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?