What Have I Done?

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Timothy Chappell

Abstract

An externalist view of intention is developed on broadly Wittgensteinian grounds, and applied to show that the classic Thomist doctrine of double effect, though it has good uses in casuistry, has also been overused because of the internalism about intention that has generally been presupposed by its users. We need a good criterion of what counts as the content of our intentional actions; I argue, again on Wittgensteinian grounds, that the best criterion comes not from foresight, nor from foresight plus some degree of probability, nor from any metaphysics of “closeness”, but simply from our ordinary shared understanding of what counts as doing a given action, and what does not.

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Special topic – THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY OF THOMAS AQUINAS AND CONTEMPORARY PRACTICAL ETHICS
Author Biography

Timothy Chappell, The Open University

Timothy Chappell
Professor of Philosophy
The Open University Ethics Centre
Department of Philosophy
Faculty of Arts
The Open University
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes MK7 6AA
UK
e-mail: t.chappell@open.ac.uk

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