PLEASE NOTE this is a sample reading list for the 2013-14 academic year – precise seminar content
may change from year to year.
Week 1
Anscombe (1): Intentions and Intentional Action
Anscombe, Intention, pp. 1-47, esp. §§1-16, 23-26
Supplementary reading
• Davidson, ‘Agency’, in his Essays on Actions and Events (for an influential version of the view
that actions are events that are intentional under some description)
• O'Shaughnessy, The Will (first edition), ch. 10 (for a defence of the view that there are ‘subintentional’ actions)
• O'Shaughnessy, The Will (second edition), ch. 10 (for a retraction of that view)
• R. Hursthouse, 'Arational Actions', Journal of Philosophy 88 (1991) (for an argument against the
idea that to act intentionally is to act in a way that’s open to a reason-giving explanation)
• H. Steward, ‘Sub-intentional Actions and the Over-mentalization of Agency’, in C. Sandis, New
Essays on the Explanation of Action
Week 2
Anscombe (2): Practical Reasoning
Anscombe, Intention, §§ 33-44 (pp.57ff)
Supplementary reading
• C. Vogler, ‘Anscombe on Practical Inference’, in E. Milgram, Varieties of Practical Reasoning
• J. Raz, ‘Practical Reasoning’, in his From Normativity to Responsibility
• B. Stroud, ‘Practical Reasoning’, in his Philosophers Past and Present
• F. Schueler, Reasons and Purposes, ch. 4
Week 3
Anscombe (3): Practical Knowledge
Anscombe, Intention, §§ 8, 28-33, 45-52
Supplementary reading
• R.Hursthouse, 'Intention', Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 2000
• K. Donnellan, 'Knowing what I am Doing', Journal of Philosophy 1963
• S. Hampshire, Freedom of the Individual, ch. 2
• K. Falvey, ‘Knowledge in Intention’, Philosophical Studies 99, 2000.
• B. O'Shaughnessy, ‘Observation and the Will’, Journal of Philosophy 1963
• M. Thompson, 'Anscombe's Intention and Practical Knowledge', in A. Ford et al (eds.), Essays on
Anscombe's Intention.
• R. Moran, ‘Anscombe on Practical Knowledge’, in J. Hyman & H. Steward (eds.), Agency and
Action.
• N. Eilan & R. Roessler (eds.), Agency and Self-awareness. Esp. the chapters by Lucy O'Brien,
Tony Marcel and Brian O'Shaughnessy
• J. Roessler, ‘The Epistemic Role of Intentions’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 2012/13
Week 4
Davidson: Reason Explanation
D.Davidson, ‘Actions, Reasons, and Causes’
Supplementary reading
• W. Child, Causality, Interpretation and the Mind, chapter 3
• J. Hornsby, ‘Agency and Causal Explanation’, in her Simple Mindedness
• — ‘Actions in their Circumstances’, in A. Ford et al (eds.), Essays on Anscombe’s Intention.
• F. Schueler, ‘Action Explanations: Causes and Purposes’, in B. Malle et al, Intentions and
Intentionality
• A. Mele, ‘Teleological Explanations of Actions: Anticausalism versus Causalism’, in J. Aguilar & A.
Buckareff (eds.), Causing Human Actions
• J. Dancy, Practical Reality
Week 5
Williams: Reasons and Motivation
B. Williams: ‘Internal and external reasons’, in his Moral Luck.
Reprinted in J. Adler & L. Rips. (eds.), Reasoning. Studies of Human Inference and its Foundations,
chapter 3 (p. 60ff), available here.
Supplementary reading
• H. James, Owen Wingrave (available at http://www.henryjames.org.uk/owenw/ )
• T. Scanlon, What we Owe to Each Other, Appendix and chapter 1 (esp. pp. 41-49)
• D. Parfit, 'Reasons and Motivation, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Suppl Vol. LXXI 1997
• J. McDowell, ‘Might there be external reasons?’, in J. Altham & R. Harrison (eds.), World, Mind
and Morality.
• B. Williams, ‘Reply to McDowell’, in J. Altham & R. Harrison (eds.), World, Mind and Morality.
• — ‘Internal reasons and the obscurity of blame’, in his Making Sense of Humanity
• — 'Some Further Notes on Internal and External Reasons', in E. Millgram (ed.), Varieties of
Practical Reasoning
• — ‘ Values, Reasons, and the Theory of Persuasion’, in his Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline
• J. Raz, 'Reasons: Explanatory and Normative', in his From Normativity to Responsibility
• C. Korsgaard, ‘Scepticism about practical reason’, in her Creating the Kingdom of Ends
• U. Heuer, ‘Thick concepts and internal reasons’ (in U. Heuer & G. Lang (eds.), Luck, Value, and
Commitment
Week 7
Bratman: Intentions and Plans
M.Bratman, Intention, Plans and Practical Reasoning chs. 2 and 3 (I've also scanned chs. 1
(Introduction) and 7 (helpful summary of some key points).)
[Note that these are zip files — downloading may take a couple of minutes.]
chapters 1,2
chapters 3,7
Supplementary reading
• Davidson, 'Intending', in his Essays on Actions and Events, ch. 5
• K. Setiya, 'Intention', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Bratman, 'Davidson's Theory of Intention', reprinted In his Faces of Intention, ch. 11
• D. Velleman, 'What Good Is a Will?', in A. Leist (ed.) Action in Context
• A. Millar, Understanding People, esp. ch. 3 - 5
Week 8
Is instrumental rationality a myth?
M.Bratman, 'Intention rationality'
Supplementary reading
• J. Raz, 'The myth of instrumental rationality', in his From Normativity to Responsibility
• N. Kolodny, 'Why by rational?', Mind 2005
• C.Korsgaard, 'The normativity of instrumental reason', in G. Cullity & B. Gaut (eds.), Ethics and
Practical Reason
Week 9
Reasons: facts or mental states?
Jennifer Hornsby, 'A Disjunctive Conception of Acting for Reasons', in A. Haddock & F. Macpherson
(eds.), Disjunctivism
Supplementary reading
• J. Raz, 'Reasons: Explanatory and Normative', in his From Normativity to Responsibility
• J. Dancy, Practical Reality (link under week 4)
• J. Dancy, 'On how to Act — Disjunctively', in A. Haddock & F. Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism
• J. McDowell, 'Acting in the Light of a Fact', in D. Bakhurst et al. (eds.) Thinking About Reason
• J. Hawthorne & J. Stanley, 'Knowledge and Action', Journal of Philosophy 2008
Week 10
Agency
H. Steward, ‘Sub-intentional Actions and the Over-mentalization of Agency’, in C. Sandis, New
Essays on the Explanation of Action (ch. 16, pp. 295-312)
supplementary reading:
• S. Della Sala, 'The Anarchic Hand', The Psychologist 18, 2005
• also see supplementary reading under week 1