Intentions

The universe is enormous, perhaps unimaginably so. In comparison, we are very small. Does this suggest that humanity has little if any cosmic significance? And if we don’t matter, should that matter to us? Blaise Pascal, Frank Ramsey, Bertrand Russell, Susan Wolf, Harry Frankfurt, Stephen Hawking, and others have offered insightful answers to those questions. For example, Pascal and Ramsey emphasize that whereas the stars (in all their enormity) cannot think, human beings can. Through an exploration of some features of (...) awe and its positive effects on us, I offer a novel way of answering the second question: even if we don’t matter, we, unlike the stars, naturally benefit from observing our own smallness. I explore implications for accounts of the absurdity of human life. Life might be absurd. But I give reasons to think that life isn’t absurd in the ways some such as Nagel and Camus suggest. Finally, I connect non-symmetric awe with Buddhist insights to strengthen a recent and more positive account of how to find meaning in life. (shrink)

En quoi consiste l’explication des actions humaines? Au sein de la philosophie analytique, la réponse standard à cette question, que les travaux de Davidson ont largement contribué à façonner, est la conception causaliste : expliquer une action consiste à mentionner la raison pour laquelle l’agent l’a accomplie, conçue comme la combinaison particulière d’états mentaux (désir et croyance) dont l’occurrence est la cause des mouvements corporels constituant l’action. En identifiant les raisons à des causes, cette conception a fait ressurgir les questions (...) métaphysiques modernes touchant la causalité mentale, la nature de l’esprit et sa relation au monde physique. Mais les difficultés auxquelles donne lieu le causalisme ne justifient-elles pas plutôt son réexamen? C’est ce que se proposent de faire les auteurs des contributions réunies dans ce volume, que ce soit pour en défendre et en prolonger les intuitions fondatrices ou au contraire pour en contester le bien-fondé. (shrink)

En quoi consiste l’explication d’une action ? La question, fondamentale pour toute réflexion méthodologique sur les sciences de l’homme, renvoie d’abord à une pratique commune. Dans nos rapports à autrui, il arrive que la compréhension fasse défaut. C’est alors que surgit le besoin d’explication, afin de comprendre la conduite d’autrui ou encore éclairer les autres sur ce que nous faisons… Qu’est-ce qu’une action intentionnelle ? Les pensées d’un agent causent-elles son comportement ? Comment caractériser le savoir qu’un agent possède de (...) sa propre action ? Quel rapport l’explication d’une action entretient-elle avec ce savoir ? À quelles conditions est-il possible de comprendre autrui ? S’appuyant sur l’approche logico-grammaticale de Ludwig Wittgenstein et d’Elizabeth Anscombe, Rémi Clot-Goudard récuse les conceptions faisant des prédicats psychologiques les noms d’états ou d’événements internes aux agents et connus d’eux seuls. Il fait valoir que le caractère intentionnel des actions doit se comprendre à partir des règles qui gouvernent leur mode de description et qu’il faut rapporter les intentions au raisonnement pratique et à la connaissance pratique pour cerner leur force explicative. Il soutient ainsi que la maîtrise des concepts psychologiques est un savoir-faire enté sur l’expressivité naturelle du corps humain et la dimension intrinsèquement sociale et institutionnelle de la vie humaine – invitant ainsi ses lecteurs à se déprendre de l’illusion moderne d’un “sujet désengagé”. (shrink)

I aim to show that the content of our perceptual states depends counterfactually on the action we want to perform. Most philosophical and psychological theories of perception claim or at least assume the opposite: they conceive of perception as allpurpose: what we want to do does not influence what we see. I will argue that the content of one's perceptual state does vary as the action one is inclined to perform varies. To put it very simply, what we see does (...) indeed depend on what we want to do. After clarifying what counterfactual dependence means in my claim, I will give a two step argument. (a) one's visual attention (sometimes) depends counterfactually on one's intention to perform an action (everything else being equal) and (b) one's perceptual content (always) depends counterfactually on one's visual attention (everything else being equal). If we put these claims together, what we get is that one's perceptual content depends counterfactually on one's intention to perform an action (everything else being equal). (shrink)

Despite its short historical moment in the sun, behaviorism has become something akin to a theoria non grata, a position that dare not be explicitly endorsed. The reasons for this are complex, of course, and they include sociological factors which we cannot consider here, but to put it briefly: many have doubted the ambition to establish law-like relationships between mental states and behavior that dispense with any sort of mentalistic or intentional idiom, judging that explanations of intelligent behavior require reference (...) to qualia and/or mental events. Today, when behaviorism is discussed at all, it is usually in a negative manner, either as an attempt to discredit an opponent’s view via a reductio, or by enabling a position to distinguish its identity and positive claims by reference to what it is (allegedly) not. In this paper, however, we argue that the ghost of behaviorism is present in influential, contemporary work in the field of embodied and enactive cognition, and even in aspects of the phenomenological tradition that these theorists draw on. Rather than take this to be a problem for these views as some have, we argue that once the behaviorist dimensions are clarified and distinguished from the straw-man version of the view, it is in fact an asset, one which will help with task of setting forth a scientifically reputable version of enactivism and/or philosophical behaviorism that is nonetheless not brain-centric but behavior-centric. While this is a bit like “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” strategy, as Shaun Gallagher notes (2019), with the shared enemy of behaviorism and enactivism being classical Cartesian views and/or orthodox cognitivism in its various guises, the task of this paper is to render this alliance philosophically plausible. Doi: 10.1007/s11229-019-02432-1. (shrink)

Much work in the philosophy of action in the last few decades has focused on the elucidation and justification of a series of purported norms of practical rationality that concern the presence or absence of intention in light of belief, and that demand a kind of structural coherence in the psychology of an agent. Examples of such norms include: Intention Detachment, which proscribes intending to do something in case some condition obtains, believing that such condition obtains, and not intending to (...) do that thing; Intention-Belief Consistency, which proscribes intending to do what you believe you will not do; Intention Consistency, which proscribes intending each of two ends you believe to be inconsistent; and Means-End Coherence, which proscribes intending an end and not intending the means you believe to be implied by your end. In this paper, I present a series of examples that show that these requirements are not genuine requirements of rationality. The reason for this is simple: these requirements concern the presence or absence of intention in light of all-out belief. Rational agents like us, however, do not, and in fact should not, always form or revise their intentions in light of what they all-out believe. When such agents do not form or revise their intentions in light of what they all-out believe, they need not be irrational if they do not conform to these requirements. (shrink)

This volume provides a framework for approaching and understanding mental normativity. It presents cutting-edge research on the ethics of belief as well as innovative research beyond the normativity of belief—and towards an ethics of mind. By moving beyond traditional issues of epistemology the contributors discuss the most current ideas revolving around rationality, responsibility, and normativity. -/- The book’s chapters are divided into two main parts. Part I discusses contemporary issues surrounding the normativity of belief. The essays here cover topics such (...) as control over belief and its implication for the ethics of belief, the role of the epistemic community for the possibility of epistemic normativity, responsibility for believing, doxastic partiality in friendship, the structure and content of epistemic norms, and the norms for suspension of judgment. In Part II the focus shifts from the practical dimensions of belief to the normativity and rationality of other mental states—especially blame, passing thoughts, fantasies, decisions, and emotions. These essays illustrate how we might approach an ethics of mind by focusing not only on belief, but also on debates about responsibility, rationality, and the normativity of involuntary mental states. -/- The Ethics of Belief and Beyond paves the way towards an ethics of mind by building on and contributing to recent philosophical discussions in the ethics of belief and the normativity of other mental phenomena. It will be of interest to upper-level students and researchers working in epistemology, ethics, philosophy of action, philosophy of mind, and moral psychology. (shrink)

G. E. M. Anscombe’s Intention, meticulous in its detail and its structure, ends on a puzzling note. At its conclusion, Anscombe claims that when he denied Jesus, St. Peter intentionally did what he intended not to do. This essay will examine why Anscombe construes the case as she does and what it might teach us about the nature of practical rationality.

The author asks whether there was a “scientific ‘68”, and focuses on aspects of two specific methodological proposals defined in the 1940s and 50s by the terms “action research” and “mixing methods”, applied particularly to social sciences. In the first, the climate surrounding the events of 1968 contributed to heightening the participative element to be found –by definition– in “action research”; that is: the importance of making the research subjects themselves participants in the design, execution and application of the study (...) of which they are the focus. This approach captured the democratic and anti-authoritarian spirit at the heart of the proposal, which was part of the prevailing climate in those days. The repercussions of 1968 on “mixing methods” focused on studying what had actually occurred, especially between the youth and workers, and therefore, particularly from the point of view of sociology and social psychology, using a “mixed methods” approach. The author explores the proposal of Norman Denzin; but traces the recent origins of both “mixing methods” and “action research” back to the proposals of mainly Kurt Lewin and the Chicago School. (shrink)

ABSTRACTA widespread view in the philosophy of mind and action holds that intentions are propositional attitudes. Call this view ‘Propositionalism about Intention’. The key alternative holds that intentions have acts, or do-ables, as their contents. Propositionalism is typically accepted by default, rather than argued for in any detail. By appealing to a key metaphysical constraint on any account of intention, I argue that on the contrary, it is the Do-ables View which deserves the status of the default position, and Propositionalism (...) which bears the burden of proof. I go on to show that this burden has not been met in the literature. (shrink)

In this paper, I present an alternative account of action that improves upon what has come to be known as the standard story. The standard story depicts actions as events that are caused by and made intelligible through the appropriate combinations of the agent’s beliefs, desires, decisions, intentions and other motivational factors. I argue that the standard story is problematic because it depicts the relation between the agent and their bodily actions as causally mediated by their motivational factors. On the (...) alternative account that I present, whenever an agent performs a bodily action, they do so by exerting a distinctive kind of effort so as to initiate, sustain, and control their own bodily capacities, an essential feature of bodily action that is absent from the standard story. (shrink)

The account of intentional action Anscombe provides in her Intention has had a huge influence on the development of contemporary action theory. But what is intentional action, according to Anscombe? She seems to give two different answers, saying first that they are actions to which a special sense of the question ‘Why?’ is applicable, and second that they form a sub-class of the things a person knows without observation. Anscombe gives no explicit account of how these two characterizations converge on (...) a single phenomenon, leaving us with a puzzle. I solve the puzzle by elucidating Anscombe's two characterizations in concert with several other key concepts in ‘Intention’, including, ‘practical reasons’, the sui generis kind of explanation these provide, the distinction between ‘practical’ and ‘speculative’ knowledge, the formal features which mark this distinction, and Anscombe's characterization of practical knowledge as knowledge ‘in intention’. (shrink)

Le présent ouvrage collectif contient les Actes d'un colloque international bilingue sur l'action, les attitudes et la décision que nous avons organisé en hommage à notre regretté collègue J.-Nicolas Kaufmann à Trois-Rivières du 3 au 5 octobre 2002. L'ouvrage présente et discute d'hypothèses, d'enjeux et de théories contemporaines sur l'action, les attitudes, la rationalité et la décision. La première partie intitulée Pensées, actions et engagements contient des contributions de John Searle, Daniel Vanderveken, Candida Jaci de Sousa Melo et Raimo Tuomela (...) traitant de problèmes généraux de la philosophie de l'esprit et de l'action. Dans la deuxième partie de l'ouvrage intitulée Phénoménologie, ontologie et philosophie de l'esprit, nous avons regroupé, autour d'un texte de Nicolas Kaufmann, quatre études qui traitent diversement de la contribution de la phénoménologie classique, principalement de la phénoménologie de Husserl, à des questions centrales de la philosophie contemporaine dans les domaines de la philosophie de l'esprit, de la théorie de l'action et de l'ontologie formelle. La troisième partie de l'ouvrage, Causalité et naturalisme, réunit trois contributions qui portent sur des questions centrales de la philosophie contemporaine. Daniel Laurier se penche sur la question de savoir si le normativisme sémantique est compatible avec le naturalisme sémantique, alors qu'André Leclerc et Wilson Mendonça s'intéressent à la notion de causalité mentale et examinent différents arguments qui contestent le bien-fondé de cette notion. La dernière partie de l'ouvrage intitulée Rationalité et décision réunit trois contributions logico philosophiques de Storrs McCall, Mathieu Marion et Michel Paquette qui traitent de la rationalité des agents lors de leurs prises de décision et délibérations. (shrink)

Scholarship on Aristotle’s theory of action has recently veered toward an intellectualist position, according to which reason is in charge of setting the goals of action. This position has recently been criticized by an anti-intellectualism revival, according to which character, and not reason, sets the goals of action. I argue that neither view can sufficiently account for the complexities of Aristotle’s theory, and suggest a middle way that combines the strengths of both while avoiding their pitfalls. The key problem for (...) intellectualism is that Aristotle explicitly states reason cannot set the goals of action. The key problem for anti-intellectualism is that he also holds that the soul’s rational part must guide and prescribe over the non-rational part. I propose indirect intellectualism, a promising middle path. (shrink)

In this paper we secure the explanatory value of affordances by treating them as relational properties and as inherently linked to unintentional movements and possible intentional actions. We distinguish between Basic affordances, which are related to unintentional movements, and Complex affordances, which are subjective and executively controlled by individuals. The linkage between affordances and motor intentions allows for accounting for the infinite number of affordances that any given object potentially has. Appealing to objective systematic contingencies that provide the actor with (...) information about the effects of her actions, allows for accounting for perception of affordances and for securing their explanatory value. (shrink)

In this book, Alfred Mele tackles some central problems in the philosophy of action. His purpose is to construct an explanatory model for intentional behaviour, locating the place and significance of such mental phenomena as beliefs, desires, reasons and intentions in the etiology of intentional action.

This paper is a contribution to the recent debate between a number of anthropologists and philosophers concerning the role of intentions in a theory of verbal behavior. It reviews a number of arguments put forward by ethno- and anthro-polinguists against the intention-centered view of human behavior common in current cognitively oriented language research, and typically represented in John Searle's theory of intentionality and of speech acts. It is argued that these arguments do not affect the assumption that intentions are always (...) and necessarily present in behavior, but they do show that intentions as such are insufficient to understand behavior. These matters are discussed against the background of Searle's theory of intentionality. (shrink)

This paper suggests several summa genera for the various meanings of intentio in Aquinas and briefly outlines the genera of cognitive intentiones. It presents the referential and existential nature of intentions of harm or usefulness as distinguished from external sensory or imaginary forms in light of Avicenna’s threefold sensory abstraction. The paper offers a terminological clarification regarding the quasi-immaterial existential status of intentions. Internal sensory intentions account for a way in which one perceives something, as is best seen in light (...) of the distinction between formal and material objects. Against the imagist account of intentions that denies the memorative power an immanent object, it shows that the memorative’s proper and immediate object is the intention of the past, while its extrinsic mediate object is the imaginary phantasm. (shrink)

What is the relation between the intention to A and doing A intentionally? It is natural to suppose that the latter entails the former. That is, it is natural to accept what Michael Bratman has called the ‘Simple View’ of the relation between acting intentionally and having an intention. Bratman is one noteworthy writer who has denied that the Simple View is true. In the present paper I do not defend this view. I contend that one well-known argument that Bratman (...) offers for thinking that the Simple View is false fails, in fact, to disprove it. If there are reasons for thinking that the Simple View is false, as I believe there are, they are not the ones that Bratman has offered. My discussion of Bratman also raises some more general questions about the principles governing the rational formation of intentions. I suggest that a special sort of example casts doubt on the tenability of a commonly accepted principle that Bratman, among others, utilizes. (shrink)

Berislav Marusic explores how we should take evidence into account when thinking about future actions, such as resolving to do something we know will be difficult. Should we believe we will follow through, or not? He argues that if it is important to us, we can rationally believe we will do it, even if our belief contradicts the evidence.

Sometimes it is not so bad to decide in a hurry: Influence of different levels of temporal opportunity on the elaboration of purchasing intention The present study examines the impact of different levels of time pressure on the elaboration of purchase intention. Participants formed attitudes towards two stores and then indicate in which stores they would go shopping. Descriptions of the stores were experimentally constructed in order to indicate whether participants rely on an attribute-based or an attitude-based strategy when forming (...) their purchase intention. Participants made their choices under time pressure or were given unlimited time to deliberate. Results show that in 5 second limit and unlimited time conditions, they rely more on an attitude-based decision strategy and chose the less optimal store. Under moderate time pressure, participants are able to use relevant knowledge about the stores and rely more on an attribute-based strategy. Results are discussed in light of the Unconscious Theory of Thought. (shrink)

Future-directed intentions, it is widely held, involve behavioral dispositions. But of what kind? Suppose you now intend to Φ at future time t. Are you thereby now disposed to Φ at t no matter what? If so, your intention disposes you to Φ even if around t you will come to believe that Φ-ing would be crazy. And would not that be a crazy intention to have? – Like considerations have led Luca Ferrero and others to believe that only intentions (...) with strong internal conditions are capable of rationality. This paper explores in how far a broadly dispositional view of intention supports their claims. Its first point will come as a surprise: Intentions indeed involve dispositions toward follies in plenty. Natural objections against this bizarre-sounding claim are shown to fail, and standard counterfactual analyses of disposition locutions are shown to underpin it further. However, since the dispositions at issue are pro tanto dispositions, the consequences are not as odd as might be expected: When hedged by reasonable habits to reconsider one’s intentions, dispositions toward follies do not entail any actual crazy behavior. On balance, unconditional intention is therefore found rational after all. Dispositions toward crazy actions need not be crazy dispositions. (shrink)

This paper is divided into two parts. In the first part, I extend the traditional definition of lying to illocutionary acts executed by means of explicit performatives, focusing on promising. This is achieved in two steps. First, I discuss how the utterance of a sentence containing an explicit performative such as “I promise that Φ ” can count as an assertion of its content Φ . Second, I develop a general account of insincerity meant to explain under which conditions a (...) given illocutionary act can be insincere, and show how this applies to promises. I conclude that a promise to Φ is insincere (and consequently a lie) only if the speaker intends not to Φ , or believes that he will not Φ , or both. In the second part, I test the proposed definition of lying by promising against the intuitions of ordinary language speakers. The results show that, unlike alternative accounts, the proposed definition makes the correct predictions in the cases tested. Furthermore, these results challenge the following necessary conditions for telling a lie with content p: that you have to assert p directly; that you have to believe that p be false; that p must be false; that you must aim to deceive the addressee into believing that p. (shrink)

How and to what extent do people take into account the intentions of others? Alessandro Duranti sets out to answer this question, showing that the role of intentions in human interaction is variable across cultures and contexts. Through careful analysis of data collected over three decades in US and Pacific societies, Duranti demonstrates that, in some communities, social actors avoid intentional discourse, focusing on the consequences of actions rather than on their alleged original goals. In other cases, he argues, people (...) do speculate about their own intentions or guess the intentions of others, including in some societies where it was previously assumed they avoid doing so. To account for such variation, Duranti proposes an 'intentional continuum', a concept that draws from phenomenology and the detailed analysis of face-to-face interaction. A combination of new essays and classic re-evaluations, the book draws together findings from anthropology, linguistics and philosophy to offer a penetrating account of the role of intentions in defining human action. (shrink)

Suppose that you do not do what you have previously decided to do. Are you to be charged with irrationality? A number of otherwise divergent theories of practical rationality hold that by default, you are; there are rational pressures, it is claimed, that favor the long-term stability and eventual execution of distal intentions. The article challenges this view by examining how these purported pressures can be spelled out. Is intention a normative commitment to act? Are intentions reasons for action – (...) or at least for retaining one's intention until the time to act has come? Or is the rationality of ‘doing as you decide’ governed by diachronic wide-scope norms, as Michael Bratman and John Broome suggest? All of these approaches are shown to raise severe problems, which suggests a more modest view: diachronic pressures on intending are at each point in time confined to the very next instant. (shrink)

Christopher Tollefsen, relying on the new natural law theory, has suggested that in the Phoenix abortion case, the action might be characterized simply as removing the baby rather than killing the baby. Tollefsen and other proponents of the new natural law theory fail to give proper weight to the observable facts of the world around us, and thereby tend to ignore the importance of observable causes in shaping the character of our intentions and our actions. An appreciation of the role (...) of causes reveals that our intentions cannot so readily land on one description of an action and exclude other descriptions. For the Phoenix case, the description “harming the baby” cannot fall outside the doctors’ intention. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 14.2 : 273–293. (shrink)

Philosophical orthodoxy identifies weakness of will with akrasia: the weak willed person is someone who intentionally acts against their better judgement. It is argued that this is a mistake. Weakness of will consists in a quite different failing, namely an over-ready revision of one's intentions. Building on the work of Bratman, an account of such over-ready revision is given. A number of examples are then adduced showing how weakness of will, so understood, differs from akrasia.

Recently it has been argued that we cannot intend at will. Since intentions cannot be true or false, our involuntariness cannot be traced to “the characteristic of beliefs that they aim at truth”, as Bernard Williams convincingly argues. The alternative explanation is that the source of involuntariness is the shared normative nature of beliefs and intentions. Three analogies may assimilate intentions to beliefs vis-à-vis our involuntariness: first, beliefs and intentions aim at something; second, beliefs and intentions are transparent to the (...) true and the good respectively; third, beliefs and intentions are answers to questions other than that of whether to endorse them. The purpose of this paper is to argue that attempts to ground involuntariness in normativity rather than truth imply that we cannot act at will. I assume that actions are the paradigm case of doing something at will, and utilize this assumption as a restriction on any account of our inability to believe at will: it should not be possible to generalize it to actions. Any account of doxastic involuntarism that implies that we cannot act at will is false—if we cannot act at will, what can we do at will? I close by offering a notion of doing something at will that is based on Williams’ insight that truth—rather than reason—matters to our inability to believe at will. (shrink)

Presents a collection of essays by the celebrated philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe. This collection includes papers on human nature and practical philosophy, together with the classic 'Modern Moral Philosophy'.