Were one to characterize the aims of this book ambitiously, it could be said to sketch the philosophical foundations or underpinnings of the scientific world view or, better, of the scientific conception of the world. In any case, it develops a comprehensive philosophical view, one which takes science seri ously as the best method for getting to know the ontological aspects of the world. This view is a kind of scientific realism - causal internal realism, as it is dubbed in the book. This brand of realism is "tough" in matters of ontology but "soft" in matters of semantics and epistemology. An ancestor of the book was published in Finnish under the title Tiede, toiminta ja todellisuus (Gaudeamus, 1983). That book is a shortish undergraduate-level monograph. However, as some research-level chapters have been added, the present book is perhaps best regarded as suited for more advanced readers. I completed the book while my stay at the University of Wisconsin in Madison as a Visiting Professor under the Exchange Program between the Universities of Wisconsin and Helsinki. I gratefully acknowledge this support. I also wish to thank Juhani Saalo and Martti Kuokkanen for comments on the manuscript and for editorial help. Dr Matti Sintonen translated the Finnish ancestor of this book into English, to be used as a partial basis for this work. His translation was supported by a grant from Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden edistamisvarat. Finally, and as usual, I wish to thank Mrs."

The papers contained in this volume are based on the contributions to an international, interdisciplinary Symposium entitled 'Analytical and Sociologi cal Action Theories' which took place in Berlin (West) on September 1-3, 1982. Each part comprises a main paper followed by two (in Part IV three) papers commenting on it. On the whole there is an equal division into philo sophical and sociological papers. In particular each main paper receives both inter- and innerdisciplinary comments. The Berlin Symposium was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Bonn) and, to a smaller extent, by the Freie UniversiHit Berlin; both grants are acknowledged gratefully. Berlin and Helsinki, May 1984 GOTTFRIED SEEBASS RAIMO TUOMELA vii GOTTFRIED SEEBASS INTRODUCTION I. It is a striking fact that the extended efforts of both sociologists and analytical philosophers to work out what is termed a 'theory of action' have taken little, if any, account of each other. Yet of the various reasons for this that come to mind none appears to be such as to foil any hopes for fruitful interdisciplinary exchange. Being concerned, apparently, with the same set of phenomena, viz. individual and social actions, the two theories can reasonably be expected to be partially overlapping as well as competitive and complementary. Accordingly each can eventually be shown by the other to need completion or revision. Whether or to what extent this is the case is subject to inquiry and discussion."

Contemporary Action Theory, Volume II (Social Action) is concerned with the philosophical and logical aspects of actions performed by several individuals or groups of individuals. The topics dealt with in this volume include collective attitudes (especially joint intentions), cooperation, social norms, and commitments. The contributors are leading experts in the philosophy of social action and artificial intelligence. No comparable collection of papers is currently available.

Contemporary Action Theory, Volume I (Individual Action) is concerned with topics in philosophical action theory such as reasons and causes of action, intentions, freedom of will and of action, omissions and norms in legal and ethical contexts, as well as activity, passivity and competence from medical points of view. Cognitive trying, freedom of the will and agent causation are challenges in the discussion on computers in action. The Volume consists of contributions by leading experts in the field written specifically for this volume. No comparable volume currently exists.

This anthology consists of a collection of papers on the nature of dis positions and the role of disposition concepts in scientific theories. I have tried to make the collection as representative as possible, except that problems specifically connected with dispositions in various special sciences are relatively little discussed. Most of these articles have been previously published. The papers by Mackie, Essler and Trapp, Fetzer (in Section 11), Levi, and Tuomela appear here for the first time, and are simultaneously published in Synthese 34, No. 4, which is a special issue on dispositions. Of the previously published material it should be emphasized that the papers by Hempel and Fisk have been extensively revised specially for this anthology. The papers are grouped in four sections, partlyon the basis of their content. However, due to the complexity of the issues involved, there is considerable overlap in content between the different sections, especially between Sections land 11. I wish to thank Professors James Fetzer and Carl G. Hempel for helpful advicc in compiling this anthology."

It is somewhat surprising to find out how little serious theorizing there is in philosophy (and in social psychology as well as sociology) on the nature of social actions or joint act. hons in the sense of actions performed together by several agents. Actions performed by single agents have been extensively discussed both in philosophy and in psycho ogy. There is, ac cordingly, a booming field called action theory in philosophy but it has so far strongly concentrated on actions performed by single agents only. We of course should not forget game theory, a discipline that systematically studies the strategic interac tion between several rational agents. Yet this important theory, besides being restricted to strongly rational acting, fails to study properly several central problems related to the concep tual nature of social action. Thus, it does not adequately clarify and classify the various types of joint action (except perhaps from the point of view of the agents' utilities). This book presents a systematic theory of social action. Because of its reliance on so-called purposive causation and generation it is called the purposive-causal theory. This work also discusses several problems related to the topic of social action, for instance that of how to create from this perspective the most central concepts needed by social psychology and soci ology. While quite a lot of ground is covered in the book, many important questions have been left unanswered and many others unasked as well."

In Cooperation, A Philosophical Study, Tuomela offers the first comprehensive philosophical theory of cooperation. He builds on such notions a collective and joint goals, mutual beliefs, collective commitments, acting together and acting collectively. The book analyzes the varieties of cooperation, making use of the crucial distinction between group-mode and individual-mode cooperation. The former is based on collective goals and collective commitments, the latter on private goals and commitments. The book discusses the attitudes and the kinds of practical reasoning that cooperation requires and investigate some of the conditions under which cooperation is likely, rationally, to occur. It also shows some of the drawbacks of the standard game-theoretical treatments of cooperation and presents a survey of cooperation research in neighbouring fields. Readership: Essential reading for researchers and graduate students in philosophy. Also of interest to researchers int he social sciences and AI.

Were one to characterize the aims of this book ambitiously, it could be said to sketch the philosophical foundations or underpinnings of the scientific world view or, better, of the scientific conception of the world. In any case, it develops a comprehensive philosophical view, one which takes science seri ously as the best method for getting to know the ontological aspects of the world. This view is a kind of scientific realism - causal internal realism, as it is dubbed in the book. This brand of realism is "tough" in matters of ontology but "soft" in matters of semantics and epistemology. An ancestor of the book was published in Finnish under the title Tiede, toiminta ja todellisuus (Gaudeamus, 1983). That book is a shortish undergraduate-level monograph. However, as some research-level chapters have been added, the present book is perhaps best regarded as suited for more advanced readers. I completed the book while my stay at the University of Wisconsin in Madison as a Visiting Professor under the Exchange Program between the Universities of Wisconsin and Helsinki. I gratefully acknowledge this support. I also wish to thank Juhani Saalo and Martti Kuokkanen for comments on the manuscript and for editorial help. Dr Matti Sintonen translated the Finnish ancestor of this book into English, to be used as a partial basis for this work. His translation was supported by a grant from Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden edistamisvarat. Finally, and as usual, I wish to thank Mrs."

It is somewhat surprising to find out how little serious theorizing there is in philosophy (and in social psychology as well as sociology) on the nature of social actions or joint act. hons in the sense of actions performed together by several agents. Actions performed by single agents have been extensively discussed both in philosophy and in psycho ogy. There is, ac cordingly, a booming field called action theory in philosophy but it has so far strongly concentrated on actions performed by single agents only. We of course should not forget game theory, a discipline that systematically studies the strategic interac tion between several rational agents. Yet this important theory, besides being restricted to strongly rational acting, fails to study properly several central problems related to the concep tual nature of social action. Thus, it does not adequately clarify and classify the various types of joint action (except perhaps from the point of view of the agents' utilities). This book presents a systematic theory of social action. Because of its reliance on so-called purposive causation and generation it is called the purposive-causal theory. This work also discusses several problems related to the topic of social action, for instance that of how to create from this perspective the most central concepts needed by social psychology and soci ology. While quite a lot of ground is covered in the book, many important questions have been left unanswered and many others unasked as well."

Conceptual change and its connection to the development of new seien tific theories has reeently beeome an intensively discussed topic in philo sophieal literature. Even if the inductive aspects related to conceptual change have already been discussed to some extent, there has so far existed no systematic treatment of inductive change due to conceptual enrichment. This is what we attempt to accomplish in this work, al though most of our technical results are restricted to the framework of monadic languages. We extend Hintikka's system of inductive logic to apply to situations in which new concepts are introduced to the original language. By interpreting them as theoretica1 concepts, it is possible to discuss a number of currently debated philosophical and methodological problems which have previously escaped systematic and exact treatment. For instance, the role which seientific theories employing theoretical con cepts may play within inductive inference can be studied within this framework. From the viewpoint of seientific realism, sueh a study gives outlines for a theory of what we call hypothetico-induetive inference. Some parts of this work which are based on Hintikka's system of in ductive logic are fairly technical. However, no previous knowledge of this system is required, but, in general, acquaintance with the basic ideas of elementary logic and probability theory is suffieient. This work is part of a project, originated by Professors Jaakko Hintikka and Raimo Tuomela, concerning the role of theoretical concepts in science."

This book presents a unified and systematic philosophical account of human actions and their explanation, and it does it in the spirit of scientific realism. In addition, various other related topics, such as psychological concept formation and the nature of mental events and states, are dis cussed. This is due to the fact that the key problems in the philosophy of psychology are interconnected to a high degree. This interwovenness has affected the discussion of these problems in that often the same topic is discussed in several contexts in the book. I hope the reader does not find this too frustrating. The theory of action developed in this book, especially in its latter half, is a causalist one. In a sense it can be regarded as an explication and refin ment of a typical common sense view of actions and the mental episodes causally responsible for them. It has, of course, not been possible to discuss all the relevant philosophical problems in great detail, even if I have regarded it as necessary to give a brief treatment of relatively many problems. Rather, I have concentrated on some key issues and hope that future research will help to clarify the rest."

The papers contained in this volume are based on the contributions to an international, interdisciplinary Symposium entitled 'Analytical and Sociologi cal Action Theories' which took place in Berlin (West) on September 1-3, 1982. Each part comprises a main paper followed by two (in Part IV three) papers commenting on it. On the whole there is an equal division into philo sophical and sociological papers. In particular each main paper receives both inter- and innerdisciplinary comments. The Berlin Symposium was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Bonn) and, to a smaller extent, by the Freie UniversiHit Berlin; both grants are acknowledged gratefully. Berlin and Helsinki, May 1984 GOTTFRIED SEEBASS RAIMO TUOMELA vii GOTTFRIED SEEBASS INTRODUCTION I. It is a striking fact that the extended efforts of both sociologists and analytical philosophers to work out what is termed a 'theory of action' have taken little, if any, account of each other. Yet of the various reasons for this that come to mind none appears to be such as to foil any hopes for fruitful interdisciplinary exchange. Being concerned, apparently, with the same set of phenomena, viz. individual and social actions, the two theories can reasonably be expected to be partially overlapping as well as competitive and complementary. Accordingly each can eventually be shown by the other to need completion or revision. Whether or to what extent this is the case is subject to inquiry and discussion."

This anthology consists of a collection of papers on the nature of dis positions and the role of disposition concepts in scientific theories. I have tried to make the collection as representative as possible, except that problems specifically connected with dispositions in various special sciences are relatively little discussed. Most of these articles have been previously published. The papers by Mackie, Essler and Trapp, Fetzer (in Section 11), Levi, and Tuomela appear here for the first time, and are simultaneously published in Synthese 34, No. 4, which is a special issue on dispositions. Of the previously published material it should be emphasized that the papers by Hempel and Fisk have been extensively revised specially for this anthology. The papers are grouped in four sections, partlyon the basis of their content. However, due to the complexity of the issues involved, there is considerable overlap in content between the different sections, especially between Sections land 11. I wish to thank Professors James Fetzer and Carl G. Hempel for helpful advicc in compiling this anthology."

Contemporary Action Theory, Volume I (Individual Action) is concerned with topics in philosophical action theory such as reasons and causes of action, intentions, freedom of will and of action, omissions and norms in legal and ethical contexts, as well as activity, passivity and competence from medical points of view. Cognitive trying, freedom of the will and agent causation are challenges in the discussion on computers in action. The Volume consists of contributions by leading experts in the field written specifically for this volume. No comparable volume currently exists.

Contemporary Action Theory, Volume II (Social Action) is concerned with the philosophical and logical aspects of actions performed by several individuals or groups of individuals. The topics dealt with in this volume include collective attitudes (especially joint intentions), cooperation, social norms, and commitments. The contributors are leading experts in the philosophy of social action and artificial intelligence. No comparable collection of papers is currently available.

In Cooperation, A Philosophical Study, Tuomela offers the first comprehensive philosophical theory of cooperation. He builds on such notions a collective and joint goals, mutual beliefs, collective commitments, acting together and acting collectively. The book analyzes the varieties of cooperation, making use of the crucial distinction between group-mode and individual-mode cooperation. The former is based on collective goals and collective commitments, the latter on private goals and commitments. The book discusses the attitudes and the kinds of practical reasoning that cooperation requires and investigate some of the conditions under which cooperation is likely, rationally, to occur. It also shows some of the drawbacks of the standard game-theoretical treatments of cooperation and presents a survey of cooperation research in neighbouring fields. Readership: Essential reading for researchers and graduate students in philosophy. Also of interest to researchers int he social sciences and AI.