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An instrumental action is an action that happens in order to bring about an outcome.
 
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example: you press a lever in order to obtain a tasty snack.
 
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example: then you catch a bus in order to get home.
 
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Here’s another example. Ayesha is holding Zac’s glass ...
 
You tilt the bottle thereby pouring prosecco all over Zac's trousers. You might say, the goal of my actions was not to soak Zac's trousers but to fill his glass.
 
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As this illustrates, some actions involving are instrumental in the sense that
 
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among all their actual and possible consequences,
 
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there are outcomes to which they are directed
 
In such cases we can say that the actions are clearly instrumental.
 
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Concerning any such actions, we can ask What is the relation between an instrumental action and the outcome or outcomes to which it is directed?
 
What makes true Ayesha’s statement, ‘The goal of my action was not to soak Zak’s trousers but to fill his glass’.
 
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The standard answer to this question involves intention.
 
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An intention (1) specifies an outcome,
 
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(2) coordinates the one or several activities which comprise the action;
 
and (3) coordinate these activities in a way that would normally facilitate the outcome’s occurrence.
 
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What binds particular component actions together into larger instrumental actions? It is the fact that these actions are all parts of plans involving a single intention.
 
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What singles out an actual or possible outcome as one to which the component actions are collectively directed? It is the fact that this outcome is represented by the intention.
 
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So the intention is what binds component actions together into instrumental actions and links the action taken as a whole to the outcomes to which they are directed.
 
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Intentions specify goals.
 
So they can’t *be* goals, can they?
 
[Been careful to avoid talk of goals except when using Ayesha’s statement, ‘The goal of my action was not to soak Zak’s trousers but to fill his glass’.]
 
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Need to take a step back
 
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But what are intentions?
 
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Is postulating intention redundant?
 
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Conjecture: there is a consistent theory for any of the 128 patterns of answers to these seven questions.
 
This is not the kind of problem that philosophers can help with. In fact philosophers are partly responsible for the problem.
 
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But what are intentions?
 
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you supermarket
 
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Steve prefers chocolate to bananas.
 
Steve intends to buy both items.
 
Steve wants to leave the supermarket as quickly as possible.
 
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In this situation, people will sometimes get the bananas and then the chocolate.
 
This is actually surprisingly difficult to do (Marshmallow task \&c)
 
That people do it is an everyday miracle.
 
So my idea is that we need to posulate intentions to explain the behaviour of the shopper when she successfully goes to the bananas first and then to the chocolate despite having a stronger desire for chocolate than bananas.
 
Because this shopper acts against her stronger desire, it seems we cannot explain by appeal to desire alone.
 
Intention is that extra element we postulate to explain her behvaiour.
 
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In a more elaborate case, you might use a shopping list. The shopping list is a physical counterpart of your intention.
 
More generally, humans and perhaps other animals have abilities to plan. They are not always pushed around by their strongest desires from moment to moment. Intentions are the elements of their plans.
 
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So we solved the dilemma. Yay!
 
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Was taking a step back: done that now
 
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[Will probably skip]
 
Let’s explore how this relates to the Simple Picture I started with. The challenge was to discover why people act.
 
How, if at all, does this vindicate and extend the Simple Picture?
 
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Intentions are linked to, or beliefs and desires.
 
they are linked to beliefs and desires so if you have a look at some philosophical article on intention for example in the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy you're going to see that philosophers say all kinds of different things about intention and they disagree and there really doesn't seem to be any end to that but for our purposes we only need something which is a point that is agreed on very broadly and this is that intentions characteristically are associated with or perhaps even identical with (we don't care) beliefs and desires
 
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so in this case we might suppose i had a desire to fill zach's glass and a belief that by pouring from the bottle i would fill zack's glass and those two things are what led to or if you like constituted (who knows) the intention that i pour in order to fill zach's glass
 
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sometimes we think we know the reason but it is not a reason (because not a fact) -> belief
 
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Justify in an instrumental sense.
 
(To return to the earlier illustration, We may not think Jason’s betrayal justified Medea’s desire to murder her children, but we recognise that she did select actions that were appropriate for achieving what she desired.)
 
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[Not sure if it helps to put the words on the screen. May skip]
 
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Does the Standard Answer involving intention provide a full answer to that question? Or are there things other than intentions which might link an instrumental action to an outcome? The next section provides a reason for thinking that there are.
 

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