Mind Association

Justifying Intentions
Author(s): Alfred Mele
Source: Mind, New Series, Vol. 102, No. 406 (Apr., 1993), pp. 335-337
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2253873
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 Justifying Intentions

ALFRED MELE

In his "Purposive Intending" T.L.M. Pink (1991) instructively criticized a popu-

lar view about intentions and advanced an alternative position of his own. I chal-
lenged a pair of theses to which Pink's position committed him (Mele 1992a).
Pink now agrees that both theses are false. His mistake, he says, was to express
his view in terms of reasons; his position is now to be framed in terms of "justi-
fications" (1993).
Pink understands "justifications for doing A" as "desirable ends which doing
A would be likely to further" (1993). Similarly, justifications for intending to X
are desirable ends that intending to X is likely to further. Pink argues that justifi-
cations for A-ing and justifications for intending to A are not coextensive. I
agree-just as I agree with Pink's earlier claim (1991) that reasons for A-ing and
reasons for intending to A are not coextensive (Mele 1992b). An important point
revealed by his arguments for noncoextensiveness of justifications, Pink con-
tends, is that "our intendings, like our tryings to act and our actions, are justified
by desirable ends which they are likely to further. That means that our intending
or at least intention-formation falls, as trying and action proper surely do, into the
class of end-directed activity".
I myself take forming an intention to be an action (Mele 1992c, p. 141). So I
agree with Pink about where intention-formation falls. However, I distinguish
forming an intention from otherwise acquiring one and acquiring an intention
from the intention acquired (Mele 1992c, pp. 139-4 1; cf. Davidson 1980, pp. 89-
90). Some intentions are products of acts of intention-formation and some are
not, or so I argue (in Mele 1992c). Here,I take up a related issue, focusing on an
assumption of Pink's that apparently motivates his view of "the nature of inten-
tions themselves" and his reluctance to ascribe intentions to toddlers.
Pink's remarks on toddlers (1993) highlight an important difference between
his view of intentions and a more traditional one. As I mentioned in Mele 1992a,
the question whether toddlers intend is partly empirical. It is also partly concep-
tual. On some conceptions of intention, toddlers may have what it takes to intend;
on others they may not. Pink suggests that "the essential function of intentions is
to facilitate action planning and coordination" (my italics). (I dub this "assump-
tion F".) Supposing that (some) toddlers neither plan their actions nor coordinate
their activities, perhaps they do not intend at all, given F-as Pink intimates. But
F must strike many students of intention as surprisingly narrow. Important func-
tions urged for intentions and intention-acquisition (including intention-forma-
tion) in the literature also include the initiating, sustaining, and guidance of

Mind, Vol. 102 . 406. April 1993 C) Oxford University Press 1993

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336 Alfred Mele

intentional actions (for discussion and references, see Mele 1992c, Chs. 8 and
10).

Pink suggests that in "doing A in order that E" toddlers are acting intentionally
and "what makes it true that toddlers do A in order that E" is that "their doing A
is (non-deviantly) caused by a desire for E and a belief that doing A would further
E" (1993). Suppose that this suggestion is true. The question remains whether the
desire and belief can cause an intentional A-ing without giving rise to an intention
that mediates between them and the action. (On intention as a mediator, see Dav-
idson 1985, p. 221 and Mele 1992c, Ch. 10.) If the essential function of intention
is what F says it is, then in some cases there may be no place for an intention that
mediates between reasons for A-ing and an intentional A-ing. Sometimes, having
reasons for A-ing straightaway, possessing the requisite know-how, and lacking
competing concerns, an agent has no need for "action planning and coordina-
tion". If, alternatively, forming and otherwise acquiring intentions is not limited
in practical scope to facilitating action planning and coordination, and if acquir-
ing what I have elsewhere termed a proximal intention-an intention to do some-
thing straightaway-can figure importantly in the etiology of an intentional
action (Mele 1992c, Ch. 10), matters are more complicated.
Pink says that "the question of whether intentional action requires intentions
needs to be settled on the basis of a developed theory of intention". I agree. But
there are theoretical reasons for doubting that "the essential function of intentions
is to facilitate action planning and coordination"-including reasons for thinking
that the connection between the reasons for which we act and our intentional
actions features mediating intentions (Mele 1992c, Chs. 7-13). And when we cast
our theoretical nets broadly enough to include initiating, sustaining, and guiding
intentional actions among the functions of intentions and intention-acquisition, it
becomes rather more plausible that, as I have put it elsewhere, some relevant
intention or other is at work "in every case of intentional action" (Mele 1992c,
pp. 174-5; on sudden intentional actions of the kind Pink mentions, see pp. 162,
184-6).'
Pink is right to observe that reasons (1991) and justifications (1993) for
intending to A are not coextensive with reasons and justifications for A-ing. In
remarking that cases in which "the ends likely furthered by intention and action
do differ materially" are "rare" (1993), Pink is saying, in effect, that justifications
for intending to A rarely differ materially from justifications for A-ing, since he
treats the ends likely to be furthered by X as precisely the justifications for X.
Even so, Pink is right to emphasize that theories of intention that cannot accom-
modate cases of divergence cannot fully capture the practical nature and

I The claim that some intention or other is at work in every case of intentional act
is weaker than the claim that every intentional action is intended. When agents intention-
ally raise their hands above their heads, they also raise them above their shoulders. Nor-
mally, they do the latter intentionally in the course of intentionally doing the former; but
the thesis at issue leaves it open that the only intention at work in many such cases is the
intention to raise one's hand above one's head. (For discussion, see Mele 1992c, pp. 132-
5, 174-5, 183-4.)

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 Justifying Intentions 337

functions of intention-formation. It does not follow, however, that the "honours"

regarding intention fall more on Pink's side than on Davidson's (Pink 1993), if
theories of intention that can only accommodate its contribution to planning and
coordination have their limitations too. Of course, I have not argued here that
intention makes a more robust contribution to human behaviour. But neither did
Pink argue for his narrower conception of the functions of intention; and given
the hefty workload that an established tradition claims for intentions, Pink's
assumption F is not likely to gain easy acceptance. I believe that a view of inten-
tion truly deserving of the philosophical honours will do justice not only to
intention's contribution to practical planning and coordination but also to inten-
tion's place in the initiating, sustaining, and guiding of intentional actions.
Reasons-and, I hope, justifications-for that belief are offered in Mele 1992c.

Department of Philosophy ALFRED MELE

Davidson College
Davidson, North Carolina 28036
USA

REFERENCES

Davidson, D. 1980: "Intending", in his Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford:

Clarendon Press, pp. 229-239.
1985: "Replies to Essays I-IX", in Essays on Davidson, Vermazen, B. and
Hintikka, M., eds. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Mele, A. 1992a: "Intending for Reasons". Mind, 101, pp. 327-33.
1992b: "Intentions, Reasons, and Beliefs: Morals of the Toxin Puzzle".
Philosophical Studies, 68, pp. 171-94.
1992c: Springs of Action: Understanding Intentional Behavior. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Pink, T.L.M. 1991: "Purposive Intending". Mind, 100, pp. 343-59.
1993: "Justification and the Will". Mind, this issue, pp. 329-34.

2 This paper was written during my tenure of a 1992-93 fellowship at the National Hu-
inanities Center.

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