Abstract
Many philosophers of action, including Bratman and Mele, conceive intentions functionally, as executive states: intentions are mental states that represent an action and tend to cause this action. In the philosophical tradition (e.g. for Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Leibniz, Kant) another function of intentions, which may be called “volitive”, played a much more prominent role: intentions are mental states that represent what kind of actions we want and prefer to be realised and thus, in a possibly rational way, synthesise our motivational, desiderative, and perhaps affective as well as cognitive attitudes towards this action. This paper argues that intentions must fulfil both functions and then develops a concept of ‘intention’ that integrates both functions. One reason for including the volitive function in the definition of ‘intention’ is that only via this function the value of actions as such is realised, namely to enable the person, the kernel of the self to express herself and to control the world. Various forms of dissociation of the two functions are discussed and a proposal how to deal with such cases in the definition of ‘intention’ is developed.
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Notes
Since “impressions”, in Hume’s terminology, are different from “ideas”, where ideas comprise also belief states and knowledge (Hume 1739–40/1978, II, 1, 1 (pp. 275–276)), according to Hume’s definition, intentions cannot be beliefs. In his definition, Hume does not give a further phenomenological specification or reduction of the “internal impression” but identifies it only via simultaneous events (“the impression we feel …, when …”). Hence his definition is open to various empirical interpretations. The same holds for Locke’s definition. One such interpretation could be Bratman’s sui-generis view of intentions (cf. below, Sect. 3).
Although Bratman also popularised what I like to call the “sui-generis theory of intention”, according to which intentions are not reducible to other kinds of propositional attitudes like desires or beliefs (cf. below)—a theory which is closely related to the executive-state view—he was not even the first to propose the sui-generis theory of intentions. Gilbert Harman (1976, pp. 432, 436 = 1997, pp. 150, 154; 1986) and Raimo Tuomela (1977) presented the sui-generis thesis previously. So, how can Bratman’s book (Bratman 1987) stand for all these theories? A somewhat trivial answer is that Bratman dedicated the first monographic discussion to them. Some less trivial answers are that he provided, for most theorists, convincing arguments against eliminativist conceptions of intentions (like those of the Neo-Wittgensteinians and the early Davidson; Davidson himself later criticised eliminativism); Bratman offered good arguments against all reductive theories of intentions, and he developed a strong theory of the practical, executive and planning function of intentions, and of their binding force.
For the reader who is not familiar with Leibniz’s “Nouveaux essais” (“New Essays Concerning Human Understanding”) it might be helpful to explain that this book is organised as a dialogue between Philalethes and Theophilus and closely follows the single paragraphs of Locke’s “Essay Concerning Human Understanding”. Philalethes outlines Locke’s position, Theophilus represents Leibniz’s comments and further theoretical development. So we find the just cited definition in Theophilus’s speech.
A somewhat more formal but still rough definition is this:
p is an executive state of the subject s if and only if:
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0. p is a mental attitude of the subject s of some modal or phenomenological type Ψ; the propositional content of this attitude is either a description ‘a’ of a future (even immediate future) behaviour of s or a proposition about such a behaviour: ‘a is R’. (i.e.: p = Ψs,a; or: p = Ψs,(Ra).) We can summarise this as: p is a mental attitude of some type 〈Ψ, R〉 about the action a.
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1. p is a state in an action-generating mechanism, i.e. a psychophysical cybernetic system with feedback control and the following properties:
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1.1. the system contains an executive part, capable of realizing a range of controlled behaviour (realizing movements, exerting forces or causing mental events);
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1.2. and the system contains a mental part, capable of forming attitudes towards the elements of the set of controllable behaviour;
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1.3. and some of these attitudes, namely the attitudes of a certain type 〈Φ, Q〉—with Φ being a modal or phenomenological attitude type and Q being empty or being the main predicate of the attitude’s propositional content—, are the set point determiners of this system in the sense that attitudes of this type 〈Φ, Q〉 towards some element b of the set of controllable behaviour of the mechanism, with a rather high reliability cause this behaviour b.
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2. p is a mental attitude of the same type as the set point determiners of the action-generating mechanism, i.e. 〈Ψ, R〉 = 〈Φ, Q〉.
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There are several types of intentions. In particular, we have to distinguish implementation intentions and goal intentions (Gollwitzer 1999), where goal intentions determine the goal to be reached but do not yet specify the details of the action, by which it shall be reached, in a way understandable to the executive system. Goal intentions are anchors for a further deliberation with the aim of specifying the action and forming an implementation intention, which is understandable to the executive system. Of course, only implementation intentions but not mere goal intentions have a (direct) executive function.
This piece of method is part of a more comprehensive philosophical method and theory, which I have called “idealising hermeneutics”. For a detailed description see, Lumer 2012.
McCann has shown that several other mental states in principle can fulfil many functions of intentions (McCann 1995, pp. 575–582).
This is not to say that intentions are always based on deliberation; of course, they can be spontaneous. The argument, primarily, says only: if there is a deliberation its result cannot be a sui-generis intention. However, secondly, even in cases of spontaneous decisions intentions emerge from desires and beliefs about the desires’ possible fulfilment, express these desires and beliefs and thus are volitive, though not in a very elaborated way—I spontaneously intend to scratch and do so because I want to get rid of an itch and believe (though not occurrently) that scratching probably will have this effect—; but sui-generis intentions would not capture the volitive nature even of these spontaneous intentions because, precisely as a consequence of their being sui generis, they are isolated from any other practically relevant subjective state.
Of course, also Bratman wants intentions to be rational and at least accessible to rationality requirements. He stresses especially the requirement that various intentions should be consistent with each other (Bratman 1987, pp. 9, 31, 109) and that goal intentions are reasons for implementation intentions (ibid. 24, 27), but he takes desires and beliefs to be reasons in the decision process too (ibid. 24, 35, 43–44) and wants to integrate all these considerations as reasons into a rational deliberation (ibid. 85). In addition, Bratman takes it for granted that beliefs, desires and pro-attitudes in general in some way influence intentions and actions (ibid. 15 f. 35), that pro-attitudes motivate to actions (ibid. 15 f.) and that practical reasoning issues in intentions (ibid. 17, 108 f.). However, the problem is that his—rather rudimentary—action psychology does not explain how we could achieve the desired forms of rationality, i.e. how the subjective reasons could have any effect on the sui-generis intention, and how (which kind of) reasoning leads to (which type of) intention. His action psychology simply does not provide or even at least indicate psychological laws that connect the just mentioned states (various forms of desires and beliefs, etc.) with sui-generis intentions. Hence it cannot even explain how, after having recognised (which is a belief state) that two of our intentions collide, we can use this belief for making the intentions coherent. Bratman seems to suppose that the usually assumed steps of deliberations (making out possible options, looking for their relevant consequences, evaluating them, etc.) simply terminate in the sui-generis intention. This would be strange and hardly possible, however, the semantic content of the deliberation’s conclusion is—in Davidson’s terminology (Davidson 1978/1980, pp. 98 f., 100–102)—an all-out judgement or, according to my conception (Lumer 2005), an optimality judgement (that some option a is the personally best). However, this semantic content in Bratman’s picture is not preserved and semantically expressed anywhere; there is only the sui-generis intention, which at best functions as a frozen indicator of this content. Furthermore, if, e.g. in case of new information about further options or consequences, we should revise our intention, a Bratmanian agent would either remain stuck with that frozen indicator, which, as a mere indicator, is not open to epistemic revisions, or she would have to treat it exactly like an—as such epistemically revisable—all-out or optimality judgement, so that the sui-generis intention would only be such a judgement in disguise. The general problem behind all these difficulties is that sui-generis intentions are just psychologically isolated from all the other mental states that influence decisions.
Further criticisms of the Empirical sui-generis thesis are provided in: Lumer 2005, p. 241.
Apart from these proposals, Mele sees as one of the characteristic, though not necessary, functions of intentions that they put a proper end to practical reasoning (Mele 1992, pp. 138–140; 2009, p. 692). Though this thesis prima facie may look like an assertion that intentions are bound to and synthesise the results of practical deliberation, this is not what the thesis says. It says only that when the intention is formed, therewith the practical reasoning is terminated; what the agent will attempt is settled; hence there is no need to deliberate any longer. In any case, however, this function, according to Mele, is not necessary for having an intention; there are many intentions which are not preceded by a practical deliberation (Mele 1992, p. 139).
I have presented posthypnotic “intentions” as paradigm of an executive state without volitive function. This is at least a nice armchair example. However, the reality may be different. Posthypnotic “intentions” empirically exist and are efficacious. But an open question is whether the volitive function is really missing. Reading about hypnosis and speaking with people who practice it, unfortunately, I could not determine the phenomenological status of the hypnotically induced disposition to execute the instruction. However, the hypnotisers did stress that people are very differently prone to hypnosis, that their eventual acceptance of instructions depends completely on their trust in the hypnotiser and that instructions that go strongly against the subject’s convictions would not be accepted. There is also the well-known fact that after having executed the posthypnotic instruction subjects who additionally have been instructed to forget the act of instruction tend to explain their actions by rationalisations. These phenomena speak against an interpretation of posthypnotic instructions as orders that the subjects accepts like a robot and directly transforms into mere executive intentions. A quite better interpretation may be in terms of optimality judgements. The fact that subjects trust in their hypnotiser means that they believe that the hypnotiser probably will do something good and definitely not harm the subject. So, if the hypnotiser gives the subject an instruction she may believe this to be optimum for herself even though she does not know a direct justification for it. Hence, the optimality judgement is based on an argument from authority only but it has its volitive function: it is a pro-attitude itself and is believed to integrate all the other pro-attitudes about the options to the subject’s best. The difference with respect to usual decisions on the basis of arguments from authority, e.g. when children follow their parents’ orders without understanding the rationale for the orders, would be, however, that after having carried out the instruction or order, the hypnotised subject (whose memory of receiving the instruction is extinguished) is not aware of the judgement’s origin and, therefore, confabulates her reasons.
Possibility 3 is rather close to what Mele proposes. The differences, however, are: (i) Mele assumes that subjective optimality judgments about one’s proper actions are usually followed by an intention but he does not hold that every executive state is preceded by an optimality judgement. (ii) Furthermore, Mele takes the executive states alone to be the intention—even if they have not been caused by an optimality judgement. So the differences between Mele’s and my approach are that Mele presupposes ontological dissociation, which I deny, and that he proposes something closer to strategy 3, whereas I opt for strategy 4; what he proposes is only near strategy 3 because he, like Bratman, takes directly executive states to be intentions without requiring that they have be brought about by volitive states, which, however, is the main concern of the present paper.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank an anonymous referee for very valuable suggestions and the participants at the presentation of this paper during the XXII. Deutscher Kongress für Philosophie in Munich for their inspiring discussion.
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Lumer, C. The volitive and the executive function of intentions. Philos Stud 166, 511–527 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-0048-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-0048-8