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From Practical Knowledge to Forms of Life: Toward an Account of the Unity of Animal Action

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Màster en Filosofia Analítica (APhil), Facultat Filosofía, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2024-2025, Director/Tutor: Joshua Shepherd

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This paper explores the idea of animal intentional action. My aim is to advance a thesis about
the logical form that our judgment takes when attributing intentionality to animal action, thereby allowing
us to distinguish it from human action. To this end, I first criticize the so-called “standard theory of
action” —which locates intentionality in mental events separate from the event itself— for its failure to
adequately explain how we ascribe intentionality to animals in the first place. I then develop an alternative
within theories of practical knowledge, particularly Anscombe’s account, which explains in a different
way the unity and form of human action. My thesis holds that whereas human action derives its unity
from practical knowledge as the agent’s self-consciousness of practical means and ends, animal action —
lacking such self-consciousness— receives its unity through our judgments that refer to their very “forms
of life”, a notion I explain by drawing on Michael Thompson’s theory

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From Practical Knowledge to Forms of Life: Toward an Account of the Unity of Animal Action