Intention is an agent's specific purpose in performing an action or series of actions, the end or goal that is aimed at. Outcomes that are unanticipated or unforeseen are known as unintended consequences.
Intentional behavior can also be just thoughtful and deliberate goal-directedness. Recent research in experimental philosophy has shown that other factors may also matter for whether or not an action is counted as intentional.
Read more about Intention: Philosophy, Related Terms
Famous quotes containing the word intention:
“I would say here something that was heard from an ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree; “That the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how the heaven goes.””
—Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)
“We call the intention good which is right in itself, but the action is good, not because it contains within it some good, but because it issues from a good intention. The same act may be done by the same man at different times. According to the diversity of his intention, however, this act may be at one time good, at another bad.”
—Peter Abelard (1079–1142)
“Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem per se, the circumstance ... which, in the first place, gave rise to the intention of composing a poem that should suit at once the popular and the critical taste.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)