Self-Consciousness in Acting

Abstract

This essay considers Anscombe’s account of practical knowledge, the non-observational and non-contemplative “knowledge that a man has of his intentional actions” (Anscombe 1963, 50 – 51), and investigates how such knowledge can fit into a more general conception of self-consciousness. Doing so will allow us to see that, as self-knowledge generally is “the same reality” (Rödl 2007, 14) as its object, the idea that practical knowledge is the (formal) “cause of what it understands” (a dictum that Anscombe adopts from Aquinas) does not as such constitute a mark distinguishing self-knowledge of action from other forms of self-knowledge. This in turn allows us to avoid a pitfall: the idea that action, as the conclusion of practical reasoning, must be necessitated by the premises—as well as the accompanying idea that every action must be derived from a final or “infinite” end (Rödl 2007, 38).

1. My topic is what G. E. M. Anscombe in Intention1 calls “practical knowledge” or, at one point, “the knowledge that a man has of his intentional actions” (Anscombe 1963, 50 – 51). Anscombe does not explicitly describe practical knowledge as a case of self-consciousness, but I think putting what she says in that context helps to make sense of it. But first, I will spend some time working through Anscombe’s discussion.

2. First, knowledge of one’s actions is not observational.

Anscombe singles out intentional actions by whether the question “Why?” in a certain sense has application.2 The relevant sense is one in which the question asks for someone’s reason for doing something. But in Anscombe’s project, that explanation of the question is off limits. It would presuppose that we understand the idea of reasons for acting, which is part of the conceptual region she wants to elucidate. So, she explains the question in a roundabout way, which includes listing kinds of case in which it does not apply. And one way of rejecting the question is to say “I knew I was doing that, but only because I observed it” (Anscombe 1963, 14). So, knowledge of one’s actions is not observational.

3. Second, practical knowledge is not just not observational but also not contemplative. Contemplative knowledge owes its being knowledge to the independent actuality of what is known. Observational knowledge is contemplative in that sense, but not all contemplative knowledge is observational. So, it could be that practical knowledge is not observational but still contemplative in some other way. Anscombe argues that it is not.

She arrives at this by a train of thought that starts with a skeptical question about the claim that knowledge of one’s intentional actions is, as she sometimes puts it, “without observation”: “is it reasonable to say that one ‘knows without observation’ that one is [for instance] painting a wall yellow?” (Anscombe 1963, 50). And she responds:

When knowledge or opinion are present concerning what is the case, and what can happen—say Z—if one does certain things, say ABC, then it is possible to have the intention of doing Z in doing ABC; and if the case is one of knowledge or if the opinion is correct, then doing or causing Z is an intentional action, and it is not by observation that one knows one is doing Z; or in so far as one is observing, inferring etc. that Z is actually taking place, one’s knowledge is not the knowledge that a man has of his intentional actions. By the knowledge that a man has of his intentional actions I mean the knowledge that one denies having if when asked e. g. “Why are you ringing that bell?” one replies “Good heavens! I didn’t know I was ringing it!” (Anscombe 1963, 50 – 51).

The claim that knowledge of one’s intentional actions is “without observation” might have seemed to imply that there is no room for observational knowledge when one is, e. g., painting a wall yellow, and the question expresses a well-placed skepticism about that. But here she concedes that someone who is doing Z (e. g., painting a wall yellow) may be observing that Z is actually taking place (in that case, that the wall is actually becoming yellow).3 It is just that in so far as he does have observational knowledge of what is happening to the wall, that knowledge “is not the knowledge that a man has of his intentional actions.”

And now the question becomes: how can conceding that the painter may have observational knowledge of the relevant happening on the surface of the wall cohere with claiming that that happening is also an object for non-observational knowledge of it as something he is intentionally effecting? As she puts it:

If there are two ways of knowing here, one of which I call knowledge of one’s intentional action and the other of which I call knowledge by observation of what takes place, then must there not be two objects of knowledge? How can one speak of two different knowledges of exactly the same thing? (Anscombe 1963, 51).

Confronted with this difficulty, one can be tempted to conceive objects of practical knowledge as inner items, distinct from any observable happening. But Anscombe dismisses such conceptions as nonsense.4 They make it unintelligible how a public happening can be the execution of an intention.

The source of this trouble, Anscombe suggests, is a failure to realize that knowledge of a happening as the execution of one’s intention is not contemplative:

Can it be that there is something that modern philosophy has blankly misunderstood: namely what ancient and medieval philosophers meant by practical knowledge? Certainly in modern philosophy we have an incorrigibly contemplative conception of knowledge. Knowledge must be something that is judged as such by being in accord with the facts. The facts, reality, are prior, and dictate what is to be said, if it is knowledge. And this is the explanation of the utter darkness in which we found ourselves. For if there are two knowledges—one by observation, the other in intention—then it looks as if there must be two objects of knowledge; but if one says the objects are the same, one looks hopelessly for the different mode of contemplative knowledge in acting, as if there were a very queer and special sort of seeing eye in the middle of the acting (Anscombe 1963, 57).

Recall Anscombe’s case of the person who was unknowingly ringing a bell. Imagine a case like hers except that the person knows he is ringing the bell. There is a happening consisting in the bell’s ringing, which (since the case is like Anscombe’s) the person knows through hearing it, so observationally. And that same happening is also known to the person as his doing. Anscombe’s point is that if contemplative knowledge is the only kind under which we can bring this second bit of knowledge, we are stuck with the plainly hopeless picture of “a very queer and special sort of seeing eye in the middle of the acting.”

4. At this point, Anscombe says we need to understand practical reasoning before we can understand practical knowledge.5 And she embarks on a discussion of Aristotle on practical syllogisms.

The discussion is complex, but for my purposes the essentials are enough. The conclusion of a practical syllogism is acting in a certain way—not coming to accept a proposition. There is a premise that specifies something that, when the syllogism issues in an action, is revealed as an end for whose sake the agent is acting; and another premise or set of premises in the light of which the action that is the conclusion can be seen to be a means to or way of pursuing that end.

It would be absurd to think there is practical syllogizing whenever there is intentional action. “The interest of the account is that it describes an order which is there whenever actions are done with intentions” (Anscombe 1963, 80). And Anscombe notices that the order brought out by Aristotle’s account of practical reasoning is the same as an order she described earlier in terms of a succession of questions “Why?” and answers to them: “Why are you moving your arm up and down?”—“In order to work the pump” or “Because I am pumping.”—“Why are you pumping?”—“In order to replenish the house water supply” or “Because I am replenishing the house water supply” (Anscombe 1963, 37 – 47). And so on.

The topic of intentional action can seem an unmanageable multiplicity. But this order makes it manageable: “Aristotle’s ‘practical reasoning’ or my order of questions ‘Why?’ can be looked at as a device which reveals the order that there is in this chaos” (Anscombe 1963, 80).

5. When Anscombe returns to practical knowledge, she exploits the...