Michael Bratman

John Rawls claims that public reasoning is the reasoning of 'equal citizens who as a corporate body impose rules on one another backed by sanctions of state power' . Drawing upon an amended version of Michael Bratman's theory of shared intentions, I flesh out this claim by developing the 'civic people' account of public reason. Citizens realize 'full' political autonomy as members of a civic people. Full political autonomy, though, cannot be realised by citizens in societies governed by a 'constrained proceduralist' account of democratic self-government, or the 'convergence' account of public justification formulated recently by Gerald Gaus and Kevin Vallier.

Tadeusz Kotarbinski never formulates explicitly the project of an intellectual ethics, but we can reconstruct his answer from his Praxiology and his ethical writings. Kotarbinski does not formulate an explicit meta-ethics of values, and seems to develop a purely functionalist conception according to which there is nothing more in intellectual ethics than a conception of efficient action. However he has a theory of practical values and skills which can be applied to the aims and norms of the epistemic domain. But can he secure a genuine conception of intellectual values if these are merely immanent to dobrej robocie ?

Abstract of my contribution for the PROGRAMME OF THE 8 th INTERNATIONAL TRANSDISCIPLINARY SYMPOSIUM BIOETHICS AND APORIA OF PSYCHE, Zagreb, 9-10 May 2024 - The title of my contribution will be "The Stoics on Impulses, Passions, and Disappearance of Reason", 9th May 2024.

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. In the paper it is argued that intentions must fulfil both functions. Then a concept of 'intention' is developed that integrates both functions.

How we live our lives depends on how we relate to our past, present and future. The article focusses on the relation to our future. The target of my critique is a "planning conception" that imagines the future as a realm that we can rationally plan and form in light of our ends. In the first section I present an outline of the planning conception, building on Bratman's planning theory and Rawls' idea of a life plan. The second section highlights the attractions of the planning conception. I argue that this conception offers a prima facie intriguing view of the temporality of human life. It promises a life in which we can control the passage of time. The third section reveals severe limitations of the planning conception. I question the claim that plans are central to our self-understanding and to a good life. The planning conception tends to distort the temporality of human life with respect to past, present and future. Given this diagnosis, I sketch an alternative in the last section of the paper. I explore the temporal specifics of ways of understanding oneself as a person and argue that both the formation and the very form of these 'ways of being' do not follow the logic of planning. Keywords Plans • Plan of life • Future • Temporality • Good life • Self-understanding • Ways of being The lives of human beings are not only processes that are going on in time but also processes that have a specific temporal structure or temporality. 1 Our lives are not just extended stretches of moments ordered according to earlier and later. As self-conscious beings we know our position in time from a first-person perspective. Thus, the order of earlier and later becomes supplemented by the ever-shifting order of past, present and future. Yet in living a human life we inhabit the past, the present and the future in such a way that they undergo a

We study shared intentions in what we call loose groups. These are groups that lack a codified organizational structure, and where the communication channels between group members are either unreliable or not completely open. We start by formulating two desiderata for shared intentions in such groups. We then argue that no existing account meets these two desiderata, because they assume either too strong or too weak an epistemic condition, that is a condition on what the group members know and believe about what the others intend, know, and believe. We propose an alternative, pooled knowledge, and argue that it allows formulating conditions on shared intentions that meet the two desiderata.

The location of hormē (impulse) is a long-standing problem in Stoic action theory, as it is unclear whether it comes before or after the assent. In this paper, we aim to define hormē and locate it in the chain of mental states that, for the Stoics, bring us to action. Following both ancient and modern sources, we argue that hormē is best understood as an intention since it comprises a cluster of mental states that cause intentional action. We also argue that the impulse coincides with the assent because they are both activated in an agent’s mind almost simultaneously after an external presentation. We, then, reject the notion of double impulse and an understanding of hormē as a desire. The paper highlights interesting points of connection between the ancient and contemporary action theory by showing that the Stoic view of rational, intentional action bears strong similarities to contemporary accounts of intention.

»Echtes Team Reasoning«. This paper focuses on a kind of reasoning in which the members of a group with a goal of its own may engage, herein referred to as "real team reasoning." Starting with four challenging observations on what is, and is not, involved in acting together towards a group or collective goal, an account of a collective goal that accords with these observations is offered. This account appeals to a joint commitment of the parties, understood as is explained. Several virtues of the account are noted, and it is defended against a methodological objection privileging theoretical parsimony by reference in part to the need to invoke joint commitment in other contexts.

The location of hormē (impulse) is a long-standing problem in Stoic action theory, as it is unclear whether it comes before or after the assent. In this paper, we aim to define hormē and locate it in the chain of mental states that, for the Stoics, bring us to action. Following both ancient and modern sources, we argue that hormē is best understood as an intention since it comprises a cluster of mental states that cause intentional action. We also
argue that the impulse coincides with the assent because they are both activated in an agent’s mind almost simultaneously after an external presentation. We, then, reject the notion of double impulse and an understanding of hormē as a desire. The paper highlights interesting
points of connection between the ancient and contemporary action theory by showing that the Stoic view of rational, intentional action bears strong similarities to contemporary accounts of intention.

The purpose of this paper is to combine two fi elds and show their essential connections. The concerned fi elds are the theory of design and the proper understanding of business ethics, especially entrepreneurship; both of them are Professor Wojciech Gasparski's main areas of interest. This is a signifi cant and laudable project because in the modern world business is a key fi eld, yet it is not without its problems, especially ethical problems. Therefore, in the present context I see Gasparski to be an ethicist and axiologist who takes notions like responsibility and the satisfaction of human needs very seriously.

We study shared intentions in what we call loose groups. These are groups that lack a codified organizational structure, and where the communication channels between group members are either unreliable or not completely open. We start by formulating two desiderata for shared intentions in such groups. We then argue that no existing account meets these two desiderata, because they assume either too strong or too weak an epistemic condition, that is a condition on what the group members know and believe about what the others intend, know, and believe. We propose an alternative, pooled knowledge, and argue that it allows formulating conditions on shared intentions that meet the two desiderata.

One of Bratman's aims in Planning, Time, and Self-Governance is to develop his insights regarding planning to shed light on temptation. I focus on the main case of temptation Bratman appeals to in supporting his conclusion that it can be rational for an agent facing temptation to stick to her prior plan even if she finds herself with an evaluative judgment that favors deviating. Bratman's reasoning is meant to be consistent with the priority of present evaluation, and to be sensitive to Smart's insight that, as Bratman puts it, 'inference from the advantages of the general habit [of non-reconsideration] directly to a specific conclusion about what to do on the present occasion, once the question of what to do on the present occasion is raised, is fraught.' My reasoning suggests that, interpreted in one way, the case Bratman uses to make his argument is not clearly a case of giving in to temptation (or else not a case that requires the sort of novel contribution Bratman thinks is needed); and interpreted otherwise, the case does not raise exactly the challenges Bratman suggests it does, and the challenges it does raise are not directly addressed by the solution Bratman provides.

According to Gilbert Ryle, improvisation is a basic feature of ordinary action. In this paper, we take this idea seriously. Action is improvisation, in that it is situated: It is shaped by attentive responses to environmental circumstances. This is a crucial aspect of agency. However, it is neglected by causal theories of action (Bratman; Mele) and only partially addressed by Thompson's process-oriented theory. By resorting to Kant's theory of judgment, we argue for understanding action performance in terms of improvisational shaping of action in situ. The focus on improvisation points to a situated kind of practical rationality entailing the reciprocal shaping of intention and action instead of the ordinary instrumental kind of rationality of action as unidirectionally determined by intention.

According to Gilbert Ryle, improvisation is a basic feature of ordinary action. In this paper, we take this idea seriously. Action is improvisation, in that it is situated: It is shaped by attentive responses to environmental circumstances. This is a crucial aspect of agency. However, it is neglected by causal theories of action (Bratman; Mele) and only partially addressed by Thompson's process-oriented theory. By resorting to Kant's theory of judgment, we argue for understanding action performance in terms of improvisational shaping of action in situ. The focus on improvisation points to a situated kind of practical rationality entailing the reciprocal shaping of intention and action instead of the ordinary instrumental kind of rationality of action as unidirectionally determined by intention.

The paper is an introductory essay to the Polish translation of M.E. Bratman's paper The Fecundity of Planning Agency. Instead of summarizing the main drifts of Bratman's work, the author tries to show a few important parallels between his approach to action theory and the so-called praxiology (or 'theory of efficient action') proposed by Tadeusz Kotarbinski. It occurs that there are important similarities between their approaches both to specific problems in action theory (as: concept of an agent, the role of Buridan's Ass, or mind-infusion of actions) and to the general question how to understood agency (norms of planning). A brief presentation of these similarities gives two central results. Firstly, it allows to interpret Bratman as a kind of praxiologist, and, secondly, it shows that praxiological thinking proposed by Kotarbinski is still a vital perspective in contemporary action theory.

In this article, I examine Michael Bratman's account of stability proposed in his planning theory of intention (PTI). Stability means that future-directed intentions should be stable over time, i.e. they should involve an appropriate resistance to change. It has been interpreted as a norm governing both intentions and plans. The aim of my article is to critically enrich Bratman's account of stability by introducing plasticity as an additional norm of planning. I construct it as a different kind of stability of intentions which supplements the idea of 'reasonable stability'. Unlike the latter, plasticity applies mainly to the cases of abandonment of our plan states without reconsideration. To show this, I focus on the intra-theoretical problems of PTI and I elucidate: (1) the distinction between future-directed intentions and plans, (2) the conceptual difference between stability and inertia, which is only implicitly present in PTI, (3) the factor of the environment o...

We often value being flexible. People frequently say that they are flexible about their working arrangements. “She hates me when I say that flexibility is not what describes her attitude toward my lifestyle.” A committee pompously announces that this time, they flexibly extend their deadline for the submission of project proposals and so on. Psychological or social flexibility—especially the one exercised sensibly—is an important aspect of everyday life in modern societies. In this context, it is no surprise that recently there has been an increased interest toward this idea in the social sciences. Within the last years, psychological flexibility (PF) has been recognized not only as an important performance enhancer, but also as a crucial component of our overall health and well-being (Gardner and Moore 2007; Kashdan and Rottenberg 2010). PF appears to be something both reasonable and good.1

Planning organizes our actions and conditions our effectiveness. To understand this philosophical hint better, the author investigates and juxtaposes two important accounts in action theory. He discusses the concept of a plan proposed by Tadeusz Kotarbiński in his praxiology (theory of efficient action), and the so called "planning theory of intention" by Michael E. Bratman. The conceptual meeting of these two proposals helps to remove flaws in Kotarbiński's action theory, it also shows the way, in which we can enrich the idea of plans in the framework of intentions. Generally, praxiology occurs to be still an important perspective in action theory, which particularly shows how we can improve our understanding of planning when confronted with influential contemporary accounts.

Powyższy tytuł dla tekstu-krótkiego wprowadzenia 1 do teorii intencji opartej na planowaniu Michaela Bratmana-mógłby czytelnika, który w niewielkim choć stopniu rozeznaje się w filozofii Bratmana i wie, czym ogólnie jest prakseologia, wprawić w zdziwienie. Co amerykański współczesny filozof działania ma wspólnego z podstarzałą prakseologią? Otóż, ma dość sporo. Michael Bratman, uczeń Donalda Davidsona, należy do czołowych współczesnych postaci w filozofii działania, a szczególnie tej jej części, którą określa się jako teorię intencji opartej na planowaniu (ang. Planning theory of intention). Specyfika, swoistość i wartość jego podejścia polegają na połączeniu problematyki planowania działania z filozofią intencjonalności i intencji. Mianowicie, plany działań Bratman rozumie jako "rozrośnięte intencje" (Bratman 1987, 8) 2 , co nie tylko sytuuje zagadnienie planu działania w kontekście psychologicznym, ale również w interesujący sposób temporalizuje kwestię intencji. Jedno i drugie posiada sporą wagę w teorii działania. Zabieg taki wykonuje bowiem za jednym zamachem dwie filozoficzne rzeczy: po pierwsze, jednoznacznie wskazuje grunt metodologiczny dla teorii działania w postaci teorii intencjonalności (szerzej: filozofii psychologii) 3 , po drugie, prowadzi szlak badań nad działaniem w kierunku podmiotowości praktycznej rozumianej konsekwentnie diachronicznie, tj. ubranej w takie szaty pojęciowe, które oddają każdorazowo rozciągnięty w czasie charakter działania 4. Intencje i planowość działania wymagają-szczególnie wtedy, gdy uwyraźnimy ich czasowy charakterokreślonych wytycznych normatywnych. W innym wypadku działanie byłoby na dłuższą metę niemożliwe właśnie jako działanie zanurzone w czasie. W tym

This article explores the question: what is it for two or more people to intend to do something in the future? In a technical phrase, what is it for people to share an intention? Extending and refining earlier work of the author's, it argues for three criteria of adequacy for an account of shared intention (the disjunction, concurrence, and obligation criteria) and offers an account that satisfies them. According to this account, in technical terms explained in the paper, people share an intention when and only when they are jointly committed to intend as a body to do such-and-such in the future. This account is compared and contrasted with the common approach that treats shared intention as a matter of personal intentions, with particular reference to the work of Michael Bratman.

Michael Bratman's work, 'Shared Agency, A Planning Theory of Acting Together,' is one of the most important philosophical arguments on the theory of action and group agency. Bratman calls it the planning theory of modest sociality which he describes as a small-scale stable group of agents acting together with no hierarchical relationship among the participating agents. He builds his argument on his intention condition theory, 'I intend that we J,' in which the 'we J' is shared intentionally among the participants. This work is notably an extension of his individual planning agency. That is why he calls a continuity thesis from individual agency to shared agency. However, there are three major objections arising from his work; the problem of circularity, the problem of common knowledge and that children and animals cooperate successfully even though they lack robust theory of mind required by his argument. In this thesis, I summarise his argument and discu...

This paper presents two methods for interpreting human actions or their results with the aim of finding the underlying intention, the goal intention or the more comprehensive intention including the subject's considerations about various advantages of the chosen option as well as about its alternatives. The first interpretation method is simple and uses statistical syllogisms. The second method consists of an inference to the best explanation; it is much more elaborate but it provides more exact and detailed information. This method requires covering laws that explain the formation of intentions. Such laws are sketched too. They also cover moral actions so that the presented interpretation methods can also be used for interpreting moral actions.

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. In the paper it is argued that intentions must fulfil both functions. Then a concept of 'intention' is developed that integrates both functions.

INTRODUCTION "I reached the chair of philosophy via logic. Teaching logic became the field of my activity as a university professor of philosophy, a member of other humanistic faculties. Emphasis is here placed on the words 'teaching' and 'humanistic'. For my lectures and classes were conceived as an organon in the classical sense of the term, for philosophers as well as for those who, having completed their course of study, would espouse the cause of disseminating humanistic knowledge and thinking, particularly future secondary school teachers. Somewhat later my activity embraced also law students. My linguistic equipment proved to, be very helpful in this respect. For it seems especially important when the problems of an organon of this kind are conceived historically and is quite crucial when pondering the original Organon of Aristotle (or to be more cautious, of the peripatetic school) and its continuators. Conceived in this manner logic was by no means confined to formal logic, but came to comprise the problems of epistemology, semantics and methodology. It is precisely the latter problems-not those of formal logic-that were of particular interest to my mind. Nevertheless, I felt bound to contribute to the study of formal logic. The feeling was encouraged both by my colleagues at Warsaw University and by my awareness of the precise phase that logic had reached in its historical development. It was precisely the moment when mathematical logic was triumphantly entering the scene. The names of Frege, Bertrand Russell, Peano, Burali-Forti, Couturat and many others were on everybody's minds. Mathematical logic was closely allied with the rapidly developing set theory. The international periodical devoted to the latter, Fundamenta Mathematicae was, and still is, published in Warsaw. The distinguished philosophic-mathematical logicians: Jan Łukasiewicz and his disciple and my colleague, Stanislaw Lesniewski among many others, were active here. I only mention the names of those persons to whom my studies in mathematically oriented formal logic are particularly indebted. In this respect I owe a lot to my close alliance with Professor Lesniewski. I simply took over his original system of formal logic to suit my own purposes. (1)Relieved thus from the necessity to contribute to formal logic itself, I could concentrate on the problems I faced as a teacher of logic to be used by humanists. These centered around the problem of overcoming the hypostasis of linguistic origin, what Francis Bacon referred to as idola fori. Both our everyday language and the language of the sciences as well are teeming with nouns or noun-like forms. Hence the tendency to perceive an object behind them even when the noun is an abstract one, like for example, 'roundness', 'equality', etc. Once the existence of the alleged objects of such names is admitted, once we agree to the existence of such qualities or relations, human thought is made to wade through a mire of apparent ontological problems. They in turn impose a literal interpretation of the expressions like 'a quality inheres' in an object in the same way as a nail is embedded in a wall: whereas, in point of fact, their meaning is only metaphorical. Leibniz himself was of the opinion (which he expressed in Nouveaux essais 2, XXII, 1) that problems bristling with difficulties can be dispelled as soon as we stick only to the names of concretes in our discourse. Unaware both of these words and equally ignorant of Franz Brentano's similar ideal I formulated in 1929 the principles of the so called reism 2, XXII, 1) that problems bristling with difficulties can be dispelled as soon as we stick only to the names of concretes in our discourse. Unaware both of these words and equally ignorant of Franz Brentano's similar ideal I formulated in 1929 the principles of the so called reism. In its Kotarbinski from Ontological Reism to Semantical Concretism https://www.ontology.co/kotarbinskit.htm

In this article, I examine Michael Bratman's account of stability in his planning theory of intention (PTI). Future-directed intentions should be stable, or appropriately resistant to change, over time. Bratman claims that the norm of stability governs both intentions and plans. The aim of this article is to critically enrich Bratman's account of stability by introducing plasticity as an additional norm of planning. I construct plasticity as a kind of stability of intentions which supplements Bratman's notion of "reasonable stability. " Unlike the latter, plasticity applies mainly to cases in which plan states are abandoned without reconsideration. I focus on the intra-theoretical problems of PTI and elucidate: (1) the distinction between future-directed intentions and plans, (2) the conceptual difference between stability and inertia, which is only implicit in PTI, and (3) the role of the environment of the planner, which has a vestigial role in Bratman's work. I also defend my incorporation of plasticity against one possible objection and support it in the context of Bratman's later works. Although critical, my proposal is in moderate harmony with PTI.

In looking at Professor Gasparski's paper about the PS (praxiological-systemic) approach to design it is an obligation to grasp and deal with our cultural differences. This is in addition to the difficulties we have between disciplines elsewhere in the world. It is typical of the Polish intellectual culture that there should be a theoretical introduction to the subject. Given the theory, many conclusions follow, whether about designing, the universality of design, or the nature of design education. In a way this derives philosophically from Descartes, although strong Platonic influences are to be detected, as well as more recent linguistic philosophy Modern Polish intellectual stimuli come (almost dia. metrically opposed) from their native excellence in the field of logic and the very special concern for 'praxiology' which was promoted by Kotarbinsid. Praxiology (the knowledge of practical activity) is a term rarely used in Anglo.Saxon literature. It is much better known and used in French. Within the praxiological framework, design is an important component-it is preparation for action. Theories of action within the Anglo-Saxon literature have tended to be rather abstract and have not ~ven much attention to design. The system component of the 'PS' title refers to the way in which the designer, the object to be designed, the design process and the design situation are linked together and provide the basis of a methodical approach tO the subject. Much of the paper is taken up with the prepare. tion of statements and definitions which lead to an 'ideal' model of the system. The model, in Gasparsld's terms, is 'constructed'. This is one way of tackling the very difficult problem of producing an adequate model of design. Within this model it is possible to see the development of theory about the difference between one design case and another. This is shown particularly in discussions about the problemtask.solution net. The work done by Gasparsid's group is within an organization that appears to have no parallel elsewhere. In UK terms it is rather like a general design research institute attached to a Royal Society which involves itself with industrial affairs as well as with science. This emphasizes a different approach, which may be revealing to the reader. The language employed may be unusual, the presentation unyielding, but an effort should be made to comprehend this significant alternative contribution.

In the 5 th century, Thucydides uses it once; Isocrates and Plato each more than twenty times. The verb and the noun prohairesis appear more than seventy times in the political speeches of Aristotle's contemporary, Demosthenes. So it would seem to be a word in everyday use by ordinary Greeks. Prohairesis or prohaireō, in its various conjugations, appear more than 350 times in Aristotle's writings; the vast bulk of these appearances are in the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics. Many interpreters of the Nicomachean Ethics assume that prohairesis is a technical term, if not of Aristotle's own making, then one marked by his 4 Here and for the remainder of this section, when I refer to the number of appearances of a Greek term in Greek literature or the Aristotelian Corpus, I will be referring to the results of searches conducted on the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae CD ROM E (University of California, Irvine: 2000), held at the O'Neill Library at Boston College. I am also indebted to the database for pointing me to a number of references cited below.

In the first part (2-5) an empirical theory of practical reasons is sketched and defended. It consists of: hypotheses about what intentions are, namely optimality beliefs, (2), hypotheses about how intentions are formed on the basis of probabilistic beliefs and intrinsic desires (3), a pluralist theory about intrinsic desires (4) and a theory about motives for moral action (5). In the second part (6-8) it is argued that normative practical philosophy must rely on empirical theories of practical reasons (6). Then it is shown that theories of prudential practical rationality and of morals that are not based on such empirical theories run into problems. And it is sketched how the empirical theory outlined in the first part can be used as a basis for a reconstructive approach to practical rationality and of an internalist approach to morals (7-8).

Many of the things we do, we do together with other people. Th ink of attending a meeting, carpooling, and playing tennis. So how does doing something together diff er from doing something on your own? Presumably, this question cannot be answered in terms of external behavior only. Th ere need not be any outward diff erence between my raising an arm and my arm's rising. Similarly, there need not be any behavioral diff erence between two people who happen to walk adjacent to each other and the same people going for a walk together. Most answers to the question of how my raising my arm diff er from my arm's rising refer to the intention involved in the former but not in the latter. In response to the question about how going for a walk together diff ers from merely walking adjacent to each other, an answer that has become increasingly popular in the past two to three decades also refers to an intention: the collective intention to go for a walk together. COLLECTIVE INTENTIONALITY: THE BIG FOUR What is a collective intention? Are there any collective intentions? If so, are there any other collective attitudes, such as beliefs and desires? Questions such as these are answered by a theory of collective intentionality. Th e four most infl uential theories of collective intentionality are those of Michael Bratman, Raimo Tuomela, John Searle, and Margaret Gilbert. We refer to these theories

Essere in grado di collaborare è uno dei tratti comportamentali più importanti mostrati dall'uomo, e l'intenzionalità condivisa costituisce l'infrastruttura di base della capacità unicamente umana di collaborare. Molti filosofi si sono cimentati nello studio dell'intenzionalità condivisa, giungendo, come vedremo in seguito, a conclusioni radicalmente diverse. Questo elaborato mira infatti ad analizzare due concezioni a tratti antitetiche dell'agire collettivo. Nello specifico, verranno analizzate le teorizzazioni della Planning Theory (teoria dei piani) ed il Joint Commitment (impegno congiunto), formulate rispettivamente da Michael Bratman e Margaret Gilbert.

The relationship between intention, intentional action, and moral assessment is of fundamental importance to ethical theory. In large part, moral responsibility is based on an assessment of agent responsibility, which in turn is based on the connection between an agent's intentions and the actions which they cause. In the last twenty-five years, there has been a debate in contemporary action theory about the relationship between intentions and intentional action. Objecting to what he calls the "Simple View," which he characterizes as the view that all intentional actions are intended under some description, Michael Bratman, among others, argues that not all intentional actions are intended. In this dissertation, we will defend the Simple View by appealing to Aristotle's theory of action as developed in his psychological and ethical works. In the first part of the dissertation, we argue that all intentional actions are intended under some description; however, we argue that distinctions between different types of intention are essential: specifically, the distinction between deliberate and non-deliberate intentions and the distinction between the intention of the end and the intention of the means. Our account centers on Aristotle's concept of prohairesis, which he identifies as the distinctly human principle of action. The term prohairesis in Aristotle's works seems to have at least three senses: 1) primarily, the deliberate intention with which a person acts, an `occurent' choice; 2) the habitual or `dispositional' choice or resolve of `decent' people; and 3) general purposes that men have which may encompass voluntary action as a whole. The first sense of the term is the primary one that properly signifies the concept. Prohairesis fits within the general framework of animal motion which Aristotle sets out in the De Anima and De Motu Animalium. For Aristotle, orexis or desire is the cause of all animal motion, including human motion. Prohairesis is a deliberate desire for the means to an end. It is a principle of action peculiar to mature human beings capable of deliberating, as it is the intention which is the result of deliberation. It marks off a narrow but important stretch of intentional action. Prohairesis is set off against other types of intention, like boulesis, which is an intention of the end, and epithumia (bodily appetite) and thumos (anger), which are non-deliberate intentions relating to non-rational appetites like lust and anger. Aristotle, in contrast to contemporary accounts of intentional action, is unusually specific in his designation of the different kinds of intention. Different orexeis differ not only with regard to specific objects but also with regard to time, planning, and detail. Aristotle traces both the causal and moral responsibility agents have for their actions to the action of these internal principles of desire. Moral assessment is linked to the operative internal principle of an act. This allows for an action to be voluntary and intentional, even if the agent does not fully understand or plan for the consequences of an action. Intention, for Aristotle, if we correctly understand it as orexis and what results from orexis, is not reducible to one mode but is irreducibly plural. Furthermore, each person's capacity for intentional action is shaped by his character, and each character has correspondingly different kinds of intention, both with respect to the objects of intention and in their relation to action. Finally, the scope of intention is not definite, and depending on the agent, can include those things which attend to the means of which he has cognizance, for instance, harmful side-effect consequences or other costs of his action. In the second part of the dissertation, we examine at length the objections to the Simple View, lodged by Bratman, Gilbert Harman, and Joshua Knobe. We give an overview of objections by Bratman, Harman, and Knobe which center on three cases and four objections. The cases are: 1) a hypothetical video game; 2) unexpected success; and 3) unintended consequences. The objections are: 1) with respect to the hypothetical video game, the Simple View ascribes an irrational intention to a gamer playing the game; 2) When agents are doubtful of the success of an action they undertake, the Simple View requires that they intend the act the perform rather than that they merely try to perform the act, which opponents argue that this is irrational and false; 3) The Simple View entails the rejection of the distinction between intention and foresight which itself entails that agents intend all the results of their actions, even when those results are merely foreseen and not intended; 4) The Simple View does not adequately explain ordinary language usage with respect to ascriptions of intention for side-effect consequences, and therefore does not reflect basic, commonly shared notions of intentional action. The first two objections center on cases where it seems irrational for an agent to intend the act he performs. In the case of the video game, the scenario is so set up that the player wins a prize for hitting either target but knows that he cannot hit both or the game will shut down. It seems irrational for him to intend to hit both if he cannot; however, in order to maximize his chance winning, it would be rational to aim at both. In the case of unexpected success, it seems that agents do not intend acts whose chances of success they doubt because intending seems to require the positive belief that one will succeed; rather, it is argued that agents merely try but do not intend the act they perform. Against these cases and objections, we argue that agents are capable of conditional and complex intentions, such that one may conditionally intend to hit whichever target is opportune, while aiming at both. Likewise, we argue that intending to act does not require the positive belief that one will succeed; only that it is possible for one to succeed. Furthermore, the distinction between trying and intending is specious. Finally, we respond to the third and fourth objections centering on the intentionality of side-effect consequences. It is argued by Bratman et al. that the Simple View entails the rejection of the distinction between intention and foresight, and that such a rejection further entails consequentialism. Likewise it is also argued that the Simple View fails to account for ordinary language ascriptions of intentionality for side-effect consequences. We agree that the Simple View entails rejecting the distinction between intention and foresight as it is currently applied, but deny that this entails consequentialism, i.e., the view that the consequences of an action are the primary basis for moral evaluation and not the agent's intentions. Likewise, we agree that the Simple View does not model ordinary language ascriptions of intention; however, this is not necessarily a defect since such ascriptions are inconsistent and imprecise. Furthermore, we argue that the Simple View might be used to more adequately explain such usage. We center our response to these objections on the Doctrine of Double Effect. We argue that the doctrine arises from a mistaken interpretation of St. Thomas Aquinas' treatment of defensive killing. We argue that Aquinas does not hold that the death of an attacker is a foreseen but not intended side-effect, as proponents of Double Effect and opponents of the Simple View hold; rather it is intended as a means to the end of self-defense. Therefore, the two effects are not the desired end and a side-effect but rather the intended end and the intended means. Furthermore, we argue that this does not entail doing evil for the sake of good because Aquinas' Aristotelian account of action specification incorporates circumstances as essential components of intentions which give an act its moral quality. Furthermore, the necessary references to an agent's intentions show how the rejection of the application of the distinction between intention and foresight does not entail consequentialism. Finally, we tackle the underlying assumptions about intention and desire which lead to the rejection of the Simple View. Opponents of the Simple View hold that intention is not a form of desire because then it would not have an essential role in the genesis of action or in rational deliberation. We, however, argue that the major objections to the Simple View are defeasible once one understands intention as a species of desire, i.e. a deliberate desire, whose scope includes consequences beyond acts performed and goals achieved. The paradoxes at the heart of the debate hinge on the ambiguity of the English word `intention' and its usage, as well as the inherent difficulty of examining psychological concepts. `Intention' has several senses unified by the purposiveness of the mental states to which the word is referred. These senses can often, but not always, be distinguished in English usage by the degree and kind of deliberation attendant to them.

In questo estratto di tesi magistrale vengono illustrate quelle caratteristiche dell'intenzionalità husserliana che hanno giocato un ruolo nella riflessione più recente sull'intenzionalità, in particolare nei lavori di Searle, Bratman e Tomasello.

We study shared intentions in what we call loose groups. These are groups that lack a codified organizational structure, and where the communication channels between group members are either unreliable or not completely open. We start by formulating two desiderata for shared intentions in such groups. We then argue that no existing account meets these two desiderata, because they assume either too strong or too weak an epistemic condition, that is a condition on what the group members know and believe about what the others intend, know, and believe. We propose an alternative, pooled knowledge, and argue that it allows formulating conditions on shared intentions that meet the two desiderata.

The paper is an introductory essay to the Polish translation of M.E.  Bratman’s paper The Fecundity of Planning Agency. Instead of summarizing the  main drifts of Bratman’s work, the author tries to show a few important  parallels between his approach to action theory and the so-called praxiology  (or ‘theory of efficient action’) proposed by Tadeusz Kotarbiński. It occurs that there are important similarities between their approaches both to specific problems in action theory (as: concept of an agent, the role of Buridan’s Ass, or mind-infusion of actions) and to the general question how to understood agency (norms of planning). A brief presentation of these similarities gives two central results. Firstly, it allows to interpret Bratman as a kind of praxiologist, and, secondly, it shows that praxiological thinking proposed by Kotarbiński is still a vital perspective in contemporary action theory.

Validation of moral principles lies in foundation of acceptance of the principles. We can find the views on the possibility of that validation in the concepts of T. Kotarbiński and L. Kołakowski. Kotarbiński believes that morality should be independent of religious justifications, to prevent moral decline linked to decline of religion. Kołakowski hold the opposite opinion: morality can be truly established only in the realm of the sacrum. It is possible due to a “total character of the perception” which is typical for religion.

(Project description, summer 2018. Application for PhD scholarship in philosophy of action/psychology/intention. Assessed by the committee but not selected by the research group).
Intention: Commitment and Flexibility - With a Focus on the Hierarchical Structures of Intentions and Intention Formation.
PhD application (summer 2018).

MA Philosophy dissertation (2018), University of Copenhagen. Intention and Belief: On the question of whether the mental state of an intention is a mental state of a belief - a defence of strong intention cognitivism.
The purpose of the present thesis is to discuss and offer an answer to the question of whether the mental state of an intention is identical to the mental state of a belief. In the present thesis, the concept belief is discussed, and the strong cognitivist view, that an intention is a special kind of belief, is advocated. First, a defence of strong cognitivism, against three of its main problems, is offered by means of a distinction between theoretical and practical reasoning. It is argued that a future-directed intention is a practical belief of the kind ‘I will φ’ which represents the content of an agent’s decision regarding a course of action. Moreover, it is argued that such a belief can control an agent’s action when the time for action comes. Departing in contemporary psychological literature on mental imagery in relation to action planning, it is argued that a practical belief can initiate mental imagery of the kind that controls conduct. Finally, it is proposed that such a belief can direct an agent’s visual attention at appropriate visual objects and bodily movements, which enables the agent to execute the intended action.

In Nascimento (2015) I criticized the thesis defended in Irwin (1983) according to which two of the most famous characters in Euripides' plays, Phaedra and Medea, could be said to exemplify akratic behavior and, in the case of Phaedra, even to explain it. In that article, I've pointed out several weakness in these thesis in order to justify my disagreement. I also suggested that, although there was no reason why we should stop looking for examples and explanations of akratic behavior in Euripides' plays, that should not be the only kind of irrational behavior we ought to be interested in finding there. In this paper, I argue that Medea actually instantiates a form of irrational behavior that is different from akratic behavior. The argument that follows is divided in four parts. After a brief introduction (section I), I clarify what sort of irrationality I believe to be instantiated by Medea's behavior using Michael Bratman's theory of plan stability (section II). Then, I analyze Euripides' text in order to show why I think we should say that Medea does display that kind of irrationality (section III). The paper concludes with a brief summary of the argument (section IV).

In this paper, I argue that joint action permits a certain degree of luck. The cases I have in mind exhibit the following structure: each participant believes that the intended ends of each robustly support the joint action. This belief turns out to be false. Due to lucky circumstances, the discordance in intention never becomes common knowledge. However, common knowledge of the relevant intentions would have undermined
the joint action altogether. The analysis of such cases shows the extent to which common knowledge of the participants’ intentions can be harmful to joint action. This extends a recent line of research that has questioned the necessity of common knowledge in joint action.

In work that spans almost four decades, Michael Bratman has developed a rich account of human agency. At the centre of this account lies an understanding of intentions as individual planning states. A significant strand in this enterprise has been his work on shared agency, culminating in his 2014 monograph, which aims to extend his account of individual agency to cover cases of what he calls " modest sociality " , i.e. simple cases of acting together. Central to this endeavour is Bratman's analysis of shared intention, which for him is not a sui generis phenomenon, but can be understood in terms of his concept of individual agency, since the main components of his account of shared intention are already available in his account of the intentions of a single person. In this paper, I want to critically examine Bratman's approach to shared intention. In section 1, I will describe the analytic strategy that guides Bratman's analysis. Section 2 will introduce his central claim that the fulfilment of a list of conditions suffices for a shared intention to be present. In sections 3 to 5, I will discuss and criticise some of these conditions. In section 6, I will draw some positive conclusions from my critical arguments.

International Journal of Advances in Philosophy
2018;  2(1): 1-14
http://article.sapub.org/10.5923.j.ap.20180201.01.html

The study gives an overview of Raimo Tuomela’s philosophy of sociality and social ontology. It is shown how the subjects of his analysis of the foundation of the social domain are connected. Thereby the overview is a help for the study of his work in progress, and comparing and contrasting his account with the other founders of the analysis of collective intentionality (Bratman, Gilbert, and Searle), and their related topics, for example, I-mode and we-mode, collective commitment, social groups, cooperation, and institutions, and the ongoing contemporary analysis. It is concluded that the hard core of Tuomela’s social ontology is a sociology of membership. An open minded exchange about the differences among the accounts which are emerged since the 1990s years will only lead to a re-systematization of the social domain in time periods like of the contemporary society when taking into play that social structure and membership conditions of social systems are changed drastically.


Keywords
Philosophy of sociology, social ontology, collective intentionality, theory of corporation, decision and game theory, theory of social system, institutions, cooperation, methodological individualism and holism, sociological theory