The most influential figure in American and British philosophy today
A new edition of a collection of contempory classics from Davidson
Features two additional essays previously uncollected
to be published simultaneously with the new edition of Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation and the new volume Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective

First edition sold 20,000 copies
Volumes 4 and 5 to follow in the next year or two

Donald Davidson has prepared a new edition of his classic 1980 collection of Essays on Actions and Events , including two additional essays. In this seminal investigation of the nature of human action, Davidson argues for an ontology which includes events along with persons and other objects. Certain events are identified and explained as actions when they are viewed as caused and rationalized by reasons; these same events, when described in physical, biological, or physiological terms, may be explained by appeal to natural laws. The mental and the physical thus constitute irreducibly discrete ways of explaining and understanding events and their causal relations.

Among the topics discussed are: freedom to act; weakness of the will; the logical form of talk about actions, intentions, and causality; the logic of practical reasoning; Hume`s theory of the indirect passions; and the nature and limits of decision theory. The introduction, cross-references, and appendices emphasize the relations between the essays and explain how Davidson`s views have developed.


Provenance of the Essays and Acknowledgments
Introduction
1.
Intention and Action
Actions, Reasons, and Causes (1963)
2. How is Weakness of the Will Possible? (1969)
3. Agency (1971)
4. Freedom to Act (1973)
5. Intending (1978)
6.
Event and Cause
The Logical Form of Action Sentences (1967)
Criticism, Comment, and Defence
7. Causal Relations (1967)
8. The Individuation of Events (1969)
9. Events as Particulars (1970)
10. Eternal vs. Ephemeral Events (1971)
11.
Philosophy of Psychology
Mental Events (1970)
Appendix: Emeroses by Other Names (1966)
12. Psychology as Philosophy (1974)
Comments and Replies
13. The Material Mind (1973)
14. Hempel on Explaining Action (1976)
15. Hume`s Cognitive Theory of Pride (1976)
Appendix A: Adverbs of Action (1985)
Appendix B: Reply to Quine on Events (1985)
Index, Bibliography