ABSTRACT
In her pioneering study, Intention, Anscombe drew attention to a group of problems that are raised by thinking of human actions as doings explained by their doers’ choices. All of them spring from the paradox that actions seem to be both chosen and not chosen. Oedipus’ killing of Laius, already used to illustrate how the same action can have numerous true definite descriptions, is the classic example. It was both chosen by Oedipus (it is identical with his striking the insolent stranger he met at the crossroads of Phocis, and he chose that), and yet not chosen by him (it is identical with the killing of his father, and he did not choose that). Anscombe resolved the paradox by asserting that an action is intended only ‘under a description’, which implies, since a choice is the same thing as a determinate intention, that it can be chosen only ‘under a description’.
