Intent. By definition, it is an intention or purpose. At first glance this seems very uninteresting, understandingly as we show Intention or purpose in every single action that we take every single day, so what’s the big deal? Whether it’s getting out of bed, putting some clothes on, brewing a cup of coffee, making lunch, or tuning in your favourite podcast, everything we do have some level of thought behind it, although a good portion of our drive is still governed by instinct, debated I will admit, the majority of what we do is wilful so why talk about something seemingly trivial?
To begin I wish to stress that I am not writing an analysis on intention, in the likes of what Searle have written in 1983, neither am I pretentious to believe that I could. Terms like intentionality, prior intention or intention in action won’t be used in my writing as I don’t hold enough knowledge in philosophy to formulate educated arguments in this matter. Rather I am writing this with intuition and based on personal observations. That being said the intention or purpose that I will be referring to falls in the category of prior intention.
We can start now by establishing what could be a good foundation for intent, what are the attributes needed for one to have intentions. Firstly, a basic sense of awareness, to identify the need, the aim and the possible obstacles, secondly, some degree of analytical skills, so you can elaborate your plan and evaluate risks and rewards and finally the skills, experience and resources to achieve your goal. If we take the example of “brewing a cup of coffee” above, the person wakes up feeling groggy. Aware of their current state, they decide to walk to the kitchen and make a coffee (the plan), they have a coffee machine, and pods, they know how to operate the machine and have a pair of hands with opposable thumbs (resources, skill and means). So this seems to be, in my opinion, a good enough foundation to have intent, you need awareness, some intelligence and the means to take action and reach the objective, although the latest is not necessary for an aim to exist, a creature with all the will of the world without the capacity to do anything has a pretty dismal future, so let’s include it.
Next, let’s propose a bit of remarks on the subject. Intent is not only attributable to humans, it can be observed throughout the animal kingdom, from a dear drinking at a creek to the cat coming back home with the offering of a freshly killed mouse for his master, we could spend a lot of time listing examples but we are looking at actions that are not purely reactionary instead they are steps taken with some basic to complex planning. Some signals in an animal’s brain might mean “I’m hungry. I am going to that food cache” which is its purpose at the moment. Subjects like animal awareness or memory have been studied by many disciplines starting from philosophy several centuries ago to modern time neuroscience and everything in between like psychology or behavioural science. Despite the fact that a lot more in animal awareness, memory or intelligence is still to be discovered and that there are different conclusions in conflict with each other, we have enough to conclude that these characteristics are held by many species but all don’t possess or at equal share. Nonetheless, the tools for intentionality(in the layman's sense) are present outside of the human species. A polar bear seeks to eat a seal resting on the ice sheet, it is aware of its hunger, the presence of the seal, if the prey is alert or maybe sleepy and possibly a hole where its meal might escape. The beast now will approach analyzing the situation using the landscape or wind for cover, it knows by experience that the risks are minimal because it has the strength and speed to overpower the seal and the reward is absolutely delicious. Once again, the three fundamentals are present. Now let’s propose that intention can be noted far and wide in animals (us included). One could then hierarchize these intentions according to their sophistication based on the different drivers and the levels of awareness behind the aim. The artist painting on its canvas guided by her creativity, imagination and taste for beauty, would be considered more sophisticated than the wolf swimming 300 meters to reach a seal carcass stuck on a rock, detected by its acute senses and driven by hunger. So you can go down the chain of evolution all the way to the bacteria in which nothing is left but pure instincts. So purpose is not distinct from humans, we’re at the top of the hierarchy, yes but it’s not unique to us. We are creatures of motives granted that we are not the sole possessors of that characteristic still it is not universal to the living, but the purpose is nonetheless in abundance among the subjects. Now you can take that idea and bring it into a cosmic perspective, forecast the rarity of life in the universe, noting that in cosmology we are starting to understand that life may be more abundant than formerly believed, although we’re not talking about intelligent life yet. So within the unfathomable immensity of the universe purpose is of absolute scarcity, maybe we should not attribute it so much when we ponder about its existence and origins.
The influence of intention on our perception is probably the key factor, excluding our higher sophistication, that distinguishes us from the rest. One interesting feature that set us apart from our animal cousins is intention-based morality. This is our proclivity to perceive the gravity of an action, lesser or greater depending on whether or not it was intentional. If we have civilian casualties in an armed conflict, was it accidental? Yes, then it’s collateral damage, we feel sorrowful but if it was intentional now it’s a war crime and we want blood in return. Man slaughter versus first-degree murder, car accident while sober or drunk, the circumstances alter the judgment we cast on the offender although the harm is the same and it even goes to the point where a much larger cost without intention is still regarded as forgivable, a train conductor responsible for the death of 400 people due to human error without neglect, in a just society, will not be punished but breaking and entering could lead to life imprisonment. One could argue that if a female beta wolf gets impregnated and is chastised and chased outside the social boundaries of the pack by the alpha female in consequence of her transgression, could one assume that intention-based morality exists in wolves therefore possibly in other species? Most likely not, there is so much more to discover about the mind that this will remain a philosophical debate for a while.
Now because we are beings full of intentions and we had to learn to read the intentions of possible threats to survive, it has become part of our awareness and one of the ways that we understand and analyze the world we live in. Thereupon, we are about to see another way where intent, rather our advertence of it, influences our perception.
Lucy is five years old and she enjoys playing with her puzzles while her favourite show is playing on the screen. She gets thirsty and decides to go to see her dad so he could get her a glass of juice. So Lucy gets on her feet in a quick hop, hurries to the hallway and makes a sharp right then stops as if she had hit a stone wall. At the opposite end of the hallway is Bobo! Lucy never trusted it, she was never sure of its intentions, is it about to chase her down the corridor and try to swallow her little feet? You can never tell with it, you can never predict what it is about to do. Oh, she doesn’t like Bobo! It’s a bit scary, you know. But she is so thirsty, she has to risk it! Thankfully, Bobo seems preoccupied with the bottom corner of the left wall, just humming softly while rolling its big whiskers on the floor. Lucy takes a deep breath, whimpers quietly and rushes up towards the kitchen while keeping tightly to the right to stay clear of Bobo but sure enough right when she is about to get past it, Bobo sharply pivots left and dashes straight to Lucy’s tiny feet with loud and fast clanks. Lucy shrieks and calls out for her dad,“PAPAAA!” Her worries are coming true. It is about to get her feet. Lucy’s dad storms to her aid when he realizes that he can soften his stance and lets out a laugh. “Sweetie, Bobo cannot eat your feet, it’s just our robovacuum.” In this childish story, Lucy is experiencing a classic case of anthropomorphism and every single one of us have experienced this in some way at least once in our life. It is to attribute human characteristics to things, animals or anything else that is non-human, inert, alive, fictional or otherwise. The experience is not always scary or stressful, it can happen while trying to solve a mystery or while pondering our existence. In Lucy’s story, she attributed her intentions to the robot, although it has no technology to detect her presence yet influenced by her juvenile imagination and the human tendency to anthropomorphize, she was convinced that she was being chased by the machine. You are probably thinking, well she is a child, of course, she would think such a thing but an adult would not fall for such nonsense. Not so fast, I can guarantee that it is easier than you might think. You can sit down and observe such a machine doing its work. It has no other tech than bumper plates on its front sides and proximity sensors to detect a drop on the surface it’s navigating. There’s no mapping technology so it is moving virtually blind and randomly throughout a set of preprogrammed moves. So it would go around the room bumping into walls and furniture the vast majority of the time but there would be a few occasions where it would head towards an obstacle and at the last moment, it would make a turn as if it was purposely avoiding the object and if you make abstraction of what you know about the robot and stay true to your initial feeling you would attribute intentions to it. Now that is a simplistic example you may think but my point is that if this can occur in circumstances of low impact or importance, to what end can it get if there’s a strong emotional, psychological or ideological push behind it? There was a time when a drought was thought a punishment intended by a god for transgressions committed. Or even today’s popular belief of this twisted Karma, where essentially some type of sentient energy will intentionally put one through a hard time in retribution for past ill actions. Those examples are the most obvious and the first ones that come to mind but there are many instances where one can fall to this, some trivial and others of great importance, from the spider who jumped on you to a message left by God in the part of DNA that is not understood yet. The point is, we can get blinded or misdirected by this human trait and in a very important moment, we could end up missing out on a life-changing clue or a groundbreaking discovery.
So now, maybe intent is not a banality, after all, maybe it’s worth putting some thought into it sometimes. Whether it’s being more careful about how we attribute intentions to things that shouldn’t have any or not giving undue intentions to someone who can, to stay true to reality or avoid conflict or maybe just appreciate that little things can be bigger or more impactful than they seem. Hopefully, I was able to give you a little bit of something but regardless it was my pleasure to give a bit of attention to intention.
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