Mind out of Action: the Intentionality of Automatic Actions

Mind Out of Action challenges a central dogma of contemporary philosophy of action, causalism: the idea that some movement is an action in virtue of the kind of causes it has; namely, psychological states that rationalize it. By looking at automatic actions, Di Nucci argues against both reductive (Davidson) and non-reductive (the Simple View and Bratman) causal accounts of intentional action. Automatic actions are routine performances the agent carries out without having to attend to them, like changing gear or pulling a trigger. The author argues that automatic actions do not fit the causalist bill because there is not always evidence for the attribution of the required content-specific psychological states. After having presented and defined the concept of Automatic Action, and having shown how common such concept is in empirical psychology, Di Nucci goes on to argue against reductive and non-reductive causalism. In the last chapter an alternative to causalism is presented and defended, the Guidance View, inspired by Frankfurt. Mind Out of Action will be of interest to students and scholars of the philosophy of mind and action, as well as to psychologists.