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Book Cover for: Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System, Alicia Juarrero

Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System

Alicia Juarrero

What is the difference between a wink and a blink? The answer is important not only to philosophers of mind, for significant moral and legal consequences rest on the distinction between voluntary and involuntary behavior. However, "action theory"--the branch of philosophy that has traditionally articulated the boundaries between action and non-action, and between voluntary and involuntary behavior--has been unable to account for the difference.

Alicia Juarrero argues that a mistaken, 350-year-old model of cause and explanation--one that takes all causes to be of the push-pull, efficient cause sort, and all explanation to be prooflike--underlies contemporary theories of action. Juarrero then proposes a new framework for conceptualizing causes based on complex adaptive systems. Thinking of causes as dynamical constraints makes bottom-up and top-down causal relations, including those involving intentional causes, suddenly tractable. A different logic for explaining actions--as historical narrative, not inference--follows if one adopts this novel approach to long-standing questions of action and responsibility.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Bradford Book
  • Publish Date: Jan 25th, 2002
  • Pages: 300
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.99in - 6.03in - 0.58in - 0.84lb
  • EAN: 9780262600477
  • Recommended age: 18-UP
  • Categories: Mind & BodyCognitive Psychology & Cognition

About the Author

Alicia Juarrero is Professor of Philosophy at Prince George's Community College, Maryland. She is a member of the National Council on the Humanities, the governing board of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Praise for this book

" Juarrero's lively text skillfully applies the kinds of causal analyses required in non-equilibrium, complex systems theory to the problems of action theory." -- Stanley N. Salthe, Biological Sciences, Binghamton University
& quot; Juarrero's lively text skillfully applies the kinds of causal analyses required in non-equilibrium, complex systems theory to the problems of action theory.& quot; -- Stanley N. Salthe, Biological Sciences, Binghamton University
"Juarrero's lively text skillfully applies the kinds of causal analyses required in non-equilibrium, complex systems theory to the problems of action theory."--Stanley N. Salthe, Biological Sciences, Binghamton University