BAEcon Economics

Whenever you say hello to someone, or shake their hand, or kiss their lips, you perform an action. But what sort of thing is an action? How does doing something differ from undergoing something, or having something done to you? What makes one action the same as, or different from, another action? (If you smile and say hello, is this one action or two?) Many actions involve bodily movements, but are actions identical with bodily movements? Could it be that some actions consist in less than a bodily movement, whereas others consist in more? Are there rational justifications for performing some actions rather than others? If so, what sorts of justifications are they, and what sort of practical thinking or deliberation can enable us to appreciate them? Under what circumstances, if any, is an action either (i) voluntary, (ii) intentional, or (iii) free? What sorts of explanations are explanations of people's actions? Are all actions performed by individuals, or can an action be performed by a group?

In this course, we will focus on these and other questions of the philosophy of action. 

Pre-requisites: 40 PHIL credits at Level 2

The unit aims to:

• Enable students to critically engage with issues in the philosophy of action;
• Familiarise students with some important writings in contemporary philosophy of action;
• Enhance students' ability to present and discuss philosophical issues orally, and their ability to present philosophical ideas and arguments in written work. 

One two-hour lecture and one one-hour tutorial per week.

Students should be able to:

• Identify and clearly articulate some of the main ideas and arguments in contemporary philosophy of action.

Students should be able to:

• Critically evaluate ideas, arguments and texts;
• Develop cogent arguments and explanations of their own.

Students should be able to:

• Use research tools to effectively select resources in the preparation of assessments in the philosophy of action;
• Clearly communicate ideas about the philosophy of action.

Essay 1 (2000 words) 50%

Essay 2 (2000 words) 50% 

The School of Social Sciences (SoSS) is committed to providing timely and appropriate feedback to students on their academic progress and achievement, thereby enabling students to reflect on their progress and plan their academic and skills development effectively. Students are reminded that feedback is necessarily responsive: only when a student has done a certain amount of work and approaches us with it at the appropriate time is it possible for us to feed back on the student's work. The main forms of feedback on this course are written feedback responses to assessed essays and exam answers.

We also draw your attention to the variety of generic forms of feedback available to you on this as on all SoSS courses. These include: meeting the lecturer/tutor during their office hours; e-mailing questions to the lecturer/tutor; asking questions from the lecturer (before and after lecture); presenting a question on the discussion board on Canvas; and obtaining feedback from your peers during tutorials.

• Anscombe, G. E. M. (1957/1963) Intention (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.  
• Davidson, D. (2001) Essays on Actions and Events Oxford: OUP.
• Holton, R. (2009) Willing, Wanting, Waiting  Oxford: OUP.
• Paul, S. K. (2021) Philosophy of Action: A Contemporary Introduction. Oxford and New York: Routledge.