scholarly journals Anscombe on the Expression of Intention

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Moran ◽  
Martin J. Stone
Keyword(s):  
Intentional Action ◽  
Donald Davidson ◽  
Philosophy Of Action ◽  
Verbal Expression

This paper asks an interpretive question about the place of “expression of intention” in Anscombe’s opening presentation of three familiar employments of a concept of intention, commonly taken as distinguishing between (1) having or forming the intention to do something, (2) doing something intentionally, and (3) doing something with a certain intention. An initial project in philosophy of action is, then, determining which of these employments is primary and can be used to explain the others. Anscombe’s own first division, however, is not the having of an intention but the expression of intention, as when someone says, “I’m going for a walk.” The paper argues that attention to the role of expression is not a mere peculiarity of Anscombe’s, and that specifically verbal expression provides a way to see how radically different in orientation Anscombe’s conception of intentional action is from the “standard story” of action since Donald Davidson.

scholarly journals Davidson on Practical Knowledge

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Hunter
Keyword(s):  
Early Treatment ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Donald Davidson ◽  
Careful Study ◽  
Primary Reason ◽  
Standard Interpretation ◽  
General Belief

Did Donald Davidson agree with G.E.M. Anscombe that action requires a distinctive form of agential awareness? The answer is No, at least according to the standard interpretation of Davidson’s account of action. A careful study of Davidson’s early writings, however, reveals a much more subtle conception of the role of agential belief in action. While the role of the general belief in Davidson’s theory is familiar and has been much discussed, virtually no attention has been paid to the singular belief. This essay makes a start on remedying this neglect. I begin, in section 1, by examining Davidson’s claim that for a desire or belief to rationalize and cause an action it must have a suitable generality. It must, he says, be ‘logically independent’ of the action itself. While he was clear about this requirement in the case of the desire that forms part of a person’s primary reason, I show in section 2 that his early treatment of belief confuses general and singular beliefs. This confusion reflects his failure clearly to distinguish the two roles belief can play in his account of action: as rationalizing cause and as agential awareness. Somewhat surprisingly, though, after he carefully drew the distinction and announced that intentional action requires practical knowledge, he pretty much ignored it. This may explain why some have assumed that Davidson parted ways with Anscombe on this. But a careful study of their writings shows that in fact they held remarkably similar views on the nature and need for practical knowledge.  <br /><p> </p>

scholarly journals Anscombe and Davidson on Practical Knowledge. A Reply to Hunter

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Olav Gjelsvik
Keyword(s):  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Donald Davidson ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Observational Knowledge

David Hunter has recently argued (in this journal) that Donald Davidson and Elizabeth Anscombe were in basic agreement about practical knowledge. In this reply, it is my contention that Hunter’s fascinating claim may not be satisfactorily warranted. To throw light on why, a more careful consideration of the role of the notion of practical knowledge in Anscombe’s approach to intentional action is undertaken. The result indicates a possible need to distinguish between what is called ‘practical knowledge’ and ‘(non-observational) knowledge of what one is doing’, and shows that Hunter’s claim concerning the closeness of Anscombe to Davidson only has plausibility for knowledge of what one is doing. Contrary to an interesting suggestion by Hunter, the paper argues that it is hard to see how Davidson’s position can benefit substantially from making use of the notion of knowledge of what one is doing.

scholarly journals Mystik als Tat? Philosophie und Spiritualität bei Maurice Blondel

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-97
Author(s):  
Inigo Bocken
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Direct Contact ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of Action ◽  
Jacques Maritain ◽  
Main Work ◽  
Maurice Blondel ◽  
Main Influence

Abstract Mysticism as Act. Philosophy and Spirituality in Maurice Blondel Mysticism plays a crucial role at the background of Maurice Blondel’s ‘philosophy of action’ (1893). In the years after his main work, his interest for mysticism increases. The discussion about the role of mysticism is even the battlefield of his debate with Jacques Maritain (1882–1973), who criticizes Blondel of allowing in his philosophy a direct contact with the Divine. Maritain does not accuse Blondel of ‘modernism’, but is very close to it. In order to explain his understanding of mysticism, the article outlines the intensive cooperation between Blondel and Henri Bremond (1865–1933). Blondel was of main influence for Bremond’s text on poetry and prayer in which mysticism plays an important role. At the end of the article the role of this discussion on mysticism and philosophy for Blondel’s social philosophy has been elaborated.

Akrasia

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Steward
Keyword(s):  
Intentional Action ◽  
General Term ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Best Interests ◽  
Weakness Of Will ◽  
Philosophy Of Action ◽  
Moral Philosopher ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Course Of Action

The Greek word ‘akrasia’ is usually said to translate literally as ‘lack of self-control’, but it has come to be used as a general term for the phenomenon known as weakness of will, or incontinence, the disposition to act contrary to one’s own considered judgment about what it is best to do. Since one variety of akrasia is the inability to act as one thinks right, akrasia is obviously important to the moral philosopher, but it is also frequently discussed in the context of philosophy of action. Akrasia is of interest to philosophers of action because although it seems clear that it does occur – that people often do act in ways which they believe to be contrary to their own best interests, moral principles or long-term goals – it also seems to follow from certain apparently plausible views about intentional action that akrasia is simply not possible. A famous version of the suggestion that genuine akrasia cannot exist is found in Socrates, as portrayed by Plato in the Protagoras. Socrates argues that it is impossible for a person’s knowledge of what is best to be overcome by such things as the desire for pleasure – that one cannot choose a course of action which one knows full well to be less good than some alternative known to be available. Anyone who chooses to do something which is in fact worse than something they know they could have done instead, must, according to Socrates, have wrongly judged the relative values of the actions.

Knowledge without Observation

2019 ◽  
pp. 93-116
Author(s):  
John Schwenkler
Keyword(s):  
Intentional Action ◽  
Accurate Description ◽  
First Person ◽  
Blue Book ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Bodily Movements

This chapter discusses the argument of Sections 28–32 of G.E.M. Anscombe’s Intention. It begins by relating Anscombe’s thesis that intentional action is known without observation to Wittgenstein’s discussion in the Blue Book of the knowledge of oneself “as subject” and Anscombe’s discussion in “The First Person” of unmediated self-knowledge. Following this, the chapter explores the difficulties that herself Anscombe raises for her thesis, and considers her reasons for thinking that the scope of an agent’s non-observational self-knowledge is not limited to her interior states or immediate bodily movements. Finally, it considers how the difficulties that Anscombe has raised are supposed to be addressed by her discussion of how descriptions of one’s intentional action can be contradicted, and of the difference between a list that has the role of an order and one whose role is to provide an accurate description of some facts.

Narrative in Views of Humanity, Science, and Action: Lessons for Cognitive Therapy

1991 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 241-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert L. Russell
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Cognitive Therapy ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Philosophy Of Action ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Historical View ◽  
Constructivist View ◽  
Realist View

The role of narrative constructs in philosophical views of humanity, science, and action is presented and contrasted with more familiar constructs that influence cognitive therapy. In terms of philosophical views of humanity, the view of human beings as rational animals is contrasted with a novel view emphasizing humanity’s unique storytelling nature. In terms of the philosophy of science, a positivistic, somewhat realist view is contrasted with a constructivist view in which narrative plays an essential role in explaining how theory succession takes place. In terms of the philosophy of action, partitive, ahistorical accounts of action are contrasted with a more holistic, historical view, one which necessitates narrative to account for actions intentionally oriented to the realization of an agent’s desires. The turn toward narrative in each of these areas also provides lessons concerning innovative ways to conduct cognitive therapy. In concluding, it is suggested that further investigation of narrative processes in cognitive therapy can broaden and deepen our understanding of the representational process undergirding adaptation and change.

scholarly journals ‘Intentional binding’ without intentional action

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keisuke Suzuki ◽  
Peter Lush ◽  
Anil Seth ◽  
Warrick Roseboom
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Information ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Implicit Measure ◽  
Intentional Binding ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Temporal And Spatial

The experience of authorship over one’s actions and their consequences - sense of agency - is a fundamental aspect of conscious experience. In recent years, it has become common to use intentional binding as an implicit measure of the sense of agency. However, it remains contentious whether binding effects indicate the role of intention-related information in perception or merely represent a strong case of multisensory causal binding. Here, we use a novel virtual reality setup to demonstrate identical magnitude binding effects both in the presence and complete absence of intentional action, when perceptual stimuli are matched for temporal and spatial information. Our results demonstrate that intentional binding-like effects are most simply accounted for by multisensory causal binding, without necessarily being related to intention or agency. Future studies which relate binding effects to agency must provide evidence for effects beyond that expected for multisensory causal binding by itself.

scholarly journals THE KNOBE EFFECT FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THOMISTIC ETHICS: THE PROBLEM OF NORMATIVE ORDERS AND COMPETENCES

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 (S2) ◽  
pp. 173-196
Author(s):  
Andrzej Waleszczyński
Keyword(s):  
Side Effects ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Philosophy Of Action ◽  
Knobe Effect ◽  
The Asymmetry

This article discusses how to interpret the so-called Knobe effect, which refers to the asymmetry in judgments about the intentionality of the side effects caused by one’s actions. The observed tendency is explained through the “moral undertone” of the actions judged. So far, discussions have mostly been held among philosophers in the analytical tradition, who see the theory of morality largely as an ethics of rules. The analysis developed in this article advances the research carried out so far to include teleological ethics, most notably the tradition of Thomistic ethics. Philosophical discussions address the problem of normative orders, focusing in particular on two types of cognition concerned, respectively, with moral judgments and facts. Investigating this issue proves to be helpful not only to explain the Knobe effect, but also to better understand the very notion of an intentional action as employed in the philosophy of action. As a result of this analysis, the Author explains the existing asymmetry in the attribution of intentionality to actions with the respondents’ confusion between cognitive orders. This problem brings us to the issue of normative competences. In analyzing the Knobe effect, normative competences would be responsible for the classification of the data collected and separation of the “purely informative” order from the order of moral judgments, referring to norms or values.

scholarly journals Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Joshua Shepherd
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
The Way

In the introduction the book’s central themes are introduced. Agents are often considered special, in that agents actively do things. Non-agents, by contrast, are zones of mere passivity. The aim of this book is to offer a perspective on agency that allows agency to stand out as special when compared to non-agentive systems. This perspective will be developed by way of interlinked explanations of the basic building blocks of agency, as well as its exemplary instances. Novel accounts of several key phenomena are developed: control over behavior, non-deviant causation, intentional action, skill, and knowledgeable action. Along the way the role of planning, practical reasoning, belief, and knowledge receive thorough discussion.

scholarly journals Intentional Binding Without Intentional Action

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 842-853 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keisuke Suzuki ◽  
Peter Lush ◽  
Anil K. Seth ◽  
Warrick Roseboom
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Information ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Implicit Measure ◽  
Intentional Binding ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Temporal And Spatial

The experience of authorship over one’s actions and their consequences—sense of agency—is a fundamental aspect of conscious experience. In recent years, it has become common to use intentional binding as an implicit measure of the sense of agency. However, it remains contentious whether reported intentional-binding effects indicate the role of intention-related information in perception or merely represent a strong case of multisensory causal binding. Here, we used a novel virtual-reality setup to demonstrate identical magnitude-binding effects in both the presence and complete absence of intentional action, when perceptual stimuli were matched for temporal and spatial information. Our results demonstrate that intentional-binding-like effects are most simply accounted for by multisensory causal binding without necessarily being related to intention or agency. Future studies that relate binding effects to agency must provide evidence for effects beyond that expected for multisensory causal binding by itself.

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