Philosophy of action

The field is often defined by the quote of Ludwig Wittgenstein: "What is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?"

The problems of analytical philosophy of action include:

• What are the temporal limits of an action? For instance, can an action end before its result occurs?
• Is an action the same as some bodily movement? Does one movement under different descriptions constitute different actions?
• Is an action the same as some event? Does one event under different descriptions constitute different actions?
• How are actions to be explained or rationalized? Must there be a causal link between the explanation and the action (as suggested by Donald Davidson)? In what way are the agent's intentions involved?
  

  See also

• Aristotle
• David Hume
• Praxeology
• Donald Davidson
• Jennifer Hornsby
• G. E. M. Anscombe

  References

• Philosophy of Action conference announcement: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~lawf0081/rip/
• Philosophy of Action syllabus: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~velleman/542/
• Mele, Alfred (ed.): The Philosophy of Action, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Action, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/action/
• "Philosophy of Action" - David Velleman