AGAINST THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN INTENTIONS FOR THE FUTURE AND INTENTIONS FOR THE PRESENT

Abstract

How should we account for the planning and performance of a bodily action in terms of the agent’s intentions? An influential answer invokes two distinct kinds of intention: intentions for the future (also known as prior intentions or distal intentions ), responsible for action planning, and intentions for the present (also known as intentions in action or proximal intentions ), responsible for action performance. I argue that there is something wrong with this influential answer: the notion of intention for the present is either superfluous (because intentions for the future can exercise functions associated both with action planning and with action performance) or ambiguous (because it conflates temporal, functional, and content-related aspects). Developing this criticism will lead to an alternative account of action planning and performance based on intentions of just one kind