Intention  

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Intention is a mental state that represents a commitment to carrying out an action or actions in the future. Intention involves mental activities such as planning and forethought.

Intention is also an agent's specific purpose in performing an action or series of actions, the end or goal that is aimed at. Outcomes that are unanticipated or unforeseen are known as unintended consequences.

Intentional behavior can also be just thoughtful and deliberate goal-directedness. Recent research in experimental philosophy has shown that other factors may also matter for whether or not an action is counted as intentional.

Philosophy

G.E.M. Anscombe made the topic of intentional action a major topic of analytic philosophy with her 1957 work Intention. She argued that intentional action was coextensive with action of which one could ask "why were you doing that?" In the sense that Anscombe meant her question, it was "refused application" by the answer "I was not aware that I was doing that", but not by "for no reason at all". Therefore Anscombe held that it was possible to act intentionally for no reason at all. She also claimed that intentional action was subject to "knowledge without observation", and that all intentional action involved acting under a description.

Ethics

In deontological ethics the intent of an act is the way in which a maxim is supposed to be executed.

Experimental research

In recent years, there has been a large amount of work done on the concept of intentional action in experimental philosophy. This work has aimed at illuminating and understanding the factors which influence people's judgments of whether an action was done intentionally. For instance, research has shown that unintended side effects are often considered to be done intentionally if the side effect is considered bad and the person acting knew the side effect would occur before acting. Yet when the side effect is considered good, people generally don't think it was done intentionally, even if the person knew it would occur before acting. The most well-known example involves a chairman who implements a new business program for the sole purpose to make money but ends up affecting the environment in the process. If he implements his business plan and in the process he ends up helping the environment, then people generally say he unintentionally helped the environment; if he implements his business plan and in the process he ends up harming the environment, then people generally say he intentionally harmed the environment. The important point is that in both cases his only goal was to make money.

While there have been many explanations proposed for why the "side-effect effect" occurs, researchers on this topic have not yet reached a consensus.

Related terms

• In the philosophy of mind, intentionality is the property of being "about" something else, or to have some subject matter, in a certain way. Many states of mind, such as thinking about the pyramids, are characteristically about things (in this case, the pyramids). Other things, such as words and paintings, can also have kinds of intentionality. Rocks and tables, in general, do not have intentional states.

References

• G.E.M. Anscombe, Intention
• Donald Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events

See also

authorial intent

• Collective intentionality
• Intention (criminal law)
• Scienter
• Intentional stance
• Intentional community
• Intentionality
• Intentions (disambiguation)
• Telos (philosophy)
• Authorial intentionality
• Intension
• Intentions
• Intraparietal sulcus
• Mindfulness
• Motivation
• Process art