7999
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All actions come from: body, lower self, perception, means of action, or Fate [Anon (Bhag)]
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Full Idea:
Whatever a man does, good or bad, in thought, word or deed, has these five sources of action: the body, the lower 'I am', the means of perception, the means of action, and Fate.
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From:
Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 18.14/15)
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A reaction:
The 'means of action' will presumably take care of anything we haven't thought of! Nothing quite matches the idea of 'the will' here. A twitch from the first, eating from the second, a startled jump from the third, struck by lightning from the fifth.
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6661
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Libet gives empirical support for the will, as a kind of 'executive' mental operation [Lowe]
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Full Idea:
Libet's experiments (on conscious and non-conscious choice) seem to provide empirical support for the concept of 'volition', conceived as a special kind of 'executive' mental operation.
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From:
E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 9)
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A reaction:
Despite the strictures of Hobbes (Idea 2362) and Williams (Idea 2171), the will strikes me as a genuine item, clearly observable by introspection, and offering the best explanation of human behaviour. I take it to be part of the brain's frontal lobes.
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6663
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People's actions are explained either by their motives, or their reasons, or the causes [Lowe]
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Full Idea:
When we ask why people act in the ways that they do, we are sometimes enquiring into people's motives, at other times we want to uncover their reasons, and at others we want to know the causes of their actions.
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From:
E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 9)
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A reaction:
Helpful distinctions. Any one of these explanations might be collapsed into the others. Kantians, utilitarians and contractarians can study reasons, nihilists can study causes, and virtue theorists I take to be concerned with motives.
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