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Doing what one meant to do

Abstract

When I engage in some routine activity, it will usually be the case that I mean or intend the present move to be followed by others. What does ‘meaning’ the later moves consist in? How do I know, when I come to perform them, that they were what I meant? Problems familiar from Wittgenstein's and Kripke's discussions of linguistic meaning arise here. Normally, I will not think of the later moves. But, even if I do, there are reasons to deny that thinking of them can constitute what it is to mean to perform them. I argue that the problem can be solved, in the case of routine action, by the notion that our behavioural routines are guided by what I callmodest agent memory. It will help explain both how wecan have future moves ‘in mind’ and how we can be in a position to avow the fact.

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Falk, B. Doing what one meant to do. Synthese 98, 379–399 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01063926

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01063926

Keywords

  • Routine Action
  • Linguistic Meaning
  • Future Move
  • Present Move
  • Behavioural Routine