Wanting and Intending: Elements of a Philosophy of Practical Mind

ISBN-13: 9789402413403 / Angielski / Miękka / 2018 / 364 str.

Neil Roughley

Recenzje

"This book is a comprehensive and thorough exploration of the concepts of wanting and intending, their co-relations and conceptual and empirical interdependencies. ... Roughley's presentation of the concept of wanting is telling and his novel approach to the concept of intention is worthy of further interest. Thus, the book is essential reading for researchers in the philosophy of action and related disciplines." (Piotr Tomasz Makowski, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Vol. 20, 2017)

Spis treści

Acknowledgments.- Introduction.- Part 1. Wanting.- 1.  The Question of Motivational Unity: Historical Preliminaries.- 1.1.  Practical Mind: Aristotle's Question.- 1.2.  Plato and the Tripartite Practical Mind.- 1.3.  Aristotle and the Problems of Motivational Unity.- 1.4.  Hobbes and Double Reductionism.-1.5.  Hume and Hedonic Unity.-1.6   From Stevenson to Davidson: "Pro-Attitudes".- 2.  Motivational States.- 2.1.  Starting Point: The Things We Do.- 2.2.  Behaviour.- 2.3.  Motivation and Representation.- 2.4.  Representational Match and Representational Mode.- 2.5.  The Two Dimensions of Motivation.- 2.6.  Excursus: Motivating Representations in Non-Human Animals.- 3.  Wanting* and its Symptoms.- 3.1.  Wanting*: Factoring out Believing and Fuelling.- 3.2.  Symptoms of Wanting*.- 3.3.  Symptomatic Definition.- 3.4.  A Theory of Wanting*: Key Questions and Sketch of Some Answers.- 4.  Expressive Explication and the Optative Mode.- 4.1.  Moore's Paradox and the Idea of Expressive Explication.-  4.2.  Optative and Assertoric Expression.- 4.3.  Axiological Conceptions of Wanting*.-  4.4.  Wants* as Mere Entailments.-  4.5.  Appendix: Direction of Fit and the Internal Normativity of Attitudinising.-   5.  Wanting*, Consciousness and Affect.- 5.1.  Conscious Occurrentism.- 5.2.  Not Really Wanting.- 5.3.  Wanting* and Affect.- 5.4.  End of Part I.- Part 2. Intending.- 6.  Intention, Belief and Commitment.- 6.1.  Introduction: The Irreducibility Thesis and the Role of Belief.-   6.2.  Intention Expression.- 6.3.  The Conceptual Marginality of Belief.- 6.4.  Doxastic Symptoms of (Decisional).-  6.5.  Summary: Postdecisional Commitment and Belief.- 7.  The Intentional Syndrome: Characteristic Causal Features and Rational Requirements.- 7.1.  Characteristic Causal Features: Dimensions of Intention Strength.- 7.2.  Deontic Consequences: The Intention-Consequential Requirements.- 7.3.  The Intentional Syndrome: Taking Stock.- 8.  Deciding.- 8.1.  Towards a Genetic Disjunctive Theory of Intention: The Itinerary of the Next Three Chapters.-8.2.  Decision: Two Not Particularly Helpful Theories.- 8.3.  Deciding and Judging.- 8.4.  Minimal Inquiry and Judgement.- 8.5.  Minimal Deliberation and Decision.- 8.6.  Why Decisions are not Actions.- 8.7.  Decisions as Deliberation-Terminative Optative Occurrences.- 9.  Intentions Decisional and Nondecisional.- 9.1.  Decisional Intentions.- 9.2.  Five Ways to Nondecisionally Intend.- 9.3.  Doxastic Conceptual Constraints.- 9.4.  Being Set: Nondecisional Intention and Motivation.- 9.5.  Nondecisional Intention and Conscious Wanting*.-  9.6.  Leaving the Question Open.- 9.7.  Intentions, Decisional and Nondecisional.-   10. The Intention-Consequential Requirements and Anchoring Attributability.- 10.1.  Intention Noncognitivism and the IC Requirements.- 10.2.  Bratman’s Proposal: Self-Governance and Intention Holism.- 10.3.  The IC Requirements, Self-Governance and Normative Functionalism.- 10.4.  Anchoring Attributabilityght:normal; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">.- 10.5.  Taking Responsibility and Practical Rationality.- 10.6.  Conclusion: Intention and Normative Culture.- Index.

Blurb

This book aims to answer two simple questions: what is it to want and what is it to intend? Because of the breadth of contexts in which the relevant phenomena are implicated and the wealth of views that have attempted to account for them, providing the answers is not quite so simple. Doing so requires an examination not only of the relevant philosophical theories and our everyday practices, but also of the rich empirical material that has been provided by work in social and developmental psychology.

The investigation is carried out in two parts, dedicated to wanting and intending respectively. Wanting is analysed as optative attitudinising, a basic form of subjective standard-setting at the core of compound states such as 'longings', 'desires', 'projects' and 'whims'. The analysis is developed in the context of a discussion of Moore-paradoxicality and deepened through the examination of rival theories, which include functionalist and hedonistic conceptions as well as the guise-of-the-good view and the pure entailment approach, two views popular in moral psychology.

In the second part of the study, a disjunctive genetic theory of intending is developed, according to which intentions are optative attitudes on which, in one way or another, the mark of deliberation has been conferred. It is this which explains intention's subjection to the requirements of practical rationality. Moreover, unlike wanting, intending turns out to be dependent on normative features of our life form, in particular on practices of holding responsible.

The book will be of particular interest to philosophers and psychologists working on motivation, goals, desire, intention, deliberation, decision and practical rationality.