From an Intentionalist perspective

Abstract

In order to expound and defend the intentionalist thesis that human actions are intentionally determined by persons, selves, or agents themselves I first argue that teleological explanation, even though it is consistent with physicalism and scientifically respectable in the sense of being an attempt to establish the conditions under which things and events occur and to formulate laws that express such dependencies, is not exactly coordinate with and replaceable by mechanistic explanation. Then, I argue that living human beings must be seen as teleological systems relative to the purposes and goals of intentional activities even though the human body may come as close as possible to being a mechanistic system relative to physical responses and electro‐chemical‐mechanical movements on the basis of certain insights drawn from Wittgenstein's works. Finally, I expound and defend a very strong version of the intentionalist thesis drawn from C. A. Campbell's ‘Is “Freewill”; a Pseudo‐Problem?’ [5], and criticize an influential argument against this view which is due to C. D. Broad, ‘Determinism, Indeterminism, and Libertarianism’ [3].