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On the Normativity of Intentions

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Abstract

Suppose you intend now to φ at some future time t. However, when t has come you do not φ. Something has gone wrong. This failing is not just a causal but also a normative failing. This raises the question how to characterize this failing. I discuss three alternative views. On the first view, the fact that you do not execute your intention to φ is blameworthy only if the balance of reasons pointed to φ-ing. The fact that you intended to φ does not add to the reasons for φ-ing at t. On the second view, the fact that you do not execute your intention to φ is blameworthy because you violate a requirement of rationality. Both these views have in common that they deny that intending to φ at t creates a reason to φ at t. The third alternative, the one I defend, claims that you often create reasons to φ by intending to φ.

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Notes

  1. Bratman (1987, pp. 24–27).

  2. Raz (2005), Brunero (2007), Setiya (2007).

  3. Raz (2005).

  4. Scanlon (1998, p. 18). This does not really help to understand what a reason is as long as we don’t have an account of what a ‘consideration’ is in this context or what it means for such a thing to ‘count in favor of φ-ing’. There are various theoretical positions possible here. There are so-called primitivists about reasons who think that ‘reason’ is a basic concept that defies further analysis (e.g., Scanlon 1998). Others define reasons in terms of the relation they have towards the conclusion of reasoning. For example, (Broome 2004) characterizes the relation ‘… is a reason to …’ as an explanatory one: a reason to φ is (part of) an explanation why one should φ. Kearns and Star (2008) think of this relation as an evidentiary one: a reason to φ is evidence that one should φ. Finally, Schroeter and Schroeter (2009) characterize reasons in terms of the functional relations these bear to the concepts of ‘ought’, ‘right’ and other such normative concepts. In what follows, I do not rely on the accuracy of any of these views.

  5. Many authors make a distinction between normative reasons and motivating reasons (e.g., Smith 1987). The conditions I suggest here for successful deliberation amount to saying that if deliberation is successful then the agent’s motivating reasons are also her normative reasons. Note that this need not be the only condition on the success of a piece of deliberation.

  6. That is, I might be off the hook for not making the phone call, however, it is an open question as to whether my unawareness is a failure.

  7. For similar thoughts, see Holton (2009).

  8. There are more circumstances in which a blameworthy failure of the execution of one’s intention occurs. One could forget one’s decision or one could be weak willed in the sense identified by Holton (1999). In all those cases there is a blameworthy failing that may or may not be reducible to the types of failures mentioned here.

  9. Bratman (1987, 1999, 2007).

  10. Actually, this is too quick. In deliberation we sometimes accept things as ‘given’ even though we do not actually believe them. For example, suppose I have the goal of not getting wet in the rain. Then, in deciding whether to bring an umbrella or put on a raincoat, I take it as given that it will rain and then try to figure out what is better, an umbrella in the rain or a raincoat in the rain. However, I might not be sure that it actually will rain. In the context of my deliberation whether to bring an umbrella or a raincoat, I accept it will rain. My attitude is not belief in the sense of a ‘degrees-of-confidence’ attitude. Neither is it the attitude of ‘full belief’. Instead these attitudes are so-called ‘acceptances’: one takes certain things as ‘given’ in the context of deliberation and decides accordingly. On the other hand, one makes decisions against a background of beliefs about the world. These beliefs are beliefs in both the degrees-of-confidence sense and the full sense—but not the acceptance sense. For example, in deciding whether or not to make that phone call, I do believe that the colleague I try to reach works at the same university as I do. See also, Cohen (1989, 1992), Bratman (1992).

  11. It is remarkably difficult to specify this constraint correctly, compare, for example, Bratman (1981), Broome (1999, 2007), Schroeder (2009).

  12. Commitment, here, is intended in a normative sense. When Ulysses binds himself to the mast so as not to give into the temptation of the Sirens, he is not committed in this sense. However, if Ulysses intends not to give in to the Sirens even though he is tempted, he is committed. See Verbeek (2007a) for a more precise analysis of commitments in this normative sense.

  13. The term ‘myth theory’ in this connection is due to Bratman (2009, 2011). Defenders of myth theory are Raz (2005), Kolodny (2005).

  14. I prefer the expression ‘pro toto’ over ‘all things considered’ that is popular in the literature, because it is not the consideration of reasons that is important but rather the ‘weight’ of all reasons (assuming that the metaphor of ‘weight’ is attractive). ‘All things considered’ suggests that the difference with a pro tanto reason is epistemic, whereas ‘pro toto’ rightly suggests that the difference is metaphysical.

  15. ‘Picking’ as opposed to ‘choosing’ in the way characterized by Ullmann-Margalit and Morgenbesser (1977).

  16. See also Kolodny (2011) for a more complicated answer to the worry.

  17. Raz (2005). Similarly, see Kolodny (2011).

  18. I take this to be the implication of Raz’ ‘facilitative principle’ that roughly says that if there is a reason to pursue an end, there is a reason to pursue the means, and his argument how the ends of the agent can make some reasons normatively salient and others not (Raz 2005).

  19. There are other answers as well, having to do with displaying deliberative virtues, such as resoluteness, and one’s effectiveness as an agent. In what follows I ignore these but my objections to the cost-benefit answer above carry over to this type of answers.

  20. This may be too fast. In the original formulation of the bootstrapping objection, intentions do not provide reasons. If the type of cost-benefit argument mentioned above justifies the inertia of intentions, then this is a case of bootstrapping. Alternatively, one may argue that bootstrapping occurs when the intention to φ is taken as a reason to φ (and not something else). In that case, this would not be a case of bootstrapping, because the inertia of the intention to φ is not justified by the intention to φ, but by the cost-benefit ratio of reconsideration. However, since the change of the cost-benefit ratio of considering whether to φ is due to the formation of the intention to φ, this amounts to some kind of indirect bootstrapping which is alien to the spirit, if not the letter, of myth theory.

  21. However, it is not clear exactly how to distinguish the two (Schroeder 2008, Lord 2010).

  22. Broome (1999, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009).

  23. However, there may be reasons to comply with requirements or to violate them (Broome 2005).

  24. Broome (1999, p. 403).

  25. For example, Schroeder (2004), Bratman (2007), Kolodny (2007), Reisner (2009), Lord (2010), Way (2010), Brunero (2012).

  26. Harman (1986), Velleman (1989), Setiya (2007) defend the view that these requirements are requirements of theoretical reason; Brunero (2009), Bratman (2011) argue against such ‘cognitivism’; Broome (2009), finally, argues that neither of these extremes is plausible.

  27. I am assuming here that it is straightforward what exactly the requirement of means-end coherence is. However, that is not the case. Poisoning my uncle is but one of the means to avail myself of the inheritance (i.e., it is at best sufficient, not necessary) and things get really tricky once we start thinking of means that are neither necessary nor sufficient (yet causally relevant) for achieving the end.

  28. For a version of this objection, see Setiya (2007). A reply to this objection is in Bratman (2009).

  29. This is, after all, the reason that Broome (2007) and others argue that these requirements are wide-scope.

  30. Foot (1972), Joyce (2006).

  31. E.g., Kolodny (2005).

  32. E.g., Broome (2005).

  33. E.g., Bratman (2009), Holton (2009).

  34. Broome (2005), Bratman (2011). For a defense see Holton (2009).

  35. E.g., Velleman (1992), Bratman (2009). But see Enoch (2006).

  36. Regardless which of these two views one accepts and regardless of how one answers these particular objections, there is the further problem that these considerations are not those one would expect if one takes the distinctions between reasons and requirements on the one hand and narrow- and wide scope on the other seriously. If one insists that the normative pressure of intentions is really normative and at the same time avail oneself of the fact that wide-scoped demands cannot be detached, one would expect that a two-flavor theory would not look for a wide-scope requirement but for a wide-scoped reason of the form that there is a reason to see to it that if one intends the end, one pursue the necessary means.

  37. See also Schroeder (2007).

  38. In what follows, I rely on Verbeek (2007b). A similar, but not identical, view has been developed by den Hartogh (2004). Another version of this idea of authority exercised over oneself is in recent work by Ruth Chang, e.g., Chang (2009).

  39. The notion of authority that follows is roughly that of Joseph Raz’ ‘service conception of authority’ Raz (1985, 1986, 2006), except that it is not committed to the idea that authority comes with exclusionary reasons.

  40. Note that I am using these terms in a technical meaning. The distinction is of course well known from Kant’s distinction between ‘acting in conformity with duty’ and ‘acting out of duty’ (Kant 1785).

  41. Raz (1986).

  42. I abstract here from some of the other ways in which law could be established in some jurisdictions, such as existing conventions or certain types of precedent where no explicit act of parliament is necessary to give it force of law.

  43. Assuming, of course, that the law has authority. This is not a trivial assumption. For a critical discussion, see Simmons (1979).

  44. See for example, Broome (2008), Kearns and Star (2008).

  45. Verbeek (2007a).

  46. Bratman (1987).

  47. den Hartogh (2004).

  48. Or any other fair way—i.e., any way that gives equal weight to A and B—to break the tie between A and B in a fair manner.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank John Broome, Markus Schlosser and one anonymous referee, as well as the participants of the First Topoi Conference on ‘Intentions: philosophical and empirical issues’ in Rome, 28–30 November 2012, for their valuable comments. I have benefitted greatly from conversations with Michael Bratman, John Broome, Ruth Chang, and Nic Southwood about these issues over the years.

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    Bruno Verbeek

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Verbeek, B. On the Normativity of Intentions. Topoi 33, 87–101 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-013-9221-8

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