De re belief in action

Abstract

Beliefs and other attitudes play a prominent role in the explanation of action. It has thus seemed plausible, even obvious, that actions directed upon concrete objects are explainable in part by attitudes directed upon those objects. The aim of this paper is to expose vexing difficulties in the received views that attempt such explanation, to show that the received views cannot simply be patched up to avoid the difficulties, and to suggest a somewhat different approach to the explanation of action in terms of the agent’s attitudes.