INTENTIONS AND AGENCY

• Authors: Wágner Zoltán
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

In this paper the author investigates Harry G. Frankfurt's philosophy of action from the point of view of the concept of intentionality in action. Many influential philosophers of action assume that agents have a separate faculty to form intentions. Most notably, Michael E. Bratman, David J. Velleman and Gary Watson claim that this ability is centrally important to our ability to act. To be agents, it seems to be necessary to actively influence our behaviour, and intentions play a significant role in this process. However, very controversially, Frankfurt's philosophy seems to imply that we do not have a separate ability to form intentions. Rather, our intentions are reducible to a certain type of complex desires. So it seems that in the same way as he reduces reason to desires (most notably in his book 'The Reasons of Love'), he reduces our ability to form intentions to a special way of desiring as well. The author discusses some difficulties of this view, and he tries to point out some advantages of the contrary view according to which they have a separate faculty to actively form intentions.

Keywords

EN

AGENCY; DESIRE; FRANKFURT HARRY G.; INTENTION; PHILOSOPHY OF ACTION

Discipline

• PHILOSOPHY: PHILOSOPHY

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Filozofia (Philosophy)
• Year: 2009
• Volume: 64
• Issue: 8
• Pages: 739-747
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Wágner Zoltán

• Zoltan Wagner, Department of Philosophy, Central European University, Nador u. 9, H1051 Budapest, Hungary; www.klemens.sav.sk/fiusav/filozofia

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

10SKAAAA08193