Grice e Zubiena

 It seems that a degree of analogy between intending and believing has to be admitted; likewise the presence of a factual commitment in the case of an expression of intention. We can now use the term 'acceptance to express a generic concept applying both to cases of intention and to cases of belief. He who intends to do A and he who believes that he will do A can both be said to accept (or to accept it as being the case) that he will do A. We could now attempt to renovate the three-pronged analysis discussed in section I, replacing references in that analysis to being sure that one will do A by references to accepting that one will do A; we might reasonably hope thereby to escape the objections raised in section I, since these objections seemingly centred on special features of the notions of certainty and belief which would not attach to the generic notion of acceptance. Hope that the renovated analysis will enable us to meet the sceptic will not immediately be realized, for the sceptic can still ask (a) why some cases of acceptance should be specially dispensed from the need for evidential backing, and (b) if certain cases are exempt from evidential justification but not from justification, what sort of justification is here required.

Some progress might be achieved by adopting a different analysis of intention in terms of acceptance. We might suggest that 'X intends to do A' is very roughly equivalent to the conjunction of

(I) X accepts that he will do A

and (2) X accepts that his doing A will result from (the effect of) his acceptance that he will do A.

The idea is that when a case of acceptance is also a case of belief, the accepter does not regard his acceptance as contributing towards the realization of the state of affairs the futureexistence of which he accepts; whereas when a case of acceptance is not a case of belief but a case of intention, he does regard the acceptance as so contributing.

Such an analysis clearly enables us to deal with the sceptic with regard to his question (a), namely why some cases of acceptance (those which are cases of intention) should be specially exempt from the need for evidential backing. For if my going to London is to depend causally on my acceptance that I shall go, the possession of satisfactory evidence that I shall go will involve possession of the information that I accept that shall go. Obviously, then, I cannot (though others can) come to accept that I shall go on the basis of satisfactory evidence; for to have such evidence I should have already to have accepted that I shall go. I cannot decide whether or not to accept that I shall go on the strength of evidence which includes as a datum that I do accept that I shall go. But we are still unable to deal with the sceptic as regards question (b), namely what sort of justification is available for those cases of acceptance which require non-evidential justification even though they involve a factual commitment. Though it is clear that, on this analysis, one must not expect the intender to rely on evidence for his statement of what he will in fact do, we have not provided any account of the nature of the non-evidential considerations which may be adduced to justify such a statement, nor (a fortiori) of the reasons why such considerations might legitimately be thought to succeed in justifying such a statement.