The Structure of Intentions

What are intentions? What, for instance, is the intention to buy a loaf of bread? Theoretical psychologists offer differing answers to these questions, for they disagree about the nature and importance of intentions. Not all allow that intention is a useful systematic concept, and even those who do so define it in significantly different ways. My central thesis is that any specific instance of intention is a highly structured phenomenon arising within a highly structured system, and that the nature of intention as a psychological reality cannot be understood unless this fact is taken into account. Generic characterizations of intentions in terms simply of their immediate goal or purpose-as in expressions of the form ‘the intention to X’-denote general types of phenomena whose individual tokens may differ greatly. In a sense, then, there is no such thing as the intention to buy bread, since intentions to buy bread comprise a markedly heterogeneous class when considered in light of their psychological structure. These differences are important because they determine the function of particular intentions within the life of the agents in whom they arise, and they can be expressed only by a theory of intention adequate to represent the distinct structures that may be concerned. Such a theory would readily allow that the psychological nature of intentions to buy bread, for instance, may be very varied indeed.