LUCAS XAVIER DA SILVEIRA DE CHIARO

This project will seek to critically analyze causalist conceptions of intentional action, especially those proposed by Donald Davidson and Alfred R. Mele. Such theories presuppose a central Cartesian self, which would host certain mental states (such as beliefs and desires, or intentions) that would be, in turn, the causes of intentional action. However, the project proposes an alternative approach, grounded in the ideas of Daniel Dennett and Wilfrid Sellars, which challenges this assumption.
Through Dennett's notion of "intentional stance" and Sellars' critique of the immediacy of so-called "sense data", whose development and study will be the focus of the work proposed here, we will argue that intentional action should be understood from an eminently descriptive perspective, as a form that can be applied to certain events, rather than as a causal relationship between certain individualized and immediately perceived mental states and an individual's external behaviour.
To this end, the study shall also incorporate, subsidiarily, the perspective of Elizabeth Anscombe, who emphasizes the descriptive aspect of intention, as a unifying and teleological principle.