Intention and Action: A Nuanced View with the Hierarchical Theory

Intention and Action: A Nuanced View with the Hierarchical Theory

How does intention cause action?

Hesper Cheung

Prof. Stephen Butterfill

How does intention cause action? An answer popular in both philosophy and folk psychology is that an intention supports action planning if directed towards the future and triggers the execution of its specified action if directed towards the present. This paper argues that this answer fails to capture how intention, as a mental state, transits into bodily movements that constitute or bring the action about with its specified side effects. Based on a recently proposed framework of the theory of intention – the Hierarchical Theory of Intention of just one kind – this paper develops a nuanced account of the relationship between intention and action, in which present-directedness is a necessary but insufficient criterion. Developing this account will also reinforce the advantage of the Hierarchical Theory over mainstream philosophical theories of intention that distinguish between intentions of two different kinds.

Philosophy, Philosophy of Action, Intention