The Influence of G. E. M. Anscombe
For G. E. M. Anscombe's centenary, York University's Department of Philosophy will celebrate her lasting impact on philosophy by discussing ideas and arguments inspired by her work.
A brief presentation of the papers and comments will be given, but familiarity with the papers will be assumed.
On Anscombe on Practical Knowledge and Practical Truth
Lucy Campbell |
A central idea in Anscombe's philosophy of action is that of practical knowledge, the formally distinctive knowledge a person has of what she is intentionally doing. Anscombe also discusses the notion of 'practical truth', an idea she borrows from Aristotle, which on her interpretation is a kind of truth whose bearer is not thought or language, but action. What is the relationship between practical knowledge and practical truth? What we might call the 'Simple View' of this relationship holds that practical knowledge is knowledge of practical truth. But the Simple View isn't obviously available, since we have practical knowledge of all of our intentional actions, whereas an action manifests practical truth in Aristotle's sense only if it is a case of doing or living well. I suggest that we distinguish a stronger ethical version and a weaker action-theoretical version of each notion. This allows us to maintain a - complex - version of the Simple View, on which practical knowledge in the strong sense is knowledge of practical truth in the strong sense, and practical knowledge in the weak sense is knowledge of practical truth in the weak sense. Although Anscombe did not make these distinctions explicitly, I argue that she nevertheless commits herself to them in her discussion.
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Anscombe considers several contrasts to paradigmatic practically rational actions, such as spontaneous actions, non-human animal actions, and the “suppositious” actions of ironic slaves. I explore the connections between these, and consider whether some reduce to others. I also consider whether there is a place amongst these cases for relatively unconscious actions aimed at maintenance of an oppressive social order from which one benefits, and if so, where that place is.
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Practical Reasoning at the Margins
Kim Frost |
Maker's Knowledge
Matthias Haase |
One of the most influential thoughts in Anscombe’s Intention is her revival of the ancient and medieval idea of practical knowledge – in the words of Aquinas famous formula: a knowledge that is the “cause of what it understands.” On closer inspection, however, it is unclear how exactly her considerations stand to the tradition she claims to revive. On the face of it, there is important difference. As Anscombe has it, the object of practical knowledge is one’s intentional action: say, the act of building a house. That is not how Aristotle, Maimonides and Aquinas speak. According to their views, the object of practical knowledge is the house made. The action of making or building a house is the way or manner in which one knows of its existence. If all goes well, the maker or producer knows her product through the act of production.
One might think that this is just a difference of emphasis. After all, if one knows that one has made a house, then one knows that there is (or was) a house. But it is unclear whether Anscombian practical knowledge extends all the way to the completion of the action. For, Anscombe appears to equate practical knowledge with “knowledge in intention”. Given the two guises in which intending can appear – in action and prior to action – the focus is on knowing what one is doing and knowing what one is going to do. Knowing what one has done and has achieved thereby seems to be another matter. Since one can’t intend what one has done, it would seem that the done deed can’t be in the scope of practical knowledge so conceived. The contemporary literature following Anscombe is shaped by Anscombe’s equation of practical knowledge with knowledge in intention. Roughly speaking, it divides into two camps. According to Presentism put forward by Michael Thompson, Sebastian Rödl, and Eric Marcus, practical knowledge is self-knowledge in action and for this reason restricted to action in progress. According to Futurism put forward by David Velleman and Kieran Setiya, practical knowledge is knowledge by decision. In consequence, achievements can be known before reaching them. Neither conception leaves space for the traditional conception of maker’s knowledge according to which the making or producing is the source one’s knowledge of the product. Given Anscombe’s equation, Presentism and Futurism appear to exhaust the available options. In consequence, the question arises whether is guilty of her own charge: Could it be that she misunderstood what those ancient and medieval authors meant be practical knowledge? In the paper, I first argue that Presentism and Futurism are equally untenable. They both rest on the assumption that one can have practical knowledge of what is doing without having any knowledge of what one has done so far. But this is mistake. It neglects the fact that the description of on-going action by the progressive (‘I’m doing A’) differs from the description of a mere tendency by the prospective imperfective (‘I’m going to do A’) in that the former entails that there is some A* for which it is true that I have done A*. If one doesn’t know of phases of one’s action that are already complete, then one doesn’t know that one is on the way. In consequence, the talk of practical knowledge of what one is doing becomes a funny way of saying that one knows what one intends to do. If there is to be practical knowledge of the actuality of one’s action in material reality, it has to include knowledge of one’s achievements on the way. I will argue that this means that the intelligibility of the very idea of practical knowledge of the actuality of my action depends on making space for the traditional notion of maker’s knowledge according to which one can know the product through one’s act of production.Then I consider whether there is an alternative to Presentism and Futurism available within the framework of Anscombe’s Intention. |
I argue that there are two distinct but related senses of practical truth at work in Anscombe’s philosophical writings, that she is aware of these distinct senses, and that she takes pains at points to distinguish them, characterizing one sense as “truth in agreement with desire,” ("Practical Truth," 72; "Practical Inference," 31) and the second, more robust sense as “truth in agreement with right desire.” ("Practical Truth," 72) I demonstrate, moreover, that crucial to her articulation of these two senses, and her account of their relationship, are distinctions that she draws between practical soundness and practical validity, and, implicitly but no less importantly, between practical soundness and purported practical soundness. I suggest that such purported practical soundness also plays a central role in the practical philosophy of Sellars, Korsgaard, and Davidson; indeed, that Davidson appears to take this appeal to purported practical soundness from Anscombe.
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Anscombe's Account of Practical Truth via Practical Soundness (with Detours through Sellars, Korsgaard, and Davidson)
Paul Hurley |
Actions, Normative Reasons, and Causes
Robert Myers |
My title is clearly a play on Davidson’s, and his "Actions, Reasons, and Causes" will be my starting point. I begin, in Section 1, by granting that, as he presented it in this early paper, the causal theory of action was too reductive. But I then argue, in Section 2, that Davidson eventually developed the resources to do better. In particular, I argue that the more holistic conception of pro-attitudes developed in his subsequent writings strengthened his position on this front quite considerably.
My main goal in this paper, however, is to open a second front in the dispute between causal and non-causal theories of action, this time over the nature of normative reasons and their role in the explanation of pro-attitudes. As I argue in Sections 3 and 4, I believe Davidson’s less reductive formulation of the causal theory of action makes possible an equally non-reductive version of meta-normative naturalism that could prove very difficult for non-causalists to match. |
Recent work by Joseph Raz, Nico Kolodny, and Sergio Tenenbaum suggest that there are no normative constraints peculiar to intentions as such. Such constraints are a myth. We can understand the rationality of intention without positing that intention is a mental state.
I argue that, further, we can understand the descriptive nature of intention (i.e., its role in intrapersonal and interpersonal coordination) without positing that intention is a mental state. Such a posit is itself a myth (as Anscombe recognized). There is no state of intending. Instead, intention is an action at a certain developmental stage. In particular, the stage of development where coordination takes place, where the parts of the action are characteristically reasoning how, avoiding conflicts, and closing deliberation. |
The Myth of a State of Intending: Coordination without Statism
Devlin Russell |