The Griceian Homunculus

From O'Shaughnessy's obit, today:

"Second, action is a primitive aspect of the mind, not to be analysed in terms of belief and desire, or intention. Correlative with this is O'Shaughnessy's identification of the category of subintentional action. We fidget, we drum our fingers idly on the table, roll our tongues around our mouths, tap a foot to an imagined rhythm. These are all actions, but done with no purpose and without the direction of intention. Subintentional action is for O'Shaughnessy a perfect illustration of how an aspect of our minds is essentially bound up with our bodies. Where the doctrine that all action involves trying has been central to action theory over the last 50 years, O'Shaughnessy's highlighting of the existence of subintentional action has had a wider impact".

Grice would disagree.

I first learned about this via a little book, "Mental representation and meaning", by Cummings.

If O'Shaughnessy were right (about sub-intentional stuff), then Grice would be wrong!

If I postulate something sub- (sub-standard): sub-doxastic, sub-boulemaic, say -- then, I would need to postulate a homunculus (to do the work). And who needs them?!

My eye-opener on this has been Lombard/Stine, "Grice's intentions", Philosophical Studies.

Grice's intentions have been highly overrated, but overrate them anyday and keep underrating anything under!