human action

is distinguished not by some metaphysical principle, but by the fact that they are things we are in a distinctive way responsible for.

I think Immanuel Kant's greatest contribution to philosophy was his idea that what distinguishes judgments and actions from the responses of merely natural creatures is not that they involve some metaphysically special sort of stuff (mind stuff), but that they are things we are in a distinctive way responsible for. (Brandom 'interview 1999 pdf)

is in all cases equivalent, and all are on principle doomed to failure.

All human actions are equivalent. . . and all are on principle doomed to failure. Carl Sandburg

is always operating in obedience with laws as fixed as those of geometry, and so is best written about as if we were concerned with lines and planes and solids.

I will write about human beings as though I were concerned with lines and planes and solids." 6 "I have labored carefully not to mock, lament, or execrate, but to understand, human actions; and to this end I have looked upon passions . . . not as vices of human nature, but as properties just as pertinent to it as are heat, cold, storm, thunder and the like to the nature of the atmosphere Since human actions obey laws as fixed as those of geometry* psychology should be studied in geometrical form, and with mathematical objectivity. "I will write about human beings as though I were concerned with lines and planes and solids." 6 "I have labored carefully not to mock, lament, or execrate, but to understand, human actions; and to this end I have looked upon passions . . . not as vices of human nature, but as properties just as pertinent to it as are heat, cold, storm, thunder and the like to the nature of the atmosphere." T It is this impartiality of approach that gives to Spinoza's study of human nature such superiority that Froude called it "the most complete by far which has ever been made by any moral philosopher." 8

human action, n.Definitions

human action