Knowing what you are doing: Action‐demonstratives in unreflective action

Abstract

AbstractAlmost everything that we do, we do by doing other things. Even actions we perform without deliberation or conscious planning are composed of ‘smaller’, subsidiary actions. But how should we think of such subsidiary actions? Are they fully‐fledged intentional actions (in the sense of things that we do for reasons) in their own right? In this paper I defend an affirmative answer to this question, against a recently influential form of scepticism. Drawing on a distinctive kind of ‘action‐demonstrative’ representation, I show that the sceptic's arguments do not go through.