Action and Acts of Will

Abstract

I said in the previous chapter that it was not possible, in “Brutus was responsible for Caesar’s death,” to replace “Brutus” with a description of an event without departing from our ordinary way of speaking. But if Brutus is identified either with his body or with his mind, perhaps this substitution can be made after all. From one philosophical point of view, only material bodies and the relations between them really exist. To speak of Brutus therefore is really to speak of a physical body-the one we normally call Brutus’ body. It is then both possible and, in the interest of clarity, desirable to replace “Brutus” with a description of an event, the most likely substitution being a description of a movement of Brutus’ body. For the dagger moved because Brutus’ arm moved; and Caesar died because the dagger moved and entered his body. In this view, an action is a movement of a human body, i.e., a bodily movement, though we would ordinarily include within the description of the action a reference to its immediate consequences. Indeed, we would often refer to the action by referring to its consequences, as when we say that Brutus killed Caesar.