutes a causal explanation. In defending the thesis that objects to classic rationalism, empirism and, at the same time, to the 1960’s hegemonic current of Analytical Philosophy, Davidson opened new ways for the enquiry about the rationality of beliefs and actions. He did change the focus of questions like “what makes an action or beliefs be rational or irrational?” to “ what is it that makes action, thought, and language intelligible?”

Hellenistic medical epistemology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
R.J. Hankinson
Keyword(s):  
Causal Explanation ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Medical Epistemology ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Practical Medicine ◽  
Scientific Inference ◽  
The Status

During the Hellenistic period (323–31 bc), there arose, largely in Alexandria, a profound debate in medical methodology. The main participants were the Empiricists, committed to an anti-theoretical, practical medicine based on observation and experience and the various Rationalists, such as Herophilus, Erasistratus, and Asclepiades, who held that general theories of physiology and pathology were both attainable and essential to proper medical understanding and practice. Dispute about the nature of scientific inference and the status of causal explanation mirrored and to some extent conditioned the contemporary debate between Stoics and sceptics about epistemology.

Reasons and Causes

Dialogue ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-83
Author(s):  
Joseph Margolis
Keyword(s):  
Causal Explanation ◽  
Donald Davidson

In a deservedly esteemed paper, Donald Davidson has argued “that rationalization [that is, the explanation of an action in terms of reasons, in the sense in which “the reason explains the action by giving the agent's reason for doing what he did”] is a species of ordinary causal explanation” (685). Davidson himself, of course, in putting his own view forward, knowingly opposes a relatively widespread tendency to deny the thesis. I wish, in turn, to attempt to redeem the doctrine that there is a difference between explanation by causes and explanation by reasons, but I find that it cannot be done, so to speak, by reversing the clock: Davidson's arguments are very telling and the defence of the distinction must, I believe, support a significantly diminished claim. So, for example, I think we must go the distance with Davidson in admitting that “to describe an event in terms of its cause is not to identify the event with its cause, [and that] explanation by redescription … [does not] exclude causal explanation” (685); also, that there is no convincing reason “why on earth … a cause [should] turn an action into a mere happening and a person into a helpless victim” (700).

Analytical Philosophy and the Philosophy of Intellectual History: A Critical Comparison and Interpretation

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-161
Author(s):  
Admir Skodo
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Ludwig Wittgenstein ◽  
Donald Davidson ◽  
Analytical Philosophy ◽  
Critical Juncture ◽  
Critical Comparison ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

Abstract This article argues that the relationship between analytical philosophy and the philosophy of intellectual history is conceptually uneasy and even antagonistic once the general philosophical viewpoints, and some particular topics, of the two perspectives are drawn out and compared. The article critically compares the philosophies of Quentin Skinner and Mark Bevir with the philosophies of Ludwig Wittgenstein, J.L. Austin, W.V.O. Quine and Donald Davidson. Section I compares the way in which these two perspectives view the task of philosophy. Section II points to a critical difficulty in Bevir and Skinner’s use of analytical philosophy in their discussions on objectivity. In section III, another such critical juncture is identified in the topic of explanation. Finally, section IV suggests an interpretation for the character of the comparison.

Mental Causes

1968 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 98-114
Author(s):  
C. H. Whiteley
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Causal Explanation ◽  
States Of Mind ◽  
Human Actions ◽  
The Road ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
The Look ◽  
Causal Language ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Single Set

The question I shall consider is whether there are any mental causes, that is, whether there is anything which is both a state of mind and a cause of other mental or physical happenings. The obvious common-sense answer to this question is Yes. In ordinary discourse (that is, outside philosophy and psychology) we constantly refer to human actions and experiences in what appears to be causal language; we seem to be saying that some states of mind are causes of other states of mind, and of some bodily activities. Sometimes we do this by using the word ‘cause’ itself— ‘His driving into the ditch was caused by his seeing a child run into the road’, ‘The cause of his silence was his wish to protect his friend’. More often we use expressions which in physical contexts are admittedly causal— ‘A glimpse of the look on her face made him hesitate’, ‘Ambition was the driving force of his career’. Most philosophers have taken for granted the genuineness of these causal attributions. But recently it has been frequently denied that any state of mind can be properly described as the cause either of other states of mind or of physical occurrences, at any rate if by a state of mind one means a state of consciousness. Some philosophers who deny this are materialists, advocates of the Unity of Science. They believe that everything that happens in the universe can be causally accounted for by reference to a single set of fundamental laws, the laws of physics, and since a state of consciousness is not, as such, a physical state of any kind, it cannot have a place in the causal explanation of any event, and must be an epiphenomenon. Others are believers in an indeterminist interpretation of human freedom, and hold that o t introduce the category of cause and effect into the explanation of human actions is to deny that there is any genuine free will. I shall not be concerned with either of these general metaphysical objections, neither of which convinces me; but I shall consider some more specific objections to the admission of particular sorts of mental causes.

Explanation in history and social science

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David-Hillel Ruben
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Causal Explanation ◽  
Proper Subset ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Human Actions ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Social Events ◽  
Individual Human

Historians and social scientists explain at least two sorts of things: (a) those individual human actions that have historical or social significance, such as Stalin’s decision to hold the show trials, Diocletian’s division of the Roman Empire, and the Lord Chief Justice’s attempt to reform the English judicial system; (b) historical and social events and structures (‘large-scale’ social phenomena), such as wars, economic depressions, social customs, the class system, the family, the state, and the crime rate. Philosophical questions arise about explanations of both kinds (a) and (b). Concerning (b), perhaps the most pressing question is whether explanations of this sort can, ultimately, be understood as merely explanations of a large number of individual human actions, that is, as a complex set of explanations of the first kind, (a). A causal explanation is an explanation of something in terms of its event-cause(s). Some explanations under (b) appear not to be causal explanations in this sense. There are two ways in which this appears to happen. First, we sometimes seem to explain a social structure or event by giving its function or purpose. This seems to be an explanation in terms of its effects rather than by its causes. For example, it might be claimed that the explanation for a certain social custom in a tribal society is the way in which it contributes to social stability or group solidarity. An explanation of a thing in terms of its effects cannot be a causal explanation of that thing. Second, we sometimes seem to cite social structure as the explanation of something. Whatever a social structure is, it is not itself an event, and since only (it is often said) events can be causes, such a ‘structural’ explanation does not seem to be a causal explanation. A second question, then, about explanations of kind (b) is whether some of them, at any rate, are genuinely non-causal explanations, or whether functional and/or structural explanations of this sort can be seen as special sorts of causal explanation. Explanations of kind (a) are a proper subset of explanations of human actions generally. Although some of the discussion of these issues began life as a distinct literature within the philosophy of history, it has now been absorbed into philosophical action theory more generally. Even so, a question that remains is just which proper subset of human actions are the ones of interest to the historical and social sciences: how can we discriminate within the class of human actions between those in which historians or social scientists have a legitimate interest and those outside their purview?

scholarly journals Sorabji and the Dilemma of Determinism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Russell
Keyword(s):  
Effective Control ◽  
Human Actions ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Main Thrust

In Necessity, Cause and Blame (London, 1980) Richard Sorabji argues that what is caused need not be necessitated. On this basis he argues that human actions may be caused but not necessitated and that in this way we can escape the usual difficulties associated with the dilemma of determinism. This chapter argues that this strategy runs into serious difficulties and that in important respects it gets impaled on both horns of the dilemma at once. The main thrust of the criticism advanced is that on Sorabji’s account, while an agent may have more than one available set of reasons to act on, she still lacks effective control over which of these reasons becomes her will—leaving the agent vulnerable, in significant respects, to the play of chance and luck. The relevance of these issues to the contemporary debate is explained in an addendum from 2016.

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