A Representationalist Theory of Intention

Reasoning about Mental States - Formal Theories and Applications

Volume

Reasoning about Mental States - Formal Theories and Applications

Contents

We present an alternative model of intention, one that is representationalist, in the sense that its semantic objects provide a more direct representation of cognitive state of the intending agent. We argue that this approach results in a much simpler model of intention than does the use of an NML, and that, moreover, it allows us to capture interesting properties of intention that have not been addressed in previous work. Further, the relation between belief and intention is mediated by the fundamental structure of the semantics, and is independent of any particular choice for temporal operators or theory of action. This gives us a very direct, simple, and semantically motivated theory, and one that can be conjoined with whatever temporal theory is appropriate for a given task.