Doing what one meant to do

Barrie Falk

pp. 379-399

in: Synthese 98 (3), 1994.

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.

Cited authors

Wittgenstein Ludwig