Are There Unintentional Actions

JN MUCH of the recent work on the concept of human action, it has been assumed that there are various kinds of actionsintentional, unintentional, voluntary, involuntary, and so on. A. I. Melden writes, in the course of discussing motives, that the action of signaling before making turn in one's automobile is a full-blooded example of an intentional action,2 and G. E. M. Anscombe states explicitly that actions can be either intentional or unintentional.3 I want to consider the question of whether there is class of actions called unintentional actions, by first pointing out certain feature of large number of actions. If we say of person that he is loaf of we imply that it is true of that person that one of his ends is having the loaf of bread in his possession (or in that of the person for whom he is the bread). If this were not one of his ends, then he would not be loaf of He might be doing something else, such as pretending to buy loaf of bread, but he would not be performing the action called buying loaf of bread. If we say of person that he is replacing windowpane, we imply that it is true of him that one of his ends is the window's having an unbroken piece of glass in it. If he did not have this end, he would necessarily be doing something else, that is, performing some other action. The bread's being in his possession and the window's containing an unbroken pane are clearly different from the actions of loaf of bread and of replacing windowpane. The former might be called of these actions. One action-for example, loaf of bread-can have many results. In addition to the loaf's then being in the agent's possession, the action also could have as results: (a) the serious depletion of the grocer's supply of bread; (b) the making of the buyer's bag of purchases too bulky to be carried easily; (c) the saving of the life of his child who is suffering from malnutrition; and so on. The action of loaf of bread could have these results. But the buyer need not intend that any of these results should occur (that is, need not have any of these as his ends) in order for it to be

Contemporary philosophy · Epistemology · General interest · Free Will and Agency · Philosophy