Aristotle's Theory of Prohairesis and Its Significance for Accounts of Human Action and Practical

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"Aristotle's Theory of Prohairesis and
Its Significance for Accounts of Human
Action and Practical Reasoning"
Author: Michael Angelo Formichelli
Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/729
This work is posted on eScholarship@BC,
Boston College University Libraries.
Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2009
Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted.
Boston College

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Department of Philosophy

ARISTOTLE’S THEORY OF PROHAIRESIS AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE FOR
ACCOUNTS OF HUMAN ACTION AND PRACTICAL REASONING

A Dissertation
By
MICHAEL ANGELO FORMICHELLI

submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

August 2009
©
copyright by MICHAEL ANGELO FORMICHELLI
2009
Abstract: “Aristotle’s Theory of Prohairesis and Its Significance for Accounts of Human
Action and Practical Reasoning”
By Michael Angelo Formichelli
Arthur Madigan, S.J., Adviser

The relationship between intention, intentional action, and moral assessment is of
fundamental importance to ethical theory. In large part, moral responsibility is based on
an assessment of agent responsibility, which in turn is based on the connection between
an agent’s intentions and the actions which they cause. In the last twenty-five years,
there has been a debate in contemporary action theory about the relationship between
intentions and intentional action. Objecting to what he calls the “Simple View,” which
he characterizes as the view that all intentional actions are intended under some
description, Michael Bratman, among others, argues that not all intentional actions are
intended. In this dissertation, we will defend the Simple View by appealing to Aristotle’s
theory of action as developed in his psychological and ethical works.
In the first part of the dissertation, we argue that all intentional actions are
intended under some description; however, we argue that distinctions between different
types of intention are essential: specifically, the distinction between deliberate and non-
deliberate intentions and the distinction between the intention of the end and the intention
of the means. Our account centers on Aristotle’s concept of prohairesis, which he
identifies as the distinctly human principle of action. The term prohairesis in Aristotle’s
works seems to have at least three senses: 1) primarily, the deliberate intention with
which a person acts, an ‘occurent’ choice; 2) the habitual or ‘dispositional’ choice or
resolve of ‘decent’ people; and 3) general purposes that men have which may encompass
voluntary action as a whole. The first sense of the term is the primary one that properly
signifies the concept. Prohairesis fits within the general framework of animal motion
which Aristotle sets out in the De Anima and De Motu Animalium. For Aristotle, orexis
or desire is the cause of all animal motion, including human motion. Prohairesis is a
deliberate desire for the means to an end. It is a principle of action peculiar to mature
human beings capable of deliberating, as it is the intention which is the result of
deliberation. It marks off a narrow but important stretch of intentional action.
Prohairesis is set off against other types of intention, like boulēsis, which is an intention
of the end, and epithumia (bodily appetite) and thumos (anger), which are non-deliberate
intentions relating to non-rational appetites like lust and anger.
Aristotle, in contrast to contemporary accounts of intentional action, is unusually
specific in his designation of the different kinds of intention. Different orexeis differ not
only with regard to specific objects but also with regard to time, planning, and detail.
Aristotle traces both the causal and moral responsibility agents have for their actions to
the action of these internal principles of desire. Moral assessment is linked to the
operative internal principle of an act. This allows for an action to be voluntary and
intentional, even if the agent does not fully understand or plan for the consequences of an
action. Intention, for Aristotle, if we correctly understand it as orexis and what results
from orexis, is not reducible to one mode but is irreducibly plural. Furthermore, each
person’s capacity for intentional action is shaped by his character, and each character has
correspondingly different kinds of intention, both with respect to the objects of intention
and in their relation to action. Finally, the scope of intention is not definite, and
depending on the agent, can include those things which attend to the means of which he
has cognizance, for instance, harmful side-effect consequences or other costs of his
action.
In the second part of the dissertation, we examine at length the objections to the
Simple View, lodged by Bratman, Gilbert Harman, and Joshua Knobe. We give an
overview of objections by Bratman, Harman, and Knobe which center on three cases and
four objections. The cases are: 1) a hypothetical video game; 2) unexpected success; and
3) unintended consequences. The objections are: 1) with respect to the hypothetical
video game, the Simple View ascribes an irrational intention to a gamer playing the
game; 2) When agents are doubtful of the success of an action they undertake, the Simple
View requires that they intend the act the perform rather than that they merely try to
perform the act, which opponents argue that this is irrational and false; 3) The Simple
View entails the rejection of the distinction between intention and foresight which itself
entails that agents intend all the results of their actions, even when those results are
merely foreseen and not intended; 4) The Simple View does not adequately explain
ordinary language usage with respect to ascriptions of intention for side-effect
consequences, and therefore does not reflect basic, commonly shared notions of
intentional action.
The first two objections center on cases where it seems irrational for an agent to
intend the act he performs. In the case of the video game, the scenario is so set up that
the player wins a prize for hitting either target but knows that he cannot hit both or the
game will shut down. It seems irrational for him to intend to hit both if he cannot;
however, in order to maximize his chance winning, it would be rational to aim at both. In
the case of unexpected success, it seems that agents do not intend acts whose chances of
success they doubt because intending seems to require the positive belief that one will
succeed; rather, it is argued that agents merely try but do not intend the act they perform.
Against these cases and objections, we argue that agents are capable of conditional and
complex intentions, such that one may conditionally intend to hit whichever target is
opportune, while aiming at both. Likewise, we argue that intending to act does not
require the positive belief that one will succeed; only that it is possible for one to
succeed. Furthermore, the distinction between trying and intending is specious.
Finally, we respond to the third and fourth objections centering on the
intentionality of side-effect consequences. It is argued by Bratman et al. that the Simple
View entails the rejection of the distinction between intention and foresight, and that such
a rejection further entails consequentialism. Likewise it is also argued that the Simple
View fails to account for ordinary language ascriptions of intentionality for side-effect
consequences. We agree that the Simple View entails rejecting the distinction between
intention and foresight as it is currently applied, but deny that this entails
consequentialism, i.e., the view that the consequences of an action are the primary basis
for moral evaluation and not the agent’s intentions. Likewise, we agree that the Simple
View does not model ordinary language ascriptions of intention; however, this is not
necessarily a defect since such ascriptions are inconsistent and imprecise. Furthermore,
we argue that the Simple View might be used to more adequately explain such usage.
We center our response to these objections on the Doctrine of Double Effect. We
argue that the doctrine arises from a mistaken interpretation of St. Thomas Aquinas’
treatment of defensive killing. We argue that Aquinas does not hold that the death of an
attacker is a foreseen but not intended side-effect, as proponents of Double Effect and
opponents of the Simple View hold; rather it is intended as a means to the end of self-
defense. Therefore, the two effects are not the desired end and a side-effect but rather the
intended end and the intended means. Furthermore, we argue that this does not entail
doing evil for the sake of good because Aquinas’ Aristotelian account of action
specification incorporates circumstances as essential components of intentions which
give an act its moral quality. Furthermore, the necessary references to an agent’s
intentions show how the rejection of the application of the distinction between intention
and foresight does not entail consequentialism.
Finally, we tackle the underlying assumptions about intention and desire which
lead to the rejection of the Simple View. Opponents of the Simple View hold that
intention is not a form of desire because then it would not have an essential role in the
genesis of action or in rational deliberation. We, however, argue that the major
objections to the Simple View are defeasible once one understands intention as a species
of desire, i.e. a deliberate desire, whose scope includes consequences beyond acts
performed and goals achieved. The paradoxes at the heart of the debate hinge on the
ambiguity of the English word ‘intention’ and its usage, as well as the inherent difficulty
of examining psychological concepts. ‘Intention’ has several senses unified by the
purposiveness of the mental states to which the word is referred. These senses can often,
but not always, be distinguished in English usage by the degree and kind of deliberation
attendant to them.

i
Table of Contents

Introduction to the Dissertation 1

Part I: Aristotle’s Theory of Prohairesis

I.1: Introduction to the First Part 17

I.2: A Survey of Prohairesis in the Aristotelian Corpus 21

I.3: Sources of Voluntary Motion in the De Motu Animalium and De Anima
I.3.1: Desire, Imagination, and Action in the De Motu Animalium and De Anima
33
I.3.2: Phantasia, Orexis, and Intending: Nussbaum on Phantasia in the De Motu
Animalium and De Anima
50

I.4: The Ethical Works
I.4.1: The Aristotelian Account of the Voluntary 66
I.4.2: The Voluntary in the Eudemian Ethics 74
I.4.3: The Voluntary in the Nicomachean Ethics 83
I.4.3.1: Voluntary Action, Responsibility, and the Foundation of Character
87
I.4.3.2: Compulsion, Harm, and Instrumental Intentions 91
I.4.3.3: Ignorance, Cognizance, Cause, and Responsibility 95
I.4.3.4: Internal Causation and the Scope of the Voluntary 99
I.4.3.5: Deliberation and Prohairesis
I.4.3.5.1: Boulēsis and Bouleusis 103
I.4.3.5.2: The Place of Prohairesis in Aristotle’s Accounts of the
Soul and Action
105
I.4.3.5.3: The Results of Deliberation: Action and Prohairesis
113
I.4.3.6: Prohairesis as a Composite Mental State or Capacity 125
I.4.3.7: How Prohairesis Follows from Practical Reasoning 128
I.4.3.8: Kinds of Prohairesis and Other Intentions 133

I.5: Conclusion of the First Part 151