Degrees of Intention

Degrees of Intention

Does intending come in degrees? The question seems odd and to admit of only one answer—it does not. We don’t talk this way (“I half intend to drink a beer”, “Do you strongly intend to go to the shops?”). Intending is like knowing: you don’t weakly or partially know a fact—you either know it or you don’t. Both are like ordinary physical states of affairs: things don’t insipidly fall or are wholeheartedly square. When you intend to do something, you are committed to doing it, no ifs or buts; intending doesn’t come on a scale of intensity. It isn’t like pain or pleasure, which do come in degrees, as ordinary language attests and introspection reveals. Intending is an all or nothing thing. So it seems anyway. Yet a doubt can be raised and a puzzle produced. For belief and desire do come in degrees, and intention is intimately bound up with them. I might weakly desire to drink a beer and strongly believe there is no beer in the vicinity, so I refrain from seeking out beer (too much effort, too little reward). Or I might have a passion for pineapple and feel very convinced there are pineapples hereabouts; I head for the nearest pineapple, eagerly chomping it down. Do I have the same measure of intention in both cases? Don’t I weakly intend to look for a beer but strongly intend to apprehend a pineapple? Isn’t that what we would expect given my beliefs and desires? Intentions are a product of beliefs and desires, so shouldn’t the former inherit the properties of the latter? Shouldn’t gradation characterize both? It looks as if my reasons differ in strength in the two cases, so intentions ought to. What if we introduced a word “intending*” that is stipulated to mean “volitional mental state supervenient on beliefs and desires”—wouldn’t that designate the same mental state as “intention”? If intentions were constituted by beliefs and desires, they would certainly have all the properties of beliefs and desires, including the property of being graded. Does ordinary intuition refute such a thesis? Maybe we need to revise our intuitions in the light of the intimate connection between intentions and beliefs and desires (reasons). We also know that it is not possible to intend what you believe to be impossible, so shouldn’t very weak belief in the possibility of the action reduce the strength of the corresponding intention? Ditto for desire: we can’t intend what we have no desire to do (taking desire in the widest sense), so shouldn’t intention be attenuated by a weakening of desire, vanishing when desire does? From a theoretical point of view, degrees of intention make sense, given the psychological antecedents of intention; we really should view intention in that way. Perhaps this is one of those cases in which ordinary language is misleading. So, after all, intentions do come in degrees of intensity, right?

Still, the contrary intuition is stubborn, and not to be put down to mere conversational implicature. It isn’t just that saying “I somewhat intend to go to the gym today” conversationally implies that I probably won’t go; it seems to be in the very nature of intention that it knows no degrees. It clearly isn’t the same as belief and desire in the respect in question: what would a feeble lukewarm intention even feel like? Compare decision: what does it mean to say that someone only weakly decided to go swimming? Isn’t decision inherently all or nothing? You don’t “make up your mind” only partially or to some degree. We thus seem pulled in two directions. Why is this? I think I know why: it is because of the nature of action. Intention mediates between reasons and actions, with reasons (beliefs and desires) admitting of degree: but actions don’t admit of degree. You either do it or you don’t. There are no degrees of drinking a (whole) beer, as there are no degrees of slipping on a banana peel or splitting the atom. It happens or it doesn’t. Reaching your thirtieth birthday isn’t a matter of degree, and neither is banging a drum thirteen times. Actions are all or nothing, like events in general. They are not like beliefs and desires (or pleasure and pain): they don’t start from zero and then ascend upwards in intensity. You can’t measure their strength on a scale. But intentions lead into actions, partaking of their black and whiteness. Actions are an on-off matter, and so are intentions, since intentions are intentions to act. Intentions thus begin in mental matters of degree and culminate in sharply defined events. They have a foot in both camps; they face in two directions (a la Janus). Intentions are mongrel, hybrid, mixed up. This explains our uncertainty about their status: we can look at them from two angles, seeing them in a different light from each angle. Now they look like things with gradation built into them; now they look like things that know only on and off. As effects of beliefs and desires, they vary in intensity; as causes of action, they come in only two varieties, operative or inoperative. This makes them conceptually peculiar, even puzzling. How can they be both graded and ungraded, continuous and discrete? They seem unclassifiable. They seem mysterious, steeped in ambiguity. I think they have always seemed elusive to philosophers (and psychologists), which is why they are generally passed over in favor of beliefs and desires or overt actions. It seems less mysterious to talk of intentional actions than of intentions per se. This is not an oversight but a principled policy (possibly unconscious). Intentions really are hard to understand. We can’t even decide whether they come in degrees! Perhaps the concept should be split into two to reflect the nature of the items designated: intention1 is the upshot of beliefs and desire; intention2 is the immediate trigger of actions. Intentions1 come in degrees of forcefulness; intentions2 either operate or don’t operate, and don’t admit of degree. As the intending process nears the point of action it loses its variability and hardens into a simple on-off switch. It ceases to come in degrees and stiffens into a rigid rule. Instead of sliding up and down a scale it settles on a fixed value that tolerates no uncertainty. It solidifies into action.[1]

[1] The resort to physical metaphor is entirely predictable: we don’t know what we are talking about so we take refuge in the nearest metaphor to hand (not that this is a bad thing as long as it is recognized for what it is). Intentions are among the most inscrutable things in the mind.