Reason, Intention, and Choice An essay in Practical Philosophy

Summary

It is the famous first thesis of Anscombe's ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ that we should lay aside moral philosophy—indeed ‘banish ethics totally from our minds’! (p. 38, paragraph 36)—‘until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology’. By a ‘philosophy of psychology’ I understand Anscombe to mean grammatical investigations into various psychological concepts that hold the key to ethics. Anscombe herself instances ‘action’, ‘intention’, ‘pleasure’, ‘wanting’ (‘more will probably turn up if we start with these’). Without such an understanding, she thinks we will simply go astray.

In Intention she addresses herself to this task, at least as regards ‘intention’, ‘action’ and ‘wanting’. Indeed of the four concepts mentioned in ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, it is only the concept ‘pleasure’ that is left

‘in its obscurity; it needs a whole enquiry to itself’.

(Intention 40.4, p. 77)

In this paper I explore the question whether Anscombe's desire to keep ethics out of the ‘logical features of practical reasoning’ (38.1, p. 72) doesn't lead her to cut those features down too far; whether, that is, there is not more to human action and practical rationality at the grammatical level than she seems inclined to concede. And I wish to connect this with her suspicion and criticism of Aristotle's concept of preferential choice (prohairesis).

Part 1

In Intention section 5 Anscombe asks:

‘What distinguishes actions which are intentional from those which are not? The answer that I shall suggest is that they are the actions to which a certain sense of the question ‘Why?’ is given application; the sense is of course that in which the answer, if positive, gives a reason for acting. […]