Shared agency is a distinctive kind of sociality that involves interdependent planning, practical reasoning, and action between participants. Philosophical reflection suggests that agents engage in this form of sociality when a special structure of interrelated psychological attitudes exists between them, a set of attitudes that constitutes a collective intention. I defend a new way to understand collective intention as a combination of individual conditional intentions. Revising an initial statement of the conditional intention account in response (...) to several challenges leads to a specification of the properties these intentions need to have in order to be genuine commitments. I then show how a structure of conditional intentions with these properties settles a collection of agents on engaging in social interactions that display all the features typically associated with shared agency. (shrink)

In this paper, I will discuss the various ways in which intentions can be said to be conditional, with particular attention to the internal conditions on the intentions’ content. I will first consider what it takes to carry out a conditional intention. I will then discuss how the distinctive norms of intention apply to conditional intentions and whether conditional intentions are a weaker sort of commitments than the unconditional ones. This discussion will lead to (...) the idea of what I call the ‘deep structure’ of intentions. Roughly, this is the idea that the conditional nature of our intentions is only partially made explicit in the expressions we use to communicate our intentions and in the explicit form of our thinking about and reasoning with them. Most conditions that qualify our intentions are part of a deep functional structure that can be evinced by observing the actual psychological functioning of intentions and by considering the rational requirements that they engage. I will argue that the deep structure of intentions is characteristically conditional. Genuinely unconditional intentions are only limiting instances of conditional intentions and their contribution to agency can only be understood in light of this fact. I will conclude by showing that the characteristic conditional structure of intentions is intimately related to distinctive features of human agency, especially to its unity over time. (shrink)

The main thesis of this paper is that, whereas an intention simpliciter is a commitment to a plan of action, a conditional intention is a commitment to a contingency plan, a commitment about what to do upon (learning of) a certain contingency relevant to one’s interests obtaining. In unconditional intending, our commitment to acting is not contingent on finding out that some condition obtains. In conditional intending, we intend to undertake an action on some condition, impinging (...) on our interests, which is as yet unsettled for us, but about which we can find out without undue cost. (shrink)

The doctrine of promissory fraud holds that a contractual promise implicitly represents an intent to perform. A promisor's conditional intent to perform poses a problem for that doctrine. It is clear that some undisclosed conditions on the promisor's intent should result in liability for promissory fraud. Yet no promisor intends to perform come what may, so there is a sense in which all promisors conditionally intend to perform. Building on Michael Bratman's planning theory of intentions, this article provides a (...) theoretical account of the distinction between “foreground” and “background” conditions on intentions in general and then explains why foreground conditions on a promisor's intent to perform are likely to result in material promissory misrepresentation, while background conditions are not. The difference between foreground and background conditions lies in whether the agent accepts the satisfaction of the condition for the purposes of her practical reasoning. A promisor's nonacceptance of a condition on her intent to perform is material because it is likely to affect her preperformance deliberations and investment in the transaction, as well as her willingness to seek agreement with the promisee on how to fill contractual gaps. (shrink)

The concept of conditional intent is pervasive in practical reasoning and action. Although conditional intent has not received the detailed attention it deserves, it is worth remarking that much if not most of the intentions we formulate and on the basis of which we act or try to act are conditional in logical form.

In this paper, I discuss Ludwig's systematic and illuminating account of conditional intentions, with particular reference to my own view (presented in "Conditional Intentions", Noûs, 2009). In contrast to Ludwig, I argue that we should prefer a formal characterization of conditional intentions rather than a more substantial one in terms of reasons for action (although the conditions that qualify an intention bear on the reasonableness and justifiability of the intention). I then defend a partially different (...) taxonomy of the conditions that might qualify an intention and discuss how the difference bears on the application of the rational pressures of intention. I go on to acknowledge that Ludwig is correct on insisting on the centrality of the *epistemic* element in the antecedent of conditional intentions. But I argue that even when a condition has been settled (that is, when the agent has ascertained that it holds), the intention remains genuinely conditional. In my view, conditions that have been settled are not just part of the background of planning: they continue to qualify the content of the intention (although they come to play a different role when settled). I then discuss how the settling of a condition does not interrupt the *continuity* of the content and structure of the intention---in contrast to Ludwig's account, where the conditional intention appears to give rise, when the conditions are taken as settled, to a distinct *unconditional* intention. I close by discussing the serious concern that my way of characterizing conditional intentions threatens to swallow most intentions, given that it is unlikely that we have intentions that do not rest on our accepting the obtaining of relevant conditions. (shrink)

What is required for several agents to intentionally φ together? I argue that each of them must believe or assume that their φ-ing is a single end that each intends to contribute to. Various analogies between intentional singular action and intentional joint action show that this doxastic single end condition captures a feature at the very heart of the phenomenon of intentional joint action. For instance, just as several simple actions are only unified into a complex intentional singular activity if (...) the agent believes or assumes that there is a single end that each action is directed to, so several agents’ actions are only unified into an intentional joint activity if each agent believes or assumes that there is a single end that each intends to contribute to. Influential accounts of intentional joint action, including Christopher Kutz’s and Michael Bratman’s, implicitly include this condition only if participants must intend to contribute to the end under the same conception. While such a requirement successfully rules out some counterexamples, it also makes the accounts unable to appropriately accommodate and explain clear cases of intentional joint action that they ought to be able to accommodate and explain. (shrink)

This paper discusses a problem arising from the way in which John Searle marks the distinction between intentional and unintentional action (Inquiry, Vol. 22, pp. 253?80), namely, that of adequately distinguishing those events which we regard as unintentional actions on the part of an agent from those other events occasioned by or brought about as a result of his action which we (correctly) do not countenance as actions of any sort ? unintentional or otherwise. Searle's attempt to distinguish them in (...) terms of the ?proximity of the contents of intentions? is examined and rejected, and an alternative account which exploits the anthropocentric character of our action vocabulary is proposed and defended. The discussion ends with a brief indication of some other difficulties engendered by Searle's analysis. (shrink)

The concept of intention is widely thought to involve a confidence condition of some sort, a condition that specifies certain beliefs that one must either have or lack if one intends to do something. Two of the most common formulations of this condition are the following: (i) A intends to X only if A believes that they (probably) will X; and (ii) A intends to X only if A does not believe that they (probably) will not X. A third, (...) much weaker formulation can also be considered: (iii) A intends to X only if A does not believe that it is highly unlikely that they will X. In this article I report on a series of experiments that indicate that ordinary speakers of English do not apply the concepts of intention and belief in accordance with any of the foregoing hypotheses. These experimental results provide empirical evidence against the idea that there is a confidence condition in the concept of intention. (shrink)

In this paper, I sketch a revision of jonathan bennett's "meaning-Nominalist strategy" for explaining the conventional meanings of utterance-Types. Bennett's strategy does not explain sentence-Meaning by appeal to sub-Sentential meanings, And hence cannot hope to yield a theory that assigns a meaning to every sentence. I revise the strategy to make it applicable to predication and identification. The meaning-Convention for a term can then be used to fix its satisfaction conditions. Adapting a familiar trick of tarski's, We can then determine (...) an infinity of conventional meanings from a finite number of meaning-Conventions. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against recent modifications of the Knowledge Condition on intentional action that weaken the condition. My contention is that the condition is best understood in the context of Anscombe’s Intention and, when so understood, can be maintained in its strongest form.

The ascription of intentional states to the self involves knowledge, or at least claims to knowledge. Armed with the working definition of knowledge as 'the ability to do things, or refrain from doing things, or believe, or want, or doubt things, for reasons that are facts' [Hyman, J. Philos. Quart. 49:432—451], I sketch a simple competence model of acting and believing from knowledge and when knowledge is defeated by un-experienced changes of state. The model takes the form of three concentric (...) circles. The 'periphery' is analogous to Fodor's [(1983), The modularity of mind. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA] input systems. The 'core' contains copies of peripheral representations, and between these representations there is executive competition. At the 'nucleus', operations are performed on the core representations of, at least, negation and recursion. I argue that this provides a fruitful way in which to conceptualise why theory-of-mind tasks challenge pre-school children, how some degree of first-person authority is mental state attribution is possible, and how executive inhibition is achieved. (shrink)

According to just war theory, a resort to war is justified only if it satisfies the right intention condition. This article offers a critical examination of this condition, defending the thesis that, despite its venerable history as part of the just war tradition, it ought to be jettisoned. When properly understood, it turns out to be an unnecessary element of jus ad bellum, adding nothing essential to our assessments of the justice of armed conflict.

Suppose that you intend to go to the theater. Are you therein intending the unconditional proposition that you go to the theater? That would seem to be deeply irrational; after all, you surely do not intend to go if, for instance, in the next instant an earthquake is going to devastate the city. What we intend we do not intend ‘no matter what,’ it is often said. But if so—how can anyone ever rationally intend simply to perform an action of (...) a certain kind? In response to the puzzle, a ‘conditionality’ view of intention has emerged: the contents of everyday intentions are claimed to be fraught with hidden conditional clauses. The paper argues that such claims are radically unmotivated: even unconditional intentions have only limited inferential import and hence contrast sharply with a ‘no matter what’ stance. The point is established by examining relevant patterns of reasoning from unconditional to conditional intentions. (shrink)

Cultural intentions, understood as enabling conditions, some physical and technological, others conceptual and theoretical, make it possible for artists to create the artworks they create. They play an ineliminable role in the mechanism of reference for artifact-kind terms, including "art." Because of the crucial role that cultural intentions play in the mechanism of reference for artifact-kind terms, the reference of such terms cannot be properly understood in the same way as the reference of natural-kind terms, for intentions of any kind (...) do not play a role in the reference of such terms as gold or water. I therefore reject the claim made by Hilary Putnam and others that the mechanism of reference for the two... (shrink)

Future-directed intentions, it is widely held, involve behavioral dispositions. But of what kind? Suppose you now intend to Φ at future time t. Are you thereby now disposed to Φ at t no matter what? If so, your intention disposes you to Φ even if around t you will come to believe that Φ-ing would be crazy. And would not that be a crazy intention to have? – Like considerations have led Luca Ferrero and others to believe that (...) only intentions with strong internal conditions are capable of rationality. This paper explores in how far a broadly dispositional view of intention supports their claims. Its first point will come as a surprise: Intentions indeed involve dispositions toward follies in plenty. Natural objections against this bizarre-sounding claim are shown to fail, and standard counterfactual analyses of disposition locutions are shown to underpin it further. However, since the dispositions at issue are pro tanto dispositions, the consequences are not as odd as might be expected: When hedged by reasonable habits to reconsider one’s intentions, dispositions toward follies do not entail any actual crazy behavior. On balance, unconditional intention is therefore found rational after all. Dispositions toward crazy actions need not be crazy dispositions. (shrink)

To qualify the truth of a proposition probabilistically is to place it within the scope of a special type of alethic modality. We expect that, as in other modal contexts, the merely probabilistic truth of an assumption in a valid inference must carry over to whatever conclusions are derived from the assumption. That expectation, however, is not always fulfilled in ordinary reasoning about conditional probabilities. There are simpler ways of illustrating what I shall call the paradoxes of conditional (...) probabilistic reasoning in ordinary language, but the following argument is a colorful example. Consider an apparently deductively valid inference, by an imaginary inmate of a penal institution supervised by a bitterly hated warden who is surrounded by dangerous criminals, including the argument’s author. (shrink)

In the literature of collective intentions, the ‘we-intentions’ that lie behind cooperative actions are analysed in terms of individual mental states. The core forms of these analyses imply that all Nash equilibrium behaviour is the result of collective intentions, even though not all Nash equilibria are cooperative actions. Unsatisfactorily, the latter cases have to be excluded either by stipulation or by the addition of further, problematic conditions. We contend that the cooperative aspect of collective intentions is not a property of (...) the intentions themselves, but of the mode of reasoning by which they are formed. We analyse collective intentions as the outcome of team reasoning, a mode of practical reasoning used by individuals as members of groups. We describe this mode of reasoning in terms of formal schemata, discuss a range of possible accounts of group agency, and show how existing theories of collective intentions fit into this framework. (shrink)

We study shared intentions in what we call “loose groups”. These are groups that lack a codified organizational structure, and where the communication channels between group members are either unreliable or not completely open. We start by formulating two desiderata for shared intentions in such groups. We then argue that no existing account meets these two desiderata, because they assume either too strong or too weak an epistemic condition, that is, a condition on what the group members know and believe (...) about what the others intend, know, and believe. We propose an alternative, pooled knowledge, and argue that it allows formulating conditions on shared intentions that meet the two desiderata. (shrink)

This paper analyzes communication with a language that is vague in the sense that identical messages do not always result in identical interpretations. It is shown that strategic agents frequently add to this vagueness by being intentionally vague, i.e. they deliberately choose less precise messages than they have to among the ones available to them in equilibrium. Having to communicate with a vague language can be welfare enhancing because it mitigates conflict. In equilibria that satisfy a dynamic stability condition intentional (...) vagueness increases with the degree of conflict between sender and receiver. (shrink)

Are there distinct roles for intention and motor representation in explaining the purposiveness of action? Standard accounts of action assign a role to intention but are silent on motor representation. The temptation is to suppose that nothing need be said here because motor representation is either only an enabling condition for purposive action or else merely a variety of intention. This paper provides reasons for resisting that temptation. Some motor representations, like intentions, coordinate actions in virtue of (...) representing outcomes; but, unlike intentions, motor representations cannot feature as premises or conclusions in practical reasoning. This implies that motor representation has a distinctive role in explaining the purposiveness of action. It also gives rise to a problem: were the roles of intention and motor representation entirely independent, this would impair effective action. It is therefore necessary to explain how intentions interlock with motor representations. The solution, we argue, is to recognise that the contents of intentions can be partially determined by the contents of motor representations. Understanding this content-determining relation enables better understanding how intentions relate to actions. (shrink)

This paper explores principles governing the rational balance among an agent's beliefs, goals, actions, and intentions. Such principles provide specifications for artificial agents, and approximate a theory of human action (as philosophers use the term). By making explicit the conditions under which an agent can drop his goals, i.e., by specifying how the agent is committed to his goals, the formalism captures a number of important properties of intention. Specifically, the formalism provides analyses for Bratman's three characteristic functional roles (...) played by intentions [7, 9], and shows how agents can avoid intending all the foreseen side-effects of what they actually intend. Finally, the analysis shows how intentions can be adopted relative to a background of relevant beliefs and other intentions or goals. By relativizing one agent's intentions in terms of beliefs about another agent's intentions (or beliefs'), we derive a preliminary account of interpersonal commitments. (shrink)

Intentional binding describes the phenomenon that actions and their effects are perceived to be temporally approximated. We introduced a new method of duration estimation to the research field, the method of constant stimuli. Participants freely chose to press one of two keys or experienced passive key presses. After an interval of 250 ms or 600 ms a visual effect occurred. In Experiment 1, each key produced an effect after a specific interval. In Experiment 2, both keys produced an effect after (...) the same interval that varied between sessions. Participants compared the duration of the action–effect interval with a tone of varying duration. To assess intentional binding, we compared the perceived duration of the action–effect interval between the active and passive condition. We showed intentional binding for 600 ms, but not for 250 ms action–effect intervals in both experiments. Thus, the method of constant stimuli is suitable to assess intentional binding. (shrink)

In order to understand ongoing activity, observers segment it into meaningful temporal parts. Segmentation can be based on bottom‐up processing of distinctive sensory characteristics, such as movement features. Segmentation may also be affected by top‐down effects of knowledge structures, including information about actors' intentions. Three experiments investigated the role of movement features and intentions in perceptual event segmentation, using simple animations. In all conditions, movement features significantly predicted where participants segmented. This relationship was stronger when participants identified larger units than (...) when they identified smaller units, and stronger when the animations were generated randomly than when they were generated by goal‐directed human activity. This pattern suggests that bottom‐up processing played an important role in segmentation of these stimuli, but that this was modulated by top‐down influence of knowledge structures. To describe accurately how observers perceive ongoing activity, one must account for the effects of distinctive sensory characteristics, the effects of knowledge structures, and their interactions. (shrink)

High turnover intention is a problem in the workforce today. The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between experienced workplace incivility and psychological well-being on turnover intention. The subjects of this study were 46 millennial employees who had worked for at least three months. Data were collected with turnover intention scale, experienced workplace incivility scale, and psychological well-being scale. Partial Least Square PLS-SEM analysis was used to analyze the data. Findings indicate that experienced workplace (...) incivility is positively related to turnover intention, while psychological well-being is negatively related to employee turnover intention. The results show that workplace incivility affects employee turnover intention higher than psychological well-being for millennial employees. Connections and communality are characteristics of millennial employees; therefore, they consider that the environment is essential. It is essential for employers to develop a work condition that minimalizes experienced workplace incivility and improves the psychological well-being of their employees to reduce turnover intention among millennial employees. (shrink)

Wright’s judgement-dependent account of intention is an attempt to show that truths about a subject’s intentions can be viewed as constituted by the subject’s own best judgements about those intentions. The judgements are considered to be best if they are formed under certain cognitively optimal conditions, which mainly include the subject’s conceptual competence, attentiveness to the questions about what the intentions are, and lack of any material self-deception. Offering a substantive, non-trivial specification of the no-self-deception condition is one of (...) the main problems for Wright. His solution is to view it as a positive presumption, which is violated only if there is strong evidence to the effect that the subject is self-deceived. In this paper, I will argue that the concern about self-deception in Wright’s account is misplaced and generally unmotivated. (shrink)

There has been a long-standing dispute in the philosophical literature about the conditions under which a behavior counts as 'intentional.' Much of the debate turns on questions about the use of certain words and phrases in ordinary language. The present paper investigates these questions empirically, using experimental techniques to investigate people's use of the relevant words and phrases. g.

What I shall do in this paper is to propose an analysis of ‘Agent P tries to A’ in terms of a subjunctive conditional, that avoids some of the problems that beset most alternative accounts of trying, which I call ‘referential views’. They are so-named because on these alternative accounts, ‘P tries to A’ entails that there is a trying to A by P, and therefore the expression ‘P’s trying to A’ can occur in the subject of a sentence (...) and be used to refer to a particular, namely an act or event of trying. A conditional account such as mine avoids having to answer questions about those alleged particulars, for example their location and their causal relation to physical actions, or alternatively their identity to physical actions. In brief, the analysis I propose eschews any need to quantify over any sort of trying particulars. I both clarify the proposal and deal with five possible objections to it: metaphysically impossible actions: cases of finking and reverse-cycle finking; the empirical emptiness of preventers and blockers; proximate intentions and trying; and alleged explanatory loss. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Intention Authorial Intention Varieties of Intentionalism The Utterance Model Hypothetical Intentionalism Hypothetical Intentionalism and Actualist Intentionalism Compared Success Conditions and the Dilemma Argument.

Skill or control is commonly regarded as a necessary condition for intentional action. This received wisdom is challenged by experiments conducted by Joshua Knobe and Thomas Nadelhoffer, which suggest that moral considerations sometimes trump considerations of skill and control. I argue that this effect (as well as the Knobe effect) can be explained in terms of the role normative reasons play in the concept of intentional action. This explanation has significant advantages over its rivals. It involves at most a conservative (...) extension rather than a radical revision of what we tend to believe about intentional action, and it fits better with the way we conceive of the relation between intentional action and moral responsibility. (shrink)

Most theories of intentional action agree that if acting for a reason is a necessary condition for the action in question to be an intentional action, the reason need not genuinely justify it. The same should hold for shared intentional action, toward which philosophers of action have recently turned their attention. I argue that some of the necessary conditions proposed for shared intention turn out to require that we deny this claim. They entail that shared intention is possible (...) only if the participating agents form their intentions on the grounds of genuinely rational considerations. Thus, they “over-rationalize,” as I call it, shared intention. (shrink)

I discuss a criterion for successful communication between a speaker and a hearer put forward by Buchanan according to which there is communicative success only if the hearer entertains, as a result of interpreting the speaker's utterance, a thought that has the same truth conditions as the thought asserted by the speaker and, furthermore, does so in virtue of recognizing the speaker's communicative intentions. I argue, against Buchanan, that the data on which it is based are compatible with a view (...) involving Fregean modes of presentation. In the second part of the article I critically discuss Unnsteinsson's claim that communicative success depends on the absence of contextually salient false distinctness beliefs about the subject matter of the conversation. I argue that this thesis leads to clearly counterintuitive consequences and that no fundamental role must be given to the presence or absence of false distinctness beliefs in one's account of successful communication. The upshot is that we should stick with Buchanan's criterion. I conclude by employing Strawson and Recanati's concepts of linking and merging to show how the criterion I favour is compatible with the fact that, when subjects hold no relevant false distinctness beliefs, communicative success does not seem to be disrupted by the hearer seemingly failing to recognize the speaker's intentions. (shrink)

In this paper I study two ways of transforming decision problems on the basis of previously adopted intentions, ruling out incompatible options and imposing a standard of relevance, with a particular focus on situations of strategic interaction. I show that in such situations problems arise which do not appear in the single-agent case, namely that transformation of decision problems can leave the agents with no option compatible with what they intend. I characterize conditions on the agents’ intentions which avoid such (...) problematic scenarios, in a way that requires each agent to take account of the intentions of others. (shrink)

In “Intentional action and side-effects in ordinary language” (2003), Joshua Knobe reported an asymmetry in test subjects’ responses to a question about intentionality: subjects are more likely to judge that a side effect of an agent’s intended action is intentional if they think the side effect is morally bad than if they think it is morally good. This result has been taken to suggest that the concept of intentionality is an inherently moral concept. In this paper, we draw attention to (...) the fact that Knobe’s original interpretation of the results is based on an abstract rendering of the central scenario that is significantly different from the vignettes presented to the survey participants. In particular, the experimental vignettes involve temporal and social dimensions; they portray sequences of social actions involving an agent and an interlocutor, rather than a lone agent making a momentary decision in light of certain attitudes. Through textual analyses of a set of vignettes used to study the Knobe effect, drawing on ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, and discursive psychology, we show that there are many differences between the experimental conditions besides the moral valence of the side effect. In light of our textual analyses, we discuss vignette methodology in experimental philosophy and suggest an alternative interpretation of Knobe’s original experimental results. We also argue that experimental philosophy could benefit from considering research on naturally occurring social interaction as an alternative source of empirical findings for discussions of folk-psychological concepts. (shrink)

This essay challenges some assumptions of prevalent theories of empathy. The empathizer, according to these theories, must have an emotion or a representation that matches the recipient’s emotion or representation. I argue that these conditions fail to account for important cases, namely surrogate and out-group empathy. In the course of this argument, I isolate some conceptual difficulties in extant models of cognitive empathy. In place of the matching theories,I propose an indexical model that (1) distinguishes virtual from real self-reference and (...) (2) replaces self–other distinctions with an epistemic condition. According to this account, empathy occurs when we index an intention to another person about whom we have the relevant knowledge or understanding. (shrink)

Many philosophers are convinced that rationality dictates that one’s overall set of intentions be consistent. The starting point and inspiration for our study is Bratman’s planning theory of intentions. According to this theory, one needs to appeal to the fulfilment of characteristic planning roles to justify norms that apply to our intentions. Our main objective is to demonstrate that one can be rational despite having mutually inconsistent intentions. Conversely, it is also shown that one can be irrational despite having a (...) consistent overall set of intentions. To overcome this paradox, we argue that it is essential for a successful planning system that one’s intentions are practically consistent rather than being consistent or applying an aggregation procedure. Our arguments suggest that a new type of norm is needed: whereas the consistency requirement focuses on rendering the contents of one’s intentions consistent, our new practical consistency requirement demands that one’s intentions be able to simultaneously and unconditionally guide one’s action. We observe that for intentions that conform to the ‘own-action condition’, the practical consistency requirement is equivalent to the traditional consistency requirement. This implies that the consistency requirement only needs to be amended in scenarios of choice under uncertainty. (shrink)

The paper discussed and analyzes collective and joint intentions of various strength. Thus there are subjectively shared collective intentions and intersubjectively shared collective intentions as well as collective intentions which are objectively and intersubjectively shared. The distinction between collective and private intentions is considered from several points of view. Especially, it is emphasized that collective intentions in the full sense are in the “we-mode”, whereas private intentions are in the “I-mode”. The paper also surveys recent discussion in the literature concerning (...) the nature of collective and joint intention and defends the author's accounts against criticisms. (shrink)

The concept of intentional identity has aroused considerable interests since Geach. I argue, however, that the real import of intentional identity is still not duly appreciated. Drawing on three sets of close-knit data – intersubjective and intrasubjective intentional identity, along with cross-speaker anaphora, I submit coordination as the key to its proper understanding and propose a set of success conditions thereof.

This paper argues that a class of popular views of collective intention, which I call “quasi-psychologism”, faces a problem explaining common intuitions about collective action. Views in this class hold that collective intentions are realized in or constituted by individual, mental, participatory intentions. I argue that this metaphysical commitment entails persistence conditions that are in tension with a purported obligation to notify co-actors before leaving a collective action attested to by participants in experimental research about the interpersonal normativity of (...) collective action. I then explore the possibilities open to quasi-psychologists for responding to this research. (shrink)

We argue that any strong version of a knowledge condition on intentional action, the practical knowledge principle, on which knowledge of what I am doing (under some description: call it A-ing) is necessary for that A-ing to qualify as an intentional action, is false. Our argument involves a new kind of case, one that centers the agent’s control appropriately and thus improves upon Davidson’s well-known carbon copier case. After discussing this case, offering an initial argument against the knowledge condition, and (...) discussing recent treatments that cover nearby ground, we consider several objections. One we consider at some length maintains that although contemplative knowledge may be disconnected from intentional action, specifically practical knowledge of the sort Anscombe elucidated escapes our argument. We demonstrate that this is not so. Our argument illuminates an important truth, often overlooked in discussions of the knowledge-intentional action relationship: intentional action and knowledge have different levels of permissiveness regarding failure in similar circumstances. (shrink)