G.E.M. Anscombe on the Analogical Unity of Intention in Perception and Action

Abstract

Elizabeth Anscombe'sIntention is a landmark text in action theory. 1 Even those who disagree strongly with Intention's central theses recognize its monumental influence in shaping contemporary debates.Anscombe's work in the philosophy of perception, by contrast, has suffered a different fate.In the voluminous literature on perceptual intentionality, one strains to find even a modicum of enthusiasm for the details of her views.This asymmetrical influence is not obviously problematic.Although everyone recognizes the shared etymology of 'intention' in the expressions 'intentional action' and 'intentional experience', 2 and while many are aware of the rich philosophical tradition that takes the conceptual ties between the intentionality of action and perception to be of paramount importance, 3 one is now more likely to find an emphasis on how the uses of 'intentionality' differ across philosophical domains than on any supposed commonality between them.So it is not surprising that most theorists now adopt a method that permits them to focus exclusively on the use of 'intentionality' in their preferred subdiscipline to the exclusion or ignorance of others.1 Earlier versions of this paper were presented at University College, Dublin and the University of Pittsburgh.We would like to thank the audiences of these talks for their helpful comments.2 'Intentionality' derives from the Latin 'intentio' by way of the German 'intentionalit€ at'.'Intentio', in turn, derives from the verb 'intendere' = df being stretched toward something ('intendere arcum in' means to aim a bow at __).Both actions and intentional mental states such as perception and belief easily fall under this metaphor; each, in their own way, can be said to "aim at" or "be stretched toward" a circumscribed target that one might fail to hit.For example, when someone deliberates poorly, he "fails to hit or get what he shot at" (Plato, Cratylus 420c) and when someone believes falsely, he "is like a bad archer who shoots besides the mark and misses" (Plato, Theaetetus 194a).3 This commitment was commonplace among the Scholastics of the later Middle Ages.It is also a prominent feature of Augustine's philosophy (De Trinitate, XI) and has precedents among the Stoics (Diogenes Laertius VII 157) and in Plato (Cratylus 420b-c).Interestingly, however, neither of the texts primarily responsible for the present centrality of intentionality to analytic philosophy of mind, Brentano 1874/1973, 88-89 and Chisholm 1957, 168-185; discuss action, though they do, between them, discuss propositional attitudes expressed by the verbs 'to desire', 'to wish', and 'to seek'.We should also note that the classical understanding of intentionality does not precisely match the contemporary understanding.For example, in Aquinas' work, esse intentionale is not a "mark of the mental" (e.g., a perceptual medium, which is in no way mental, can possess a visible species that exists in esse intentionali; cf.

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