Abstract: Many philosophers of action conceive intentions functionally, as executive states: intentions are mental states that represent an action and tend to cause this action. In the philosophical tradition another function of intentions, which may be called "volitive", played a much more prominent role: intentions are mental states that represent what kind of actions we want and prefer to be realized and thus synthesize in a possibly rational way our motivational, desiderative and perhaps affective as well as cognitive attitudes towards this action. I...
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