ACTORS WITHOUT INTENTIONS:THE DOUBLE PHENOMENA VIEW
(Received in revised form 2 November 1999)
1. INTRODUCTION
Philosophers of action divide on the question of whether there is adistinctive state of intention, that is, a state not reducible to desire,belief, some combination of desire and belief, or some other statealtogether. Those who hold that there is an irreducible state of inten-tion typically invoke this state in their accounts of what makes anaction intentional. Others believe that there is no distinctive state ofintention, and so in accounting for what makes an action intentional,they make no appeal to such a state. In this paper, I will argue that aplausible alternative has been overlooked. This is the possibility thatthere is an irreducible state of intention but that it is not the relationof an action to this state that makes that action intentional.1
In arguing for this alternative, I will be rejecting what I call the“Intention-Action Principle”:
The Intention-Action Principle (IAP): If S A’s intentionally, then there is some-thing S intends to do and it is the relation of S’s A-ing to a relevant intention thatmakes S’s A-ing intentional.
Nonreductivists generally accept this principle. But Reductivists toocan embrace IAP as long as the requirement that there is somethingS intends to do is not interpreted to mean S has anirreduciblestate of intention. Notice that IAP does not require that if S A’sintentionally, S intends to A. The view that one intentionally A’sonly if one intends to A has been dubbed ‘the Simple View’ byMichael Bratman, Bratman and others reject the Simple View dueto considerations illustrated by the following: Gerald is going to tryto score a goal by kicking the ball over the goalie’s head, but hebelieves he will fail. If he succeeds, it seems he has kicked the ball
over the goalie’s head intentionally, yet given his belief that he willnot succeed, we might not think he intended to do this. IAP is notthreatened by this example. The relevant intention may simply bean intention to try to kick the ball over the goalie’s head. IAP canbe seen as a compromise principle. It is weaker than the SimpleView while still asserting a strong connection between intentionalaction and intention (also called “future-directed intention”, “pureintention” and “distal intention” in the literature). This compromiseprinciple does justice to our intuition that there is a close tie betweenintending to do something and doing something intentionally. Afterall, given that both future-directed intention and intentional actioninvolve purpose or aim, it is unlikely we are dealing with a mereorthographic accident. Furthermore, we are aware that many future-directed intentions seem eventually to issue in intentional action.These points need to be addressed by anyone rejecting IAP, but theyare not sufficient reason to accept IAP.
I believe that the best account of intention is nonreductive andthus that IAP is true only if for every intentional action, the agent ofthe action has a nonreductive intention and it is the relation of theagent’s action to this nonreductive intention that makes the actionintentional. The nonreductive view of intention I favor sees theprimary functional roles of intention as connected to planning. Butonce we accept such an account, we should find ourselves far morereluctant to think such a state is involved in every case of intentionalaction. The idea that there is an independent state of intending butthat this state plays no crucial role in intentional action is one almostall philosophers have ignored or dismissed out of hand. Consider thework of Donald Davidson. In “Actions, Reasons, and Causes,” Dav-idson claims that “the expression ‘the intention with which Jameswent to church’ has the outward form of a description, but in fact itis syncategorematic and cannot be taken to refer to an entity, state,disposition, or event.”2,3 Here is he advocating a reductive accountof intention, but in developing his early view, he ignored cases offuture-directed intention, or as he says ‘pure intention’. In a laterpaper, “Intending”, he considers cases of intending where there isno accompanying action. He writes:
If someone digs a pit with the intention of trapping a tiger, it is perhaps plausiblethat no entity at all, act, event, or disposition, corresponds to the noun phrase, ‘the
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intention of trapping a tiger’ – this is what our survey has led us to hope. But it isnot likely that if a man has the intention of trapping a tiger, his intention is not astate, disposition, or attitude of some sort.4
He concludes “. . . the strategy that appears to work for acting withan intention has no obvious application to pure intending, that is,intending that is not necessarily accompanied by action.”5 David-son might have concluded that while reductive accounts work forintention in action (and intentional action), a nonreductive accountis called for to handle pure intending. But instead, he says “. . . ifthis is so [that pure intending involves a distinctive state], it is quiteincredible that this state or attitude. . . should play no role in actingwith an intention.”6
I should note one difference between the view I will defend andthe view Davidson calls ‘incredible’. It is not my view that inten-tions never play a role in intentional action. Rather, it is my viewthat some intentional actions do not involve an intention and thusintentional actions are not intentional in virtue of being related to anintention. In section 2, I argue for the claim that intentions are notreducible to desires and beliefs. I do this by arguing against whatI take to be the best reductive accounts of intention. In section 3,I turn to the question “Why think an intention is not at work in allcases of intentional action?” In other words, why not accept a nonre-ductivist account of intention and accept IAP? Section 4 introducesand discusses some empirical studies which I believe further supportmy position. If we reject IAP, then two important questions remain:“What makes intentional action intentional?” and “How are inten-tion and intentional action related?” In section 5, I canvass somepossible answers to these questions.
2. REDUCTIVE VIEWS OF INTENTION
On reductive accounts of intentional action, what makes an actionintentional is its relation to the agent’s beliefs and desires.7 Theseviews attempt to account for intentional action by appeal to onlybeliefs, desires, actions, and sometimes causation. They do notposit an independent state of intending. On some reductive accountsintentional actions are actions which are caused in the right way
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by a belief and desire of the agent. One reason many philo-sophers have found reductive accounts of intention appealing isthat these accounts need not posit any mysterious and question-able entities like acts of will. A further reason is that the viewupholds the picture which divides propositional attitudes by whathas come to be called their ‘direction of fit’. Beliefs have the dir-ection of fit ‘mind-to-world’ while desires have the direction of fit‘world-to-mind’.8
As Davidson points out, the problem with reductive accountsbecomes apparent when we consider cases of intention whichinvolve no corresponding action. For example, Max intends to watchThe X-filesnext Sunday night but he is not taking any action towarddoing so now. The most common reductivist approach sees Max’sintention as a desire, belief, or combination of desire and belief. Butwhich desires and beliefs? Not the ones appropriately related to hisaction for there is no action yet (and there might not be one – hemight change his mind before Sunday). Reductivists need to specifywhen a belief and desire constitute an intention and when not andthis task has proved instructively challenging. Below I consider twoattempts to do so, the first by Robert Audi and the second by WayneDavis.9
Audi proposes the following:
A person, S, intends, at time t, to A, if and only if, at t,(1) S believes that S will (or that S probably will) A; and(2) S wants, and has not temporarily forgotten that S wants, to A;
and(3) either S has no equally strong or stronger incompatible wants
(or set of incompatible wants whose combined strength isat least as great), or, if S does have such a want or set ofwants, S has temporarily forgotten that S wants the object(s)in question, or does not believe S wants the object(s).10
I will discuss briefly four problems with this account. The firstof these concerns (1) above. While I think there is some beliefcondition on intention – for example, one does not intend to A ifone believes one won’t A – I also think the belief condition at (1)above is too demanding. According to Audi, for an agent to satisfycondition (1) with regard to some act A, the agent must believe shewill probably A (that is, has better than equal odds of A-ing). It
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seems to me that Max, for example, may intend to buy juice at thestore today while knowing he forgets to buy juice slightly more oftenthan he remembers to do so and while believing that today will beno different from the past.
A second problem (emphasized by Bratman) is that a person mayhave a predominant desire to do something, believe she will do it,and yet remain unsettled.11 Bratman offers the plausible case of aworkaholic who wants to go to the library, believes she will do so,but is concerned that this behavior is simply addictive and plans togive the matter more thought. The point is that intending seems torequire a commitment; it requires being settled in a way that is notguaranteed by a predominant desire to A and a belief one will A.
A third objection is offered by Audi himself:
Suppose Sally satisfies [the criterion above] with respect to intending to insultLeo, but believes that she will be unable to avoid grimacing when she meets himand that she will thus insult him, but will be doing so neither voluntarily norintentionally.12
In my opinion, Sally lacks the requisite expectation of control tointend to insult Leo. A person cannot intend to do what she thinksshe cannot help doing. Audi replies to his example first by sayingSally does have the requisite control since she can decide to avoidLeo altogether. But more importantly, he says the control require-ment is false. In order to separate these two points, let’s imagine theexample altered in the following way only: Sally is in traction in thehospital and knows Leo will come to visit her. She has no way ofkeeping Leo out. Given that Audi thinks the control requirement isfalse, on his view, Sally intends to insult Leo here too. This strikesme as intuitively false. We do not intend to do an action if we believewe lack the requisite control to do so.
A final concern with Audi’s view is that it counts what we wouldnormally think of as unintended side effects as intended effects ofaction. For example, Keita intends to go to her office this morning.She believes that she’ll see her colleague Jonah there. Althoughshe’s looking forward to seeing Jonah, she does not go to her officein order to see him. In other words, she intends to go to her office andthinks of seeing Jonah as a welcome side effect of doing so; she doesnot intend to see Jonah. But on Audi’s account, she believes she’llsee Jonah, she wants to see him, and we may suppose she has no
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stronger desire or set of desires incompatible with her desire to seeJonah. Thus, on Audi’s view, Keita intends to see Jonah.13 Again,I think Keita does not intend to see Jonah, but thinks of seeing himas a welcome benefit of going to her office. For these reasons, I findAudi’s view implausible.14
Wayne Davis offers a different reductive account of intending.Davis first states his view as follows:S intends that p only if Sbelieves that p in part because S desires that P.15 So on Davis’sview, it is important that the desire that p give rise to the beliefthat p. This is a significant change from Audi’s view since Audidoes not require the desire and belief be related to each other inany particular way. Because of this requirement, Davis’s account isimmune from some of the objections above. Consider Sally and Leoagain. Sally desires that she insult Leo but her belief that she willdo so is not based on her desire. However, thus far we have onlya necessary condition for intending that p. As Davis himself pointsout, the above won’t work as a necessaryand sufficient conditionfor intending because such an account would not distinguish intend-ing from wishful thinking. For example, someone who wishfullyexpects the Red Sox will win the World Series does not intend thatthe Red Sox win.16
For this reason, Davis proposes the following:S intends that p iffS believes that p because he desires that p and believes his desirewill motivate him to act in such a way that p.17 This account doesnot count wishful thinking as intending, but I believe it is problem-atic nevertheless. On this view, in order to have an intention, onemust have a very complex belief – a belief including the concepts ofdesireandmotivation. This is implausible. Its implausibility can per-haps be seen best by considering young children. Five and six yearolds presumably have intentions, but it’s doubtful they have suchbeliefs. One might respond that Davis’s view can be made plaus-ible simply by rewording the latter conjunct. While it is implausibleto attribute to children the concept of motivation, it is plausible toattribute to them some more basic concept of desire. So perhaps theview should be stated:S intends that p iff S believes that p becausehe desires that p and believes he will act to bring about p becausehe wants that p. I believe that this requirement is still too strongand again, that this comes out most clearly in the case of children.
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But once we allow that the relevant desires and believes can beheld unconsciously and we replace theoretical concepts like that ofmotivation with more ordinary concepts like that of desire, perhapsothers will find the view plausible. So I will mention one morereason I find Davis’s view ultimately implausible. Like Audi’s view,Davis’s view will attribute an intention to an agent even when theagent is unsettled on what to do. Take again Bratman’s workaholiccase. The workaholic may want to go to the library and believe hewill go due to the desire, and yet continue deliberating. In general,Davis’s view, like Audi’s, will yield counterintuitive results in suchcases.
I have discussed only two reductive views of intention here butI believe that these are the most plausible reductive views andthat even so, they are inadequate. We should conclude with Dav-idson that what works for intentional action does not work for pureintending.
3. NONREDUCTIVE ACCOUNTS OF INTENTION
In this section I turn to the claim that an intention is not a work inevery case of intentional action. But before addressing this question,it will be helpful to look at some nonreductive accounts of intention.Once we have a plausible account of future-directed intention, Ibelieve it will be easier to see the implausibility of assuming such astate is at work in every case of intentional action. Michael Bratmanand Al Mele are well-known proponents of the nonreductive view.Bratman argues that intentions are ‘Janus-faced’, tied on the onehand to action (this is their volitional component) and on the otherhand to planning (this is their reason-centered component). Anyadequate theory of intentions, argues Bratman, will take account ofboth roles.18
One of the key differences between Bratman’s account andreductive accounts is that the former sees intentions asinputs intofurther reasoning. Reductive views certainly see intention as tied toreasoning, but typically focus on intentions as theoutputof reason-ing. (For example if one is deliberating about whether to go skiingand decides in the end to do so, an intention to go skiing is typicallythe output of that person’s deliberation.) Bratman takes seriously the
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role an intention plays in further reasoning. Intentions, once formed,have a certain amount of stability and thus allow for interpersonaland intrapersonal coordination. He argues that an intention to Acharacteristically (1) drives means-end reasoning (that is, reasoningregarding how to A), (2) acts as a background filter, screening outoptions the agent believes incompatible with A-ing, and (3) leads toendeavoring to A. (Endeavoring is making adjustments in responseto signs of success or failure.)
Imagine a New Yorker who intends to travel to San Francisco.We may assume at some point she deliberated over whether to go toSan Francisco and decided in favor of doing so. Reductivists wouldfocus on her intention as the output of deliberation and would saysomething about how it will ultimately guide her actions. Bratman’spoint is that this intention will also lead the New Yorker to engage inmeans-end reasoning (how to get to San Francisco, and so on) andwill prevent her from making plans incompatible with going on thetrip.
Bratman is motivated to depart from the reductive picture partlybecause of problems with specific reductivist accounts and partlybecause he thinks that such accounts don’t do justice to the rolesintention plays in further reasoning and planning, and that anaccount which takes seriously these roles will be more theoreti-cally fecund. I find Bratman’s view quite plausible as an account offuture-directed intending. Bratman takes future-directed intentionsas the paradigm sort of intention. But he goes on to extend hisaccount to intentional action. Underlying this methodological moveis his acceptance of IAP. Specifically, Bratman accepts what he callsthe “Single Phenomenon View of Intention”.
Single Phenomenon View of Intention (SPV): [I]ntentional action and the state ofintention both involve a certain common state, and it is the relation of an action tothis state that makes that action intentional.19
Bratman goes on to say that he believes that the common state isintention itself, understood as irreducible to other states. Thus hepresumably accepts IAP. However, once we see intentions as inti-mately bound up with planning for and reasoning about the future,I think we should be reluctant to think such a state is involved inall cases of intentional action. To highlight the problem, I’ll focuson spontaneous actions. Audi, Searle, and others have pointed to
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spontaneous actions too in rejecting IAP, but my reasons for think-ing these cases are problematic for IAP are somewhat different fromtheirs.
Searle argues that some intentional actions are performed “quitespontaneously, without forming, consciously or unconsciously, anyprior intention to do these things”. In response to Searle, Adamsand Mele argue that intentions can simply be acquired; they neednot be formed. And they assert that intentions may be acquired“at something approaching the speed of thought.”20 Vermazen, inresponse to Searle, writes “First, it may be that the intention thatmakes each intentional action intentional is a prior intention, but notprior by very much, and [not] deliberated about enough to warrantsaying that it was formed . . . ”21 These responses are typical of thediscussion in the literature of spontaneous action. They focus onwhether there is time in such cases for the agent to form an intention.But I believe that even if we grant intentions can simply be acquiredand that they can be acquired very quickly, spontaneous actionsmay make trouble for IAP. Notice that the discussion about whetherintentions can simply be acquired and the points about speed are allabout how we come to have intentions; they look backward to whathappens just prior to the intention acquisition or formation. But ifwe accept a view like Bratman’s, then we need to think of inten-tions as states which characteristically feature in further reasoningand planning. But once we consider these forward-looking roles ofintention, it is implausible to think such a state is operative in casesof spontaneous action.
Bratman himself raises a worry about spontaneous actions withthe following case:
Suppose you unexpectedly throw a ball to me and I spontaneously reach up andcatch it. On the one hand, it may seem that I catch it intentionally; after all, mybehavior is under my control and is not mere reflex behavior, as when I blink atthe oncoming ball. On the other hand, it may seem that, given how automatic andunreflective my action is, I may well not have any present-directed intention thatI am executing catching the ball . . . The worry is that once we see what a present-directed intention is, it is unclear that such unreflective, spontaneous behaviormust involve such a state.22
I take it that in the final sentence of the quotation, Bratman is saying,once we see how connected intentions are to means-end reason-ing and planning for the future, then it is unclear an intention is
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involved in cases of simple, spontaneous action. One of Bratman’sresponses to his case is that one might be executing a long-standingpersonal policy, “a policy of protecting myself from flying objects”for example, and thus acting on a general intention to act a cer-tain way.23 While some such cases may involve the execution ofa policy, and thus a general intention to act in a certain way (e.g.brushing one’s teeth before bed every night, braking when the carahead of you brakes), many such actions, even most, surely do notinvolve the execution of a personal policy. One might respond thatreaching spontaneously for a ball isn’t a case of intentional actionat all. But that isn’t Bratman’s response and, once we move awayfrom the issue of speed, the point can be made with numerous otherexamples, like reaching for your coffee cup. We perform thousandsof simple actions every day, and we typically count these as inten-tional. I am suggesting that at least sometimes, when we reach forour coffee mugs, even when we do so very slowly, we need not haveformed – or acquired – an intention to do so. And I am suggestingthat the reason such cases are troublesome for IAP is not simplybecause such cases do not seem to allow time for deliberation, butbecause they require no deliberation, and perhaps more importantly,require no means-end reasoning. If we think of intentions as boundup with planning and means-end reasoning, then it would be unsur-prising to find the performance of many intentional actions requiredno such state.
Bratman might respond by suggesting that I am putting too muchweight on means-end reasoning, that the three roles he offers arecharacteristic of intention, but should not be understood as consti-tuting necessary and sufficient conditions for intention. Even so, Ithink there is a problem. I believe that the reason-centered roles arecharacteristic of intending (future-directed intention), but the thirdrole (endeavoring) is not. Rather, it is linked to intentional action.The New Yorker’s intention to visit San Francisco next Spring willlead her to think about whether to call a travel agent or an airline,if the latter, which airline, and so on. Furthermore, she will be dis-posed to rule out options incompatible with her trip. She will notagree to dinner in New York on May 1st if she expects to be in SanFrancisco at that time. But it is less clear how endeavoring applieshere. She might be said to endeavor to do many of the smaller pre-
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patory actions, but none of these is simply endeavoring to visit SanFrancisco.
Bratman assumes there is one common state and lists what hetakes to be the roles that one state plays in practical reasoning andin guiding action. What I question is whether we have one stateplaying the three roles he lists or two states, one playing two ofthe roles, and the second playing a third role. In support of the latterpossibility, notice that almost any arbitrary case of acting intention-ally involves some endeavoring, but not so for any arbitrary caseof future-directed intention. Endeavoring applies only once one isacting.24 And while many future-directed intentions lead to means-end reasoning and work to screen out incompatible options, mostcases of intentional action do not involve this sort of reasoning.
Here I have been assuming the third role in question is endeavor-ing. But earlier I said intentions characteristically ‘lead to endeavor-ing’. If we assume the latter best sums up the third role characteristicof intention, then we might say that the New Yorker’s intentiondoes (eventually)lead toendeavoring.25 Now the three roles takentogether will be characteristic of future-directed intention but won’tsay much at all about many or most simple cases of intentionalaction.
Bratman has assumed that intention is a single Janus-faced state.While I don’t disagree that future-directed intentions are indeed insome way linked to action as well as reasoning, they may not beso closely linked to actions as to play a guiding role. And, actingintentionally does not characteristically involve means-end reason-ing, nor does it involve screening out incompatible options fromone’s deliberations. These considerations suggest that the SinglePhenomenon View and IAP – the compromise principles – do notmove far enough away from the Simple View. They suggest thatperhaps what is called for is a Double Phenomena View of intentionand intentional action.
But so far we have been looking at just one nonreductive accountof intention. I turn now to Al Mele’s account.26 Mele’s account islike Bratman’s in important ways but the roles Mele attributes tointentions are perhaps less weighted toward future-directed inten-tions. Also, it is more obvious how Mele’s view is meant to covercases of spontaneous action.
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According to Mele, intentions are executive attitudes towardplans. The plans may be complex, such as a plan to travel abroad,or simple, such as a plan to raise one’s arm. Mele distinguishesdistal intentions from proximal intentions. Mele’s distal intentionsare basically akin to Bratman’s future-directed intentions. Meledefines these as intentions for the “non-immediate future,” whereasproximal intentions are intentions to act in the “specious present”.Although Mele distinguishes proximal and distal intentions, he takesthem to be two species of the same kind of mental state – both areexecutive attitudes toward plans. Mele explains that “a proximalintention is, in part, a propensity to execute a plan for immediateaction. . . . Similarly, a distal intention is, in part, a propensity toexecute [a] plan for the non-immediate future.”27 On his view, toput it roughly the main functional roles of an intention are to initiateand motivationally sustain action, to guide action, to help in thecoordination of plans, and to prompt means-end reasoning. Meleaccepts IAP. He believes that in every case of intentional action, aproximal intention is at work.
Let’s return to Bratman’s case of spontaneously catching a ball.On Mele’s account, the agent intended to catch the ball as long ashe had an executive attitude toward a plan that involved reaching upand catching the ball. I suspect Mele would point out that the plancould be very simple and that the intention might have been acquiredrather than formed.
Mele, like Bratman, offers a functionalist view of intention. Butwe might wonder, given functionalism, whether we are really deal-ing with one state or rather with two states: proximal intention anddistal intention. Distal intentions play a role in coordinating plansand in prompting means-end reasoning, while proximal intentionsinitiate and guide action. Distal intentions play what Bratman callsthe ‘reason centered’ roles while proximal intentions are responsiblefor what Bratman calls ‘endeavoring’. We are supposed to think bothare intentions because both are executive attitudes toward plans, butI suspect that the term ‘executive’ is doing a lot of work in Mele’sview. We might wonder, for example, in what way Max’s intentiontoday to run the Boston marathon five years hence is executive. Itdisposes him to certain sorts of behavior, but non-executive states –like strong desires – also dispose us to behave in various ways.
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Mele could point out however that IAP is not jeopardized byconsidering distal and proximal intentions to be mental states ofdifferent types. As long as proximal intentions are intentions and aslong as it is the relation of an intentional action to a proximal inten-tion that makes the action intentional, then IAP is not threatened.However, I believe that we need not and should not assume thatevery case of intentional action involves a proximal intention. Therole Mele assigns to proximal intentions can all be played by otherstates. Above I suggested that, putting things loosely, one of the keyroles of proximal intentions is to initiate action. But thisis to putthings loosely. Proximal intentions don’t themselves initiate action;after all, they are states, not events. For this reason, Mele suggeststhat it is actuallythe event of acquiringa proximal intention thattriggers action. But then there are other events which are as goodcandidates for the role, such as the acquisition of a belief, the acquis-ition of a desire, or simply a perceptual event. For example, if oneis very thirsty and suddenly comes to acquire a belief that a glass ofwater is within reach, then perhaps the belief acquisition triggersaction. Recall I am concerned here not with complex cases thatrequire deliberation, but with very simple cases of intentional action.Mele would reject this suggestion in part because of the other roleshe assigns to proximal intentions, namely, the roles of guiding actionand sustaining motivation for action. But these functions too mightbe performed by beliefs and desires, or other states.
I do not deny that there are proximal intentions, nor am I claim-ing that proximal intentions never play a role in intentional action.If Max’s distal intention to watch theX-filespersists until Sundaynight, it may then issue in a proximal intention to turn on the tele-vision now. But I see no reason to believe that a proximal intentionis involved in every case of intentional action if we can tell a cogentstory about intentional actions that does not bring in both proximalintentions and the acquisition of proximal intentions. I believe wedo better to think of intention as a state connected to planning anddeliberation and to look to other states and events when giving anaccount of intentional action.
Thus far I have been arguing that reductive accounts of intentionare unsuccessful and that once we turn to a nonreductive account ofintention, one that sees intention as defined by its role in planning for
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the future, it is less plausible to think such a state is present in everycase of intentional action; thus the IAP becomes less plausible. NowI want to turn to some empirical studies which also suggest that theremay be a distinctive state connected with our ability to plan and thatthis state may not play a role in all intentional action.
4. EMPIRICAL STUDIES
Patients with frontal lobe damage lose the ability to plan for thefuture but are still able to perform simple intentional actions.28
Many such cases are discussed in the psychological literature. InDescartes’ Error,29 neurologist Antonio Damasio discusses twosuch cases. First is the well-known case of Phineas Gage. Gage wasa railroad foreman whose head was pierced by an iron rod duringa rock-blasting explosion. The accident, which occurred in 1849,damaged the ventromedial region of Gage’s frontal lobe.30 Gagesurvived the accident, but he underwent drastic personality changes.Before the accident, he was energetic, responsible, smart, and “per-sistent in executing all his plans of action”. After, he is described as“fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity whichwas not previously his custom,. . . ”31 He is also described as havinglost his ability to make and carry out plans.
Damasio discusses at some length a case similar to that ofGage but this time, involving a man Damasio himself observes andtests. He calls this man “Elliot”. Before suffering a brain tumor,Elliot is a successful businessman. After surgery in which damagedfrontal-lobe tissue is removed with the tumor, Elliot’s personalitycompletely changes. Damasio writes that Elliot was able to com-plete simple tasks but was unable to “plan for the hours ahead ofhim, let alone to plan for the months and years of his future.”32
What do these studies show? Damasio says of the first case:
. . . Gage’s example indicated that something in the brain was concerned specifi-cally with unique human properties, among them the ability to anticipate thefuture and plan accordingly within a complex social environment. . . .33
Patients with frontal lobe damage typically lose affect, and so per-haps they lose the motivation to plan rather than the ability to do so.But the most common and perhaps most natural interpretation of the
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data is as Damasio states above: our ability to anticipate the futureand to plan is importantly linked to the frontal lobes of our brains.34
Furthermore, the ability to perform simple, intentional actions, isnot dependent on the same area of the brain as the ability to plan forthe future.
I believe this conclusion is further supported by appeal to non-human animals. One of the most salient differences between humanbrains and brains of animals like cats and dogs is that the frontallobe is much larger in humans. If there is a tight connection betweenthis part of the brain and the ability to plan for the future, wewould expect humans to engage in much more complex planningthan non-human animals and this is exactly the case. Furthermore,although we don’t characteristically label the actions of non-humananimal ‘intentional’, in fact, our actions do not seem to differ inkind from those of other animals. When we reach for our coffeemugs, wash our faces, and take walks, we are acting intentionally.My dog takes walks, my cat washes her face, and their activitiesdo not seem to be intrinsically any more or less purposeful thanmine. But I’m quite sure neither my cat nor my dog has ever had afuture-directed intention to visit San Francisco. I suspect they don’thave future-directed intentions. Having a future-directed intentionrequires being able to represent non-actual states of affairs to one-self. Intending involves being committed to a nonactual situation.And, future-directed intentions are often the output of deliberation.It’s likely my dog and cat have representational and motivationalstates (nonlinguistic ones) corresponding in some rough way to mybeliefs and desires.35 But it’s far less likely that they are able both torepresent to themselves nonactual states of affairs and to deliberate,thus it’s highly unlikely they have future-directed intentions.36
Human beings, or perhaps advanced primates, are the firstcreatures with the ability to deliberate about future options and tocommit themselves to future actions. This is why it should comeas no surprise that Phineas Gage and others like him have suffereddamage to a part of the brain particular to such creatures. Assum-ing that the ability to plan and to form intentions for the future islinked to the frontal lobe, what significance does this have for IAP?To argue that these studies show the falsity of IAP would requiredefending certain theses about the relation between the mind and the
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brain and ruling out alternative hypothesis. I will not try to do thishere, but I believe these cases offer initial evidence against IAP andtell us why we should not find shocking and should not so quicklydismiss the idea that there might be a mental state distinctive to thisspecial ability to plan, a state not found in every case of intentionalaction.
A second entirely different set of empirical studies may alsobear on IAP. Physiologist Benjamin Libet appears to have shownthat cerebral initiation of actions typically begins unconsciously.37
Libet’s subjects were hooked up to an electroencephalograph, whichmeasures a brain wave in the cortical area called ‘the readinesspotential’. Variations in the length and pattern of this brain wavehave been found to correlate with differences in movement. Forexample, one pattern is correlated with right hand movements,another with left foot movements; one pattern is correlated withthe movements of a hand playing the piano and another with thatof a hand picking up a glass. Libet’s subjects were instructed tospontaneously flex their right hands. They were also instructed towatch a dot rotating on a clock face and to say where on the clockface the dot was when they first became aware of an urge or anintention to move their hand. Libet found that:
the results clearly showed that the that onset of RP [readiness-potential] precedesW [the conscious urge or intention] by about 350 msec. . . This means that thebrain has begun the specific prepatory processes for the voluntary act well beforethe subject is even aware of any wish or intention to act; the volition process musthave been initiated unconsciously (or non-consciously).38
Libet’s work has been challenged on various fronts, from the timingmethods used to his interpretation of the data.39 While these chal-lenges are important, for now I simply want to point out that if Libetis correct, then his results cannot be generalized in any straightfor-ward way to future-directed intentions. If Libet is correct, then in thecase of simple actions, the brain selects and prepares for an actionbefore the subject is even aware of an intention so to act.40 Thusthe order of events is: (1) neural activity associated with right handmovement; (2) consciousness of an intention to move one’s righthand now; (3) activation of relevant muscles. Libet believes that theintention is not completely causally impotent. He thinks it offers theagent an opportunity to ‘veto’ the intended action. Even if conscious
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intentions do have veto-power, the picture Libet presents is at oddswith the widely-accepted view that actions are cause by consciousintentions.
My main purpose here however is not to look at Libet’s workin detail, nor is it to work through the implications of Libet’swork for views of intentional action. Rather, I want to point outthat Libet’s results cannot be generalized in any straightforwardway to future-directed intentions. Recall that future-directed inten-tions are often not accompanied by any relevant action. Max, forinstance, intends to jog tomorrow but is simply cooking spaghettinow. Thus the order of events in the case of future-directed inten-tion cannot be as shown above for the cases of simple action inthe present. It is highly doubtful that neural activity associated withjogging precedes Max’s awareness of an intention to jog. Further-more, while it’s unclear that a conscious intention plays any roleat all in the typical case of simple action, it’s highly likely that aconscious future-directed intention does drive means-end reasoningand work to screen out incompatible options. Thus Libet’s work,like Damasio’s, gives us reason to think that the case of future-directed intention is importantly different from that of intention inaction.
5. UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
My main aim in this paper is not to provide a fully worked out alter-native to the views considered here. Rather, it is to make the casethat current work in philosophy of action overlooks the possibilitythat there is an independent state of intending but that this state is notpresent in all cases of intentional action, and thus, that it is not therelation of an action to this state that makes an action intentional.Nevertheless, if I am right, then very important questions remain.Perhaps the two most pressing questions are: “What makes inten-tional actions intentional?” and “How are future-directed intentionand intentional action related?” In considering each question, myaim will be only to suggest that there are plausible alternatives tothe views I am criticizing, not to exhaust the possible alternatives,nor to decide among them.
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What makes intentional actions intentional?I will outline a coupleof possible answers to this question, both alternatives to SPV. First,the adverb ‘intentionally’ may work as what Jonathan Bennett hascalled an ‘ellipsis excluder’.41 To say an action was done inten-tionally makes clear it was not, for example, done accidentally,involuntarily, mistakenly, or unknowingly. If such an account is cor-rect, then whether we call an action intentional will turn out to bevery context-dependent, and thus it will be a mistake to look fora common account of all cases in which we say an agent actedintentionally.
A second line of response would look to the relation an actionbears to other states. There are several candidates for what theseother states might be and I have briefly spelled out one such alter-native in my discussion of Mele. There I said an intentional actionmay be intentional in virtue of being related in the right way to theagent’s beliefs and desires. Alternatively, perhaps intentional actionsare actions which are under the agent’s control where the monitoringand control are provided by something ‘lower level’ than beliefs anddesires.
If IAP is false, then how are intentional action and intendingrelated?While I am somewhat skeptical about reductivist accountsof intentional action, let me assume such an account for now andassume an account like Bratman’s of future-directed intention inorder to sketch one way such a question might be answered. Ona reductive view, when a desire-belief pair favor an action in thepresent, they together are sufficient to issue in an action.42 Nowwe might assume that when an action is favored which cannot beexecuted in the present, for example, the action of flying across thecountry next month, the belief and desire lead to the formation of adistinctive (irreducible) state of intending. Notice here the desire andbelief cause the relevant intention – they do not constitute it. Thisintention then is related to the desire and belief (and gets its primarymotive force here). This is to view the intention as the output of adesire and belief or of deliberation involving the weighing of desiresand beliefs. But as Bratman points out, it also serves as input tofurther reasoning, and works as a filter to screen out incompatibleoptions. Such an account might separate not only cases in which theaction is not for the specious present, but also cases in which the
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agent is conflicted over what to do and thus engages in deliberation.A decision in such cases might also issue in an intention.
But then in those cases where an intention is formed, how onthis view would it be related to the agent’s later intentional action(assuming there is one)? Again I will offer a couple of specula-tive possibilities. Here a future-intention might be seen as a sortof place-holder for the action, one that persists until the action isavailable. One might think here of the introduction of currency intothe barter economy. Currency acts as sort of place holder or stor-age device, playing a role in the economy somewhat like the role afuture-directed intention plays in one’s mental economy. Addition-ally, both quickly take on ‘a life of their own’ (money, especiallyas it ceases to be tied to the gold standard.) For intentions, thisindependent life consists in part in the roles intentions play as inputsto further reasoning. Views about how rich this independent life offuture-directed intentions is vary. One can see this by looking to thenormative debate about whether intentions provide additional rea-sons for action (above and beyond belief-desire reasons)?43 Thosewho think intentions do provide additional reasons posit a richerindependent life for intentions than those who do not.
Such a view would still be able to account for certain commonal-ties between intentional action and intending. In being placeholdersfor action, intentions would exhibit the sort of commitment to bring-ing something about that acting itself exhibits. Furthermore, bothfuture-directed intention and intentional action would exhibit dualdirections of fit. In acting intentionally, the relevant desire providesthe agent with a mind-to-world attitude. But the adjustments theagent makes or is disposed to make in response to information aboutthe world show an attitude with world-to-mind fit as well. On thisview, although future-directed intention is notreducibleto belief anddesire, it is an attitude which is both desire-like and belief-like. Mostobviously intentions have a mind-to-world fit. The action intendedis meant to bring about a desired state of affairs. But intentions arebelief-like in that one cannot rationally intend what one believes isimpossible, nor can one rationally and knowingly hold conflictingintentions. And intentions themselves are subject to modification inlight of new information about the world.
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So far, I have been discussing the relation of intentional actionin general and future-directed intention in general. But what is therelation between a future-directed intention to A and a later inten-tional A-ing? Given the “placeholder” view above, we might thinkof the intention as persisting until the time of action. Then, at thetime of action, some more basic mechanism (one that is responsiblefor the execution of simple, immediate actions) ‘kicks in’. Thinkagain of reaching for a mug. Here movement is guided. Likewise,certain animal actions appear guided. The ‘guidedness’ and goal-directedness may simply be accounted for by a desire or belief, asReductivists claim, or it may be accounted for in some more basicway.
An alternative to the ‘placeholder’ idea sketched above is thatthere are something like two routes to action. Spontaneous actions,most or all actions of non-human animals, and other actions comeabout without any intention playing a role. But in those cases wherean intention is formed (again cases where the agent experiences aconflict over what to do), the intention does play some role bringingabout intended action, at least in the normal case. Though I will notdevelop the point here, I believe such an account might be fruitfullydeveloped. On the latter possibility more than the former, Bratmanwould be right after all to call intentions Janus-faced, but he wouldbe wrong nevertheless in his acceptance of SPV and IAP.
The best accounts of intention are nonreductive. These accountssee intentions as inputs into further planning, and as outputs ofdeliberation. The failure of reductive accounts of intention takentogether with the empirical information we have connecting adeveloped frontal lobe with planning and deliberative abilitiesargues for a nonreductive account of intention. But once we acceptthat intention is a state intimately connected to complex deliberationand planning and once we see that those who can’t plan can stillperform intentional actions, we should be reluctant to assume sucha state is involved in every case of intentional action. Instead, weshould begin to take seriously the possibility that IAP is false.44
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NOTES
1 John Searle holds a view somewhat like this. However, Searle believes there aretwo kinds of intention, prior intentions and intentions in action, the latter beingparts of action. I do not posit two kinds of intention nor do I hold that actionshave intentions as parts. See John Searle’sIntentionality(Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1983).2 Donald Davidson,Essays on Actions and Events(Oxford: Clarendon, 1980,p. 8).3 In these passages, Davidson writes of acting with an intention as opposed tointentional action. For the purposes of this paper I have grouped together actingwith an intention and intentional action. The important distinction is between whatDavidson calls ‘pure intending’ – intention that isn’t or needn’t be accompaniedby an action, and the other cases.4 Ibid., p. 88.5 Ibid.6 Ibid.7 This isn’t how Davidson would formulate his own view since he believes actionsare intentional only ‘under a description’. Thus there is no class of intentionalactions. This position follows in part from his view of actions as concrete partic-ulars admitting of multiple descriptions.. See his “Agency” in Davidson, 1980.8 This way of distinguishing beliefs and desires is suggested by G.E.M.Anscombe inIntention (NY: Cornell University Press, 1985, p. 56). Roughlyspeaking, beliefs aim at truth. If a belief does not match the world, the beliefshould change as opposed to the world. Desires aim at realization. If a desire doesnot match the world, the desire should not therefore be changed. Rather, againroughly speaking, it is the world that is to conform to the desire. See also Searle,pp. 7–8.9 Both reduce intentions to belief-desire pairs. One might think that intentionsare simply a kind of desire; alternatively, one might see intentions as a kind ofbelief. [For more on intention as belief, see H.P. Grice, “Intention and Uncer-tainty”, Proceedings of the British Academy57, pp. 263–279 and David Velleman,Practical Reflection(NJ: Princeton Univ. Press), 1989]. Views which attempt toreduce intention to desire have a great deal of trouble accounting for the irra-tionality of knowingly holding conflicting intentions. Views which see intentionas a kind of belief will be subject to the same objections as desire-belief viewsin so far as on each kinds of view, intending to A entails believing one will A.Also, on Velleman’s view, for example, intentions are identified will self-fulfillingexpectations that are motivated by a desire for their fulfillment and that representthemselves as such. This makes Velleman’s view subject to an objection I makeabove to Wayne Davis’s desire-belief view. On these views of intention, it’s notclear young children have the requisite concepts to have intentions. See chapter 4of Velleman’s book for an extended discussion of common objections and repliesto ‘belief’ accounts of intention.
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10 Robert Audi, “Intending and its Place in the Theory of Action”ContemporaryAction Theory, Vol. I, pp. 177–196.11 See Chapter 1 of Michael Bratman,Intentions, Plans, and Practical Reason(Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1987).12 Audi, p. 69.13 Ben Mathew pointed this out to me.14 I assume here that if S intends to C as well as to B by A-ing, then if S A’s, shedoes so in order to C as well as to B.15 Wayne Davis, “A Causal Theory of Intending,”American PhilosophicalQuarterly21, 142.16 This is Davis’s own counterexample and it leads him to reformulate his view.17 Davis, p. 147.18 See Michael Bratman, 1987 and Al Mele,Springs of Action(New York:Oxford University Press, 1992).19 Bratman, p. 112.20 Adams and Mele, “The Role of Intention in Intentional Action,”CanadianJournal of Philosophy19 (1989), 521–522.21 Bruce Vermazen, “Questionable Intentions,”Philosophical Studies9 (1998),273.22 Bratman, p. 126.23 Ibid.24 In fact, it is hard to see the difference between endeavoring and acting with anintention. Bratman thinks there are different senses of ‘S acts with the intentionto A’ and so matters are not quite so simple. See Chapter 9,Intentions, Plans, andPractical Reason.25 I suspect the first interpretation is closer to what Bratman has in mind. Onpage 141 ofIntentions, Plans, and Practical Reason, he writes of “the tendencyof intention to issue in corresponding endeavoring” (see also p. 108).26 Mele, 1992.27 Ibid., p. 144.28 Given my acceptance in section 3 of functionalist accounts of intention, itmay seem odd to turn to empirical studies which would be most compellinggiven something like a type-type identity theory. However, I believe views whichcombine a functional account of mental state concepts with a species-specific andotherwise restricted type-type identity view are highly plausible and eliminate anytension between these two positions. See David Lewis’s “Mad Pain and MartianPain” in Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. One. ed. Ned Block(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980).29 Antonio Damasio,Descartes’ Error(NY: Avon Books, 1994).30 This was determined relatively recently by applying modern neuroimagingtechniques to photographs of Gage’s skull.31 p. 8.32 p. 37.33 p. 10.
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34 While damage to the frontal lobes consistently compromises planning anddecision-making ability, damage to other regions of the brain can have a similareffect. For example, Damasio notes that damage to the somato-sensory cortices ofthe right hemisphere, and damage to the amygdala, part of the limbic system, alsoimpair decision-making. See Chapter 4 ofDescartes’s Error. See also, JoaquinM. FusterThe Prefrontal Cortex(NY: Ravel Press, 1989).35 It may be best to think of all our desires as being for nonactual states, or at leastfor states we believe to be nonactual. I’m not suggesting animals have desires withlinguistic content; rather that they have some sort of motivational states whichcorrespond in some rough way to human desires.36 Such claims concerning animals are of course always controversial.37 See for example Benjamin Libet, “Preparation of Intention-to-Act in Relationto Pre-Event Potentials Recorded at the Vertex,” inElectroencephalography andClinical Neurophysiology, 56 (1983), 367–372; and “The Neural Time-Factor inperception, Volition and Free Will,” inRevue de Metaphysique(1992), 255–272.38 Libet (1992), p. 263.39 Al Mele raises questions concerning Libet’s interpretation of his data in“Strength of Motivation and Being in Control: Learning from Libet,” inAmericanPhilosophical Quarterly(1997).40 Given that the subjects have been instructed to flex their hands, they presum-ably begin the experiment with intentions to do so. So the relevant intention herehas to be an intention to flexnow.41 Jonathan Bennett, “Real,” inMIND, LXXV (1966), pp. 504–507.42 Benjamin Libet’s experiments do call this picture into question. Libet’s studiesmay support a double phenomena view and may point to an even more radical dif-ference between intentional action and future-directed intention than is suggestedhere. But I do not think the plausibility of DPV depends upon such a picture.Therefore, here I present how an alternative to SPV might go which accepts astandard reductive view of intention.43 See Bratman, especially Chapters 3 through 7, as well as David Gauthier,“Commitment and Choice: An Essay on the Rationality of Plans”, and EdwardMcClennan,Rationality and Dynamic Choice: Foundational Explorations(Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).44 Many thanks to Robert Audi, Michael Bratman, Susan Brison, Bernie Gert,Robert Fogelin, Al Mele, James Moor, Judy Thomson and an anonymous refereeof this journal for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
