scholarly journals Practical Knowledge and Acting Together

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olle Blomberg
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Joint Action ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Special Kind ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Philosophical View ◽  
Observational Knowledge

This chapter explores a problem that joint action raises for an influential philosophical view of the nature of intentional action. According to this view, an agent is intentionally -ing if and only if she has a special kind of practical and non-observational knowledge that she is -ing. It is here argued, however, that this view faces serious problems when extended to make sense of the possibility of an intentional action performed by several agents together. Since a general theory of intentional action should be applicable to both singular and joint intentional action, this suggests that practical and non-observational knowledge is not essential to intentional action as such.

Practical Knowledge

2019 ◽  
pp. 155-200
Author(s):  
John Schwenkler
Keyword(s):  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Efficient Cause ◽  
The World ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Strict Requirement ◽  
Observational Knowledge

This chapter discusses the argument of Sections 44-48 of G.E.M. Anscombe’s Intention. It begins by situating her appeal to the concept of practical knowledge in relation to the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. Following this, the chapter shows how several elements in Aquinas’ account are drawn on by Anscombe in her argument that an agent’s self-knowledge of her act is “the cause of what it understands”. It is argued that Anscombe meant to characterize an agent’s practical knowledge as both formal and efficient cause of its object. Finally, the chapter considers whether Anscombe succeeds in defending her thesis that intentional action is necessarily known without observation. Here it is argued, first, that knowledge of one’s act is not a strict requirement of doing something intentionally, and second, that the role of observation in an agent’s self-knowledge is different from that of evidence in observational knowledge of the world.

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 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.

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.

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.

scholarly journals Evolving intentions for social interaction: from entrainment to joint action

2008 ◽  
Vol 363 (1499) ◽  
pp. 2021-2031 ◽  
Author(s):  
Günther Knoblich ◽  
Natalie Sebanz
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Joint Attention ◽  
Joint Action ◽  
Perception And Action ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Cultural Learning ◽  
Interpersonal Processes ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Blind Individuals

This article discusses four different scenarios to specify increasingly complex mechanisms that enable increasingly flexible social interactions. The key dimension on which these mechanisms differ is the extent to which organisms are able to process other organisms' intentions and to keep them apart from their own. Drawing on findings from ecological psychology, scenario 1 focuses on entrainment and simultaneous affordance in ‘intentionally blind’ individuals. Scenario 2 discusses how an interface between perception and action allows observers to simulate intentional action in others. Scenario 3 is concerned with shared perceptions, arising through joint attention and the ability to distinguish between self and other. Scenario 4 illustrates how people could form intentions to act together while simultaneously distinguishing between their own and the other's part of a joint action. The final part focuses on how combining the functionality of the four mechanisms can explain different forms of social interactions. It is proposed that basic interpersonal processes are put to service by more advanced functions that support the type of intentionality required to engage in joint action, cultural learning, and communication.

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.

Aşvan 1968–72: the Excavations

1973 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 73-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
David French
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Executive Committee ◽  
Joint Action ◽  
Interim Report ◽  
Rescue Operation ◽  
Historical Materials ◽  
Flood Zone ◽  
Turkish Government ◽  
Preliminary Account ◽  
Set Up

The purpose of this long, interim report is fourfold:1. to provide a straightforward preliminary account of results of excavations in the Aşvan region in the years 1968–72;2. to attempt an explanation of how and why the modern studies were carried out;3. to offer a tentative demonstration of the relevance of the modern studies to archaeology (i.e. the excavation of objects and structures);4. to outline, by using concrete examples, the general theory and methods, and thereby to demonstrate the feasibility of a co-ordinated approach.The Keban Project was founded in 1968 under the aegis of the Middle East Technical University and with the co-operation of the Turkish Government. The stated aim of the Project was the rescue of historical materials from the area to be flooded by the Keban Dam, located just below the confluence of the Murat and the upper Euphrates (Fig. 1). The necessity of immediate action had been demonstrated largely through the efforts of the Faculty of Architecture and Restoration. In the area of the flood zone staff and students had carried out feasibility and recording surveys which then made clear both the nature and requirements of a rescue operation. Their results were published in Doomed by the Dam (METU, Ankara 1967). In 1968 a Committee (METU Keban Dam Area Salvage Project Executive Committee) was set up, under the chairmanship of the then Rector of METU, Dr. Kemal Kurdaş, to co-ordinate the efforts of those various teams, both Turkish and foreign, which had accepted the Committee's appeal for joint action in a rescue operation.

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 Deviant Formal Causation

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah K. Paul
Keyword(s):  
Side Effects ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Causal Theory ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Causal Theory Of Action ◽  
Causal Chains ◽  
The Right ◽  
Formal Causation

What is the role of practical thought in determining the intentional action that is performed? Donald Davidson’s influential answer to this question is that thought plays an efficient-causal role: intentional actions are those events that have the correct causal pedigree in the agent's beliefs and desires. But the Causal Theory of Action has always been plagued with the problem of “deviant causal chains,” in which the right action is caused by the right mental state but in the wrong way. This paper addresses an alternative approach to understanding intentional action inspired by G.E.M. Anscombe, interpreting that view as casting practical thought in the role of formal rather than efficient cause of action and thereby avoiding the problem of deviant (efficient) causal chains. Specifically, on the neo-Anscombean view, it is the agent’s “practical knowledge” – non-observational, non-inferential knowledge of what one is doing – that confers the form of intentional action on an event and is the contribution of thought to determining what is intentionally done. This paper argues that the Anscombean view is subject to its own problematic type of deviance: deviant formal causation. What we know non-observationally about what we are doing often includes more than what we intend to be doing; we also know that we are bringing about the foreseen side effects of acting in the intended way. It is argued that the neo-Anscombean view faces difficulty in excluding the expected side effects from the specification of what is intentionally done, whereas the Causal Theory has no such difficulty. Thus, the discussion amounts to an argument in favor of the Causal Theory of Action.

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