CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 1,512Philosophy and History of SciencePhilosophy and Theoretical ScienceFree Will and Agency

Explaining Behavior: Reasons in a World of Causes

Dretske, Fred·1988·The MIT Press eBooks
DOI 10.7551/mitpress/2927.001.0001
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Why do human beings move? In this lucid portrayal of human behavior, Fred Dretske provides an original account of the way reasons function in the causal explanation of behavior. Biological science investigates what makes our bodies move in the way they do. Psychology is interested in why persons—agents with reasons—move in the way they do. Dretske attempts to reconcile these different points of view by showing how reasons operate in a world of causes. He reveals in detail how the character of our inner states—what we believe, desire, and intend—determines what we do. Bradford Books imprint

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.7551/mitpress/2927.001.0001

Cites

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • A more substantive notion of agency can be defined by adding three conditions to Russell and Norvig's account: the system's outputs affect its subsequent inputs; agents pursue goals; and the system must learn to produce goal-conducive outputs.

    “A more substantive notion of agency can be defined by adding three conditions to Russell and Norvig's account.”

    From Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness (2023) · cites this paper as Dretske 1988

  • Zombie-Jackson has intentional states.

    “Contrary to Searle, a good case can be made that zombie-Jackson does have intentional states.”

    From Conceivability, Possibility, and the Mind-Body Problem (1999) · cites this paper as Dretske 1988

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Dretske, F.
Corresponding author
Dretske, Fred
Venue
The MIT Press eBooks
Publisher
The MIT Press
Published
1988-04-28
DOI
10.7551/mitpress/2927.001.0001
OpenAlex
W4245007993
Cited by
1,512
References
0
Citations by year
2026: 56 · 2025: 52 · 2024: 82 · 2023: 52 · 2022: 41 · 2021: 49 · 2020: 32 · 2019: 96 · 2018: 35 · 2017: 38 · 2016: 26 · 2015: 43 · 2014: 35 · 2013: 22 · 2012: 41
FWCI
88.86
Type
book
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
The MIT Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Philosophy and History of Science
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Free Will and Agency
Keywords
reason, causal explanation, human behavior, intentional action, agency, belief and desire, intention, philosophy of action, psychology of action

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review