This paper presents an analysis of Richard Holton's multiple‐plan cases. In these cases, we seem to plan with different mutually incompatible ways of reaching a single goal and yet the plan appears rational. I will argue that examples of this kind contain a backup‐plan structure and that we should understand them as a combination of an intention to try and a conditional intention. This combined analysis avoids the difficulties that other approaches face.

Marušić & Schwenkler (Analytic Philosophy, 59, 309) offer a simple and elegant defense of strong cognitivism about intention: the view that an intention to φ is a form of belief that one will φ. I show that their defense fails: however simple and elegant, it fails to account for various aspects about intention and its expression, and faces distinctive challenges of its own, including a dilemma and counterexample. These also undermine Marušić & Schwenkler's claim to a best-explanation type of account (...) and recommend alternatives to strong cognitivism altogether. (shrink)