A simple definition of ‘intentionally’

Cognitive scientists have been debating how the folk concept of intentional action works. We suggest a simple account: people consider that an agent did X intentionally to the extent that X was causally dependent on how much the agent wanted X to happen (or not to happen). Combined with recent model...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: German, T.C (Author), Quillien, T. (Author)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier B.V. 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:View Fulltext in Publisher
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001 10.1016-j.cognition.2021.104806
008 220427s2021 CNT 000 0 und d
020 |a 00100277 (ISSN) 
245 1 0 |a A simple definition of ‘intentionally’ 
260 0 |b Elsevier B.V.  |c 2021 
856 |z View Fulltext in Publisher  |u https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104806 
520 3 |a Cognitive scientists have been debating how the folk concept of intentional action works. We suggest a simple account: people consider that an agent did X intentionally to the extent that X was causally dependent on how much the agent wanted X to happen (or not to happen). Combined with recent models of human causal cognition, this definition provides a good account of the way people use the concept of intentional action, and offers natural explanations for puzzling phenomena such as the side-effect effect. We provide empirical support for our theory, in studies where we show that people's causation and intentionality judgments track each other closely, in everyday situations as well as in scenarios with unusual causal structures. Study 5 additionally shows that the effect of norm violations on intentionality judgments depends on the causal structure of the situation, in a way uniquely predicted by our theory. Taken together, these results suggest that the folk concept of intentional action has been difficult to define because it is made of cognitive building blocks, such as our intuitive concept of causation, whose logic cognitive scientists are just starting to understand. © 2021 Elsevier B.V. 
650 0 4 |a article 
650 0 4 |a behavior 
650 0 4 |a causality 
650 0 4 |a Causality 
650 0 4 |a Causation 
650 0 4 |a cognition 
650 0 4 |a Cognition 
650 0 4 |a Concepts 
650 0 4 |a decision making 
650 0 4 |a human 
650 0 4 |a human experiment 
650 0 4 |a Humans 
650 0 4 |a Intention 
650 0 4 |a Intentional action 
650 0 4 |a Judgment 
650 0 4 |a logic 
650 0 4 |a morality 
650 0 4 |a Morals 
650 0 4 |a theoretical study 
650 0 4 |a theory of mind 
650 0 4 |a Theory of mind 
700 1 |a German, T.C.  |e author 
700 1 |a Quillien, T.  |e author 
773 |t Cognition