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Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System
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.
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.
300 pages, Paperback
First published November 26, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 29, 2021
Juarrero takes a complex systems perspective to the philosophical question of "what does it mean to say that a person caused something to happen?"
She provides some interesting insights into what causation means when prediction isn't actually possible. But the writing, in an academic philosophical style, is dense.
She provides some interesting insights into what causation means when prediction isn't actually possible. But the writing, in an academic philosophical style, is dense.
March 22, 2021
Starts slow but picks up steam as it goes. A really powerful and predictive theory from 20 years ago that the intervening progress in ML largely supports.
October 24, 2021
This is a book that took me a LONG time to read. The most interesting part for me was the first part - an analysis of the development of thinking in cause and effect. Being a somewhat amateur philosopher, I probably missed nuance and detail that strengthened the argument. Nevertheless I found it interesting in terms of assumptions made about cause and effect. The sense of being a bit out of my depth increased through the rest of the book, but the ubiquitous highlighter pen strokes mark plenty of opportunities to return an re engage. Towards the end, I felt I was emerging somewhat from the darkness as the concept of attractors and dynamic complex systems started to resonate once again. My measure of 4* review is a book that I would recommend and I’m still not sure if that, but I think I would recommend if someone wanted a bit more of a dive into cause and effect in human systems - which is kind of where I was coming from.
April 6, 2021
This is a great book with some really important message about the way we interpret causality. It might be hard to read, though, depending on your background. It was hard for me because I don't have a lot of background in philosophy.
June 25, 2019
Quite hard to read, yet one of the best books on explaining behaviour, cause and complex, adaptive, dynamical systems.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews