Does intention involve belief?

Cognitivists think that intention necessarily involves belief; noncognitivists deny this claim. I argue that both sides of the debate have so far overlooked that the beliefs involved in intention are first‐personal beliefs and therefore relevantly different from ordinary beliefs that stand in need of justification through evidence. This move substantially changes the cognitivist thesis, and in such a way that the noncognitivist objections can be avoided. In Section 2, I lay out the intuitions behind cognitivism and the arguments against it that motivate noncognitivist positions. Section 3 discusses and dismisses Velleman's cognitivist response to these arguments. In Section 4, I introduce the distinction between “ordinary” and “first‐personal beliefs.” In Section 5, I argue that intention invariably involves a first‐personal belief that one will do what one intends to do. Finally, in Section 6, I return to the noncognitivist objections and show how my proposal answers them.