ABSTRACT
A series of disputes involving human action, intention, causes, and deliberation may seem to have some bearing on the problem of the implications of determinism. This chapter addresses the philosophical problems of action and personhood only to the extent to deal with determinism and free will. As Franklin points out, it is important to distinguish between the motive of an action and its intention. It is possible, perhaps, to construe the intention not as being a part of the action, but as part of its cause. Nagel suggests that there is no solution to the difficulty, "because something in the idea of agency is incompatible with actions being events, or people being things". Putting an action fully into the context of external circumstance turns it into an event and deprives it of its initial actionhood; learning more about a person turns the person into a thing and makes moral judgments pointless.
