Intentional Action and Self-Awareness

Abstract

Abstract When we perform intentional bodily actions we are normally aware of what we are doing. Of course, we can be mistaken about important aspects of our actions, and our actions can have many surprising features. For example, in a Peanuts cartoon, Lucy is shown tearing up what she takes to be Linus’s blanket, but it turns out that the blanket is in fact her own. In a sense Lucy does not know what she is doing. But of course her lack of knowledge is far from total. She knows, for example, that she is tearing up ‘this’ (perceptually presented) blanket. What this example illustrates is that typically, at least some of the descriptions under which an action is intentional-some of the descriptions that figure in the content of the agent’s intention-are descriptions under which the agent knows what she is doing.