Change in View offers an entirely original approach to the philosophical study of reasoning by identifying principles of reasoning with principles for revising one's beliefs and intentions and not with principles of logic. This crucial observation leads to a number of important and interesting consequences that impinge on psychology and artificial intelligence as well as on various branches of philosophy, from epistemology to ethics and action theory. Gilbert Harman is Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. A Bradford Book.

First published in 1969. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

My goal is to define intending. I defend the view that believing and desiring something are necessary for intending it. They are not sufficient, however, for some things we both expect and want (e.g., the sun to rise tomorrow) are unintendable. Restricting the objects of intention to our own future actions is unwarranted and unhelpful. Rather, the belief involved in intending must be based on the desire in a certain way. En route, I argue that expected but unwanted consequences are (...) not intended, examine the two senses of "desire," distinguish intending from being willing, and relate intending to a variety of other propositional at? titudes. (shrink)

It has often been said that 'desire' is ambiguous. I do not believe the case for this has been made thoroughly enough, however. The claim typically occurs in the course of defending controversial philosophical theses, such as that intention entails desire, where it tends to look ad hoc. There is need, therefore, for a thorough and single-minded exploration of the ambiguity. I believe the results will be more profound than might be suspected.

The paper defends the thesis that for S to V intentionally is for S to V as (in the way) S intended to. For the normal agent the relevant sort of intention is an intention that one's intention to V generate an instance of one's V-ing along some (usually dimly-conceived) productive path. Such an account allows us to say some actions are intentional to a greater or lesser extent (a desirable option for certain cases of wayward causal chains), preserves the (...) intuitive link between intention and intentionally, and supports the common sense view that the concept of intending is more basic than those of acting with an intention and of acting intentionally. The remainder of the paper responds to certain apparent counter-examples offered by Audi, Harman, and Bratman. In the course of this, I discuss connections between intending to V and hoping to V, and I argue that one can intend to do what one doesn't expect to do, and that one always intends what one attempts. (shrink)