Abstract

This chapter argues that intention-in-action plays a role in providing us with a distinctive form of knowledge of what we are doing when we perform our intended actions. The chapter considers how this account of intention-in-action bears on an account of our knowledge of our own mental actions and how this, in turn bears, on an account of our knowledge of what we are doing when we are consciously thinking. The chapter considers some of O’Shaughnessy's claims about the role of the ‘mental will’ in an account of the state of wakeful consciousness in the self-conscious subject – in particular, some claims he makes about the differences between dreaming and wakeful states of consciousness. In light of this discussion, it is argued that the avenue to self-knowledge afforded by intention-in-action plays a central and significant role in the ordinary, awake, conscious mental life of a self-conscious subject.