Intention and 'why?'
An intentional action is one to which 'why did you do that?' applies and is answered with a reason. Intention is not a private inner event but a feature of action under a description.
The Twentieth Century to Today · 1919 – 2001
G. E. M. Anscombe
安斯康姆 · Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe
Intention founded the philosophy of action, 'Modern Moral Philosophy' revived virtue ethics and coined 'consequentialism', and she opposed an honorary degree for Truman because he ordered the atomic bombs dropped.
Someone who really thinks, in advance, that it is open to question whether such an action as procuring the judicial execution of the innocent should be quite excluded from consideration, I do not want to argue with; he shows a corrupt mind.
Source: Modern Moral Philosophy (1958)
Anscombe was born in Ireland to an English army officer and schoolmaster. As a girl she taught herself Catholic theology, converted in her teens, and remained a devout and combative believer all her life. She read classics and philosophy at St Hugh's College, Oxford, took a first in 1941, and the same year married the philosopher Peter Geach; they had seven children, and her trousers, cigars and insistence on being addressed by her surname caused talk in Oxford.
In 1942 she went to Cambridge as a research student, met Wittgenstein and became his closest pupil; they talked for six years. Before his death he named her, with Rhees and von Wright, as literary executor. She translated the Philosophical Investigations, published in 1953 and still the standard version, and wrote An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus. From 1946 she was a fellow of Somerville College, Oxford, where she taught for twenty-four years.
In 1956, when Oxford proposed an honorary degree for Truman, she opposed it publicly in Convocation, saying that a man who ordered the atomic bombs dropped was a murderer, and wrote the pamphlet Mr Truman's Degree. Intention (1957) analysed the concept in Wittgenstein's manner: an intentional action is one to which the question 'why?' applies and is answered by a reason; the agent has a non-observational 'practical knowledge' of what they are doing; and an action can be intentional under one description and not under another. Davidson called it the most important work on action since Aristotle.
'Modern Moral Philosophy' (1958) argued that moral philosophy should be set aside until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology; that 'moral obligation' and 'morally ought' are survivals from a divine-law framework that has been lost and should be dropped; and that English moral philosophy since Sidgwick is 'consequentialism', marked by the view that any act may be justified in some circumstances, so that someone who seriously considers whether an innocent may be executed 'shows a corrupt mind'. The paper set off the revival of virtue ethics. In 1970 she took Wittgenstein's chair at Cambridge; she opposed contraception and abortion and in old age was arrested sitting in at an abortion clinic. She died in 2001 and is buried in the same cemetery as Wittgenstein.
Key Ideas
Practical knowledge
The agent knows what they are doing not by observation but by 'non-observational knowledge', which is the cause of what it understands rather than a record of it.
Action under a description
The same bodily movement can be 'moving an arm', 'pumping water', 'poisoning the inhabitants', intentional under some descriptions and not others. The identity of action depends on description.
Dropping the moral 'ought'
'Moral obligation' is the residue of a law conception that has lost its divine legislator and has no content in secular philosophy. Return to Aristotle: what is human flourishing, what are the virtues.
Consequentialism
She coined the word to name English ethics since Sidgwick: no act is absolutely forbidden and everything depends on consequences. She regarded it as the corruption of morality.
Influenced by
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
His student, literary executor and translator of the Philosophical Investigations; Wittgenstein said she was the one woman student he did not find tiresome, and she applied his method to action, intention and ethics.
- Aristotle
'Modern Moral Philosophy' called for abandoning the law-like ethics of 'obligation' and 'ought' and returning to Aristotle's virtues and human flourishing; the revival of virtue ethics begins with that paper.
- Thomas Aquinas
- Gottlob Frege
- David Hume
She cited Hume's 'no ought from is' but turned it round: without a divine lawgiver the moral 'ought' has lost its sense, and utilitarians and Kantians alike are using an empty word.
- Immanuel Kant
- John Stuart Mill
She lumped English moral philosophy from Mill to Hare together as 'consequentialism', a word she coined, to charge it with permitting anything for the sake of good results.
Influenced
- Alasdair MacIntyre
He turned the diagnosis of 'Modern Moral Philosophy' into a historical narrative: we possess only fragments of moral language, like science after a catastrophe.