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Intention and Volition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Jing Zhu
Jing Zhu*
Affiliation:
Department of Social Sciences, Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing100039, China
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Extract

The volitional theory of human action has formed a basis for a prominent account of voluntary behavior since at least Aquinas. But in the twentieth century the notions of will and volition lost much of their popularity in both philosophy and psychology. Gilbert Ryle's devastating attack on the concept of will, and especially the doctrine of volition, has had lingering effects evident in the widespread hostility and skepticism towards the will and volition. Since the 1970s, however, the volitional theory has received some renewed interest in the philosophy of action.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , June 2004 , pp. 175 - 193
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2004

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References

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17 Recent findings in cognitive neuroscience indicate that the neural underpinnings that are essential in supporting these three types of mental activities share some common brain structures and are organized in an integral, meaningful way. See my ‘Locating Volition’ for a review.

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21 Ibid., 162.

22 Ibid., 130-7.

23 Brand (in Intending and Acting) and Bratman (in Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason) make similar distinctions. Cf. Searle's distinction between prior intention and intention in action in his Intentionality, ch. 3.

24 See their ‘The Intention/Volition Debate.'

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30 Ibid., 326.

31 Ibid., 328.

32 Ibid., 327.

33 See Adams and Mele, ‘The Role of Intention in Intentional Action’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 19 (1989) 511-32.

34 See ‘The Intention/Volition Debate’ 331-2 for a list of the phenomena that volitions are postulated to explain. Adams and Mele argue that trying can perfectly do the explanatory work attributed to volitions.

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36 See B. O'Shaughnessy, ‘Trying (as the Mental “Pineal Gland”).’

37 Mele, Springs of Action, 177Google Scholar and 192.

38 The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 2, 1132-3.

39 Ibid., 1130.

40 Springs of Action, 179.

41 Ibid.

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55 Ibid.

56 Ibid.

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59 Mele, Irrationality, 26.Google Scholar

60 I would like to thank Andrei Buckareff, Puqun Li, Paul Thagard, and Jeff Zucker, as well as three anonymous referees, for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.