Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'On the Moral and Legal State of Abortion' and 'Intending'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


2 ideas

20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 1. Intention to Act / a. Nature of intentions
An intending is a judgement that the action is desirable [Davidson]
     Full Idea: We can identify an intentional action ...with an all-out conditional judgement that the action is desirable. ...In the case of pure intending, I now suggest that the intention simply is an all-out judgement.
     From: Donald Davidson (Intending [1978], p.99), quoted by Rowland Stout - Action 8 'Davidson's'
     A reaction: 'Pure' intending seems to be what Stout calls 'prior' intending, which is clearer. This still strikes me as obviously false. I judge that it is desirable that I make a cup of coffee, but secretly I'm hoping someone else will make it for me.
20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 1. Intention to Act / c. Reducing intentions
Davidson gave up reductive accounts of intention, and said it was a primitive [Davidson, by Wilson/Schpall]
     Full Idea: Later Davidson dropped his reductive treatment of intentions (in terms of 'pro-attitudes' and other beliefs), and accepted that intentions are irreducible, and distinct from pro-attitudes.
     From: report of Donald Davidson (Intending [1978]) by Wilson,G/Schpall,S - Action 2
     A reaction: Only a philosopher would say that intentions cannot be reduced to something else. Since I have a very physicalist view of the mind, I incline to reduce them to powers and dispositions of physical matter.