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The dominant view holds that actions are essentially brought about by the agent's intentions. Merleau-Ponty offers an alternative account, according to which actions are primarily initiated and guided by the agent's apprehension of her environment. Intentions may still play a role in bringing about action, but they are not essential. In this chapter, I consider two important factors that contribute to our actions: habit and attention. I argue that neither can be satisfactorily accommodated on the dominant model, but Merleau-Ponty's framework provides a nice explanation of them. This gives us some reason to prefer a Merleau-Pontyian account to the dominant view.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-01616-0_1

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