Some Preliminary Thoughts for Understanding Inadvertent Actions
from Part II - Agency, Reasons and Inadvertence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 October 2021
Inadvertent actions in relation to legal and moral responsibility have been represented as puzzling on many occasions. In this chapter, I aim to show they are puzzling for different reasons than those usually proposed. Before I do this it is important to clarify some assumptions and presuppositions. First, the chapter presupposes that intentional action constitutes the paradigm of action . Second, it presupposes that intention and intentional actions run parallel to practical reason, and that the first-person perspective is the primary perspective to explain intentional action. Inadvertent actions seem to be an important challenge to this conception and this study aims to pave the way for thinking about negligence in the context of the first-person perspective. The aim of the chapter is modest in the sense that it neither offers an account of negligence, nor a criticism of the views that have been advanced in the literature, but identifies a puzzle that arises in the context of actions from the first-person perspective and gestures towards a possible methodology for thinking about negligent actions. I see this as a necessary and preliminary task before engaging with the nature of negligent acts and responsibility for negligence.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.