Work

The agentive achievement of acceptance

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Is acceptance an act or a state? Jonathan Cohen is often seen as a proponent of the view that acceptance is a mental act. In contrast, Michael Bratman claims that acceptance is a mental state. This paper argues that the evidence supports a more subtle approach. Linguistic intuitions about the lexical aspect of the verb ‘accept’ support the view that there is an act of acceptance and a state of acceptance. It is shown that ‘accept’ is polysemous between a non‐stative and a stative sense. In addition to its evident stative sense, ‘accept’ has a non‐stative “agentive achievement” sense which denotes the essentially intentional action of adopting the state of acceptance. Ultimately, the paper returns to Jonathan Cohen's view of acceptance and argues that it is more charitable to attribute to him the view that to accept is to adopt the state of acceptance.

Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

DOI: 10.1111/phpr.70009

Author: Samuel Boardman

Institution: Technische Universität Dresden

Language: English

Topic: Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics

Subfield: Philosophy

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $2,900

Funder: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft