Speaker: Carlotta Pavese (Cornell University)

Are there essentially intentional actions?

A long tradition in action theory holds that there are such things as essentially intentional actions—actions that are intentional whenever performed (Anscombe, Davidson, Bennett, Turri, etc). In my talk, I argue that the existence of essentially intentional action is a philosophical myth and that this has interesting repercussions in action theory and in epistemology. In the first part of my talk, I defend the claim that the doctrine of essentially intentional actions is incompatible with a desirable practical knowledge condition on intentional actions, which I argue we have independent reasons to embrace. In the second part of my talk I argue that the doctrine of essentially intentional actions is incompatible with a plausible solution to a puzzle—the puzzle of novice learning—-that arises for certain kinds of theories of action and I contend that is an additional reason to reject the doctrine. Finally, I explore some interesting conclusions that follow from rejecting the doctrine of essentially intentional actions.