Intentions, Intending, and Belief: Noninferential Weak Cognitivism

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 101 (2):308-327 (2020)
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Abstract

Cognitivists about intention hold that intending to do something entails believing you will do it. Non-cognitivists hold that intentions are conative states with no cognitive component. I argue that both of these claims are true. Intending entails the presence of a belief, even though the intention is not even partly the belief. The result is a form of what Sarah Paul calls Non-Inferential Weak Cognitivism, a view that, as she notes, has no prominent defenders.

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Philip Clark
University of Toronto, Mississauga

Citations of this work

Action.George Wilson - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Intention as Belief.John Schwenkler - 2021 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 103 (2):318-334.
Are there subintentional actions?William Hornett - 2025 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 110 (1):51-74.

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References found in this work

Intention, plans, and practical reason.Michael Bratman - 1987 - Cambridge: Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Intention.Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe - 1957 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
The Possibility of Practical Reason.David Velleman - 2000 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by J. David Velleman.
Reasons Without Rationalism.Kieran Setiya - 2007 - Princeton University Press.

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