Conditional Intentions

Conditional Intentions " [Don] Giovanni's own end and the end of the opera both affirm that there is no actual human life that can be lived as unconditionally as his, but, at the same time, they recognize that any vitality that other people have must sustain the dream of being as free from conditions as his was. " Bernard Williams (2006, p. 22) 1 Introduction 1.1 Many, if not most, of our avowals of intention are linguistically unconditional. However, when we say 'I will φ' or 'I intend to φ' we rarely mean to profess an intention to φ no matter what—'Fiat φ, pereat mundus.' Often even an emphatic unconditional profession of intention such as 'I intend to φ at all costs' or 'I will φ no matter what' is not to be taken literally given that one is not really willing to φ at the price of losing one's life or making Heavens fall. Most intentions appear to be conditional in their 'deep structure' even when the conditions are not explicitly stated. This should not be surprising. For agents like us, who have a plurality of ends and live in a complex world, truly unconditional intentions directed at particular kinds of actions are often recipes for disaster. They are likely to impose too rigid a constraint on our conduct by demanding that we pursue them at all costs. This seems to be too high a price to pay, unless we would like to live in the unconditional mode of Don Giovanni, whose " single-minded determination to live at the fullest energy, at the extreme edge of desire—as Bernard Williams writes—neglects consequences to himself as much as to others, " and leads him to an inevitable end, facing the natural consequences of his recklessness. 1 In spite of the ubiquity of conditional intentions, the contemporary debate in the philosophy of action has only occasionally taken up the issue of their nature and distinctive contribution to our agency. 2 This neglect could be justified if one could easily carry over to intentions the outcomes of the lively philosophical debates about the nature 3 of indicative conditionals and conditional obligations. 3 But this is not so. Because of the special role that conditional intentions play in our agency, especially in its diachronic dimension, conditional intentions raise a distinctive set of questions and puzzles that deserve a separate—and long overdue—investigation. 1.2 In this …