Bøger udgivet af Humanities Online

Donald Davidson has contributed to many subjects in contemporary philosophy. He was one of the most influential Anglo-American analytical philosophers in the late 20th century. His leading topics are the theory of meaning, the philosophy of action and the theory of mind. His claim is to give a Unified Theory of Thought, Meaning, Action, and Evaluation as a new foundational account of language. In the history of his work emerged an overall view of mind and its relation to the world. This approach argues for a total revision of the Cartesian tradition and of traditional empiricism in epistemology. This book systemizes his philosophy and refers to the critiques of his theory of meaning, action, and mind since the 1970s years. It is not fixed what Davidson's place in the history of philosophy will be, but many patterns of philosophical thought in the last fifty years would not have been without him.

The philosophical questions about action concern it's nature, it's description and it's explanation. The leading questions are "What a theory of action is possible?", "Are reasons causes?", "What are practical thoughts?" and "What is the formal logic of practical inference?" Gerhard Preyer offers new answers of some old question about the description and the explanation of action and the logical structure of deliberation or practical reasoning which results from the theory of action since the 1950s years. It is argued that a theory of agent can provide an alternative to any theory postulating actions as irreducible entities metaphysically. The author's account presents intention as states irreducible to beliefs and desires. The analysis places also a requirement on a fruitful description of the mind-body problem.