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    Reasons cannot be causes of actions. — Carmelics
    Statements
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    Perspectives
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    Home/Moral Responsibility
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    Reasons cannot be causes of actions.

    CausationMoral Responsibility
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.If an agent's explaining reasons R were among the causes of action A, then there must be some universal causal law nomologically linking the psychological factors in R to the A-type action they rationalize.
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    • 2.There are no strict psychological laws and co-ordinate conditions that ensure a suitable action will be the invariant product of pertinent pro-attitudes, beliefs, and other psychological states.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Donald Davidson's 'primary reasons' account shows reasons can be causes without requiring strict nomological laws, only heteronomic generalizations.
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    • 2.The requirement for strict universal laws conflates Humean regularity theory with causation itself; singular causal relations can hold without covering laws.
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    • 3.Davidson's anomalous monism demonstrates mental events are physically realized and thus enter causal relations, even if mental descriptions resist strict laws.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.The supporting argument commits a non-sequitur: the absence of strict psychological laws entails only that reasons-explanations are not nomological, not that reasons are causally inert.
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    • 2.Dretske's and Fodor's work on causal-explanatory relevance of mental content shows that propositional attitudes can be causally efficacious in virtue of their semantic properties, not despite them.
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    Topics

    Moral ResponsibilityCausation

    Related

    Davidson's anomalous monism demonstrates mental events are physically realized a...Donald Davidson's 'primary reasons' account shows reasons can be causes without ...Dretske's and Fodor's work on causal-explanatory relevance of mental content sho...If an agent's explaining reasons R were among the causes of action A, then there...
    +3 moreShow less
    The requirement for strict universal laws conflates Humean regularity theory wit...The supporting argument commits a non-sequitur: the absence of strict psychologi...There are no strict psychological laws and co-ordinate conditions that ensure a ...

    Similar

    Reasons cannot explain actions by causing them87%It does not follow from reasons being necessary for action-explanation...82%Deterministically caused actions are ultimately caused by factors and ...81%If reasons explain actions, they do so by causing those actions81%

    Source

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    One of the principal arguments that was used to show that reason explanations of action could not be causal was the following. If the agent's explaining reasons R were among the causes of his action A, then there must be some universal causal law which nomologically links the psychological factors in R (together with other relevant conditions) to the A-type action that they rationalize. However, it was argued, there simply are no such psychological laws; there are no strict laws and co-ordinate
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit