Follage

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzf2e0o_Xm92cEZPVkp6MFVZdkk/view?usp=sharing

The Best of Friends

Action is always upfront about what they’re doing. He is direct and quick to the point, and more than anything likes to get the job done. Intention, on the other hand, likes to hide behind action, letting him lead the way and being able to change as he pleases. Action and Intention have been best friends for a long time now. They always felt a natural attraction to each other, with Intention always following action.

Nobody ever really knows what Intention is thinking, and he always seems to evade inspection. Judgment always wants to know what he’s thinking, but Action understands Intention better than anyone else, and tells Judgment to go bother someone else.

Sometimes Action and Intention get into fights though. Action feels random sometimes, and doesn’t feel much like she needs Intention. Action is very social, and sometimes just feels like hanging out with Randomness and being silly.

But Action always makes the decision to come back to Intention. While Action knows she can hang out and have fun on his own, he always remembers that Intention cannot exist without him.

Love and Separation

Rationality was always the smartest kid in the class, but he never had any fun. His parents, Truth and Reason, raised him to be like that. When he was younger, he would want to play with his friends, but his parents quickly beat that out of him. “Those other kids are too immature for you” truth would say, “and if you want to be the best at oboe, you’ll need to practice as much as you can,” reason would chime in. People liked him at school though. He was great at solving problems, and came into everything with a level head. He was never sour about the past nor would he make rash decisions. Rationality was calm and collected.

            But as the years went by Rationality grew more and more distant from the other kids in his class. They would go to the movies or out to the park, but all he wanted to do was stay inside and work by himself. His parents were satisfied, but the other kids began to forget about him. Everyone knew he would be successful, but nobody seemed to really care. Rationality lost interest in everyone at school, except for one.

            Emotion had been popular her whole life. She was exciting and fun and understanding, anything you would want in a person. More than anything, she was excited about life, with an invincible passion for everything she did. Rationality saw this in her, and saw that she was everything he was not. He became fixated on this girl, and thought that she could solve his problems.

            One day Rationality approached her, but he was a little bit uncomfortable. He hadn’t talked to a girl, or anyone for that matter, in a really long time. But he wasn’t nervous, because he knew that it wouldn’t help him. He approached her, and he blurted out “would you go on a date with me? I think we would have a very good time. We could eat food which would trigger the sensors in our dopamine receptors, and then maybe we could uh, maybe see a movie. Visual stimulants are very exciting for the human mind.” To his surprise, she said yes.

            Although it was a little awkward at first, Rationality and Emotion had a great time. They were very different, but they found a way to make it work. After a little while, things got more serious, and rationality and emotion started spending a lot of time together.

            But then things started to get weird, Emotion started to fall in love with Rationality, but he felt nothing. Emotion started to feel like Rationality was being distant. He stopped calling her, and when they did talk everything seemed forced.

            One day Emotion reached her limit. She called rationality over and dumped everything on him. “Why don’t you love me?” she screamed, but he had no answer. Then Rationality left. He called Emotion that night. “I had a lot of good times with you, but I don’t know how to deal with your emotional problems. I can’t deal with something that I can’t succeed at. I feel as if seeing other people would maximize our expected well beings,” he said.

Trapped!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzf2e0o_Xm92YUFuX0UydlNHRlk/view?usp=sharing

The Role of Intention in Ethics: An Introduction Using The Trolley Problem

In 1967 Phillipa Foot introduced the “trolley problem”. Many philosophers have modified the problem since then, but as originally stated goes as follows: a conductor is driving a train onto a set of tracks with five people tied to the tracks who will die unless he diverts the train onto a set of tracks with one person on it. (Foot 3) In 1985 Judith Jarvis Thompson modified the problem, making the actor a bystander, who has the power to either let the train ride its course or redirect it by pulling a lever. (Thompson 1). Over the past fifty years, many different philosophers have come up with answers to this problem, but every answer must deal with the importance of the bystander’s intention in acting. As such, the different answers to the trolley problem reveal the role that intention plays in determining the rightness or wrongness of action in a variety of ethical theories.

II. Intention: Its Definition and Presence in The Trolley Problem.

            While there are many theories about what it means for an action to be intentional, there is consensus about what it means to say that an action has some particular intention. Much of this consensus originates from G.E.M. Anscombe’s 1957 book Intention. Anscombe poses an example of a worker who pumps poison water into a house full of Nazi leaders. She goes through a number of different question that one could ask the worker, all of which get different answers, but are also describing the same action. Some of the questions appear to get almost tautological responses (e.g. 'Why are you moving your arms up and down?' 'To operate the water pump' 'Why are you operating the water pump?' 'To replenish the water supply'). Other responses, however, are more revealing and unveil some ultimate intention of action (e.g. 'Why are you replenishing the water supply?' 'To poison it' 'Why are you poisoning it?' 'To kill the Nazis'). Anscombe's argument is that the final link in this causal chain represents the intent of an action, as it is the ultimate intent to which all other intents are subsumed. (Anscombe 41)

            While it is somewhat clear how to identify the intention of actions, assumptions have to be made in nearly all ethical situations. Since an intention is a subjective state, it is only accessible to the actor. In the case of the trolley problem, the assumptions made about intention are generally reasonable, but cannot be verified. In most cases, it is assumed that if the bystander pulls the lever, they intend to save five people, while there is not assumption made for the bystander who doesn’t pull the lever. In a real ethical situation, the intentions of the actor wouldn’t be entirely determinate, but for the sake of the problem itself, these assumptions allow moral philosophers to make arguments about ethical judgments.

II. Approaches to the Trolley Problem.

A) Utilitarian approach: Utilitarian’s believe that the only relevant ethical property of action is their expected value of maximizing happiness and minimizing pain. These philosophers hold that the bystander should pull the switch and try to save as many lives as possible. Joshua Greene believes this position to be intuitive, but also that those who have disagreements with this position are thinking irrationally. To prove this, Greene analyzed the parts of the brain that are used to make different ethical judgments, and gave people different moral dilemmas to work out. One dilemma was the Trolley problem, while the other was as follows: “t's war time, and you are hiding in a basement with several other people. The enemy soldiers are outside. Your baby starts to cry loudly, and if nothing is done the soldiers will find you and kill you, your baby, and everyone else in the basement. The only way to prevent this from happening is to cover your baby's mouth, but if you do this the baby will smother to death.” Many people answered that the bystander should pull the switch in the Trolley problem, but claimed that the baby should not be killed, where the situation seem ethically analogous. Greene came up with a sort of “dual-process theory,” in which he argued that humans are capable of making two sorts of moral judgments. One is a more rational and logical judgment, made in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, that makes utilitarian calculations (e.g. it’s better so save five lives than one). The other forms of ethical judgments, made in the anterior cingulate cortex, provide more emotional and immediate judgments. (Greene 3)

            Greene’s answer thus reveals that utilitarians do not consider the intentions of actions to be relevant. He would argue that when one considers the intention of an action, they are using the irrational part of their brain to make a judgment that does not actually effect the moral rightness of the action in question.

B) The Doctrine of the Double Effect: Foot actually introduced the “trolley problem” as a way of arguing for the “doctrine of the double effect,” or the idea that the direct intention of an action is more relevant to its ethical rightness or wrongness than the foreseen consequences of that action. Foot’s argument for this principle is similar to Greene’s, as it starts from the intuitive judgments that people make in ethical situations. Foot gives the example of a judge who can stop riots by framing an innocent person, and argues that most people would say that this is unethical because part of the judge’s plan is to frame an innocent person, and is not just a side effect of what the judge is attempting. However, most people would answer that the bystander should pull the switch because the direct intent of their action is to save five people, instead of killing one. In opposition to Greene, Foot does not question this intuition, but instead argues that it is a necessary precondition to ethical judgment. (Foot 4)

C) The Act-Omission Distinction: Some believe that the bystander should not pull the switch in the trolley problem. These philosophers believe there to be a distinction between action and omission, as individuals can only be held responsible for acting, but not responsible for failing to act. Among these philosophers is Anscombe, who believes that a distinction between act and omission must exist. A utilitarian claims that for an actor to let one die is the same as to kill them, but Anscombe argues that this could not be the case, since it would imply that to not murder people would be ethically equal to saving lives, which intuitively cannot be the case. (Anscombe 68) In terms of the trolley problem, this means that it is wrong for the bystander to pull the switch, since if they do so they are responsible for the killing of one person, but would not be responsible for anything if they let the trolley take its course.

            These philosophers thus consider intention relevant to action, but define action differently than other philosophers. Instead of taking action to be anything that a person does, these philosophers believe that actions only take place in the case that a person performs some willed bodily movement.

III. Conclusion

            The question of the Trolley problem will never be resolved, but it provides a nice introduction to different schools of thought in philosophical ethics. While the Trolley problem is not nearly as complicated as most ethical situations, it is still very effective as an example for demonstrating the beliefs of an ethical theory.

Works Cited

Anscombe, G. E. M. Intention. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1958. Print.

Foot, Philippa. "The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect." Virtues

and Vices (1967): 19-32. Web.

Greene, Joshua. "Joshua Greene's Harvard Homepage." N.p., n.d. Web. 20 May 2015.

Thomson, Judith Jarvis. "The Trolley Problem." The Yale Law Journal 94.6 (1985):

1395. Web.

Intention Post 2

G.E.M. Anscombe's writing style has still been giving me trouble, but again I learned a great deal from the next section of Intention that I read. In this post, I'll focus mostly on content, as my last post was more introductory and I didn't have time to work through many of the arguments that Anscombe has made.

In this section, Anscombe focuses mostly on causality, and the analysis of intentional actions from both interior and exterior perspectives. As for causality, Anscombe simply argues that in order for one to take an intentional action, they must have some understanding of causality. Anscombe starts with an example of a person saying that they intend go upstairs in order to get their camera. They are then told that their camera is in fact in the cellar, to which they reply, " 'I quite agree, there is no way for a person at the top of the house to get the camera; but still I am going upstairs to get it' " (36). Anscombe claims that this statement is unintelligible, as an action cannot be done with the intention of achieving some end which the agent knows is unachievable, or as Anscombe puts it, "In order to make sense of ' I do P with a view to Q ', we must see how the future state of affairs Q is supposed to be a possible later stage in proceedings of which the action P is an earlier stage" (36). This argument, I think, is quite intuitive, and seems to be sound both in example and in formal syllogism.

Later, Anscombe moves into the descriptive and linguistic aspects of intention. She poses the following question: "is there any description which is the description of an intentional action, given that an intentional action occurs?" (37). I'm not sure Anscombe actually answers this question very clearly in the sections that proceed, but I do think that she provides some insight as to how one even describes an action as intentional. Anscombe poses an example of a worker who pumps poison water into a house full of Nazi leaders. She goes through a number of different question that one could ask the worker, all of which get different answers, but are also describing the same action. Some of the questions appear to get almost tautological responses (e.g. 'Why are you moving your arms up and down?' 'To operate the water pump' 'Why are you operating the water pump?' 'To replenish the water supply'). Other responses, however, are more revealing and unveil some ultimate intention of action (e.g. 'Why are you replenishing the water supply?' 'To poison it' 'Why are you poisoning it?' 'To kill the Nazis'). Anscombe's argument is that the final link in this causal chain represents the intent of an action, as it is the ultimate intent to which all other intents are subsumed. Again, much of this is intuitive, but I am unclear about Anscombe's intent ;) in making these arguments.

I think that I also have a better idea of a research project after my reading. I know that intent plays a great deal into the law and proof of intent often changes the category of a crime. I think it would be interesting if I compared Anscombe's theory of intention to the way in which intention is understood in the law. What do you think? How could I make the project more interesting/nuanced?

Intention G.E.M Anscombe Post 1

I began reading G.E.M. Anscombe's short book Intention with excitement. Most of my knowledge of philosophy comes from ethics, which is concerned with the rightness and wrongness of action. Anscombe's Intention, alternatively, can be described as a book about "action theory," or the study of human bodily movement. Intention is not about the psychological or biological aspects of action, but rather about the linguistics of statements of intention like "I am going to take a walk," and more broadly about the categorization of actions. As the title entails, Anscombe's book discusses the intentions behind actions. However, this topic, at least in Anscombe's eyes, is far more complex than one would expect.

Anscombe does not hesitate to introduce the complexity of her theory about intention. She starts the text with "Very often, when a man says ' I am going to do suchand-such ', we should say that this was an expression of intention. We also sometimes speak of an action as intentional, and we may also ask with what intention the thing was done" (1). Already, Anscombe introduces three concepts of intention that must be dealt with separately, but are all also intimately connected. These three forms of intention, however, are not quickly clarified by Anscombe. Her writing style is peculiar, as it seems as if Anscombe is writing to clarify her own thoughts, instead of explaining them. Most philosophers start with a claim, justify it, and then respond to objections. Anscombe, however, will start with a claim, justify it, point out some insufficiency in explanatory power or a counter-example, and then start with a more nuanced claim to repeat the process. While some readers may prefer this style because it presents philosophical thought in a more organic structure (one usually starts with an argument, notices problems, and modifies the claim), I have found it somewhat confusing and in some places annoying. This style makes it difficult for me to identify her argument and understand where she's going with some particular line of reasoning.

Despite Anscombe's writing style, I've been able to gleam a great deal from what she argues about intention. Anscombe clarifies what it means for an action to be "intentional." She argues that intentional actions "are the actions to which a certain sense of the question ' Why? ' is given application" (9). By this Anscombe means that an action is intentional if it makes sense to ask why an agent took such an action. The question "why?" used in this context is not asking for merely the cause of an action, but for an internal reason of an agent that in turn causes an action. For Anscombe, all actions fit under this category, except three types actions. Anscombe identifies these actions through linguistic means, identifying them by the response an actor would give when prompted with the question "why?". The first category encompasses those actions for which someone would answer "'I was not aware I was doing that'" (25). For instance, if one were to ask a person "why are you making a squeaky noise with the saw," the question "why?" would have no application if the person realized that they were sawing, but did not realize that the saw was making such a noise. One cannot have a reason for doing something that they didn't realize they were doing in the first place. The second category encompasses those actions for which someone would answer something to imply "I observed that I was doing that" (25). For instance, when a doctor initiates a patient's patellar reflex, they are aware that they are moving their leg, but cannot explain why they are moving their leg, as it is merely a reaction continuously experienced. The third category is extremely confusing to me. Anscombe explains her idea in the following passage:

"There was a third circumstance as well, in which the question would have no application: namely that in which the action is somehow characterised as one in which there is no room for what I called mental causality. This would come out if for example the only way in which a question as to cause was dealt with was to speculate about it, or to give reasons why such and such should be regarded as the cause. E.g. if one said ' What made you jump like that? ' when someone had just jerked with the spasm which one sometimes gets as one is dropping off to sleep, he would brush aside the question or say ' It was involuntary you know, the way one does sometimes jump like that" (25).

This seems misdirected, as any action where one would have to speculate about the cause must either be an action one is not aware that they were doing, or one that they have no control over and can only observe, like a reflex. Anscombe's example would fit the latter category, as one has no control over jumping when they are falling asleep, but they can still observe it. It seems as if this discrepancy between knowledge of action and knowledge of cause just results in the third response, and this response is not of a different type than the other two.