What are conscious intentions for? What do we gain from having a capacity for intentions as opposed to simply a capacity for desire-belief motivation? Do intentions have a function not just in the sense that they have a causal role but in the normative sense in which having this function confers benefits on intention-forming creatures that explain why these creatures have this capacity. In other words, do intentions have a teleofunction? Is there something they are for? And if so, what is this teleofunction?
Roughly, the notion of intention is that of a mental state that represents a goal (and means to that goal) and contributes through the guidance and control of behavior to the realization of what it represents. Thus, my intending to go to my office will control and guide my behavior (e.g., leaving my house, taking the bus, walking from the bus stop to my office), thus contributing to the realization of the goal represented by the intention. Many philosophers hold the view that if we do something intentionally, we must be aware of what we are doing. Therefore, they consider that it is of the essence of intentions to be conscious. I have argued elsewhere (Pacherie 2008) in favor of a notion of motor intentions whose contents may not always be accessible to consciousness. On my view then, the phrase "conscious intentions" need not be pleonastic. Here, however, my focus will be on intentions qua conscious states and I will use "conscious intentions" and "intentions" interchangeably.
In his 2007 paper, "What good is a will?", David Velleman considers the question whether the human will, understood as the capacity for (conscious) intentions, has a purpose or teleofunction. He discusses two accounts that assume that the will has a purpose but disagree on what this purpose is. On one account, associated with Bratman’s planning theory of agency, the primary function of intentions is pragmatic: having the capacity to form prior intentions is good because it allows us to place our actions more firmly under the control of deliberation and to coordinate our actions over time. On the other account, inspired by Anscombe’s theory of intentions, the primary function of intentions is epistemic. Intentions are good because they provide self-knowledge: an intention on which one acts provides us with a special kind of knowledge of what one is doing.
David Velleman is himself skeptical that the attitude of intention has a teleofunction. Rather, he suspects that the human will is an accident or a spandrel, that is a byproduct of some more general and fundamental endowments of human nature. Velleman suggests, however, that our hypotheses about the origins of the will, including his own, must be closer to creation myths than to scientific theories. Talk of myths, of course, has both negative and positive connotations. On the negative side, myths are, if not downright false or unfounded, at least ultimately unverifiable. On the positive side, myths are dramatization devices that serve to highlight, and make sense of, the value or function of a practice, of an institution or, in the case at hand, of a cognitive capacity. Here, I will offer my own creation myth for intentions, a myth that emphasizes the social dimension and social function of conscious intentions. The main claim I will defend is that having conscious intentions is a good thing in large part because it facilitates coordination and cooperation with others and because cooperation is itself fitness enhancing. My aim in proposing this social creation myth is not to entirely displace other creation myths, but rather to complement them, to highlight an important facet of conscious intentions that traditional philosophy of action has tended to neglect and to plug some holes in the stories told in other myths.
Here’s how I will proceed. In section 2, I will present the two creation myths considered and rejected by Velleman and discuss some difficulties they raise. In section 3, I will discuss Velleman’s own creation myth. In section 4, I will introduce and motivate a pragmatic function of intention largely overlooked by these creation myths, namely their role in the control and monitoring of ongoing actions. In section 5, I will tell my own social creation myth. I'll argue that this pragmatic function of intentions plays a crucial role in contexts of joint action where agents have to align their representations in order to coordinate their actions towards a joint goal. I'll speculate that the main evolutionary benefit conferred by a capacity for conscious intentions is that it enables a considerable increase in the possibilities for joint action and cooperation.