Marty wrote:

You could say, "it intended to do it, but succeeds it's in intentions each time" but how are we to judge success outside the capacity from failure?

Since there's no necessity in causation, I think causal dispositions could fail to manifest, and so they do not succeed in manifesting every single time, that's the only way I can read "failure" into them. Do you mean to say that they don't fail, but out of necessity carry out their effects, or is it strictly restricted to the sense of intentionality you spoke of above? My point is, there is a sense in which there's a possibility of failure for causal dispositions, so there is a sense in which they can fail.

Marty wrote:

That's the only way we do understand intentions - them being normative; they can fail to uphold to certain commitments one makes. When one has a commitment, they can inevitably fail to be accordance with such a commitment to which they will then attempt to try to succeed at it again. They are different from mere casual dispositions in the sense that casual events do not have something to be accordance with. Lighting doesn't "intend" to hit a tree, it merely hits a tree - therefore never misses it's mark. If something never missed it's mark, how can we distinguish this from mere casual dispositions? You could say, "it intended to do it, but succeeds it's in intentions each time" but how are we to judge success outside the capacity from failure? Intentions need at least the possibility of failure, but God cannot fail. However, if he does truly have intentions (which presumably the theists holds) he must be able to fail!

Well, one model of the successful execution of intention which does not require the possibility of failure would be this: the execution of an intention is action in accordance with a conception about what will happen. That is, the agent who has a conception of a result he wants and is guided by that conception is executing his intention for that result to occur. As long as the notion of having a conception makes sense, this will allow one to distinguish intention from mere causation.

It's not clear to me why the possibility of failure should help anyway, since it's not clear to me that it's part of the notion of a causal disposition that it doesn't include the possibility of failure. Maybe Bs can only be caused by events of type A, but one might still have an event of type A without B.

Intentions and desires have the same direction of fit, moreover, but if the ascription of both has to presuppose the possibility of failure, and the possibility of failure is the only way to distinguish intention and desire from mere causation, then it isn't clear how there could be a basis for distinguishing intention and desire. That is, neither intention nor desire could just be causation with a possibility of failure, causation measured by some norm. They would have to be something else in addition to that, so that intentions are F causation with a possibility of failure, while desires are non-F causation with a possibility of failure. But then it isn't obvious that whatever F is should be sufficient to distinguish intention from mere causation without reference to possibility of failure.

The inkling of truth in your argument, I think, is that possibility of failure might be a precondition for our acquiring the concept of intention. But it doesn't follow that possibility of failure is a precondition for the existence of intentions. (Compare: if no proposition could fail to be true, we probably would not have the concept of truth. But that doesn't make the notion of necessary truth straightforwardly contradictory.)
 

Marty wrote:

DanielCC wrote:

One brief point: 'But then we're just making up fantastical objects because these are not being supplied by any intuition'

This is surely incorrect - if successful various theistic proofs are in themselves successful i.e. they prove that a being with X attributes exists, then they serve as more than an intuition that Mind2 is possible. All the objection then boils down to is the observation that God must be a very unusual being, something the theist will grant given Divine uniqueness. 

And which are those?

Varying forms of the Cosmological Argument (Aquinas' First Way, PSR, Scotus' Modal et cetera), the Modal Ontological Argument and more?

Alternatively you were just being rhetorically obtuse. What you have to do to get any millage out of the proposed objection is either:

A, show that each alleged theistic proof fails.

B, show that the Gaps Problem in the Cosmological Argument is indeed a problem and that, though successful in demonstrating a necessary being, these arguments do not allow one to conclude said being has X attributes.

Greg wrote:

Marty wrote:

That's the only way we do understand intentions - them being normative; they can fail to uphold to certain commitments one makes. When one has a commitment, they can inevitably fail to be accordance with such a commitment to which they will then attempt to try to succeed at it again. They are different from mere casual dispositions in the sense that casual events do not have something to be accordance with. Lighting doesn't "intend" to hit a tree, it merely hits a tree - therefore never misses it's mark. If something never missed it's mark, how can we distinguish this from mere casual dispositions? You could say, "it intended to do it, but succeeds it's in intentions each time" but how are we to judge success outside the capacity from failure? Intentions need at least the possibility of failure, but God cannot fail. However, if he does truly have intentions (which presumably the theists holds) he must be able to fail!

Well, one model of the successful execution of intention which does not require the possibility of failure would be this: the execution of an intention is action in accordance with a conception about what will happen. That is, the agent who has a conception of a result he wants and is guided by that conception is executing his intention for that result to occur. As long as the notion of having a conception makes sense, this will allow one to distinguish intention from mere causation.

It's not clear to me why the possibility of failure should help anyway, since it's not clear to me that it's part of the notion of a causal disposition that it doesn't include the possibility of failure. Maybe Bs can only be caused by events of type A, but one might still have an event of type A without B.

Intentions and desires have the same direction of fit, moreover, but if the ascription of both has to presuppose the possibility of failure, and the possibility of failure is the only way to distinguish intention and desire from mere causation, then it isn't clear how there could be a basis for distinguishing intention and desire. That is, neither intention nor desire could just be causation with a possibility of failure, causation measured by some norm. They would have to be something else in addition to that, so that intentions are F causation with a possibility of failure, while desires are non-F causation with a possibility of failure. But then it isn't obvious that whatever F is should be sufficient to distinguish intention from mere causation without reference to possibility of failure.

The inkling of truth in your argument, I think, is that possibility of failure might be a precondition for our acquiring the concept of intention. But it doesn't follow that possibility of failure is a precondition for the existence of intentions. (Compare: if no proposition could fail to be true, we probably would not have the concept of truth. But that doesn't make the notion of necessary truth straightforwardly contradictory.)
 

Presumably, when you say, "the execution of an intention is action in accordance with a conception about what will happen" you mean to say it will possibly occur, since you have no guarantee of what will necessarily occur. All expectations or commitments presuppose possibility that co-companies it -- unless you claim that you have such an ability that you know it will occur?

Also, to back step a bit, let me fix what I said eariler: some desires are intentional, others are mere casual dispositions. But when something is intentional, it seems to follow that it is then normative.

So looking at it another way: intentional desires/beliefs are propositional statements that are either true or false, and they're either true or false depending on how one engages through those commitments. But the tricky thing with God is that God cannot even have beliefs, he just has knoweldge, it seems.You could say that "God doesn't engage through these activites" but then we're just not talking about intentional states. 

Last edited by Marty (5/18/2017 10:37 pm)

Marty wrote:

Presumably, when you say, "the execution of an intention is action in accordance with a conception about what will happen" you mean to say it will possibly occur, since you have no guarantee of what will necessarily occur. All expectations or commitments presuppose possibility that co-companies it -- unless you claim that you have such an ability that you know it will occur?

No, that is not what I mean. "a conception about _____" is an intensional context; when I say "what will happen," I am characterizing the content of the conception, not providing it with a referent, so that the existence of the conception does not depend on "what will happen" in fact having a referent.

Marty wrote:

Also, to back step a bit, let me fix what I said eariler: some desires are intentional, others are mere casual dispositions. But when something is intentional, it seems to follow that it is then normative.

I don't have any beef with finding a sense of "normative" in which it's true that intentions (and desires, and beliefs) are "normative". I was asking what that sense was and why the normativity of intentions, desires, and beliefs implies that for each intention, desire, or belief, it is possible for that intention, desire, or belief to fail.

Marty wrote:

So looking at it another way: intentional desires/beliefs are propositional statements that are either true or false, and they're either true or false depending on how one engages through those commitments. But the tricky thing with God is that God cannot even have beliefs, he just has knoweldge, it seems.You could say that "God doesn't engage through these activites" but then we're just not talking about intentional states. 

I don't follow your meaning.

Yes, ascriptions of intention and belief are propositions which can be true or false. For instance: A intends to φ; B believes that p. It is also true that these propositions will provide us with conditions for saying that A successfully executed his intention or that B is correct in his belief, and correspondingly they provide conditions for failure.

One could call these conditions "commitments": in the case of intention, a commitment to bringing something particular in about, and in the case of belief, a commitment to the world's being a certain way. It isn't true, though, that the truth of the ascription of intentions and beliefs depends on "how one engages through those commitments" (unless this means something I don't appreciate). Someone can intend to φ even if he doesn't, and one can believe that p even if p is false. The "success" and "failure" of intentions and beliefs is orthogonal to the truth or falsity of ascriptions of intention and belief.

In any case, I'd be happy to say that intentions and beliefs are normative if this just means that it makes sense to attribute success or failure to them. What I deny, and what I have seen little argument for, is that an ascription of intention must be false if it is not possible for that intention to fail. One would think that specifying the conditions for success or failure is sufficient; that for some reason the fulfillment of these conditions is ruled out does not seem to imperil the truth of an ascription of intention.

I wouldn't say that God lacks beliefs because he has knowledge. Knowledge seems to be a kind of belief.