CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016
| Author | Xu, Huaming |
|---|---|
| Title | Is the knowledge a man has of what he is intentionally doing necessarily non-observational? |
| Summary | According to G. E. M. Anscombe, a person who is intentionally up to something must always know without observation what he is up to. In this thesis, I provide a critique of Anscombe’s claim. I argue that observation on the part of an agent can play a justificatory role in the agent’s acquisition of the knowledge about what he is intentionally up to: if we are intentionally changing the public world we would need observation to keep our actions on track, and thus observational reasons are needed to warrant our judgements as to what we are intentionally doing. But the practicality of the knowledge an agent has of what he is intentionally doing—i.e., the knowledge’s being the cause of its object—seems to entail the unqualified non-observational character Anscombe imputes to such knowledge. I show that the entailment does not hold, for the reason that our capacity for agent’s knowledge of intentional action is fallible. |
| Supervisor | Huoranszki, Ferenc |
| Department | Philosophy MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2016/xu_huaming.pdf |
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