Practical determination : action, capacity, knowledge
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- I defend the thesis that intentional action constitutively involves practical knowledge: a distinctly practical form of knowledge that an agent has of her action when acting intentionally. I identify intentional action as an agent's felicitous exercise of her corresponding practical capacity, practical knowledge as a distinctive form of practical judgment involved in such exercise. I argue that such judgment constitutes knowledge in that it constitutes the agent's capacity to guide herself by the fact of her intentional action; that this knowledge is practical in that it is constituted by the agent's practical judgment, in felicitous exercise of her practical capacity. The argument develops over three parts. In Pt I, Action, I attend to the ontology of happening and action and of intentional action specifically. Standard ontologies of action conceive of action in terms of completed events, thus complicating the recognition of practical knowledge, the primary locus and object of which is ongoing intentional action. I develop an account of happening and action in terms of a focal notion of "practical determination": of a particular of a general, determinable type developing in a determinate way. I understand intentional action along these lines as the agent's intentional practical determination of what happens. In Pt II, Capacity, I turn to the nature of practical capacity as the capacity for intentional action. Following the discussion and framing of Pt I, I understand such capacity as the capacity for intentional practical determination. I develop an account of practical capacity along the lines of Aristotelian "rational two-way" capacities: as a capacity to act in a determinate way according as one intentionally determines to do so. I argue that intentional action is nothing other than the felicitous exercise of such capacity. In Pt III, Knowledge, I offer an account of practical knowledge hinged on the exercise of practical capacity. I argue that, where an agent exercises such a capacity felicitously, the particular judgment constitutively involved in her exercise constitutes her practical knowledge of her intentional action. Following an epistemological tradition that recognizes knowledge as the capacity to guide oneself by facts I recognize practical knowledge as the agent's capacity to guide herself by the fact of her intentional action
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2020; ©2020 |
| Publication date | 2020; 2020 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Hauthaler, Nathan Isaac Philip |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Hills, David James, 1947- |
| Thesis advisor | Hills, David James, 1947- |
| Thesis advisor | Bratman, Michael |
| Thesis advisor | Lawlor, Krista |
| Degree committee member | Bratman, Michael |
| Degree committee member | Lawlor, Krista |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Philosophy. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Nathan Isaac Philip Hauthaler |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Philosophy |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2020 |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2020 by Nathan Isaac Philip Hauthaler
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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