Deciding Without Intending

Alexandra Nolte; Wesley Buckwalter; David Rose; John Turri

doi:10.5334/joc.101

Abstract

According to a consensus view in philosophy, “deciding” and “intending” are synonymous expressions. Researchers have recently challenged this view with the discovery of a counterexample in which ordinary speakers attribute deciding without intending. The aim of this paper is to investigate the strengths and limits of this discovery. The result of this investigation revealed that the evidence challenging the consensus view is strong. We replicate the initial finding against consensus and extend it by utilizing several new measures, materials, and procedures. Together this evidence strongly suggests that “deciding” is not synonymous with “intending” in ordinary language and that the consensus view should be rejected.

References

1Aune, B. (1978). Hall on intention and decision. Journal of Philosophy, 75, 564. DOI: 10.2307/2025846
Back to article
2Buckwalter, W. (2019). Error Possibility, Contextualism, and Bias. Synthese. DOI: 10.1007/s11229-019-02221-w
Back to article
3Buckwalter, W., & Turri, J. (2018). Moderate Scientism in Philosophy. In J. R. Ridder, R. Peels & R. van Woudenberg (Eds.), Scientism: Prospects and Problems (pp. 280–300). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190462758.003.0013
Back to article
4Carruthers, P. (2010). Introspection: divided and partly eliminated. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 80, 76–111. DOI: 10.1111/j.1933-1592.2009.00311.x
Back to article
5Clarke, R. (2003). Libertarian Accounts of Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/019515987X.001.0001
Back to article
6Frankfurt, H. G. (1988). The Importance of What We Care About. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511818172
Back to article
7Goldman, A. I. (1970). A Theory of Human Action. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Back to article
8Hall, J. W. (1978). Deciding as a way of intending. Journal of Philosophy, 75, 553–64. DOI: 10.2307/2025845
Back to article
9Holton, R. (2009). Willing, Wanting, Waiting. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199214570.001.0001
Back to article
10Kane, R. (1998). The Significance of Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Back to article
11Kaufman, A. S. (1996). Practical Decisions. Mind, 75, 25–44. DOI: 10.2307/3665807
Back to article
12Knobe, J. (2003). Intentional Action and Side Effects in Ordinary Language. Analysis, 63, 190–94. DOI: 10.1093/analys/63.3.190
Back to article
13Litman, L., Robinson, J., & Abberbock, T. (2017). TurkPrime.com: A versatile crowdsourcing data acquisition platform for the behavioral sciences. Behavioral Research Methods, 49(2), 1–10. DOI: 10.3758/s13428-016-0727-z
Back to article
14Machery, E., & Doris, J. M. (2017). An Open Letter to Our Students: Doing Interdisciplinary Moral Psychology. In B. Voyer & T. Tarantola (Eds.), Moral Psychology. Cham: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-61849-4_7
Back to article
15McCann, H. J. (1986). Intrinsic intentionality. Theory and Decision, 20, 247–73. DOI: 10.1007/BF00134041
Back to article
16McGuire, J. (2016). Can One Decide To Do Something Without Forming an Intention to Do It? Analysis, 76(3), 269–279. DOI: 10.1093/analys/anw036
Back to article
17Meiland, J. W. (1970). The Nature of Intention. London: Methuen.
Back to article
18Mele, A. R. (1992). Springs of Action. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/019515617X.001.0001
Back to article
19Mele, A. R. (2003). Motivation and Agency. New York: Oxford University Press.
Back to article
20O’Shaughnessy, B. (1980). The Will (vol. 2). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Back to article
21Pink, T. (1996). The Psychology of Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Back to article
22Raz, J. (1975). Reasons for action, decisions and norms. Mind, 84, 481–99. DOI: 10.1093/mind/LXXXIV.1.481
Back to article
23R Core Team. (2018). R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.
Back to article
24Rose, D., Buckwalter, W., & Nichols, S. (2017). Neuroscientific Prediction and the Intrusion of Intuitive Metaphysics. Cognitive Science, 41(2), 482–502. DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12310
Back to article
25Rose, D., Machery, E., Stich, S., Alai, M., Adriano, A., Berniunas, R., Buchtel, E., Chatterjee, A., Cheon, H., Cho, I., Cohnitz, D., Cova, F., Dranseika, V., Eraña Lagos, A., Ghadakpour, L., Grinberg, M., Hannikainen, I., Hashimoto, T., Horowitz, A., Hristova, E., Jraissati, Y., Kadreva, V., Karasawa, K., Kim, H., Kim, Y., Lee, M., Mauro, C., Mizumoto, M., Moruzzi, S., Olivola, C., Ornelas, J., Osimani, B., Rosas Lopez, A., Romero, C., Sangoi, M., Sereni, A., Songhorian, S., Sousa, P., Struchiner, N., Tripodi, V., Usui, N., Vázquez del Mercado, A., Volpe, G., Vosgerichian, H., Zhang, X., & Zhu, J. (2019). Nothing at stake in knowledge. Noûs, 53(1), 224–247. DOI: 10.1111/nous.12211
Back to article
26Searle, J. R. (2001). Rationality in Action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI: 10.1080/10002001058538709
Back to article
27Shepherd, J. (2013). The apparent illusion of conscious deciding. Philosophical Explorations: An International Journal for the Philosophy of Mind and Action, 16, 18–30. DOI: 10.1080/13869795.2013.723035
Back to article
28Turri, J. (2017). Epistemic Contextualism: An Idle Hypothesis. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 95(1), 141–56. DOI: 10.1080/00048402.2016.1153684
Back to article
29Turri, J. (2018). Experimental Epistemology and “Gettier” Cases. In S. Hetherington (Ed.), The Gettier Problem (pp. 199–217). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Back to article

Deciding Without Intending

Abstract

Paradigm

My account