Title: “Expression of Intention and Final Causality.”
Conference: Evangelical Philosophical Society (Southeast Regional).
Location: The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, KY.

Abstract

In her pivotal work Intention, Elizabeth Anscombe identifies three ways in which we use the word intention related to moral actions: (1) expression of intention, (2) intentional action, and (3) intention with which something is done. Her work has drawn much attention to the topic of intentionality in action theory. If one accepts her taxonomy of intention, two challenges related to the final cause of an action must be dealt with. First, Richard Moran and Martin J. Stone express concern that expression and intentional action need not be separated. Second, Christoph Lumer is concerned that in expression, we must define two functions at work, a volitive function that is the mental state of intention and an executive function that is the power to execute action. Lumer rightly asks how intention is executed, but there may be another means than redefining intention to include an executive function.

I will respond to these two challenges by investigating Anscombe’s claims and supplementing with an exegesis of Thomas Aquinas’s discussion of intention in the Summa Theologiæ I-II.12. I would like to propose that the present challenges to Anscombe’s model are met if expression of intention is understood as the verbal expression of intention unique to rational animals, and intention is understood as an act of the will that is the bond between the final cause of a volitional action and the efficient cause or means of carrying it out. These solutions are apparent in Anscombe if her backgrounds in Wittgensteinian philosophy of language and expertise in Aquinas are considered.