scholarly journals Reconciling Practical Knowledge with Self-Deception

Mind ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 128 (512) ◽  
pp. 1205-1225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Marcus
Keyword(s):  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
The Self ◽  
Correct Description ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Do So

Abstract Is it impossible for a person to do something intentionally without knowing that she is doing it? The phenomenon of self-deceived agency might seem to show otherwise. Here the agent is not (at least in a straightforward sense) lying, yet disavows a correct description of her intentional action. This disavowal might seem expressive of ignorance. However, I show that the self-deceived agent does know what she's doing. I argue that we should understand the factors that explain self-deception as masking rather than negating the practical knowledge characteristic of intentional action. This masking takes roughly the following form: when we are deceiving ourselves about what we are intentionally doing, we don't think about our action because it's painful to do so.

Anscombe on Practical Knowledge

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Moran
Keyword(s):  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Philosophical Account ◽  
Observational Knowledge ◽  
The Way

The notion of “practical knowledge” is a central part of the philosophical account of intentional action in Elizabeth Anscombe’s monograph Intention. It is characterized in a number of different ways: as a form of “non-observational” knowledge of what one is doing, as the way a person knows what she will do when this is grounded in an intention and not a mere prediction, as a “non-contemplative” mode of knowing that is “the cause of that which it understands.” The paper attempts to organize and show the coherence of these various strands in Anscombe’s conception of practical knowledge, and argues that it enables us to understand both how the agent’s perspective on what she is doing plays a constitutive role in the identity of the intentional action in question, while yet allowing that a person can fail to do what she takes herself to be doing.

scholarly journals Is addiction a myth? Donald Davidson’s solution to the problem of akrasia says not*

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Heather ◽  
Gabriel Segal
Keyword(s):  
Drug Research ◽  
Causal Attribution ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
The Self ◽  
Philosophical Problem ◽  
Intentional Actions ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Will ◽  
Akratic Action ◽  
Do So

Heather, N., & Segal, G. (2015). Is addiction a myth? Donald Davidson’s solution to the problem of akrasia says not*. The International Journal Of Alcohol And Drug Research, 4(1), 77-83. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.7895/ijadr.v4i1.195An obvious problem for the concept of addiction is its portrayal as involving involuntary behavior in the face of the addict’s intentional actions. This has led some writers to call addiction a myth and to describe the self-labeling of persons as addicts as an illustration of causal attribution. We argue that this position is seriously mistaken. We propose that it is possible to construct a meaningful concept of addiction without assuming it involves completely involuntary behavior and to do so within the language of agents engaging in intentional action. One way of doing so arises from the work of Donald Davidson (1917-2003), particularly his essay "How is weakness of the will possible?" (Davidson, 1969). Davidson proposes a solution to the classic philosophical problem (called the problem of akrasia or incontinence) of how it is logically possible for someone to perform an action against her better judgement, and his solution is relevant to an understanding of addiction (i.e., addiction is a class of akratic action). Thus, Davidson’s solution to this philosophical problem is also an answer to the question of how it is possible to understand addiction without assuming it entails completely involuntary behavior. At the same time, Davidson’s conclusion at the end of his essay—that the akrates cannot give a reason for preferring incontinent over continent action—suggests what addicts mean when they say they feel compelled to behave the way they do.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Nisenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Human Action ◽  
The World ◽  
Fundamental Tension

The concluding chapter draws on the story of Rosenzweig’s near conversion to Christianity and return to Judaism to explain why, for Kant and his heirs, what is at issue in reason’s conflict with itself is our ability to affirm both the value of the world and of human action in the world. The chapter explains why Rosenzweig came to view the conflict of reason as the manifestation of a more fundamental tension between one’s selfhood and one’s worldliness, which could only be dissolved by understanding human action in the world as the means by which God is both cognized and partly realized. To make Rosenzweig’s ideas more accessible, the chapter compares them with contemporary interpretations of Kant’s views on the nature of practical knowledge and (intentional) action. It also shows how the book’s take on the issues that shaped the contours of post-Kantian German Idealism can help us see that the conflict of reason can be regarded as the underlying concern that recent competing interpretations of this period share.

Double-Effect Donation Disputed

2021 ◽  
pp. 002436392110381
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Cavanaugh
Keyword(s):  
Organ Donation ◽  
Healthy Individual ◽  
Living Donor ◽  
Double Effect ◽  
Vital Organ ◽  
Dead Donor Rule ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Living Person ◽  
Do So

In “Double Effect Donation,” Camosy and Vukov argue that “there are circumstances in which it is morally permissible for a healthy individual to donate their organs even though their death is a foreseeable outcome”. They propose that a living donor could ethically donate an entire, singular, vital organ while knowing that this act would result in death. In reply, I argue that it is not ethical for a living person to donate an entire, singular, vital organ. Moreover, mutatis mutandis, it is not ethical for surgeons and others to perform such a deadly operation. For to do so is “intentionally to cause the death of the donor in disposing of his organs”. Such an act violates the dead donor rule which holds that an entire, singular, vital organ may be taken only from a corpse. Contrary to Camosy and Vukov’s claims, double-effect reasoning does not endorse such organ donation.

The Dialectics of Affect

Anxiety ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 133-174
Author(s):  
Bettina Bergo
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Human Race ◽  
Human Actions ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Spiritual History

Initially influenced by Schelling’s lectures on positive philosophy (1841–1842), Kierkegaard ultimately withdrew from his lectures, devoting his attention exclusively to the redaction of Either/Or. The Concept of Anxiety was written in the shadow of that work under a uniquely anonymous pseudonym. Of course, anxiety in his deformalization of late idealism was not a concept; it belonged and did not belong to the understanding. Indeed, it precedes human actions under the sign of inherited “sinfulness” and as sheer possibility. If Kierkegaard aligned freedom with a leap, then anxiety was the affect precursive to it. Anxiety was the prethetic knowing that we are able to do. . . X. Tracing the “spiritual” history of the human race which carries the sins of the fathers even as it freely enacts sin, Kierkegaard urged that the more spiritual the culture, the more anxious it was. No longer the adjuvant of reason as in Hegel, anxiety belonged to the irreducible condition of a living subject. Over the five years that separated the Concept of Anxiety from Sickness onto Death, Kierkegaard’s mood of “Angest” will intensify as it is approached from his new perspective of Coram Deo (“before God”). Within the new perspective, the status and the meaning of the self is altered, showing a clearer relation to infinity. For the task of Kierkegaard’s philosophy—learning to become the nothing that one is—had attained a new stage in his existential dialectic. His arguments influenced Heidegger’s recourse to anxiety as a passage toward the question of being.

Practical Knowledge

Philosophy ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Hunter
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Bodily Sensation ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Philosophical Questions

A person typically knows what she is doing when she does something intentionally, and she usually knows this without having to observe herself. This so-called practical knowledge raises many philosophical questions. Does intentional action require practical knowledge and, if so, what is the strength of this requirement? What is it about intentional action that requires it, since a person can be doing something unintentionally without knowing about it? What is the source or ground of this knowledge? How is it related to observation, bodily sensation, and proprioception? How is a person’s practical knowledge connected to the reasons she has for acting and to practical reasoning more generally? In what sense, if any, is a person’s practical knowledge the “cause” of what it understands, as Anscombe famously claimed? While the notion of practical knowledge was central to the theory of action in the middle decades of the 20th century, it lost this place in the 1960s. But the last ten years has seen a renewed interest in the notion. This article aims to chart both the early debates and the recent discussions of practical knowledge. While it organizes the literature according to certain questions and topics, other ways to organize the literature are possible and nearly all of the texts would fit equally well under several headings.

scholarly journals Meat Eating and Moral Responsibility: Exploring the Moral Distinctions between Meat Eaters and Puppy Torturers

Utilitas ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 398-415
Author(s):  
C. E. Abbate
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Meat Eating ◽  
Average Consumer ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Harmful Behavior ◽  
Do So

AbstractIn his influential article on the ethics of eating animals, Alastair Norcross argues that consumers of factory raised meat and puppy torturers are equally condemnable because both knowingly cause serious harm to sentient creatures just for trivial pleasures. Against this claim, I argue that those who buy and consume factory raised meat, even those who do so knowing that they cause harm, have a partial excuse for their wrongdoings. Meat eaters act under social duress, which causes volitional impairment, and they often act from deeply ingrained habits, which causes epistemic impairment. But puppy torturers act against cultural norms and habits, consciously choosing to perform wrongful acts. Consequently, the average consumer of factory raised meat has, while puppy torturers lack, a cultural excuse. But although consumers of factory raised meat aren't blameworthy, they are partially morally responsible for their harmful behavior – and for this, they should feel regret, remorse, and shame.

Irony and Purity: Mishima

1996 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 651-679
Author(s):  
Peter Abelsen
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Extreme Right ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Mishima Yukio ◽  
Adjoining Room ◽  
The Military ◽  
Self Defence

Tokyo: 25 November 1970, midday. The parade ground of the Self Defence Force's Ichigaya garrison was crowded with personnel. All looked up at the balcony of the main hall, knowing that in the adjoining room the commandant had been taken hostage. On the parapet of the balcony stood one captor, dressed in a brown uniform and donning a headband with an ancient samurai motto, shichishōhōkoku (‘serve the nation for seven lives’). He was Mishima Yukio, the famous writer and founder of a militia named Tatenokai (Shield Society). Hardly able to make himself heard through the wail of sirens and the jeers from the crowd, Mishima held a speech in which he called the constitutional curtailment of the military a threat to Japan's culture. Nothing new, as he had been flirting openly with the extreme right for years. His plea to the men below to follow him in a revolt was greeted with howls of derision.

scholarly journals Issues with data and analyses: Errors, underlying themes, and potential solutions

2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (11) ◽  
pp. 2563-2570 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew W. Brown ◽  
Kathryn A. Kaiser ◽  
David B. Allison
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Case Series ◽  
The Self ◽  
System Level ◽  
Contributing Factors ◽  
Data Errors ◽  
Statistical Errors ◽  
Practice Of Science ◽  
Reporting Data ◽  
Do So

Some aspects of science, taken at the broadest level, are universal in empirical research. These include collecting, analyzing, and reporting data. In each of these aspects, errors can and do occur. In this work, we first discuss the importance of focusing on statistical and data errors to continually improve the practice of science. We then describe underlying themes of the types of errors and postulate contributing factors. To do so, we describe a case series of relatively severe data and statistical errors coupled with surveys of some types of errors to better characterize the magnitude, frequency, and trends. Having examined these errors, we then discuss the consequences of specific errors or classes of errors. Finally, given the extracted themes, we discuss methodological, cultural, and system-level approaches to reducing the frequency of commonly observed errors. These approaches will plausibly contribute to the self-critical, self-correcting, ever-evolving practice of science, and ultimately to furthering knowledge.

scholarly journals Freedom, Teleodynamism, Creativity

2014 ◽  
pp. 60-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
William E. Connolly
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Bifurcation Point ◽  
The Self ◽  
Positive Freedom ◽  
Simple Mode ◽  
The World ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Do So

After presenting a critique of both negative and positive freedom this essay pursues the relation between creativity and freedom, drawing upon Foucault, Deleuze and Nietzsche to do so.  Once you have understood Nietzsche’s reading of a culturally infused nest of drives in a self, the task becomes easier.  A drive is not merely a force pushing forward; it is also a simple mode of perception and intention that pushes forward and enters into creative relations with other drives when activated by an event.  You can also understand more sharply how the Foucauldian tactics of the self work.  We can now carry this insight into the Deleuzian territory of micropolitics and collective action by reviewing his work on flashbacks and “the powers of the false.” If a flashback in film pulls us back to a bifurcation point where two paths were possible and one was taken, the powers of the false refer to the subliminal role the path not taken can play in the formation of creative action.  As you pursue these themes you see that neither old, organic notions of belonging to the world nor do negative notions of detachment as such do the work needed.  Deleuze’s notion of freedom carries us to the idea of cultivating “belief” in a world of periodic punctuations.  The latter are essential to creativity and incompatible with organic belonging.  They are also indispensable supports of a positive politics today.

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