Main authors discussed: Anscombe, Velleman, Setiya, Davidson

Anscombe was the first philosopher in modern times to note that when we act intentionally, we know what we are doing without observation, under the description(s) on which the action is intentional.  Paul calls this “Anscombe’s Non-Observational Knowledge Thesis” and she sets out to explain how it or something close could be true.  Those who have taken Anscombe’s thesis most seriously are Setiya and Velleman, and they account for it with a Strong Cognitivist view of intention, according to which intentions just are beliefs about what one is or will be doing.  Paul on the other hand wishes to preserve a view of intention on which intentions are distinctively practical or conative attitudes, and so her principal target is the Strong Cognitivist view.

She puts forward a number of independent arguments against Strong Cognitivism.  These include (1) the claim that actions can be intentional without one having a belief about what he is doing, e.g. driving on “autopilot”; (2) the Strong Cognitivist is committed to a view on which intentions-as-beliefs are a species of wishful thinking, which is too much to swallow; (3) the claim that you can intend actions which you do not believe you will do, e.g. intending to make tenure when your chances are iffy; (4) we have non-observational knowledge of the foreseen side-effects of our actions, not merely the intended ones.  I think the Strong Cognitivist could come up with responses to all of these objections, however in some cases the responses would be strained.  The question is whether there is a better model on offer.

Paul presents us with the alternative Inferential model.  The basic idea is that we have knowledge of our intentions, and we can often reasonably infer that our intentions are being successfully executed.  Thus we have knowledge of what we are doing without observing ourselves doing it.

Paul convincingly defends the view against several immediate objections, but she needs an account of how we know (a) our intentions and (b) that inference from intention to successful action is reasonable.  Her account of how we know our intentions struck me as weak; she claims that intentions are usually based on conscious decisions and that, ordinarily, we can’t fail to know our decisions.  I doubt this is true and if it is true, we can just say that “forming an intention” is a conscious process and skip the bit about decisions.    The discussion of how we can know that our intentions are being successfully executed is interesting and sophisticated.  She points out, for instance, that a large part of what makes it the case that I am walking to the library is that I intend to be walking to the library (and not somewhere else), so that knowledge of my intentions goes a long way towards knowledge of what I am intentionally doing, and that such knowledge exceeds anything empirical observation could give us.  There is still a question, however, of how I know without observation that I am walking (at all), and this I would have liked to see more thoroughly addressed.

Although I would nitpick around the edges, Paul’s Inferential model of our self-knowledge of our own intentional actions strikes me as very plausible in its main outlines and notably superior to the Strong Cognitivist view.  Highly recommended reading for those with an interest in philosophy of action.

Reviewed by Heath White
University of North Carolina, Wilmington