The Anscombean Argument

I now move on to studying an argument from Roessler (2014), which I callThe Anscomb- ean Argument. The Anscombean Argument is concerned with what sense the proponent of Williams’ Dictumwcan make of a certain sort of conversational exchange involving the

asking and answering of the sort of ‘why did youϕ?’ question that is a topic of discussion in Anscombe (1957). Consider Roessler’s example of such an exchange: a case in which a photographer is setting up his camera on the side of the pavement in order to take a photograph of Marilyn Monroe. The photographer is asked ‘why are you setting up your camera here?’ and he replies: ‘because Marilyn Monroe is going to come this way’. Here is what Roessler wants to say about the relevant sort of conversational exchanges:

To locate the disagreement [with Williams’ Dictumw], it is useful to distin-

guish three elements of Anscombe’s view of the reason-seeking question ‘why?’: (a) We ordinarily take it that a good way to answer the question ‘Why are

you doing A?’ is to answer the question ‘What’s the point (or: What’s the good) of doing A?’

(b) While there is more than one style of answering the latter question, the most basic way to do so is this: we set out the considerations in the light of which our doing A can be seen to be an effective way to promote some (in some way) desirable outcome.

(c) Such explanations are often meant to be taken at face value. For ex- ample, accepting the reason given by the photographer for positioning his camera on that pavement would involve accepting (i) that Marilyn Monroe is going to pass by, and (ii) that this (plus the desirability of his taking a picture of her) gives him good reason for acting, and (iii) that he is acting because these considerations give him good reason.

(Roessler, 2014:5)

Anscombe claims, in other words, that one way of successfully answering her ‘Why?’ question is to offer an explanatory sentence which provides an answer to the question: ‘What’s the point of doing A?’, where that in turn consists in citing the normative reasons one is committed to their being as explanantia. The result is a non-psychologistic ratio- nalising statement associated with the good case: S is ϕ-ing because p. Moreover, she thinks that we often intend such non-psychologistic rationalising statements to be taken as they appear: as purporting to explain just by appeal to the normative facts. Ways of doubt- ing the explanation, then, would include doubting that p is true, that it has the normative significance being attributed to it, and that it is the factor doing the explanatory work – instead of some other, perhaps non-rational factor.

The problems for Williams Dictumware supposed to begin to emerge once it’s pointed

out that its proponent is committed to a certain sort of interpretation of such conversational exchanges. The proponent of that view must, it seems, deny (c), on pain of convicting ordinary thought and judgement about reasons explanations of systematic error. To unpack this thought somewhat, the idea is that the proponent of Williams’ Dictumw is committed

to denying that rationalising explanations can take normative reasons asexplanantia. But if (c) is correct, then we are pre-philosophically committed to the thought that they can. So if (c) is correct then the proponent of Williams’ Dictumwwould be committed to saddling

ordinary thought and talk about reasons with systematic error. That would serve to shift the burden of proof onto the proponent of Williams’ Dictumw, which is a result that they

will presumably wish to avoid (wisely, given that, as we will see, there aren’t any good arguments for the thesis). So the proponent of Williams’ Dictumw must resist (c): we

are not pre-philosophically committed to the possibility of rationalising explanations that appeal to normative reasons, they must say.

The next stage of Roessler’s argument purports to establish that (c) is true. This is what Roessler has to say about the matter:

The case for (c) turns on the thought that practical reasoning has two aims that are intelligibly and, for the deliberator, essentially connected. One aim is to

get right what one has most reason to do. The other aim is todetermine or control what one will be (or is) doing. (Ibid.)

I think the correct way to understand what’s going on here is as follows. Reasoning or deliberation which characteristically results in one’sϕ-ing for a reason involves two aims. The first is to bring to mind the set of facts which are reasons for and against one’sϕ-ing and to settle the issue of whether those facts, all things considered, speak in favour of one’s ϕ-ing or not: this is a matter of working out what one has most reason to do. The second is to result in aϕ-ing which is in some way controlled or determined by one’s episode of reasoning. To say that these areaimsof reasoning is to say there the episode of reasoning counts as defective to the extent that it fails to achieve either of them. Moreover, they are aims of reasoningfrom the subject’s own point of view: from the subject’s point of view, what they are doing is attempting to settle the matter about whether or not toϕand then toϕin a way that is in some sense controlled by their episode of deliberation.

The key thought is that from the subject’s own point of view, the two aims are con- nected:

The two things are evidently connected. What is essential for success in prac- tical reasoning is not just that it should get things right and that it should somehow make a difference to what one will eventually be doing, but that the facts (which one needs to get right) will make a difference to what one will be doing. (Roessler, 2014:5)

The thought is that one doesn’t simply aim to get right whether one ought toϕandin addition, orover and above that, aim at aϕ-ing controlled by one’s deliberation. Rather, there is a single aim of reasoning which subsumes both aims already mentioned and links them: reasoning which characteristically results in aϕ-ing for reasons is reasoning aimed atone’s ϕ-ing in a way that is explained by the reasons which settle the issue. And this thought about what links the aim of determining what can be said in favour of one’sϕ-ing with the aim of determining what one does is supposed to tell in favour of (c):

To insist that the correct explanation of the agent’s doing A lies in her ‘mo- tivating reasons’ (her non-factive attitudes). . . One would have to think about one’s action from a standpoint that is neutral on whether one is getting things right in one’s practical reasoning. . . It may not beimpossiblefor an agent to adopt that kind of perspective even in the midst of deliberating and acting, but doing so would certainly go against the grain. It is hard to stop caring about the distinction between discovery and delusion while being engaged in a project of practical reasoning, the success of which turns on that distinction. (Ibid.:6-7)

In a word, we don’t pre-philosophically conceive of the episodes of reasoning which result in ourϕ-ing for reasons as episodes which aim to deliver usϕ-ings that are explained by the appearance of normative reasons, butϕ-ings that are explained by the normative

reasons themselves. That is the point of the thought about what reasoning aims at from the agent’s own point of view described above: the two aims described are united and subsumed by a more general aim, which is part of the subject’s own point of view on their reasoning, that one’sϕ-ing is explained by the normative reasons one has surmised during the course of the reasoning.

The Anscombean Argument has two steps. The first aims to establish that (c) generates a problem for the proponent of Williams’ Dictumw. The second aims to establish that

(c) is true. The problem, it seems to me, lies with the first step. The argument that (c) is incompatible with Williams’ Dictumw appeals to the idea that the proponent of it is

committed to saying that rationalising explanations never take normative reason-involving

explanantia. But, as we have seen, that is false: Davidson and Dancy can perfectly well agree that theexplanansin the good case is either a state of knowing or the fact that p. So even if we are pre-philosophically committed to the claim that normative reasons explain why we ϕ, that’s consistent with Williams’ Dictumw. It might even be consistent with

Williams’ Dictums, depending on how the particular Reductionist theory is developed.