Abstract
Intention has long been at the forefront of discussions in the philosophical psychology of intentional action. In spite of its prominence, aspects of it have been neglected. For example, its role in the phenomenology of ability, as discussed by Hans Bernhard Schmidt, Chapter 12, in this volume, is rarely treated. I focus on a different but similarly neglected aspect in this paper. This is the self-evaluative aspect of intention. I argue that in intention the agent takes an evaluative attitude towards herself. This attitude of self-evaluation is best understood in terms of what John Broome has called normative requirements.
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- 1.
What I say about intention is not uncontentious and departs from what, for example, Gilbert (2006) says about it. However, my view is consistent with that of others e.g. Broome (2001), and as I do not propose to develop a theory of intention here, I will not offer a full discussion the ways in which my view differs from the views of others.
- 2.
See Bratman (1999a).
- 3.
This applies to either intention for the future or intention in action.
- 4.
One may be able to intend or act without having reasons for intending or acting. For example, it may be that I can intend to eat a saucer of mud without thinking that anything favours this, and then act on my intention. In this case, one judges oneself in light of the first element, I-thought, but not the second, Reason. Such intentions are puzzling, not only to the bystander, but to the intender herself. Insofar as I do not have a reason for what I’m doing, I don’t know why I’m doing it, and so, am to some extent rationally incomprehensible to myself (and others). Plausibly, the rational practical agent is characterized by the fact that her intentional actions are rationally comprehensible to her. Acting without rationally comprehending why one acts is, necessarily, an anomalous activity of rational practical agents. See Kim (1998).
- 5.
- 6.
Broome (1999, 410).
- 7.
See Gilbert (1990).
- 8.
Bratman (2009). See also Gilbert’s clarification of shared intention in (2009).
- 9.
- 10.
Bratman (1997a).
- 11.
- 12.
See Gilbert (2009, 175).
- 13.
See Bratman (1999a).
- 14.
Gilbert (1993, 686) says that obligations are reasons to act. In her (2009) she says “I take it that given either a standing, unrescinded decision or a current intention, the person in question has sufficient reason to act in a particular way even without this having been the case prior to the formation of the intention or decision. In saying that one has sufficient reason to act in some way I mean that, if all else is equal, one ought so to act. The ‘ought’ here is a matter of what might be referred to as a rational requirement … I do not mean to imply that either decisions or intentions are ‘reasons’ … considerations for or against a particular action that would appropriately be weighed prior to making a decision whether or not to perform it” (179–80).
- 15.
Gilbert also thinks that Bratman’s view fails to provide stability. See her (2009). See also Gold and Sugden (2007).
- 16.
It is not that Bratman is opposed to sub-categories within modest sociality. He distinguishes between shared intentional activity and shared cooperative activity. “Shared intentional activity … is activity suitably explainable by a shared intention and associate forms of mutual responsiveness. Shared cooperative activity requires, further, the absence of certain kinds of coercion, and commitments to mutual support in the pursuit of the joint activity.” Bratman (1997b, 142). My view entails that shared intentional action will involve a certain amount of what might be called co-operation, but elaborating on the relationship between shared intention and co-operation goes beyond my scope here.
- 17.
- 18.
In her (2006) Gilbert says that intentions give sufficient reason to act. She compares what she says about sufficient reason to Broome’s normative requirements: “Broome (2001) argues that intentions (which he conceives of much as I conceive of decisions) are not reasons but ‘normatively require’ conforming action. This may allow that they give their possessor sufficient reason, in my sense, to conform” footnote 8, p. 128. See also footnote 15 of this paper.
- 19.
Gilbert (2009, 173).
- 20.
Gilbert (2009, 173).
- 21.
Bratman (2009, 152).
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Acknowledgements
My thanks to the participants at the Workshop on Self-Evaluation at the University of Basel for helpful comments. Thanks to Antti Kauppinen, Federico Lauria and Alain Pé-Curto for very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
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O’Brien, L. (2011). Self-Evaluation in Intention: Individual and Shared. In: Konzelmann Ziv, A., Lehrer, K., Schmid, H. (eds) Self-Evaluation. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 116. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1266-9_13
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