| The relationship between intention, intentional action, and moral assessment is of fundamental importance to ethical theory. In large part, moral responsibility is based on an assessment of agent responsibility, which in turn is based on the connection between an agent's intentions and the actions which they cause. In the last twenty-five years, there has been a debate in contemporary action theory about the relationship between intentions and intentional action. Objecting to what he calls the "Simple View," which he characterizes as the view that all intentional actions are intended under some description, Michael Bratman, among others, argues that not all intentional actions are intended. In this dissertation, we will defend the Simple View by appealing to Aristotle's theory of action as developed in his psychological and ethical works.;In the first part of the dissertation, we argue that all intentional actions are intended under some description; however, we argue that distinctions between different types of intention are essential: specifically, the distinction between deliberate and non-deliberate intentions and the distinction between the intention of the end and the intention of the means. Our account centers on Aristotle's concept of prohairesis, which he identifies as the distinctly human principle of action. The term prohairesis in Aristotle's works seems to have at least three senses: (1) primarily, the deliberate intention with which a person acts, an 'occurent' choice; (2) the habitual or 'dispositional' choice or resolve of 'decent' people; and (3) general purposes that men have which may encompass voluntary action as a whole.;In the second part of the dissertation, we examine at length the objections to the Simple View, lodged by Bratman, Gilbert Harman, and Joshua Knobe. We give an overview of objections by Bratman, Harman, and Knobe which center on three cases and four objections. The cases are: (1) a hypothetical video game; (2) unexpected success; and (3) unintended consequences. The objections are: (1) with respect to the hypothetical video game, the Simple View ascribes an irrational intention to a gamer playing the game; (2) When agents are doubtful of the success of an action they undertake, the Simple View requires that they intend the act the perform rather than that they merely try to perform the act, which opponents argue that this is irrational and false; (3) The Simple View entails the rejection of the distinction between intention and foresight which itself entails that agents intend all the results of their actions, even when those results are merely foreseen and not intended; (4) The Simple View does not adequately explain ordinary language usage with respect to ascriptions of intention for side-effect consequences, and therefore does not reflect basic, commonly shared notions of intentional action. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
