ABSTRACT
I wish in the following paper to compare, in outline at least, two rather different models of intentional action. The first model is voluntariness-based. This model teaches that intentional human action occurs as an effect of rationalizing pro attitudes towards its performance, and essentially consists in doing what we want or will because we want or will to do it. This model is a familiar feature of modern English-language action theory. It goes back to Thomas Hobbes, though the best-known modern defender of it is Davidson. As we shall see, the model has been further elaborated by writers such as Harry Frankfurt and David Velleman to provide a theory not only of action but also of self-determination. The second model is practical reason-based. This model views intentional action as consisting, not in any voluntary or willed effect, but in a distinctively practical or action-constitutive exercise of rationality. This model reached a highly developed form in medieval and early modern scholasticism; and it provided the target against which Hobbes first developed his rival voluntariness-based theory.1
