Peter Faulconbridge (UCL) - 2014-15 Students
peter.faulconbridge.12@ucl.ac.uk

Ritual as action in philosophy and the social sciences

The nature of human action is a topic of concern in philosophy and many of the social sciences. However, there are some kinds of action, for example ritual action, which are much discussed in a number of the social sciences but very rarely considered in contemporary analytic philosophy of action. I am interested in finding out what a philosophical account of action which takes more notice of ritual action would look like. My starting point is to examine discussions of the nature of human action in general and ritual action in particular in the social sciences, especially anthropology.