Collective Intentionality and Causal Powers

Team Reasoning and Collective Intentionality

Different versions of the idea that individualism about agency is the root of standard game theoretical puzzles have been defended by Regan 1980, Bacharach (Research in Economics 53: 117-147, 1999), Hurley (Behavioral and Brain Sciences 26: 264-265, 2003), Sugden (Philosophical Explorations 6(3):165-181, 2003), and Tuomela 2013, among others. While collectivistic game theorists like Michael Bac...

Husserl on Collective Intentionality

Intentionality, Evaluative Judgments, and Causal Structure

The results from a number of recent studies suggest that ascriptions of intentionality are based on evaluative considerations: specifically, that the likelihood of viewing a person’s actions as intentional is greater when the outcome is bad than good (see Knobe, 2006, 2010). In this research we provide an alternative explanation for these findings, one based on the idea that ascriptions of inte...

Capabilities as causal powers

T h e auth or arg ue s th at S e n’ s c ap ab il ity ap p roac h is p rim aril y a p h il osop h ic al und e rl ab ouring e x e rc ise aim e d at e l ab orating c e rtain c e ntral e c onom ic c ate g orie s, and th at th e p h il osop h ic al and m e th od ol og ic al und e rp inning s of S e n’ s ap p roac h are rad ic al l y d if f e re nt f rom th ose of c onte m p orary w e l f are e c ono...

Kant on causal laws and powers.

The aim of the paper is threefold. Its first aim is to defend Eric Watkins's claim that for Kant, a cause is not an event but a causal power: a power that is borne by a substance, and that, when active, brings about its effect, i.e. a change of the states of another substance, by generating a continuous flow of intermediate states of that substance. The second aim of the paper is to argue again...