PHL * K101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Intentionality
Document Summary
Just because something can be interpreted does not mean it cannot be. Interpretativism can tell you what action is being performed, but not why it is performed. Point appears somewhat misleading because if we think of the dray essay and it"s historical explanation, we have come to give an account of the historical actor as an individual, and we put ourselves in their shoes. We try to see what was the thing to do at the time. What and why cannot be easily disentangled. To know what action is being done also seems to require knowing why". Actions are said to follow from beliefs and desires. We can sometimes give quasi-causal accounts of why people had certain beliefs and desires. People are often concerned with actions in the aggregate, people often need to employ higher level generalizations as a result- theories.
