I develop Anscombe’s distinction between mistakes in judgment and mistakes in performance into a novel account of intentional action and the metaphysics of mind.
Anscombe’s distinction is usually understood in terms of the “direction of fit” possessed by different kinds of mental states. In Chapter 1 I argue that direction of fit is a hopeless idea. Direction of fit is guided by intuitions of symmetry, but those intuitions are misguided: there are ineliminable asymmetries between the mind’s theoretical and practical activity. I further argue that Anscombe’s distinction is best understood not in terms of direction of fit, but in terms of mental activity that is partially constituted by norms.
In Chapter 2 I develop a theory of fallible capacities: capacities that sometimes issue in mistakes. Fallible capacities are essentially normative because norms are built into their logical structure. I argue for the essential normativity of the mind on the basis of the claim that the fallible capacity to know is essential to minds like ours. The primary dialectical opponent to the argument is a reductive naturalist, who accepts the appearance that we have a fallible capacity to know, but offers a reductive account of what it is to possess that capacity. I argue that such reductive accounts fail; the options are to reject the appearances outright, or to accept that the mind is essentially normative.
Chapter 3 solves a problem about action individuation. A basic action is one that is not performed by means of some other action. Basic action theorists say that all intentional actions decompose into basic actions; Michael Thompson says that none do. I argue that neither view is right, because action individuation is up to individual agents themselves. I further argue that this independently plausible conception of intentional action is, in one key respect, best accommodated by the theory of fallible capacities outlined in Chapter 2, because that theory can explain why mistakes in performance fall into the logical category of particulars; something that traditional basic action theory and Thompson’s view cannot easily explain
