Abstract

While most philosophers agree that the concept of intentional action plays an important role in our folk psychology, there is still wide-scale disagreement about the precise nature of this role. Unfortunately, there has traditionally been a dearth of empirical data about folk ascriptions of intentional action. Lately, however, philosophers and psychologists have begun making a concerted effort to fill in this empirical lacuna. In this dissertation, I discuss how this research sheds new light on problems in action theory, moral philosophy, and the philosophy of law. First, I set the stage with a discussion of some of the problems traditionally associated with the concept of intentional action. Here, questions include: What is it to do something intentionally? How are intentional actions related to intentions? What is the relationship between intentional action and conative, cognitive, and moral considerations? In this first section, my main goal is to survey the relevant literature from action theory in order to give the reader a perspicuous view of the kinds of debates that shape the philosophical landscape. Having laid out some of the salient problems, I then turn my attention to some recent empirical research on the folk concept of intentional action and discuss the relevance of this research to the philosophy of action. Next, I compare and contrast the folk concepts of intention and intentional action with their legal counterparts. My goal is to flesh out the extent to which these concepts diverge—a problem that is particularly pressing given that in litigated cases involving juries, jurors are often asked to judge whether the defendant acted intentionally, purposely, knowingly, etc. Finally, I flesh out the implications of the aforementioned data on the folk concept of intentional action and moral psychology—especially blame attribution—for the problem of jury partiality. I argue that the biasing effect that moral considerations have on our ascriptions of intentional action further complicates our attempt to ascertain the proper role that the concepts of intention and intentional action should play in criminal proceedings