Abstract:Cognitivists about intention hold that intending to do something entails believing you will do it. Noncognitivists hold that intentions are conative states with no cognitive component. I argue that both of these claims are true. Intending entails the presence of a belief, even though the intention is not even partly the belief. The result is a form of what Sarah Paul calls noninferential weak cognitivism, a view that, as she notes, has no prominent defenders.
“…That is what Clark aims to do in his paper. Clark (2020) argues in two ways that intentions are not identical to beliefs about what one will do. The first argument is that intentions 'are not shown to have been true or false by what you go on to do':…”
Section: Extant Arguments For Strong Cognitivism Are Summarized and T...mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Clark (2020) argues in two ways that intentions are not identical to beliefs about what one will do. The first argument is that intentions ‘are not shown to have been true or false by what you go on to do’: If you prefer sleeping in the parlor to sleeping in the attic, and wind up sleeping in the attic, your preference for sleeping in the parlor is not thereby shown to have been false.…”
Section: Extant Arguments For Strong Cognitivism Are Summarized and T...mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…On the face of it, intentions to φ fall in with desires to φ and preferences for φ‐ing, rather than with thoughts and beliefs that you will φ. ( Clark, 2020, p. 309)…”
Section: Extant Arguments For Strong Cognitivism Are Summarized and T...mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…When the chips are down he may discover that he is not, after all, decisively moved by the preference or motive he supposed he had adopted. ( Frankfurt, 1998, p. 101; cited in Clark, 2020, p. 312)…”
Section: Extant Arguments For Strong Cognitivism Are Summarized and T...mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…For example, Berislav Marušić and I have made a case for strong cognitivism about intention, according to which ‘To intend to do something is neither more nor less than to believe, on the basis of one's practical reasoning, that one will do it’ (Marušić and Schwenkler, 2018, p. 309). And Philip Clark (2020) has since proposed a view on which intention is identified with the ‘conative state’ that he calls ‘being going to do’ the thing that one intends (Clark, 2020, p. 316). Clark's position identifies (1) above with (3) and denies that they are identical with (2), while Marušić and I identified (1) with (2) without taking any direct stance on the relationship of these to (3).…”
What's the relationship between (1) intending to do something, (2) believing that you are going to do this, and (3) its being the case that you are going to do the thing in question? I propose a position on which all three categories, correctly understood, amount in the fundamental case to the very same thing. The belief that constitutes future-directed intention, when strong, likewise constitutes one as having a real tendency to act in the intended way.
“…That is what Clark aims to do in his paper. Clark (2020) argues in two ways that intentions are not identical to beliefs about what one will do. The first argument is that intentions 'are not shown to have been true or false by what you go on to do':…”
Section: Extant Arguments For Strong Cognitivism Are Summarized and T...mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Clark (2020) argues in two ways that intentions are not identical to beliefs about what one will do. The first argument is that intentions ‘are not shown to have been true or false by what you go on to do’: If you prefer sleeping in the parlor to sleeping in the attic, and wind up sleeping in the attic, your preference for sleeping in the parlor is not thereby shown to have been false.…”
Section: Extant Arguments For Strong Cognitivism Are Summarized and T...mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…On the face of it, intentions to φ fall in with desires to φ and preferences for φ‐ing, rather than with thoughts and beliefs that you will φ. ( Clark, 2020, p. 309)…”
Section: Extant Arguments For Strong Cognitivism Are Summarized and T...mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…When the chips are down he may discover that he is not, after all, decisively moved by the preference or motive he supposed he had adopted. ( Frankfurt, 1998, p. 101; cited in Clark, 2020, p. 312)…”
Section: Extant Arguments For Strong Cognitivism Are Summarized and T...mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…For example, Berislav Marušić and I have made a case for strong cognitivism about intention, according to which ‘To intend to do something is neither more nor less than to believe, on the basis of one's practical reasoning, that one will do it’ (Marušić and Schwenkler, 2018, p. 309). And Philip Clark (2020) has since proposed a view on which intention is identified with the ‘conative state’ that he calls ‘being going to do’ the thing that one intends (Clark, 2020, p. 316). Clark's position identifies (1) above with (3) and denies that they are identical with (2), while Marušić and I identified (1) with (2) without taking any direct stance on the relationship of these to (3).…”
What's the relationship between (1) intending to do something, (2) believing that you are going to do this, and (3) its being the case that you are going to do the thing in question? I propose a position on which all three categories, correctly understood, amount in the fundamental case to the very same thing. The belief that constitutes future-directed intention, when strong, likewise constitutes one as having a real tendency to act in the intended way.
Elizabeth Anscombe characterised practical knowledge as knowledge ‘in intention’. As Anscombe recognised, accepting this view involves rejecting certain basic orthodox epistemological assumptions. But even once this is done, a challenge remains for a conception of practical knowledge as knowledge ‘in intention’. For while practical knowledge would appear to be a kind of propositional knowledge, intentions would appear to be a kind of non-propositional attitude. I call this the ‘Structural Challenge’ for an intention-based account of practical knowledge. After rejecting two suggested responses – one which views intentions as propositional attitudes; one which views practical knowledge as non-propositional knowledge – I offer my own solution by showing how simply having and carrying out an intention to φ will ordinarily meet a plausible neutral condition on propositional knowledge. Knowing a fact will in general involve being mentally related to it via a successful exercise of relevant concepts. The account I develop turns on viewing a person’s carrying out an intention to φ as their constituting the fact that they are φ-ing, through a practical exercise of their concept of φ-ing. The resulting account sheds light both on the analogies, and on the crucial formal differences, between practical and theoretical knowledge.
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