Original Article
Intentions, Intending, and Belief: Noninferential Weak Cognitivism
Abstract
Cognitivists about intention hold that intending to do something entails believing you will do it. Noncognitivists hold that intentions are conative states with no cognitive component. I argue that both of these claims are true. Intending entails the presence of a belief, even though the intention is not even partly the belief. The result is a form of what Sarah Paul calls noninferential weak cognitivism, a view that, as she notes, has no prominent defenders.
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