Reasons and Causes Causalism and Anti-Causalism in the Philosophy of Action

To mark the 50th anniversary of Donald Davidson's 'Actions, reasons and causes', eight philosophers with distinctive and contrasting views revisit and update the reasons/causes debate.Their essays are preceded by a historical introduction which traces current debates to their roots in the philosophy of history and social science, linking the rise of causalism to a metaphysical backlash against the linguistic turn. Both historically grounded and topical, this volume will be of great interest to both students and scholars in the philosophy of action and related areas of study.

Guiseppina D'Oro is Reader in Philosophy at Keele University, UK. She is the author of Collingwood and the Metaphysics of Experience and co-editor (with James Connelly) of Collingwood's An Essay on Philosophical Method. She has written extensively on Collingwood's defence of the autonomy of the human sciences and its continuing philosophical relevance to the reasons/causes debate.

Constantine Sandis is Reader in Philosophy at Oxford Brookes University, UK. He is the author of The Things We Do and Why We Do Them (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and the editor or co-editor of Human Nature (with Mark Cain), A Companion to the Philosophy of Action, Hegel on Action (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), and New Essays on Action Explanation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

Series Editor's Foreword
Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
1. From Anti-Causalism to Causalism and Back: A History of the Reasons/Causes Debate; Giuseppina D'Oro and Constantine Sandis
2. Still a Cause for Concern: Reasons, Causes and Explanations; Dan Hutto
3. Mental Causation According to Davidson; John Heil
4. Why Rationalization Is Not a Species of Causal Explanation; Brian P. McLaughlin
5. Prolegomena to a Cartographical Investigation of Cause and Reason; Julia Tanney
6. Explaining Actions and Explaining Bodily Movements; Maria Alvarez
7. Actions, Explanations, and Causes; Alfred R. Mele
8. The Causal Theory of Action and the Commitments of Common Sense Psychology; Scott Sehon
9. Explaining Human Agency: Reasons, Causes, and the First Person Perspective; Karsten Stueber
Index