How We Know What We’re Doing

There are two major sorts of reactions Anscombe’s Non-Observational Knowledge Thesis has provoked in the philosophical literature. One response is a kind of skepticism, motivated by the fact that Anscombe’s formulation of the thesis is overly strong and easily defeated by counterexamples. Donald Davidson took this skeptical line, holding that it is simply a mistake to suppose that acting intentionally entails acting knowingly — non-observationally or otherwise. He pointed out that one may aim at some outcome, and end up bringing it about in the way one is trying to — so doing it intentionally — while remaining in doubt all the while that one is doing it. His well-known example concerns a man who presses down heavily on a stack of carbon-paper with the aim of making ten carbon copies at once, in the face of substantial doubt that his efforts will succeed. But if they do, he will intentionally have made ten carbon copies at once, though without actually believing in the process that he was doing so. Such examples, easily multiplied, convincingly demonstrate that non-observational knowledge is not as coincidental with intentional action as Anscombe would have it. Davidson concluded that a special kind of knowledge is not a distinguishing feature of intentional action after all, and his causal-psychological approach to understanding the domain of action theory became dominant in Anglo-American philosophy in the decades following the publication of Intention.