A Representationalist Theory of Intention

ions are relations between propositions, in which one is more abstract or general than another, let a be making a spaghetti-marinara dinner, and b be making a spaghetti dinner. In every possible world it is the case that a D b, so an intention to do a necessarily implies an intention to do b, if they are treated as normal modal operators. Normal modal operators are never abstraction free, but as we argue in the next section, intention must be. Another property of normal modal operators is that they are transparent to conjunction: L(a A b) =_ La A Lb. This means an intention to achieve a conjoined goal is 1Cohen and Levesque [9], in adopting the realism thesis, rely on claims about way an agent may change his beliefs about the connection between an intended proposition and its consequences to make their theory side-effect free. In their case, an agent who always believes that a D b is always true will incur the side-effect problem when intending a. Also, their theory will not be abstraction free or conjunction free: see below.