Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe (; 18 March 1919 – 5 January 2001), usually cited as G. E. M. Anscombe or Elizabeth Anscombe, was a British
analytic philosopher. She wrote on the
philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its relationship with the body. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are addre ...
,
philosophy of action,
philosophical logic
Understood in a narrow sense, philosophical logic is the area of logic that studies the application of logical methods to philosophical problems, often in the form of extended logical systems like modal logic. Some theorists conceive philosophical ...
,
philosophy of language
In analytic philosophy, philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, intentionality, reference, ...
, and
ethics
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns m ...
. She was a prominent figure of
analytical Thomism, a Fellow of
Somerville College, Oxford
Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, Ir ...
and Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Cambridge
, mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts.
Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge.
, established =
, other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
.
Anscombe was a student of
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is considere ...
and became an authority on his work and edited and translated many books drawn from his writings, above all his ''
Philosophical Investigations''. Anscombe's 1958 article "
Modern Moral Philosophy
"Modern Moral Philosophy" is an article on moral philosophy by G. E. M. Anscombe, originally published in the journal ''Philosophy'', vol. 33, no. 124 (January 1958).
The article has influenced the emergence of contemporary virtue ethics, especial ...
" introduced the term ''
consequentialism'' into the language of analytic philosophy, and had a seminal influence on contemporary
virtue ethics
Virtue ethics (also aretaic ethics, from Greek ἀρετή arete_(moral_virtue).html"_;"title="'arete_(moral_virtue)">aretḗ''_is_an_approach_to_ethics_that_treats_the_concept_of_virtue.html" ;"title="arete_(moral_virtue)">aretḗ''.html" ;" ...
. Her monograph ''
Intention
Intentions are mental states in which the agent commits themselves to a course of action. Having the plan to visit the zoo tomorrow is an example of an intention. The action plan is the ''content'' of the intention while the commitment is the ''a ...
'' (1957) was described by
Donald Davidson as "the most important treatment of action since
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...
." The continuing philosophical interest in the concepts of
intention
Intentions are mental states in which the agent commits themselves to a course of action. Having the plan to visit the zoo tomorrow is an example of an intention. The action plan is the ''content'' of the intention while the commitment is the ''a ...
,
action, and
practical reasoning can be said to have taken its main impetus from this work.
Life
Anscombe was born to Gertrude Elizabeth (née Thomas) and Captain Allen Wells Anscombe, on 18 March 1919, in
Limerick
Limerick ( ; ga, Luimneach ) is a western city in Ireland situated within County Limerick. It is in the province of Munster and is located in the Mid-West which comprises part of the Southern Region. With a population of 94,192 at the 2016 ...
, Ireland, where her father had been stationed with the
Royal Welch Fusiliers during the
Irish War of Independence
The Irish War of Independence () or Anglo-Irish War was a guerrilla war fought in Ireland from 1919 to 1921 between the Irish Republican Army (IRA, the army of the Irish Republic) and British forces: the British Army, along with the quasi-mil ...
.
Both her mother and father were involved with education. Her mother was a headmistress and her father went on to head the science and engineering side at
Dulwich College.
Anscombe attended
Sydenham High School
Sydenham High School is an independent school for 4- to 18-year-old girls located in London, England. Sydenham High School was founded by the Girls’ Public Day School Trust in 1887. Since then, the original school roll of 20 pupils has grown ...
and then, in 1937, went on to read ''
literae humaniores'' ('Greats') at
St Hugh's College, Oxford
St Hugh's College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford. It is located on a site on St Margaret's Road, to the north of the city centre. It was founded in 1886 by Elizabeth Wordsworth as a women's college, and accepte ...
. She was awarded a Second Class in her
honour moderations
Honour Moderations (or ''Mods'') are a set of examinations at the University of Oxford at the end of the first part of some degree courses (e.g., Greats or '' Literae Humaniores'').
Honour Moderations candidates have a class awarded (hence the ' ...
in 1939 and (albeit it with reservations on the part of her Ancient History examiners
) a
First
First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1).
First or 1st may also refer to:
*World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement
Arts and media Music
* 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...
in her degree finals in 1941.
While still at Sydenham High School, Anscombe converted to the
Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
. During her first year at St Hugh's she was received into the church, and was a practising Catholic thereafter.
In 1941 she married
Peter Geach
Peter Thomas Geach (29 March 1916 – 21 December 2013) was a British philosopher who was Professor of Logic at the University of Leeds. His areas of interest were philosophical logic, ethics, history of philosophy, philosophy of religion and t ...
. Like her, Geach was a Catholic convert who became a student of Wittgenstein and a distinguished academic philosopher. Together they had three sons and four daughters.
After graduating from Oxford, Anscombe was awarded a
research fellowship
A research fellow is an academic research position at a university or a similar research institution, usually for academic staff or faculty members. A research fellow may act either as an independent investigator or under the supervision of a pr ...
for
postgraduate study at
Newnham College, Cambridge
Newnham College is a women's Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge.
The college was founded in 1871 by a group organising Lectures for Ladies, members of which included philosopher Henry Sid ...
, from 1942 to 1945.
Her purpose was to attend
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is considere ...
's lectures. Her interest in Wittgenstein's philosophy arose from reading the ''
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
The ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'' (widely abbreviated and cited as TLP) is a book-length philosophical work by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein which deals with the relationship between language and reality and aims to define the ...
'' as an undergraduate. She claimed to have conceived the idea of studying with Wittgenstein as soon as she opened the book in
Blackwell's
Blackwell UK, also known as Blackwell's and Blackwell Group, is a British academic book retailer and library supply service owned by Waterstones. It was founded in 1879 by Benjamin Henry Blackwell, after whom the chain is named, on Broad Street, ...
and read section 5.53, "Identity of object I express by identity of sign, and not by using a sign for identity. Difference of objects I express by difference of signs." She became an enthusiastic student, feeling that Wittgenstein's therapeutic method helped to free her from philosophical difficulties in ways that her training in traditional systematic philosophy could not. As she wrote:
After her fellowship at Cambridge ended, she was awarded a research fellowship at
Somerville College, Oxford
Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, Ir ...
,
but during the academic year of 1946/47, she continued to travel to Cambridge once a week to attend tutorials with Wittgenstein that were devoted mainly to the
philosophy of religion
Philosophy of religion is "the philosophical examination of the central themes and concepts involved in religious traditions". Philosophical discussions on such topics date from ancient times, and appear in the earliest known texts concerning ph ...
. She became one of Wittgenstein's favourite students and one of his closest friends.
Wittgenstein affectionately addressed her by the pet name "old man" – she being (according to
Ray Monk
Ray Monk (born 15 February 1957) is a British biographer who is renowned for his biographies of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, and J. Robert Oppenheimer. He is emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Southampton, where he ...
) "an exception to his general dislike of academic women".
His confidence in Anscombe's understanding of his perspective is shown by his choice of her as translator of his ''
Philosophical Investigations'' (for which purpose he arranged for her to spend some time in Vienna to improve her German
).
Anscombe visited Wittgenstein many times after he left Cambridge in 1947, and travelled to Cambridge in April 1951 to visit him on his death bed. Wittgenstein named her, along with
Rush Rhees
Rush Rhees (; 19 March 1905 – 22 May 1989) was an American philosopher. He is principally known as a student, friend, and literary executor of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. With G. E. M. Anscombe he was co-editor of Wittgenstein's post ...
and
Georg Henrik von Wright, as his
literary executor
The literary estate of a deceased author consists mainly of the copyright and other intellectual property rights of published works, including film, translation rights, original manuscripts of published work, unpublished or partially completed wo ...
.
After his death in 1951 she was responsible for editing, translating, and publishing many of Wittgenstein's manuscripts and notebooks.
Anscombe did not avoid controversy. As an undergraduate in 1939 she had publicly criticised Britain's entry into the Second World War. And, in 1956, while a research fellow, she unsuccessfully protested against Oxford granting an honorary degree to
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...
, whom she denounced as a mass murderer for his use of
atomic bombs against
Hiroshima
is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui h ...
and
Nagasaki
is the capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan.
It became the sole port used for trade with the Portuguese and Dutch during the 16th through 19th centuries. The Hidden Christian Sites in the ...
.
She would further publicise her position in a (sometimes erroneously dated) pamphlet privately printed soon after Truman's nomination for the degree was approved. In the same she said she "should fear to go" to the
Encaenia (the degree conferral ceremony) "in case God's patience suddenly ends." She would also court controversy with some of her colleagues by defending the Catholic Church's opposition to
contraception
Birth control, also known as contraception, anticonception, and fertility control, is the use of methods or devices to prevent unwanted pregnancy. Birth control has been used since ancient times, but effective and safe methods of birth contr ...
.
Later in life, she would be arrested protesting outside an abortion clinic, after abortion had been legalised in
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...
(albeit with restrictions).
Having remained at Somerville College since 1946, Anscombe was elected Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge in 1970, where she served until her retirement in 1986. She was elected a
fellow of the British Academy
Fellowship of the British Academy (FBA) is an award granted by the British Academy to leading academics for their distinction in the humanities and social sciences. The categories are:
# Fellows – scholars resident in the United Kingdom
# C ...
in 1967, and a Foreign Honorary Member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...
in 1979.
In her later years, Anscombe suffered from heart disease, and was nearly killed in a car crash in 1996. She never fully recovered and she spent her last years in the care of her family in Cambridge.
She died peacefully on 5 January 2001, aged 81, with her husband and four of their seven children at her hospital bedside just after praying the
Sorrowful Mysteries
The Rosary (; la, , in the sense of "crown of roses" or "garland of roses"), also known as the Dominican Rosary, or simply the Rosary, refers to a set of prayers used primarily in the Catholic Church, and to the physical string of knots or b ...
of the
rosary
The Rosary (; la, , in the sense of "crown of roses" or "garland of roses"), also known as the Dominican Rosary, or simply the Rosary, refers to a set of prayers used primarily in the Catholic Church, and to the physical string of knots or b ...
.
Anscombe's "last intentional act was kissing Peter Geach," her husband of sixty years.
She had not said where she was to be buried and the family chose what is now the
Ascension Parish burial ground, as it was the nearest one to their home. There was some difficulty in getting a full-size plot, where she could be buried without being cremated first. This was not possible in the new part of the cemetery, so the site finally obtained – after negotiation with Ely diocesan authorities – was that of an old grave, corner-to-corner with the plot where Wittgenstein had been buried half a century before.
Debate with C. S. Lewis
As a young philosophy don, Anscombe acquired a reputation as a formidable debater. In 1948, she presented a paper at a meeting of Oxford's
Socratic Club
The Oxford Socratic Club was a student club that met from 1942 to 1954 dedicated to providing an open forum for the discussion of the intellectual difficulties connected with religion and with Christianity in particular.
The club was formed in De ...
in which she disputed
C. S. Lewis's argument that
naturalism was self-refuting (found in the third chapter of the original publication of his book ''
Miracles''). Some associates of Lewis, primarily
George Sayer
George Sydney Benedict Sayer (1 June 1914 – 20 October 2005) was a teacher at Malvern College, trustee of the Lewis estate and probably best known for his biography of the author C. S. Lewis. and
Derek Brewer, have remarked that Lewis lost the subsequent debate on her paper and that this loss was so humiliating that he abandoned theological argument and turned entirely to devotional writing and children's literature. This is a claim disputed by
Walter Hooper
Walter McGehee Hooper (March 27, 1931December 7, 2020) was an American writer and literary advisor of the estate of C.S. Lewis. He was a literary trustee for Owen Barfield from December 1997 to October 2006.
Life
Hooper was born in Reidsville, No ...
and Anscombe's impression of the effect upon Lewis was somewhat different:
As a result of the debate, Lewis substantially rewrote chapter 3 of ''Miracles'' for the 1960 paperback edition.
Work
On Wittgenstein
Some of Anscombe's most frequently cited works are translations, editions, and expositions of the work of her teacher Ludwig Wittgenstein, including an influential exegesis of Wittgenstein's 1921 book, the ''
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
The ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'' (widely abbreviated and cited as TLP) is a book-length philosophical work by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein which deals with the relationship between language and reality and aims to define the ...
''. This brought to the fore the importance of
Gottlob Frege
Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (; ; 8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925) was a German philosopher, logician, and mathematician. He was a mathematics professor at the University of Jena, and is understood by many to be the father of analytic phil ...
for Wittgenstein's thought and, partly on that basis, attacked
"positivist" interpretations of the work. She co-edited his posthumous second book, ''
Philosophische Untersuchungen/Philosophical Investigations'' (1953) with
Rush Rhees
Rush Rhees (; 19 March 1905 – 22 May 1989) was an American philosopher. He is principally known as a student, friend, and literary executor of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. With G. E. M. Anscombe he was co-editor of Wittgenstein's post ...
. Her English translation of the book appeared simultaneously and remains standard. She went on to edit or co-edit several volumes of selections from his notebooks, (co-)translating many important works like ''Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics'' (1956) and Wittgenstein's "sustained treatment" of
G. E. Moore
George Edward Moore (4 November 1873 – 24 October 1958) was an English philosopher, who with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and earlier Gottlob Frege was among the founders of analytic philosophy. He and Russell led the turn from ideal ...
's epistemology, ''On Certainty'' (1969).
In 1978, Anscombe was awarded the
Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class
The Austrian Decoration for Science and Art (german: Österreichisches Ehrenzeichen für Wissenschaft und Kunst) is a state decoration of the Republic of Austria and forms part of the Austrian national honours system.
History
The "Austrian D ...
for her work on Wittgenstein.
''Intention''
Her most important work is the monograph ''
Intention
Intentions are mental states in which the agent commits themselves to a course of action. Having the plan to visit the zoo tomorrow is an example of an intention. The action plan is the ''content'' of the intention while the commitment is the ''a ...
'' (1957). Three volumes of collected papers were published in 1981: ''From Parmenides to Wittgenstein''; ''Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind''; and ''Ethics, Religion and Politics''. Another collection, ''Human Life, Action and Ethics'' appeared posthumously in 2005.
The aim of ''Intention'' (1957) was to make plain the character of human action and will. Anscombe approaches the matter through the concept of ''
intention
Intentions are mental states in which the agent commits themselves to a course of action. Having the plan to visit the zoo tomorrow is an example of an intention. The action plan is the ''content'' of the intention while the commitment is the ''a ...
'', which, as she notes, has three modes of appearance in our language:
She suggests that a true account must somehow connect these three uses of the concept, though later students of intention have sometimes denied this, and disputed some of the things she presupposes under the first and third headings. It is clear though that it is the second that is crucial to her main purpose, which is to comprehend the way in which human thought and understanding and conceptualisation relate to the "events in a man's history", or the goings on to which he is subject.
Rather than attempt to define intentions in abstraction from
actions
Action may refer to:
* Action (narrative), a literary mode
* Action fiction, a type of genre fiction
* Action game, a genre of video game
Film
* Action film, a genre of film
* ''Action'' (1921 film), a film by John Ford
* ''Action'' (1980 fil ...
, thus taking the third heading first, Anscombe begins with the concept of an intentional action. This soon connected with the second heading. She says that what is up with a human being is an intentional action if the question "Why", taken in a certain sense (and evidently conceived as addressed to him), has application. An agent can answer the "why" question by giving a reason or purpose for her action. "To do Y" or "because I want to do Y" would be typical answers to this sort of "why?"; though they are not the only ones, they are crucial to the constitution of the phenomenon as a typical phenomenon of human life. The agent's answer helps supply the
descriptions under which the action is intentional. Anscombe was the first to clearly spell out that actions are intentional under some descriptions and not others. In her famous example, a man's action (which we might observe as consisting in moving an arm up and down while holding a handle) may be intentional under the description "pumping water" but not under other descriptions such as "contracting these muscles", "tapping out this rhythm", and so on. This approach to action influenced Donald Davidson's theory, despite the fact that Davidson went on to argue for a causal theory of action that Anscombe never accepted.
''Intention'' (1957) is also the classic source for the idea that there is a difference in "
direction of fit" between cognitive states like
belief
A belief is an attitude that something is the case, or that some proposition is true. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false. To believe something is to take i ...
s and
conative states like
desire
Desires are states of mind that are expressed by terms like "wanting", "wishing", "longing" or "craving". A great variety of features is commonly associated with desires. They are seen as propositional attitudes towards conceivable states of aff ...
. (A theme later taken up and discussed by
John Searle
John Rogers Searle (; born July 31, 1932) is an American philosopher widely noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. He began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1959, and was Willis S. and Mario ...
.) Cognitive states describe the world and are causally derived from the facts or objects they depict. Conative states do not describe the world, but aim to bring something about in the world. Anscombe used the example of a shopping list to illustrate the difference. The list can be a straightforward observational report of what is actually bought (thereby acting like a cognitive state), or it can function as a conative state such as a command or desire, dictating what the agent should buy. If the agent fails to buy what is listed, we do not say that the list is untrue or incorrect; we say that the mistake is in the action, not the desire. According to Anscombe, this difference in direction of fit is a major difference between speculative knowledge (theoretical, empirical knowledge) and practical knowledge (knowledge of actions and morals). Whereas "speculative knowledge" is "derived from the objects known", practical knowledge is – in a phrase Anscombe lifts from Aquinas – "the cause of what it understands".
Ethics
Anscombe made great contributions to ethics as well as metaphysics. She is credited with having coined the term "
consequentialism". In her 1958 essay "
Modern Moral Philosophy
"Modern Moral Philosophy" is an article on moral philosophy by G. E. M. Anscombe, originally published in the journal ''Philosophy'', vol. 33, no. 124 (January 1958).
The article has influenced the emergence of contemporary virtue ethics, especial ...
", Anscombe wrote:
"Modern Moral Philosophy" is credited with reviving interest in and study of
virtue ethics
Virtue ethics (also aretaic ethics, from Greek ἀρετή arete_(moral_virtue).html"_;"title="'arete_(moral_virtue)">aretḗ''_is_an_approach_to_ethics_that_treats_the_concept_of_virtue.html" ;"title="arete_(moral_virtue)">aretḗ''.html" ;" ...
in Western academic philosophy.
The Anscombe Bioethics Centre in Oxford is named after her, and conducts bioethical research in the Catholic tradition.
Brute and institutional facts
Anscombe also introduced the idea of a set of facts being 'brute relative to' some fact. When a set of facts xyz stands in this relation to a fact A, they are a subset out of a range some subset among which holds if A holds. Thus if A is the fact that I have paid for something, the brute facts might be that I have handed him a cheque for a sum which he has named as the price for the goods, saying that this is the payment, or that I gave him some cash at the time that he gave me the goods. There tends, according to Anscombe, to be an institutional context which gives its point to the description 'A', but of which 'A' is not itself a description: that I have given someone a shilling is not a description of the institution of money or of the currency of the country. According to her, no brute facts ''xyz'' can generally be said to entail the fact ''A'' relative to which they are 'brute' except with the proviso "under normal circumstances", for "one cannot mention all the things that were not the case, which would have made a difference if they had been." A set of facts xyz ... may be brute relative to a fact A which itself is one of a set of facts ABC ... which is brute relative to some further fact W. Thus Anscombe's account is not of a distinct class of facts, to be distinguished from another class, 'institutional facts': the essential relation is that of a set of facts being 'brute relative to' some fact. Following Anscombe,
John Searle
John Rogers Searle (; born July 31, 1932) is an American philosopher widely noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. He began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1959, and was Willis S. and Mario ...
derived another conception of 'brute facts' as non-mental facts to play the foundational role and generate similar hierarchies in his philosophical account of
speech act
In the philosophy of language and linguistics, speech act is something expressed by an individual that not only presents information but performs an action as well. For example, the phrase "I would like the kimchi; could you please pass it to me?" ...
s and
institution
Institutions are humanly devised structures of rules and norms that shape and constrain individual behavior. All definitions of institutions generally entail that there is a level of persistence and continuity. Laws, rules, social conventions a ...
al reality.
First person
Her paper "The First Person"
buttressed remarks by Wittgenstein (in his Lectures on "Private Experience") arguing for the now-notorious conclusion that the first-person pronoun, "I", does not refer to anything (not, e.g., to the speaker) because of its immunity from reference failure. Having shown by counter-example that 'I' does not refer to the body, Anscombe objected to the implied Cartesianism of its referring at all. Few people accept the conclusion – though the position was later adopted in a more radical form by
David Lewis – but the paper was an important contribution to work on
indexicals and self-consciousness that has been carried on by philosophers as varied as
John Perry,
Peter Strawson,
David Kaplan,
Gareth Evans,
John McDowell
John Henry McDowell, FBA (born 7 March 1942) is a South African philosopher, formerly a fellow of University College, Oxford, and now university professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Although he has written on metaphysics, epistemology, ...
, and
Sebastian Rödl.
Causality
In her article, “Causality and Determination”,
[Anscombe, G.E.M. “Causality and Determination”. ''Metaphysics'', edited by Jaewon Kim, Daniel Z. Korman and Ernest Sosa, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, pp. 386-396.] regarding causality Anscombe defends two main ideas: that causal relations are perceivable, and that causation does not require a necessary connection and a universal generalization linking cause and effect. Regarding her idea that causal relations are perceivable, she believes that we perceive the causal relations between objects and events. This view is contrary to
Hume’s belief, who believed that our knowledge and understanding of the world comes from experience, but that we cannot directly perceive the causal relations between objects and events.
In defending her idea that causal relations are perceivable, Anscombe poses a question “How did we come by our primary knowledge of causality?”.
She proposes two answers to this question:
# By “learning to speak, we learned the linguistic representation and application of a host of causal concepts”
# By observing that some action(s) caused a certain event
In proposing her first answer, that by “learning to speak, we learned the linguistic representation and application of a host of causal concepts”, Anscombe thinks that by learning to speak we already have a linguistic representation of certain causal concepts and she gives an example of transitive verbs, such as scrape, push, carry, knock over.
Example: I knocked over a vase of flowers.
In proposing her second answer, that by observing some actions we can see causation, Anscombe thinks that we cannot ignore the fact that certain actions, which produced a certain event are possible to observe.
Example: a cat spilled milk
The second idea that Anscombe defends in the article “Causality and Determination”
is that causation requires neither a necessary connection nor a universal generalization linking cause and effect.
Anscombe thinks that it is assumed that causality is some kind of necessary connection,
which is not true. This idea is found in
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...
’s ''Metaphysics'' and also in
Spinoza’s writing, and according to these views, the connection between cause and effect is some sort of logical connection. Empiricists (such as
Hume) did not believe that causation is a necessary connection between events, but actually that these necessary connections are found in the human mind by the experience of constant conjunction.
Constant conjunction is an observation that two events go together: if there are two events such as A and B, and it is repeatedly observed that an event of type A is being followed by an event of type B, by observation it is possible to conclude that these two events go together. Empiricists believed that this necessary connection of two events going together does not exist, but our minds think that there is.
Kant disagreed with
Hume regarding causality and necessity and
Kant believed that the concepts of both causality and necessity arise from the operations of our understanding (they arise entirely a priori as pure concepts, not from experience).
Anscombe does not believe that causation is identified with necessitation or with universal generalization. Regarding necessitation, she thinks that we can know that one thing caused another, without knowing any true law involving a necessary connection between events. Regarding universal generalization, Anscombe believes that making a large generalization has its dangers.
Example: “Always, given an A, a B follows”
Anscombe thinks that this is not always true and that each case is different.
Views of her work
The philosopher
Candace Vogler
Candace A. Vogler is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago, and a specialist in moral philosophy, philosophy of action, and G. E. M. Anscombe.
Education and career
Vogler received her PhD in philosophy from the University of Pitts ...
says that Anscombe's "strength" is that "'when she is writing for
Catholic audience, she presumes they share certain fundamental beliefs,' but she is equally willing to write for people who do not share her assumptions." In 2010, philosopher
Roger Scruton wrote that Anscombe was "perhaps the last great philosopher writing in English".
Mary Warnock
Helen Mary Warnock, Baroness Warnock, (née Wilson; 14 April 1924 – 20 March 2019) was an English philosopher of morality, education, and mind, and a writer on existentialism. She is best known for chairing an inquiry whose report formed the ...
described her as "the undoubted giant among women philosophers"
while
John Haldane said she "certainly has a good claim to be the greatest woman philosopher of whom we know".
Bibliography
Books
*
*
* ''Three Philosophers''. With
P. T. Geach. 1961.
*
*
*
*
*
* ''Human Life, Action and Ethics''. Edited by Mary Geach; Luke Gormally. St. Andrews Studies in Philosophy and Public Affairs. 4. Exeter, England: Imprint Academic. 2005.
* ' (in Spanish). Edited by J. M. Torralba; J. Nubiola. Pamplona, Spain: Ediciones de la Universidad de Navarra S.A. 2005. .
* ''Faith in a Hard Ground: Essays on Religion, Philosophy and Ethics''. Edited by Mary Geach; Luke Gormally. St. Andrews Studies in Philosophy and Public Affairs. 11. Exeter, England: Imprint Academic. 2008.
* ''
From Plato to Wittgenstein''. Edited by Mary Geach; Luke Gormally. St. Andrews Studies in Philosophy and Public Affairs. 18. Exeter, England: Imprint Academic. 2011.
Papers
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* ''XIV.—''
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Festschriften
*
References
Citations
Sources
* Anscombe (1957).
Further reading
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External links
*
Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe, 1919–2001'
Teichman, Jenny (2003)''.
Proceedings of The British Academy'' 115, p. 31-50
* ''Great Thinkers:
Jane Heal
Barbara Jane Heal (''née'' Kneale, born 21 October 1946) is a British philosopher, and since 2012, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge.
Biography
Heal is daughter of a pair of notable Oxford philosophers William Calv ...
FB
on Elizabeth Anscombe FBA' British Academy blog podcast with Rachael Wiseman (13 May 2019)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Anscombe, G. E. M.
1919 births
2001 deaths
20th-century British philosophers
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