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This chapter examines instrumental action as a basic behavioural marker of causal cognition by investigating the concordance between human causal judgements and instrumental performance across variations in the parameters of an action–outcome relation. It is also concerned with whether or not animal action exhibits the necessary prerequisite for an intentional account, namely that it is mediated by some representation of the action-outcome association. Finally, it analyses whether human causal judgements and animal actions are mediated by comparable processes in terms of their susceptibility to causal illusions.

Proprioception is true perceiving. It and touch form a closely linked mutually dependent yet diverse pair. The puzzle whereby the demands upon the Attention of proprioception are no distraction in instrumental action is resoluble through the fact that the internal active content within an instrumental deed is a harmonious hierarchy. The ‘long‐term body image’ is a causally posited something whose content encompasses body shape, which is a necessary but insufficient condition of proprioception of body shape and posture. It is distinct from the ‘short‐term body image’, which designates the internal content of the proprioceptive perception of the body at any moment. The main philosophical problem consists in assembling a bona fide veridical concept of the long‐term image. Reasons for positing it begin with the common content in the short‐term images over lengthy periods. But they must be supplemented by the fact that bodily sensations do not represent body shape, being already dependent on body‐awareness for both individuation and position. Only through hypothesizing a long‐term image can one make sense of proprioception. Reasons are given for believing (1) the body image is a dispositional psychological phenomenon, (2) it is one and the same when explaining proprioception and sensation‐location, (3) it is an empirical postulate, and (4) even though it falls short of being an a priori necessity, it is as deeply embedded in animal existence as proprioception.

This chapter examines two underlying motives of ethnic violence: emotional prejudice and ethnic obligations. It first considers how instrumental interests motivate ethnic violence before discussing arguments against this notion. It then turns to emotional prejudice, a motive that seems the polar opposite of instrumental-rational action. In particular, it looks at communally oriented emotions and explains how modernity promotes emotional prejudice. It also presents evidence showing that emotions and obligations are very influential motives for ethnic violence. More specifically, emotions and obligations are most likely to motivate ethnic violence when people possess an ethnic consciousness, a typical outcome of modernity. The chapter concludes with two examples that illustrate the impact of emotions and obligations on ethnic violence: genocide in Germany and Rwanda.

Belief by its very nature involves favoring a certain proposition not only for intellectual purposes but also for practical ones. Analytic philosophers (including Hume) who see belief as inert or as having an exclusively mind-to-world direction of fit, cannot account for important features of human action, especially action done for a purpose. And Pragmatism, for all its emphasis on the practical force of belief, fails to acknowledge its emotional aspects. But it is necessary to do so in order for Davidson-style action explanation to really work, and the idea that belief involves emotion also helps explain why pace Kant we don't have to be rational in order for our strong desire for an end to ensure the taking of the sole means to that end.

This chapter concentrates on the argument that voting is a moral duty even if it is true that other ways of helping society exist, many of which are discharged in non-political ways. The chapter shows that voting is morally special in its own right regardless of the fact that citizens may also be bound to discharge other duties of aid. Because governments are powerful entities that distribute and shape access to basic social goods as no other organization does, the mechanism to install them is unique and deserves moral attention separately. Other political, non-electoral ways of influencing government matter, but they lose all relevance if elections are absent.