scholarly journals The Double Intentionality of Moral Intentional Actions: Scotus and Ockham on Interior and Exterior Acts

Topoi ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonja Schierbaum
Keyword(s):  
Intentional Action ◽  
Faculty Psychology ◽  
Intentional Actions ◽  
The Mind

AbstractAny account of intentional action has to deal with the problem of how such actions are individuated. Medieval accounts, however, crucially differ from contemporary ones in at least three respects: (i) for medieval authors, individuation is not a matter of description, as it is according to contemporary, ‘Anscombian’ views; rather, it is a metaphysical matter. (ii) Medieval authors discuss intentional action on the basis of faculty psychology, whereas contemporary accounts are not committed to this kind of psychology. Connected to the use of faculty psychology is (iii) the distinction between interior and exterior acts. Roughly, interior acts are mental as opposed to physical acts, whereas exterior acts are acts of physical powers, such as of moving one’s body. Of course, contemporary accounts are not committed to this distinction between two ontologically different kinds of acts. Rather, they might be committed to views consistent with physicalist approaches to the mind. The main interpretative task in this paper is to clarify how Scotus and Ockham explain moral intentional action in terms of the role and involvement of these kinds of acts respectively. I argue that Scotus’s account is close to contemporary, ‘Anscombian’ accounts, whereas Ockham’s account is incompatible with them.

Understanding the Past, Predicting the Future

2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (12) ◽  
pp. 1490-1497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc J. Buehner
Keyword(s):  
Causal Relation ◽  
Action Planning ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Motor Command ◽  
Temporal Binding ◽  
Binding Effect ◽  
The Past ◽  
Intentional Actions ◽  
Ambiguity Reduction ◽  
Special Case

Temporal binding refers to a subjective shortening of elapsed time between actions and their resultant consequences. Originally, it was thought that temporal binding is specific to motor learning and arises as a consequence of either sensory adaptation or the associative principles of the forward model of motor command. Both of these interpretations assume that the binding effect is rooted in the motor system and, critically, that it is driven by intentional action planning. The research reported here demonstrates that both intentional actions and mechanical causes result in temporal binding, which suggests that intentional action is not necessary for temporal binding and that binding results from the causal relation linking actions with their consequences. Intentional binding is thus a special case of more general causal binding, which can be explained by a theory of Bayesian ambiguity reduction.

scholarly journals Folk Psychology and Proximal Intentions

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfred Mele ◽  
Thomas Nadelhoffer ◽  
Maria Khoudary
Keyword(s):  
Folk Psychology ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Garden Variety ◽  
Intentional Actions ◽  
The Relationship

There is a longstanding debate in philosophy concerning the relationship between intention and intentional action. According to the Single Phenomenon View, while one need not intend to A in order to A intentionally, one nevertheless needs to have an A-relevant intention. This view has recently come under criticism by those who think that one can A intentionally without any relevant intention at all. On this view, neither distal nor proximal intentions are necessary for intentional action. In this paper we present the results of two studies that explore folk ascriptions of proximal intentions and intentional actions in garden-variety, non-moral cases. Our findings suggest a very tight relationship between the two. We argue that the results from these two studies cohere with the Single Phenomenon View and give theorists who reject this view on conceptual grounds reason to worry.

scholarly journals Knowledge as Action

Epistemology ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 71-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Sosa
Keyword(s):  
Intentional Action ◽  
Normative Structure ◽  
Intentional Actions ◽  
Special Case

This chapter argues that judgment and knowledge itself are forms of intentional action. Such action falls under a certain normative structure of success, competence, and aptness, or success that manifests competence. Judgment is a special case falling under that structure. The chapter explains that intentional actions come in two sorts. An attempt is an intentional action, an endeavor to attain a certain objective. An attempt can fail and remain a mere attempt, whereas an achievement is a certain sort of successful attempt. Intentional actions are one sort of performance. Some performances are also aimings, however, without being intentional. These, too, can fail and remain mere aimings, to be distinguished from those that are successful.

scholarly journals Legacies of the Yale Report of 1828 in Liberal Education

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 23-40
Author(s):  
Seok Min Hong
Keyword(s):  
General Education ◽  
Liberal Education ◽  
Basic Education ◽  
Core Competencies ◽  
Graduate Studies ◽  
Faculty Psychology ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
The Status ◽  
Prescribed Curriculum ◽  
The Mind

The Yale Report was published in 1828 as a response to the rapid geographic, economic, and educational expansion in early, nineteenth-century America. The Report defined the purpose of collegiate liberal education as one that should ‘lay the foundation of superior education.’ According to the Report, this was to be best achieved by disciplining and grounding the mind on the faculty of psychology. In this process, the Report left both positive and negative legacies which have had long-term impacts on liberal education. The Report defined liberal education as one that provides general basic theories and principles. In addition, by stressing the importance of a ‘thorough education,’ the Report not only laid the basis for general education in later centuries, but also distinguished liberal education from professional, or vocational education, and the role and function of colleges accordingly. Moreover, the Report made a distinction between undergraduate and graduate studies. However, this distinction made it possible for liberal education to be downgraded into basic education for the study of concentrations. Meanwhile, the overemphasis on universal mental faculties which is content-neutral made it possible for non-liberal disciplines to be included within the curriculum of liberal education, which in turn would lower the status of liberal education. In addition, teacher-centered faculty psychology enabled the college as the guardian who took the parental responsibilities to enforce prescribed curriculum on their students. Moreover, faculty psychology also enabled liberal education to accommodate the new entrepreneurial and business demands of a rapidly changing society and thereby opened a way for neo-republicanism to be realized in America at that time. However, ironically, the discipline of the mind which was originally a tool and a skill for liberal education became its purpose since the notion of mental faculties was content-free as well as value-free. As a result, liberal education lacked virtues, values, moral⋅ethical ends, and public good. This undesirable phenomenon would give a grave lesson to the liberal education in current Korea enthralled by the notion of ‘core competencies.’

scholarly journals Dogs distinguish human intentional and unintentional action

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Britta Schünemann ◽  
Judith Keller ◽  
Hannes Rakoczy ◽  
Tanya Behne ◽  
Juliane Bräuer
Keyword(s):  
Intentional Action ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Human Actions ◽  
Intentional Actions ◽  
Unintentional Action

AbstractWhen dogs interact with humans, they often show appropriate reactions to human intentional action. But it is unclear from these everyday observations whether the dogs simply respond to the action outcomes or whether they are able to discriminate between different categories of actions. Are dogs able to distinguish intentional human actions from unintentional ones, even when the action outcomes are the same? We tested dogs’ ability to discriminate these action categories by adapting the so-called “Unwilling vs. Unable” paradigm. This paradigm compares subjects’ reactions to intentional and unintentional human behaviour. All dogs received three conditions: In the unwilling-condition, an experimenter intentionally withheld a reward from them. In the two unable-conditions, she unintentionally withheld the reward, either because she was clumsy or because she was physically prevented from giving the reward to the dog. Dogs clearly distinguished in their spontaneous behaviour between unwilling- and unable-conditions. This indicates that dogs indeed distinguish intentional actions from unintentional behaviour. We critically discuss our findings with regard to dogs’ understanding of human intentional action.

scholarly journals Pluralistic Attitude-Explanation and the Mechanisms of Intentional Action

2021 ◽  
pp. 130-153
Author(s):  
Daniel C. Burnston
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Causal Theory ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Causal Theory Of Action ◽  
Causal History ◽  
Causal Processes ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
The Mind

According to the Causal Theory of Action (CTA), genuine actions are individuated by their causal history. Actions are bodily movements that are causally explained by citing the agent’s reasons. Reasons are then explained as some combination of propositional attitudes—beliefs, desires, and/or intentions. The CTA is thus committed to realism about the attitudes. This chapter explores current models of decision-making from the mind sciences, and argues that it is far from obvious how to locate the propositional attitudes in the causal processes they describe. The outcome of the analysis is a proposal for pluralism: there are several ways one could attempt to map states like ‘intention’ onto decision-making processes, but none will fulfill all of the roles attributed to the attitudes by the CTA.

Continuity and Innovation in Medieval and Modern Philosophy

2013 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Private Language ◽  
Philosophical Position ◽  
Faculty Psychology ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Muslim Scholars

The usual division of philosophy into ‘medieval’ and ‘modern’ obscures the continuities in philosophy up until 1700. This book examines three areas where these continuities are particularly clear: knowledge, the mind, and language. It does so through three chapters, by different authors, each followed by a detailed response. The first chapter shows how Descartes attacked faculty psychology and thus separated himself from one strand of the medieval tradition, represented by Suárez. At the same time, Descartes was closely following another strand, found in Ockham. Thus, the discontinuity between medieval and modern may not be as sharp as first appears. The second chapter considers discussions of whether knowledge should be kept for the elite. In the Christian world medieval and seventeenth-century thinkers alike rarely advocated esotericism, but Jewish and Muslim scholars such as al-Ghazâlî, Averroes, and Maimonides strongly defended it. The main chapter of Part III argues that a version of such esotericism may be a defensible philosophical position today. The main chapter of Part II shows how Locke's philosophy of language fits into a long medieval tradition of thought based on Aristotle's On Interpretation. Locke introduced the requirement that a word be linked to an idea in the speaker's mind, but the chapter argues that this does not mean that Locke was proposing that we each have a private language.

Children’s Judgments of Epistemic and Moral Agents: From Situations to Intentions

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 344-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa A. Koenig ◽  
Valerie Tiberius ◽  
J. Kiley Hamlin
Keyword(s):  
Intentional Action ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Epistemic Agency ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Intentional Actions ◽  
Situational Constraints

Children’s evaluations of moral and epistemic agents crucially depend on their discerning that an agent’s actions were performed intentionally. Here we argue that children’s epistemic and moral judgments reveal practices of forgiveness and blame, trust and mistrust, and objection or disapproval and that such practices are supported by children’s monitoring of the situational constraints on agents. Inherent in such practices is the understanding that agents are responsible for actions performed under certain conditions but not others. We discuss a range of situational constraints on children’s early epistemic and moral evaluations and clarify how these situational constraints serve to support children’s identification of intentional actions. By monitoring the situation, children distinguish intentional from less intentional action and selectively hold epistemic and moral agents accountable. We argue that these findings inform psychological and philosophical theorizing about attributions of moral and epistemic agency and responsibility.

scholarly journals Elizabeth Hamilton's Scottish Associationism: Early Nineteenth-Century Philosophy of Mind

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-285
Author(s):  
SAMIN GOKCEKUS
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Faculty Psychology ◽  
Close Observation ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis article compares early nineteenth-century English and Scottish theories of the mind and the way that it develops to findings in today's developmental psychology and neuroscience through a close observation of the work of Elizabeth Hamilton (1756–1816). Hamilton was a Scottish writer and philosopher who produced three pedagogical works in her lifetime, consisting of her carefully formulated philosophy of mind and practical suggestions to caretakers and educators. Although Hamilton has received relatively little attention in modern philosophical literature, her understanding of the mind and the way it develops—based on her nuanced understanding of associationism and Scottish faculty psychology—is overwhelmingly supported by empirical findings today. In addition to utilizing Hamilton's work for the sake of understanding early nineteenth-century philosophy of mind, I argue that a large portion of Hamilton's work should be used to inform future research programs, early caregiving guides, and educational methods.

scholarly journals Time perception and the experience of agency in meditation and hypnosis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Lush ◽  
Zoltan Dienes
Keyword(s):  
Time Perception ◽  
Mindfulness Meditation ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Voluntary Action ◽  
Intentional Binding ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Intentional Actions ◽  
Intention To Move ◽  
Perception Of Time

Mindfulness meditation and hypnosis are related in opposing ways to awareness of intentions. The cold control theory of hypnosis proposes that hypnotic responding involves the experience of involuntariness while performing an actually intentional action. Hypnosis therefore relies upon inaccurate metacognition about intentional actions and experiences. Mindfulness meditation centrally involves awareness of intentions and is associated with improved metacognitive access to intentions. Therefore, mindfulness meditators and highly hypnotisable people may lie at opposite ends of a spectrum with regard to metacognitive access to intention-related information. Here we review the theoretical background and evidence for differences in the metacognition of intentions in these groups, as revealed by chronometric measures of the awareness of voluntary action: the timing of an intention to move (Libet’s ‘W’ judgements) and the compressed perception of time between an intentional action and its outcome (‘intentional binding’). We review these measures and critically evaluate their proposed connection to the experience of volition and sense of agency.

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