ABSTRACT
Revisiting the Wittgenstein/Davidson debate on whether reason explanations are a type of causal explanations, and considering in particular John Hyman’s recent reassessment and attempt to defend a causalist account of desires (2015), I argue for the following claims. First, the deviant-causal-connection problem remains an insurmountable objection to causalism. Second, using words in their ordinary senses, intentions are not desires, nor are desires dispositions; but more importantly (granting for argument’s sake that intentions are desires of sorts, and desires are dispositions of sorts), dispositions are neither causes nor “causal factors”. Finally, Hyman’s reassessment of the debate leaves out what is most crucial in Wittgenstein’s view, namely the observation that statements of one’s own reasons for acting are covered by first-person authority.
