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Reason, Intention, and Choice1 An essay in Practical Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Gavin Lawrence
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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.

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Papers
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Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 54 , March 2004 , pp. 265 - 300
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Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2004

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References

2 Compare also ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ op. cit. Vol. Ill, p. 29, para 14; Intention 39.1–2, 41.1Google Scholar; Collected Papers Vol. Ill, introduction p. viiiGoogle Scholar.

3 ‘The answers to the question ‘Why?’ which give it an application are, then, more extensive in range than the answers which give reasons for acting.’ Intention 18.6Google Scholar; cf. 17.2.

4 Differently tensed versions of the same answer, yet apparently not to be aligned simply with past, present and future. For example, while ‘No reason—I just thought I would’ can be an answer to a future action4 ‘Why are you going to Brazil next year?’—it can also occur in answer to ‘Why are you ϕ-ing’ or ‘Why did you ϕ?’. (It is to be distinguished from such locutions as the following: ‘why are you standing in line?’ ‘I just thought I would like to go to next week's concert.’ This gives the intention with which the action is done.)

There are other non-positive answers, such as ‘it was an impulse’ or ‘it was an idle action—I was just doodling’ (17.2). Again the response ‘I don't know why I did it’ can, I think, be used in much the same way as ‘for no particular reason, I just did’, i.e. with the implication that there wasn't much, if anything, by way of reason (cf. also ‘I don't know why; I just did’)—but where perhaps there is usually a reason and so a positive answer was expected (17.3).

What of replies like ‘because I (just/really) feel/felt like it’, or ‘because I (just/really) want/wanted to’? These can express a variety of things (cf. 51). They can be used rather like ‘I just did’: doesn't one sometimes say ‘for no reason—I just felt like it’ (although see 51.2–3)? But they can also be used to put one's action in the light, or context, of an urge, or a whim or a taste (‘Why on earth are you eating a Marmite sandwich?’. ‘I really felt like one’ (pace perhaps Anscombe 51.2)). There are cases where such replies may be positive answers to ‘Why?’ and so offer reasons for action (cf. 35.3–5). This area is very complex, with its differently nuanced locutions (cf. the difference between ‘just’ and ‘really’).

5 See Intention 1.1. Without these other uses (a) and (b), Anscombe feels (much of) the point of the concept would be lost. The argument of Intention 20 tries to make good on this claim and deserves more consideration than Anscombe's opponents allow (e.g. Velleman, J. D., Practical Reflection (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 112–113)Google Scholar. That we talk of intention in these various contexts is no accident, and to concentrate on just one such context may lead us into falsity. (In abstracto the question whether we are dealing with one or more concepts lacks sense; we need to know what game of ‘individuating concepts’ we are playing).

I take it that expressions of intention for the future and intentions-with-which are fairly obviously closely connected. When asked why I am standing in line, I say ‘I'm going to see Verdi's Macbeth’: this is the expression of a future goal or end I have set myself; but clearly it is close to the reply ‘in order to see Verdi's Macbeth’. Of course this is not always the case. One can express intentions for the future—one's goals—without having yet set about doing anything to secure them or having much, or indeed any, idea of what steps one is going to take in order to realize them.

6 MacDonald, S., ‘Ultimate Ends in Practical Reasoning’, Philosophical Review, C, No. 1 (1991), 39Google Scholar.

7 Hursthouse, R., ‘Arational Actions’, Journal of Philosophy, LXXXVIII, No. 2 (1991), 57–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Cf. Intention 20.4, p. 32. Perhaps Anscombe would regard some of these cases as involving backward looking motives rather than intentions, or motives in general: cf. 13 passim. The area here is very complex, and, as Anscombe says, needs a fuller investigation of motive. (For example, does acting out of E—where E is some emotion—always signify a motive? And what contrasts are there between this form of expression and doing something ‘in E’ or ‘E-ly’?).

9 And it offers no reason to accept it. (Of course one could take it as an instruction about linguistic use—a stipulation to the effect that one is not to count, or that the speaker doesn't count, an action as ‘intentional’ unless it is end-bent. But then such instruction is not a propos).

10 I call this a case of advanced fiddling because it is not, I think, a case of the sort of fiddling that Anscombe would regard as voluntary rather than intentional—a mere physical movement (e.g. twiddling one's thumbs or strumming with one's fingers): see Intention 49, p. 89Google Scholar. Clearly I was arranging the matches in the form of a house with door and windows etc.

11 As is also true of Scott MacDonald, op. cit. note 6.

12 One retort that it is natural to make here is:

(i) surely your desire gives you some reason; or the fact that you would enjoy—or at least that you think you would enjoy—eating the icecream gives you some reason to pursue it;

(ii) it is simply that, on consideration, you think this outweighed by other reasons;

(iii) but akratically you go along with the defeated reason,

(a) whether, à la Davidson, on an irrationally drawn ‘unconditional best judgment’ to the effect that so acting is best;

or (b) simply on a judgment that this is a good, or that there is at least something good about so acting.

But, in my case, I think that the fact that I would enjoy eating the icecream is no reason at all to pursue that end in my current circumstances. Perhaps I even think that the fact that I would, or might, enjoy it in these circumstances is even worse! Wouldn't it show a degree of selfishness, and indifference to the welfare of others? etc. (Perhaps I can already predict that the enjoyment will in the event be spoilt by such awareness). I am ashamed even to be thinking of pursuing this course of action, and ashamed to be pursuing it.

Another retort would be to concede that the presence of a desire for the ice-cream doesn't per se give me any reason; but to suppose instead that it is my akratic decision to pursue that end that gives me reason to look for Professor O'Hear. After all, if having so decided, I then fail, say, through laziness or incompetent scheduling, to do this, it seems I am open to further criticism. (‘Gavin is so hopeless—he can't even be akratic effectively!’). But if I think I don't have reason to decide that way in the first place, is it so obvious that I then have reason to take the appropriate means to effect that decision?

13 Cf. Foot, P., Natural Goodness (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 54CrossRefGoogle Scholar (and the references there to Aquinas).

14 See further my ‘The Rationality of Morality’, Virtues and Reasons, R., Hursthouse, G., Lawrence and W., Quinn (eds.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), passim, but especially 119–47Google Scholar.

15 Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 6.5.1140a25–31Google Scholar.

16 Cf. Aristotle, op. cit. 6.9. 1142b16–28; G. Lawrence, ‘The Rationality of Morality’, op. cit. note 14, 127–8, 133.

17 The reason—that they need cheering up—speaks for visiting them as being the good thing to do.

18 This is open not only to technical assessment but also to criticism on other grounds. For other ends and concerns—both those the agent has, and those he should have—are relevant to the correctness of his choice of means. Cf. G. E. M. Anscombe, ‘Von wright on Practical Inference’, reprinted in Virtue and Reason, op. cit. note 14, 32; G. Lawrence, ‘The Rationality of Morality’ op. cit note 14, 134–5.

19 Or where there is the practical syllogism—‘which means the same thing’ (Intention 33.1, pp. 57–8).

20 Cf. ‘Von Wright on Practical Inference’, reprinted in Virtue and Reason, op. cit. note 14, 6–7. Here Anscombe repeats the point that ‘the wanting or intention of the end’ ought not to figure in the premises (note the gloss). (She adds a qualification about a way in which a desire may come in as a premiss, attributed to Anselm Müller).

21 Thus an initial putative example of practical reasoning

‘I want a Jersey cow; there are good ones in the Hereford market, so I'll go there’ (Intention 34.1)

is seen to be incorrect (‘formally misconceived’, 35.5). It should run simply:

‘They have Jersey cows in the Hereford market, so I'll go there’ (35.5).

And here the question ‘What for?’ is in place: for we do not have a proper first premise with a desirability characterization (cf.35.6; 38.4)—but only ‘an intermediate premise’.

22 Presumably there are also undesirability characterizations, although Anscombe does not, I think, mention them.

23 The reference is back to 35.6 where Anscombe contrasts the two propositions, ‘They have some good Jerseys in the Hereford market’ and ‘Dry food suits any man’ on the ground, in effect, that the former is an intermediate premise—one for which the question ‘What for?’ can sensibly be raised, while the latter is a proper first premise where the question can't sensibly be raised: if it is raised, it

‘means, if anything “Do give up thinking about food as suitable or otherwise”—as said e.g. by someone who prefers people merely to enjoy their food or considers the man hypochondriac’

24 By ‘suits’ Anscombe seems to mean Aristotle's ‘sumpheron’, which may be equally be translated ‘beneficial’ or ‘advantageous’. By ‘befits’ Anscombe perhaps intends Aristotle's ‘prepei’.

25 I wonder whether Anscombe's (mis-)treatment of ‘should’ here isn't connected with her distance from the Traditional conception—where ‘should’ (or similar locutions) play a distinctive role as characterizing unqualified, or proper/strict, practical evaluations.

26 Cf. NE 3.4.1113a31ff; 8.2.1155b18–27, ‘trion d' onton di’ ha philousin,…’.

27 Cf. ‘The Rationality of Morality’, op. cit. note 14, 115; 125 (cf. also my ‘Reflection, Practice, and Ethical Scepticism’ Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 74, No. 4 (10 1993), 341–2). Equally we could say: with a ‘should’ claim, the question ‘Why should I?’ is always in place (except when the answer is already obvious): cf. P. Geach, ‘Goodness and Evil’, reprinted in Theories of Ethics, P. Foot (ed.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 70.Google Scholar

28 On this view, the so called ‘syllogism of appetite’ at NE 7.3.1147a31–35 is not a practical syllogism—a piece of practical calculation: cf. the contrast with akrasia of anger at 7.6.1149a32–5.

29 What may be a desirability characterization for one person may not be for another—and so what may be a proper first premise for one might be an intermediate premiss for another. This seems clearer in ‘On Promising and its Justice’, op. cit. note 1, Vol. III, 19–20, with its distinction between premise and principle of inference.

30 ‘should see what he wants under the aspect of some good’ seems to be ambiguous at least between:

(1) the agent in wanting must conceive the object, or action, wanted as being good in some respect or other (e.g. pleasant, etc);

(2) the agent in wanting must conceive the object or action wanted as desirable under some aspect—e.g. pleasant—that is in fact a form of goodness. (Cf. 40.1 (pp. 76–7), quoted above: ‘…the good (perhaps falsely) conceived by the agent to characterize the thing must really be one of the many forms of good.’)

Under (2) the agent need not conceive that what they find attractive in this case is good in this case: e.g. the akratic in finding the proposed seduction pleasant need not think its pleasantness is in this case good, although pleasure is indeed a form of goodness.

(2) is weaker than (1); but both are stronger than:

(3) the agent in wanting must conceive the object or action as desirable or attractive in some way—but not in a way that need either be thought good by them, or be a form of goodness (or be falsely thought to be).

So, for instance, someone might say:

‘After what they did to my child, I just want to make them suffer—I want them to feel excruciating pain, to know what it's like to be on the receiving end. And I am going to take steps to see that they do. But I don't think there's anything good about my objective. The thought gives me no pleasure or satisfaction of any kind—I just want them to suffer and am going to see that they do. Call it a form of destructiveness if you like.’

Indeed, given this example, (3) also might be too strong depending on how exactly we understand ‘desirable or attractive’.

I am suspicious of (1) and (2) myself.

Not all reasons for action give the intention (or objective) with which the action was done (cf. remark (d) at 12.6). Some reasons are backward-looking motives, as in the above cases of revenge and gratitude (cf. 13; 14). Others are motives-in-general which in effect offer an interpretation of the action: ‘see the action in this light’ (13.2; 13.4), as in the example of admiration (or perhaps ‘I was really angry, so I left the room’). (However motives, if they are forward-looking, are intentions: 13.5). I take it that it is sometimes clear, sometimes grey, whether a motive-in-general offers a reason or not (consider for example the reply ‘I was bored’).

So not only are there intentional actions where there is no reason for action, there are reasons for action—positive answers to the Anscombian ‘Why?’—which, while revealing the action to be intentional, are not themselves intentions with which the action is done.

Two further complexities.

First, what of replies like ‘I just feel/;felt like it’ or ‘I just want/wanted to’? One might assimilate them to cases of offering an interpretation of the action (motive-in-general)—‘see it in the light of a whim or impulse’ (cf. 17.4); or else to cases like ‘I just thought I would’ (44.2. case (a)), which Anscombe seems to view as a variant on ‘I just did, for no particular reason’. There may be cases of both; or we may think rather of a sliding scale, from cases where we take such a reply as a positive response, giving us the agent's reason, and to ones where we take it as accepting the question but claiming there was in effect no reason, passing through a range of ‘grey’ cases. (See further 51).

Second, how does Anscombe suppose these cases stand with regard to desirability characterizations? Do all positive reasons involve desirability characterizations? It would seem not. Wherever there is a purpose the demand for a desirability characterization is correct (38.3); but not all reasons are purposes, as is clear from the cases considered above (21.1 is a bit misleading on this point).

But these complexities need their own discussion.

31 Anscombe countenances other cases besides (i) and (ii). That is, (iii) there are intentional actions for which the agent has a reason—i.e. Anscombe's ‘Why?’ gets a positive answer—but where the action does not involve practical reasoning or practical calculation (‘not everything that I have described as coming in the range of “reasons for acting” can have a place as a premise in a practical syllogism.’ 35.3): see 35.3–5 (cf. 5.2; 14.1; 14.5). Some examples: ‘He killed my father, so I shall kill him’; ‘he was very pleasant, so I shall visit him’; ‘I admire him so much, <so> I shall sign the petition’ (or ‘X did such-and-such, so I shall sign the petition’, 13.2); ‘I want this, so I'll do it’. (‘The conjunction “so”is not necessarily a mark of calculation’).

32 The Traditional Conception, as I interpret that, equally allows that there are such cases of intentional action. (See e.g. McDowell, J. ‘The Role of Eudaimonia in Aristotle's Ethics’, in Essays on Aristotle's Ethics, Rorty, A. O. (ed.) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 360–1.)Google Scholar

33 Do not be misled by the question ‘What's the good of it?’. Anscombe could equally have phrased the question she is asking as: ‘What good is it?’, ‘What's it good for?’ or ‘What's its point?’.

34 A problem could be still be raised however over the possibility of a gap between the notion of a desirability characterization and that of ‘someform of good’. Can I not be attracted by some aspect (e.g. ‘fun’) that I think of as not good at all: a Puritan whose feet want to dance? (cf. note 30).

35 ‘It may be that in some sense everyone wishes for happiness; but that is not enough to make it true that everyone has a main purpose. For, firstly, what people wish for they do not necessarily try to get [cf. Intention 36.1–2], and secondly, if one is trying to get happiness this may consist in trying to get something the possession of which one believes will be happiness, and only in having such a substantive aim can one be said to have a main purpose.’

(‘On Promising and its Justice’, op. cit. note 1, Vol. III, 20, my emphasis).

36 Cf. McDowell, J., ‘The Role of Eudaimonia in Aristotle's Ethics’, op. cit. note 32, sections 1–6, especially 4Google Scholar; Lawrence, G. ‘The Function of the Function Argument’, Ancient Philosophy 21 (2001), 459CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Scott MacDonald op. cit. note 6, in connection with Aquinas.

37 Cf. ‘The Rationality of Morality’, op.cit. note 14, 131–2. Anscombe perhaps opposes the ‘ancient and medievals’ both because she is thinking that the claims are about all actions and so obviously false, and because the ‘must’ they have in mind is a logical necessity (“demonstrable”).

38 That chosen actions aim at some one end—the human good, or acting or living well, as the agent conceives that—is a definitional thesis stemming rom the account of choice. It has a role as a normative principle.

39 This is a matter of living or doing well in general (to eu sen holos), and not merely in some specific aspect of life, such as health or fitness (cf. NE 6.5.1140a25–31; 6.9.1142b28—33).

40 Charles, David, for example, argues against it, in favour of no such limitation on the end that is in question in ‘choice’ (Aristotle's Philosophy of Action (London: Duckworth, 1984), 151–55Google Scholar.

41 See ‘Thought and Action in Aristotle’, op. cit. note 1, Vol. I, 69–70; also ‘On Promising and its Justice’, op. cit. note 1, Vol III, 20:

‘Aristotle’s conception of “choice” is one according to which a man chooses to do only those actions which are governed by a main purpose;…'

She is followed by John McDowell, op.cit. note 32, 361 and footnote 6.

42 Not a translation I agree with, for instance because of NE 3.2. Illlb19–26. ‘Wish’ or ‘rational wish’ is better.

43 ‘Thought and Action in Aristotle’, op. cit. note 1, Vol. I, 70.

44 Cf. Intention 40.4, n2, p. 77. ‘Aristotle’s use of an artificial concept of “choice”, where I use “intention”, in describing “action”,…'

45 Reading ‘ei demos’ with Ross at 1142b19: cf.7.10.1152a10.

46 Compare NE 6.12.1144a23–6:

‘So there is a power/faculty which they call cleverness; and this is such as to be able to do those things that conduce to the target that has been proposed [ton hupotethenta skopon], i.e. to hit on them.’

(Reading ‘autōn’ with the codd and Burnet, rather than Bywater's ‘autou’.)

47 If impulsive, the akratic would think he should not, if he stopped to think; if weak, the akratic does think he shouldn't. Whether Aristotle supposes the weak akratic is fully cognisant of this at the moment of action or has his judgment ‘clouded’, we can set aside. What is important is that Aristotle does not suppose that the akratic's judgment is clouded in such a way that he comes to believe—even if only for a short while—that attaining this end is after all the way to live; the akratic does not at the moment of action act on a choice even if only a temporary or fleeting one. Aristotle explicitly denies that the akratics act on a choice, or hold they should (‘dei’) so act. And this is, I take it, also the point of his remark, in agreement with Socrates, that their knowledge proper is ‘not dragged around like a slave’— that is, their values, their general views of what is good and bad in life, are not dragged around, or changed to accommodate their temptations. (Compatibly with this Aristotle could have allowed for self-deception—for cases where the agent does take himself to be acting as he should because of the way his perception of the relevant features of the current situation has been (self) manipulated.)

48 Cf. NE 1.3.1095a4–ll, etc.; cf.3.2.111 lb13–15, etc.

49 NB. this is not a case of mindless snacking.

50 I am here (i) connecting Anscombe's remark that ‘epithumia may be only a feeling’ with her remarks about ‘wanting’ as feelings of desire in Intention 36.2–3; and (ii) connecting that with some of the things she says about motives (Section 13). The felt desire may give the context, or light, in which my action occurred.

epithumia, an appetite, ‘may be only a feeling’. But is it then sometimes something more? And if so, what? (Is Anscombe thinking that the expression of wanting in the sense of trying to get can sometimes be the expression of an appetite? Might the example of ‘I want this, so I’ll do it' (Intention 35.5, p. 66)–which is not a form of practical reasoning–be the expression of an appetite? But how are we to think of this? Is the ‘wanting’ here a motive in the light of which, as a response to which, we are to view my action? I feel cold, and so move closer to the fire; I feel parched, and so reach for the glass on the desk. The whole topic of epithumia is, I think, extremely difficult.)

51 The distinction between immediate, or non-calculating, and calculating akratic is not the same as Aristotle's distinction between impulsive and weak akratic. In the former, the distinction turns on whether the akratic act itself is immediate or else at a distance and so needs to be set up as an end whose attainment requires calculation. In the latter, the distinction turns on whether the akratic has or has not reached a conclusion about what, given their values, they should do. (The impulsive does not, the weak does, but then acts in violation of it.)

52 Cf. also the discussion in my ‘The Rationality of Morality’, op. cit. note 14, pp. 126–7.

53 Cf. Intention 36.

54 In fact related talk of ‘hypothesizing—or setting up—the end’ also occurs elsewhere, and in connection with demotes: cf. NE 6.12.1144a23–26. Cf. also7.8.1151a15–19.

55 Not only are these concepts difficult enough in English, but we are trying to compare and criticize across languages, where the languages do not obviously divide up the area along the same fault lines. Thus ‘hekousion’ might perhaps characterize actions as ‘intentional’ (so D. Charles op. cit. note 40, 61–62, 256–61: for reasons against, see Broadie, S., Ethics with Aristotle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 174Google Scholar. n 10). Yet there are no ways of expressing an intention for the future or the intention with which an action is done in terms employing ‘hekousion’. Given Anscombe's claims about the unity of the concept of intention and the essential dependence of the characterization of actions as intentional on these other uses of the concept (Intention 20), are we to suppose that this means ‘hekousion’ is not to be tied to the ‘intentional’–or are we to suppose that it is, but depends on the availability of these others uses of intention, which the Greek language indeed makes available, but not in a way that makes this unity explicit on the surface of the language? The conceptual division that a language offers may cover the area but divide it very differently–yet we need not suppose that they ‘fail to realize what we realize’ (Wittgenstein Zettel 380–quoted by Anscombe, ‘Linguistic Idealism’, op.cit. note 1, Vol. I, 113).

56 At any rate intention figures into his discussion alongside the voluntary/involuntary and choice: Summa Theologicae Ia2ae 6–13.

57 As she herself admits in Intention 42.2, p. 80: but there she supposes there is a basic identity. (‘The interest of the account <Aristotle’s account of the practical syllogism> is that it describes an order which is there whenever actions are done with intentions…'.)

58 A description or judgment of character is primarily one concerning the agent's stance re values—a characterization of the condition of their will. (Animals don't have character in this way, but only natural dispositions.)

59 One could see in this difference between Anscombe and Aristotle a ‘battle of wills’. That is, there are conflicting pressures on how to conceptualize the will.

(1) One pressure is to connect the will with a decison to act, or the agent's setting themselves an end to pursue.

(2) A different pressure connects the will with the pursuit of an end that the agent ‘stands behind’–sees as good, as the thing they should pursue, as expressing themselves and their values.

The case of the calculating akratic exposes the tension between these pressures.

If one views ‘the will’–not psychologically but grammatically–as a matter of certain kinds of question being in place, and certain conversations, then there need not be any problem about allowing for different conceptions of ‘the’ will.

60 Cf. note 2. That is, one may be leery of the inclination to build in more structure—to suppose that it is for a human always to act with some one end in view—sensing in this a wishfulness to secure ethics by writing it into philosophy of psychology (cf. Intention 39.1).

61 Crudely, there are two main kinds of error in practical rationality.

(1) There are mistakes (culpable or not) in the agent's practical reasoning— where their conclusion about what they should do is false, because it is not the end they ought to be pursuing, or not the means they ought to be taking, or both.

(2) There are errors against rationality—where the agent acts against what they take it—correctly or incorrectly—they should do (as in akrasia or tiredness or depression), or fail to utilize their rationality where they should.

(Cf. ‘The Rationality of Morality’, op. cit. note 14, 121–2).

62 Cf. NE 3.2.1111b6–10.

63 A rejection of this question can be equally informative—in claiming of some action that was obviously intentional that it was not done ‘in character’, and did not represent what the agent valued.

64 One moral of Aristotle's Function Argument in NE 1.7.

65 In what follows I retrace the steps I offered in ‘The Rationality of Morality’, op. cit. note 14, section 5.3, pp. 135–9.

66 It need not be exactly the same. For someone who has correct values, yet knows that he is susceptible to temptations, may see the need to make a more cautious decision than the fully wise (e.g. to drink only one glass, or to refuse the invitation to the party). Of course this may not succeed in averting his eventual akratic act.

67 That seems to be the line Aristotle takes (e.g. NE 7.9.1152a4–6, etc.). See earlier, Part 1 pp. 270–1; p. 275.

68 One may doubt whether this is strictly speaking a skill—a techne—but that needs another discussion.

69 One may of course see a progression from the akratic's making a judgment of the second sort to his making one of the first sort—and see in that progression further akrasia (as more of the agent's ends and values get compromised by his pursuit of the akratic project).

70 Contrast the notion of being unqualifiedly good-at-deliberation (haplos euboulos) with that of being qualifiedly (pos) so—good with respect to a specific end (NE6.7.1141b12–14; cf.6.5. 1140a25–31; 6.9.1142b28–31.

71 Cf.Part 1 pp. 278–9.

72 They do not have any overarching purpose or end: they are adrift on a sea of wants, buffetted by the happenstance current of their desires. Even if, from habit, this started to take certain shapes—certain patterns of behaviour emerged—this would not be enough really to sustain talk of their having values. This drifting is different from coming to the view that nothing much is worth going for, or to conceiving of acting well as just going with the flow—that what is valuable in life is to take it as it comes. This latter is a much more complex attitude—one that is cognisant of the possible demands of reason.

73 How we are to think of this is a further complex issue. (On avoiding the blue-print model, see McDowell, John, ‘Deliberation and Moral Development in Aristotle's Ethics’, Aristotle, Kant and the Stoics, S., Engstrom and J., Whiting (eds.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 19–35.)Google Scholar

74 And in this it contrasts, say, with a cat's skulking in order to catch a bird—where its doing one thing for the sake of another (or in order to achieve another) reveals a natural order, or natural pattern (centred around natural goods), (cf. Intention 42.2).

75 The distance, as Anscombe says (41.2; cf. 22.1), can be one of wider description, as well as temporal or spatial distance.

76 The ‘unity’ of life and person can be seen an achievement of integration. But it is very hard to get thoughts about such unities correct.

77 This exploration of the limits of ‘organization’ is reinforced by the possibility of the rational assessment or critique of ends (both in general and in particular). (I find myself wanting to say: ‘“good” is an organizing concept’).

78 See Aristotle NE 3.4.

79 A fuller discussion would have to discuss the challenge that the High Road is overly intellectualistic, and distorts the nature of ‘light’ actions, like making oneself a cup of tea, and of sudden actions.