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5. Conscious Intentions
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5 Anthony Marcel writes: “Oddly, many psychologists seem to assume that intentions are by their nature conscious” (Marcel 2003, 60). Daniel Wegner asserts that “Intention is normally understood as an idea of what one is going to do that appears in consciousness just before one does it” (Wegner 2002, 18). If this allegedly normal understanding of “intention” is treated as a definition of “intention,” then, by definition, any item that does not “appear in consciousness” is not an intention, and intentions are “by their nature conscious.” Is the connection between intentions and consciousness this tight? And why might scientists find themselves disagreeing about this? In sections 1 and 2, I lay some groundwork for an examination of these questions. In section 3, I offer some answers. The measure of subjects’ consciousness of their intentions in scientific studies is their reports—reports subjects make to the effect that they had conscious intentions at certain times. In the words of Richard Passingham and Hakwan Lau, “the operational index of consciousness is the ability to report” (Passingham and Lau 2006, 67). (One who does not realize that the operational index of the ability to report is an actual report may misread the quoted claim.) Now, consciousness may be layered in such a way that some occurrences or states that properly count as conscious for the ordinary adult human beings who are the loci of those occurrences or states are not reportable by those human beings. Unreportable consciousness is not my concern here. It is consciousness (or awareness) that is high-level enough to be measured by reports that concerns me; for it is consciousness of this kind, or in this sense, that is at issue in the dispute between Marcel and his opponents about whether “intentions are by their nature conscious.” I call it report-level consciousness (or awareness). In the remainder of this essay, I write simply in terms of consciousness (or awareness ) and count on the reader to remember that report-level consciousness (or awareness) is at issue. Conscious Intentions Alfred R. Mele 86 A. R. Mele 1 Intentions and Questions Intentions are a topic of discussion in a variety of fields, including neuroscience , philosophy, law, and several branches of psychology. It should not be assumed that the term “intention” is understood in the same way in all these fields. Nor should it be assumed that there is a uniform understanding of the term within each field. Here is a representative account of intention from the neuroscience literature: Intention is an early plan for a movement. It specifies the goal of a movement and the type of movement. . . . We can have intentions without actually acting upon them. Moreover, a neural correlate of intention does not necessarily contain information about the details of a movement, for instance the joint angles, torques, and muscle activations required to make a movement. . . . Intentions are initially coded in visual coordinates in at least some of the cortical areas within the PPC [posterior parietal cortex]. This encoding is consistent with a more cognitive representation of intentions, specifying the goals of movements rather than the exact muscle activations required to execute the movement. (Andersen and Buneo 2002, 191) This account is similar in some respects to my own account of intentions— more specifically, occurrent intentions (see below)—as executive attitudes toward plans (Mele 1992). The account is based primarily on functions assigned to intentions in various bodies of literature (see section 3). In my account, plans—which range from simple representations of prospective “basic” actions to complex strategies for achieving remote goals— constitute the representational content of intentions.1 What distinguishes intentions to A from other practical attitudes—for example, desires to A— is their distinctively practical nature.2 According to an influential view of representational attitudes—for example, Al’s belief that p, Beth’s desire that p, Carl’s desire to A, Donna’s intention to A—one can distinguish between an attitude’s representational content and its psychological orientation (Searle 1983). Orientations include (but are not limited to) believing, desiring , and intending. On my view, the executive dimension of intentions is intrinsic to the attitudinal orientation intending. We can have a variety of attitudes toward plans: for example, we might admire plan x, be disgusted by plan y, and desire to execute plan z. To have the intending attitude toward a plan is to be settled (but not necessarily irrevocably) on executing it.3 The intending and desiring attitudes...