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Action

Action

Paperback

Series: Heritage

Philosophy

ISBN10: 144265130X
ISBN13: 9781442651302
Publisher: Univ Of Toronto Pr
Published: Dec 15 1968
Pages: 164
Weight: 0.60
Height: 0.35 Width: 6.69 Depth: 9.61
Language: English

Professor Brown in this volume discusses one of the most difficult questions in metaphysics, what is action? His analysis proceeds along three main lines of thought: the point of view of the agent, the primacy of inanimate action, and the pervasiveness of explanatory insight in the description of action. In the spirit of recent work on practical reasoning, he takes the central fact about human action to be the existence of the point of view, and considers the agent's relation to his own body, Professor Brown argues that the concept of human action is best understood through that of inanimate action, such as the action of wind on trees or an axe on wood. His analysis takes inanimate action as fundamental, and defends it against the popular theory that it is an anthropomorphic projection. Human action is indeed unique. But it is also Professor Brown's thesis that the classical empiricist search for the brute fact of our own agency yields no more than incidental insights into its nature; introspection does not replace the analysis of human action.

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Philosophy