William Nolan

PhD project

Title: "Aristotle on Action: Events, Powers, and Causes in the Theory of Animal Movement".

The goal of the project is to develop a robust neo-Aristotelian action theory. My project uses Aristotelian insights to challenge aspects of contemporary action theory’s analysis of causation, intention, and human action. In particular, it aims to extract and develop the efficient-causal account Aristotle deployed to explain human motion, especially as found in his ethical treatises, De Anima, and De Motu Animalium. I plan to argue that some of the difficulties contemporary action theory faces - for example, deviant causal chains and the possibility of a 'gap' between a mental cause and its bodily effect - only arise because it is predicated on an early modern conception of causation.