Abstract

Margaret Gilbert has argued that an agreement is not exchange of promises, since no such exchange plays all the roles she claims are distinctive of agreements. After briefly discussing the notion of intention and the principles governing intentions, I argue that a certain type of exchange of intentions — in which one person forms a conditional intention to act if the other does, and the other forms an unconditional intention to act on the presumption that the first will do what they have said — plays all these roles, and so conclude that an agreement is in fact an exchange of intentions.