Intentionality

Intentionally Good, Really Bad

by Heather Bamford

Text from Postmedieval's Kzoo Panel "Burn After Reading."
Miniature Manifestos for a Post/Medieval Studies

http://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/2012/01/westmichiganward-ho-47th-international.html

Spinoza on Intentionality

by Martin Lenz

Draft; forthcoming in: Intentionality, ed. by Alessandro Salice with an introduction by John Searle, München: Philosophia-Verlag (Basic Philosophical Concepts) 2012

Although we commonly take our thoughts to be about external things that exist independently of ourselves, Spinoza’s... more Although we commonly take our thoughts to be about external things that exist independently of ourselves, Spinoza’s notion of intentionality suggests that our ideas are primarily about our own bodies. What are we to make of this somewhat revisionary tenet? Do our thoughts never reach out to the things themselves? This paper attempts to reconstruct Spinoza’s notion of intentionality in two steps. Firstly, I will place his position in the larger context of his metaphysical tenets and discuss how his theory of ideas provides an explanation of inten-tional content. Secondly, I will address the question of how Spinoza accounts for what we customarily take to be thoughts about external things as such. I shall argue that, for Spinoza, intentional content always involves propositional attitudes which are ultimately governed by our striving for self-preservation (conatus). In accentuating the links between his theory of propositional attitudes and his conatus principle, I hope to show how he challenges the traditional view of intentionality as grasping objects in a mind-independent world in favour of the thesis that we represent things as they are beneficial to us.

Intentionality and Developing Researcher Competence on a UK Masters Course: an Ecological Perspective on Research Education

by Juup Stelma

Co-authored with Dr Richard Fay (University of Manchester). This paper is accepted for publication in 'Studies in Higher Education'. A link to the online pre-publication version will be posted when this becomes available (probably in the late spring 2012).

Stelma, J. and Fay, R. (accepted, forthcoming) . Intentionality and developing researcher competence on a UK Masters course: an ecological perspective on research education. Studies in Higher Education.

This paper presents an ecological perspective on the developing researcher competence of participants in the research... more This paper presents an ecological perspective on the developing researcher competence of participants in the research education component of a professionally oriented Masters course. There is a particular focus on the intentionality (as in ‘purpose’) of the participants’ research education activity. The data used to develop the ecological perspective, and which at the same time is interpreted from this ecological perspective, consists of interactive, reflective and more product-like written outputs generated by two Masters course participants. The analysis reveals how the participants’ developing intentionality was shaped by a hybrid of professional and research-related influences, and how this developing intentionality affected the quality of the participants’ research education experience. The analysis, with its particular focus on intentionality, constitutes a further development of the ecological perspective on developing researcher competence proposed by Stelma (2011), and is intended also as a contribution to the emerging literature on ‘research education’ (Boud and Lee 2005).

(Re)presenting

by Narve Strand

Perceptual Experience and Perceptual Error (WORK IN PROGRESS)

by Kevin Wallbridge

The dice are cast: The role of intended versus actual contributions in responsibility attribution

by Tobias Gerstenberg

How much are people’s responsibility attributions affected by intended versus actual contributions in group contexts?... more How much are people’s responsibility attributions affected by intended versus actual contributions in group contexts? A novel experimental-game paradigm dissociated intended from actual contributions: good intentions could result in bad outcomes and bad intentions in good ones. Participants acted as external judges and attributed responsibility to computer players engaging in a repeated game. On each round, three players formed a group and each chose to roll one of three dice that differed in terms of price and probability distribution. The team won if the sum exceeded a certain threshold. The results showed that both intended contribution, reflected in the choice of die, and actual contribution, reflected in the outcome of rolling the die, were determinants of participants’ responsibility attributions. However, contrary to previous evidence (Cushman, Dreber, Wang & Costa, 2009), more participants based their attributions on the intention rather than the outcome.

Traduction de Kevin Falvey, « Knowledge in intention »

by Hugo Clémot

Traduction de Kevin Falvey, « Knowledge in intention », Philosophical Studies, vol. 99, n°1, May 2000, p. 21-44, parue dans Philosophie de l’action, Textes réunis par Bruno Gnassounou, Paris, Vrin, 2007, p. 329-362

The Mind Game: Invisible Cheating and Inferable Intentions

by Jiang Ting

LICOS Discussion Paper

This paper presents a novel cheating game, which I call the ‘mind game’, in which subjects can cheat purely in their... more This paper presents a novel cheating game, which I call the ‘mind game’, in which subjects can cheat purely in their minds so that it is invisible.  However, since the mind game is a game of chance, the probability of cheating can be inferred.  In this study, I show how a subtle variation in the rules of the game affects the extent of cheating.  In one treatment, subjects can cheat purely in the mind, while in another treatment, the order of the steps in which subjects should play the game is changed so that subjects have to disregard the prescribed order in order to cheat.  I find that subjects in this second treatment cheat significantly less.  Since subjects play the game fully in private with a double-blind payment procedure, I conjecture that this is because of self-image maintenance and the role that intent inference plays in it.  In the first treatment, the intent to cheat is unclear, while in the second, the act of disregarding the order of play cannot be easily accounted for by errors or ignorance but is due to the intent to cheat.  The clearer awareness of the intent to cheat makes it harder for subjects to be self-deceptive for preserving a moral self-image while cheating.  This study thus suggests a potential role of the ease of intent inference in deterring cheating.

Rational Constraints and the Simple View

by Ezio Di Nucci

Analysis 2010, 70 (3): 481-86

According to the Simple View of intentional action, I have intentionally switched on the light only if I intended to... more According to the Simple View of intentional action, I have intentionally switched on the light only if I intended to switch on the light. The idea that intending to ’ is necessary for intentionally ’-ing has been challenged by Bratman (1984, 1987) with a counter-example in which a videogame player is trying to hit either of two targets while knowing that she cannot
hit both targets. When a target is hit, the game finishes. And if both targets are about to be hit simultaneously, the game shuts down. The player knows that she cannot hit both targets, but still she concludes that, given her skills, the best strategy is to have a go at each target at the same time. Suppose she
hits target 1. It seems obvious that she has hit target 1 intentionally. But, Bratman argues, she could not have intended to hit target 1. Since the scenario is perfectly symmetrical, had the player intended to hit target 1, she would have also had to intend to hit target 2. But the player knows that she cannot hit both targets.

Simply, false

by Ezio Di Nucci

Analysis 2009, 69 (1): 69-78

According to the Simple View (SV) of intentional action famously refuted by Bratman (1984 & 1987), ’-ing is... more According to the Simple View (SV) of intentional action famously refuted by Bratman (1984 & 1987), ’-ing is intentional only if the agent intended to ’. In this paper I show that none of five different objections to Bratman’s counter-example – McCann’s (1991), Garcia’s (1990), Sverdlik’s (1996),
Stout’s (2005), and Adams’s (1986) – works. Therefore Bratman’s contention that SV is false still stands...

INTENTIONALITY IN KANT AND WITTGENSTEIN

by Ryan Feldbrugge

Intention Recognition, Commitment, and The Evolution of Cooperation.

by The Anh Han

Co-authored with L. M. Pereira and F. C. Santos.
In Proceedings of the 2012 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC 2012), IEEE Press, Brisbane, Australia.

Individuals make commitments towards others in order to influence others to behave in certain ways. Most commitments... more Individuals make commitments towards others in order to influence others to behave in certain ways. Most commitments may depend on some incentive that is required to ensure that the action is in the agent's best interest and thus, should be carried out to avoid eventual penalties. Similarly, individuals may ground their decision on an accurate assessment of the intentions of others. Hence, both commitments and intention recognition go side by side in behavioral evolution. Here, we analyze the role played by the co-evolution of intention recognition plus the emergence of commitments, in the framework of the evolution of cooperative behavior. We resort to tools of evolutionary game theory in finite populations, showing how the combination of these two aspects of human behavior can enhance the emergent fraction of cooperative acts under a broad spectrum of configurations.

An ecological model of developing researcher competence: the case of software technology in doctoral research

by Juup Stelma

Stelma, J. (2011). An ecological model of developing researcher competence: the case of software technology in doctoral research. Instructional Science, 39(3): 367-385.

This paper presents an ecological model of developing researcher competence, with a particular focus on doctoral... more This paper presents an ecological model of developing researcher competence, with a particular focus on doctoral students’ use of research software. The model extends on theoretical work done by Young et al. (Instructional Science 30(1): 47–63, 2002), modelling the intentional dynamics of technological learning contexts. The development of the ecological model is linked to existing ways of understanding the doctoral experience. This includes the recent emphasis on pedagogy and learning, as well as different conceptualisations of context. The experiences of three doctoral student informants are used to exemplify aspects of the ecological model. A description of an e-learning resource, designed to support Education doctoral students’ use of research software, illustrates a concrete pedagogical contribution of the model. The paper concludes with a more general discussion of contributions of the model to the field of ecological psychology and the literature on doctoral education.

Does changing behavioral intentions engender behavior change? A meta-analysis of the experimental evidence.

by Thomas Webb

"Overwhelming proximity": Affective Orientation and Difference in Merleau-Ponty's Account of Pure Depth

by Shiloh Whitney

Affective Intentionality and Self-Consciousness

by Jan Slaby

Co-authored with Achim Stephan;
appeared in Consciousness and Cognition 17, 2008, 506-513

We defend the claim that human affective states ("feelings") are self-disclosing. We will show why affective... more We defend the claim that human affective states ("feelings") are self-disclosing. We will show why affective intentionality has to be considered in order to understand human self-consciousness. One specific class of affective states, so-called existential feelings, although often neglected in philosophical treatments of emotions, will prove central. These feelings importantly pre-structure affective and other intentional relations to the world. Our main thesis is that existential feelings are an important manifestation of self-consciousness and figure prominently in human self-understanding. We offer an ordering of four levels of existential feelings and also give considerations in favour of the essential bodily nature of these feelings.

Gefühl Und Weltbezug. Die Menschliche Affektivität Im Kontext Einer Neo-Existentialistischen Konzeption Von Personalität

by Jan Slaby

PhD dissertation, University of Onabrück.
Appeared as a book - publisher: mentis, Paderborn

Affective Intentionality and the Feeling Body

by Jan Slaby

Pragmatics and Cognition: Intentions and Pattern Recognition in Context

by Marco Mazzone

M. Mazzone 2009. “Pragmatics and Cognition: Intentions and Pattern Recognition in Context", International Review of Pragmatics, 1(2), 321-347.

The importance of intention reading for communication has already been emphasized many years ago by Paul Grice. More... more The importance of intention reading for communication has already been emphasized many years ago by Paul Grice. More recently, the rich debate on “theory of mind” has convinced many that intention reading may in fact play a key role also in current, cognitively oriented theories of pragmatics: Relevance Theory is a case in point. On a close analysis, however, it is far from clear that RT may really accommodate the idea that intention reading drives comprehension. Here I examine RT’s difficulties with that idea, and propose a framework where intention reading is actually assigned a signifi cant role. This framework is compatible with RT’s account of a unified, automatic mechanism of interpretation in lexical pragmatics, to the extent that the account shares many features of associative and constraint-based explanations of other linguistic phenomena. In fact, my suggestion is that our sensitivity to others’ intentions depends crucially on the availability of specific patterns of intentional behaviour grounded in social regularities. In other words, intention reading would be just a case, though a very special one, of pattern recognition.

Intentions as complex entities

by Marco Mazzone

M. Mazzone 2011. “Intentions as complex entities”, Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 2, 767-783.

In the philosophic and cognitive literature, the word 'intention' has been used with a variety of meanings which... more In the philosophic and cognitive literature, the word 'intention' has been used with a variety of meanings which occasionally have been explicitly distinguished. I claim that an important cause of this polysemy is the fact that intentions are complex entities, endowed with an internal structure, and that sometimes different theories in the field are erroneously presented as if they were in conflict with each other, while they in fact just focus on different aspects of the phenomenon. The debate between Gallese's embodied simulation theory and Csibra and Gergely's teleological stance hypothesis is discussed as a case in point, and some misunderstandings occurring in that debate are analyzed. The thesis that intentions are complex entities is argued for by shedding light on the following aspects of intentions: conscious control; perceptual (and not only motoric) representations of end-states; attributions of value to those representations; appreciation of the rational relationships between means and ends.