Action and Its Explanation

Written from a point of view out of sympathy with the assumptions of much of contemporary philosophical action theory, this book draws its inspiration from philosophers as diverse as Aristotle, Berkeley, and Marx. Ruben's work is located in the tradition of the metaphysics of action.

Ruben sketches a theory of causal explanation of action that eschews the requirement for laws or generalisations, and this effectively quashes one argument for the oft-repeated view that no explanations of action can be causal, on the grounds that there are no convincing cases of laws of human action. He addresses a number of questions about the knowledge an agent has of his own actions, looking particularly at examples of pathological cases of action in which, for one reason or another, the agent does not know what he is doing. Inspiring and enlightening in its challenge to received wisdom, and in its convincing defence of some unfashionable positions, Action and its Explanation will be required reading for anyone working in this field.

Introduction
1. The Cambridge Theory of Action
2. Some Preliminaries
3. Theories of Action and an Introduction to the Causal Theory of Action
4. The Causal Theory of Action
5. More Theories
6. A Counterfactual Theory of Causal Explanation
Appendix on the Epistemology of Action