Reason, Intention, and Choice

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’.² 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.