Davidson's Anomalous Monism Donald Davidson, in an excerpt from his paper "Psychology as Philosophy" argues that: "Not all human motion is behavior ... but where there is behavior, intention is relevant." We may not always do what we intend (e.g., man who stomps on his own hat thinking it is the hat of his rival). But "happenings cease to be actions or behavior when there is no way of describing them in terms of intentions." (319) For Sartre, our experience of ourselves is essentially intentional. We cannot help but see the world from the perspective of a "for-itself", wanting, hoping, fearing, valuing. In all these modes of being, we freely create (freely since all being is just in-itself and not incomplete in any way, and thus is unable to force any particular projection of ). And our freedom is the source of anguish and flight into bad faith. Davidson begins from ordinary language rather than personal experience. According to Davidson, "intention is conceptually central" (319) to what we usually mean by a person’s "behavior". If psychology and other human sciences are mainly concerned with human behavior, and Davidson is right that intention is conceptually central to behavior, then psychology and the human sciences must be sciences mainly concerned with intentionality. (And Skinner must be dead wrong.) | |
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