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My Hand Goes Out to You

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

John W. Yolton
John W. Yolton
Affiliation:
York University, Toronto, Canada
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Extract

‘When a dog runs, the dog is moving his legs; when a sea urchin runs, the legs are moving the sea urchin.’ Philosophers have come to appreciate the importance of understanding what action is. Their attempts at the clarification of ‘action’ have led them to talk of arms going up, muscles contracting, psychokinesis, bodies moving. They want to distinguish between sea urchins and dogs. Joined with the concept of action there is that of the person. Some are inclined to say we fail to understand action when we treat the agent as the responding organism; in such a view there is no room for ‘responsibility’, ‘duty’, ‘ought’, ‘intention’, ‘volition’. Man as responding organism cannot be distinguished from sea urchins or from complex mechanisms.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 41 , Issue 156 , April 1966 , pp. 140 - 152
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1966

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References

page 140 note 1 J. von Uexküll, quoted by Lorenz, Konrad Z., ‘The Role of Gestalt Perception in Animal and Human Behaviour’, in Aspects of Form, ed. by L. L. Whyte, p. 159Google Scholar

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page 148 note 1 Ibid., p. 37, n.

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