intention, (1) a characteristic of action, as when one acts intentionally or with a certain intention; (2) a feature of one’s mind, as when one intends (has an intention) to act in a certain way now or in the future. Betty, e.g., intentionally walks across the room, does so with the intention of getting a drink, and now intends to leave the party later that night. An important question is: how are (1) and (2) related? (See Anscombe, Intention, 1963, for a groundbreaking treatment of these and other basic problems concerning intention.)
Some philosophers see acting with an intention as basic and as subject to a three-part analysis. For Betty to walk across the room with the intention of getting a drink is for Betty’s walking across the room to be explainable (in the appropriate way) by her desire or (as is sometimes said) pro-attitude in favor of getting a drink and her belief that walking across the room is a way of getting one. On this desire-belief model (or wantbelief model) the main elements of acting with an intention are (a) the action, (b) appropriate desires (pro-attitudes) and beliefs, and (c) an appropriate explanatory relation between (a) and (b). (See Davidson, ‘Actions, Reasons, and Causes’ in Essays on Actions and Events, 1980.) In explaining (a) in terms of (b) we give an explanation of the action in terms of the agent’s purposes or reasons for so acting. This raises the fundamental question of what kind of explanation this is, and how it is related to explanation of Betty’s movements by appeal to their physical causes. What about intentions to act in the future? Consider Betty’s intention to leave the party later. Though the intended action is later, this intention may nevertheless help explain some of Betty’s planning and acting between now and then. Some philosophers try to fit such futuredirected intentions directly into the desire-belief model. John Austin, e.g., would identify Betty’s intention with her belief that she will leave later because of her desire to leave (Lectures on Jurisprudence, vol. I, 1873). Others see futuredirected intentions as distinctive attitudes, not to be reduced to desires and/or beliefs. How is belief related to intention? One question here is whether an intention to A requires a belief that one will A. A second question is whether a belief that one will A in executing some intention ensures that one intends to A. Suppose that Betty believes that by walking across the room she will interrupt Bob’s conversation. Though she has no desire to interrupt, she still proceeds across the room. Does she intend to interrupt the conversation? Or is there a coherent distinction between what one intends and what one merely expects to bring about as a result of doing what one intends? One way of talking about such cases, due to Bentham (An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789), is to say that Betty’s walking across the room is ‘directly intentional,’ whereas her interrupting the conversation is only ‘obliquely intentional’ (or indirectly intentional). See also ACTION THEORY, PRINCIPLE OF DOUBLE EFFEC. M.E.B.