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Explaining Intentional Action Essay

Decent Essays

Elisabeth Anscombe in her book, Intention, identifies the key features that characterise intentional action; explaining intentional action along the lines of the philosophical tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas.
a) The later stages of an intentional action “swallow up” the former stages:
Intentional action is comprised of a number of stages of actions. For example, if Y intends to make a cup of coffee, first, Y has to switch on the boiler in order to boil the water. After boiling, Y pours it into the cup of coffee. While making the coffee, anyways, there are so many other things that Y is doing that are irrelevant to his intentional action. For instance, Y could cough, look through his phone, and so on. Similarly, there are many other things …show more content…

In performing his action, he may be aided by observation, but he already knows the order of actions and why, which is the essence of practical knowledge. Y does not need a theoretical stance of himself or a verification of movements in his body for him to know that he is performing an intentional action. Following the previous example, Y does not need to observe that he is making coffee to know that he intends to make coffee and is bringing this about. Y switches on the boiler to boil the water and does not ask himself “let me see what my body is up to” , “let me observe what I am doing” and gather from my movements whether I am actually bringing about making coffee. The action, of course, can be aided by observation, Y needs his sight to pour the boiling water without spilling it, for instance. But Y does not use his observation to know that he is making coffee. On the contrary, the more Y needs this theoretical stance towards himself, the more likely that his actions are not intentional, he is not controlling the action and is not guided by the order of reasons. In this occasion, Y is not an agent, rather something is happening to Y. Imagine a painter who intends making a painting. He already has an idea of what the painting will look like on the canvas. The

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