Preview: Literature from the philosophy mind and action provides a rich source of conceptual analysis relevant to intentionality. We will discuss a number of important philosophical distinctions including: actions vs. movements; intentionality ("aboutness") as a general characteristic of mental states vs. intentionality in the ordinary sense of acting purposefully; future intentions vs. concurrent intentions-in-action; and intentions vs. decisions, commitments, and promises. We will also introduce the relations of intention to other mental states (e.g., belief, desire, trying, volition), to morally relevant concepts (e.g., free will, responsibility), and to rationality and the explanation of behavior.

Facilitator: Diego Fernandez-Duque
Note-takers: Mark Sabbagh

1. Dretske, F. (1988). The structure of behavior. In F. Dretske, Explaining behavior: Reasons in a world of causes (pp. 1-32). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

2. Searle (1984). The structure of action. In J. Searle, Minds, brains, and science (pp. 57-70). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

3. Moya, C. (1990). Intention and intentional action. In C. Moya, The philosophy of action (pp. 129-144). Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

4. Audi (1993). Overview: Reason in action. In R. Audi, Action, intention, and reason (pp. 1-31). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Optional:

• Bratman, M. E. (1987). Introduction. In M. E. Bratman, Intention, plans, and practical reasoning (pp. 1-13). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Preview: The concept of intentionality is multi-faceted. When adults ascribe intentionality, several other "criterial" mental states are assumed: desire, belief, intention, awareness and skill. We will discuss the distinction and relation among these constituents and their differentiation in the child's developing concept of intentionality. For a more detailed preview discussion, see here.

Facilitator:
Note-takers: Jodie Baird, Joanna Bulkley

1. Malle, B. F., & Knobe, J. (1997a). The folk concept of intentionality. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 33, 101-121.

2. Moses, L. J. (1993). Young children's understanding of belief constraints on intention. Cognitive Development, 8, 1-25.

3. Bratman, M. E. (1987). On the way to the planning theory. In M. E. Bratman, Intention, plans, and practical reasoning (pp. 14-27). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

4. Schult, C. A. (1996). Children's understanding of the distinction between intentions and desires. In C. A. Schult, Intended actions and intentional states: Young children's understanding of the causes of human actions. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan.

Optional:

• Schueler, G. F. (1995). What are desires? In Desire. Its role in practical reasons and the explanation of action (9-41). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

• Davis, W. A. (1984). A causal theory of intending. American Philosophical Quarterly, 21, 43-54.

• Grice (1971). Intention and uncertainty. Proceedings of the British Academy, 57, 263-279.

• Shultz, T. (1980). Development of the concept of intention. In W. A. Collins (Ed.), Development of cognition, affect, and social relations: The Minnesota symposia on child psychology (pp. 131-164). Hilssdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Preview: Detecting intentions in ongoing behavior is a challenging task. In many cases perceivers must segment the behavior stream into interpretable units and use assumptive knowledge and observable cues to infer (a) whether each behavior is intentional or not and if so, (b) what the agent's intentions and goals were. In some cases, intentions may be perceived directly--but this claim is debatable, and we will debate it. For a more detailed preview discussion, see here.

Facilitator: Jodie Baird
Note-takers: Megan Houghton

1. Newtson, D., & Enquist, G. (1976). The perceptual organization of ongoing behavior. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 12, 436-450.

2. Heider, F. (1958). Excerpts from The naive analysis of action. In F. Heider, The psychology of interpersonal relations (pp. 101-124). New York: Wiley.

3. Malle, B. F. (1994). Strategies to infer intentionality. In B. F. Malle, Intentionality and Explanation: A study in the folk theory of behavior (pp. 37-44). Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stanford University.

4. Premack, D., & Premack, A. J. (1995). Intention as psychological cause. In D. Sperber, D. Premack, & A. J. Premack (Eds.), Causal cognition: A multidisciplinary debate (pp. 185-199). New York: Clarendon.

Optional:

• Dittrich, W. H., & Lea, S. E. G. (1994). Visual perception of intentional motion. Perception, 23, 253-268.

• Dasser, V., Ulbaek, I., & Premack, D. (1989). The perception of intention. Science, 243, 365-367.

• Bloom, P., & Veres. The perceived intentionality of groups. Unpublished manuscript.

Preview: Human actions are complex, and they occur within the context of a diverse and complex environment. Given this complexity, one of the biggest questions about human development is how infants and young children achieve the ability to process human action in a consistent and meaningful way, and how such processing ultimately yields appropriate attributions of intentionality. For a more detailed preview discussion, see here.

Facilitator: Joanna Bulkley
Note-takers: Megan Houghton, Matt O'Laughlin

1. Baldwin, D. A., & Baird, J. A. (1997). Action analysis: A gateway to intentional inference. Chapter to appear in P. Rochat (Ed.), Early social cognition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

2. Gergely, G., Nadasdy, Z., Csibra, G., & Biro, S. (1995). Taking the intentional stance at 12 months of age. Cognition, 56, 165-193.

3. Meltzoff, A.N. (1995). Understanding the intentions of others: Re-enactment of intended acts by 18-month-old children. Developmental Psychology, 31, 838-850.

4. Woodward, A. L. (1997a). Selectivity and discrimination in infants' encoding of human behavior. Manuscript under review.

5. Johnson, S. C. (1997, August). Gaze-following and the attribution of intentionality to novel objects. Poster presented at the meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Stanford, Calif.

Optional:

• Poulin-Dubois, D., & Shultz, T. R. (1988). The development of the understanding of human behavior: From agency to intentionality. In J. W. Astington, P. L. Harris, & D. L. Olson (Eds.), Developing theories of mind (pp. 109-125). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Gopnik, A., & Meltzoff, A. (1997). The child's theory of action. In A. Gopnik & A. Meltzoff, Words, Thoughts, and Theories (pp. 125-160). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

• Montgomery, D. (1996). The role of action-initiation in young children's causal explanations of action. Cognitive Development, 4, 467-489.

• Barresi, J. & Moore, C. (1996) Intentional relations and social understanding. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 19, 107-122.

Preview: To have successful social interactions, people must be able to explain their own and others' behavior. Such explanations rely critically on the concept of intentionality and its constituents of belief and desire. We will discuss how adults explain intentional as well as unintentional behaviors and how children might acquire these explanatory skills.

Facilitator: Matt O'Laughlin
Note-takers: Jodie Baird, Kristi Klein

1. Malle, B. F. (1997). Intentionality in attributions: A model of how people xplain behavior. Manuscript under review.

2. Goldman, A. I. (1997). The mentalizing folk. Unpublished manuscript, University of Arizona.

3. Wellman, H. M., Hickiling, A. K., & Schult, C. A. (in press). Young children's psychological, physical, and biological explanations. In H. Wellman & K. Ingaki (Eds.), Children's theories. A volumen in the series: New directions for child development. San Francisco: Josssey-Bates.

4. Kalish, C. (in press). Reasons and causes: Children's understanding of conformity to social rules and physical laws. Child Development.

Optional:

• Bartsch, K., & Wellman, H. (1989). Young children's attribution of action to beliefs and desires. Child Development, 60, 946-964.

• Gordon, R. M. (1992). The simulation theory: Objections and misconceptions. Mind & Language, 7, 11-34.

• Gopnik, A. (in press). Explanation as orgasm. Minds and Machines.

• Malle, B. F., & Knobe, J. (1997b). Which behaviors do people explain? A basic actor-observer asymmetry. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 288-304.

Preview: Everyday conversation is often described as a collaborative process. We will consider the view that language use depends crucially on participants' skill in (a) making appropriate prior assumptions about others' intentions, and (b) updating inferences about others' intentions based on ongoing conversational contributions. In addition, we will look at one case (the semantics of interpersonal verbs) in which language appears to "store" information about intentions and explanations.

Facilitator: Meg Houghton
Note-takers: Matt O'Laughlin, Kristi Klein

1. Clark, H. H. (1996). Introduction: Language use. In H. H. Clark, Using language (pp. 3-25). Cambridge University Press.

2. Grice, H. P. (1989). Meaning. In H. P. Grice, Studies in the way of words (pp. 213-223). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

3. Baldwin, D. A., & Tomasello, M. (in press). Word learning: A window on early pragmatic understanding. Chapter to appear in E. Clark (Ed.), Proceedings of the Twenty-ninth Annual Child Language Research Forum, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

4. Malle (1997). What really underlies implicit verb causality: A theoretical note. Unpublished manuscript, University of Oregon.

Optional:

• Rudolph, U., & Försterling, F. (1997). The psychological causality implicit in verbs: A review. Psychological Bulletin, 121, 192-218.

• Baldwin, D.A. (1995). Understanding the link between joint attention and language. In C. Moore & P.J. Dunham (Eds.), Joint attention: Its origins and role in development (pp. 131-158). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

• Tomasello, M. (in press). Perceiving intentions and learning words in the second year of life. In M. Bowerman & S. Levinson (Eds.), Language acquisition and conceptual development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Preview:In many cultures intention and intentionality play an important role in assigning moral status to acts. As we shall see, however, the relation between intentionality and morality is complex and multi-faceted. We will consider connections among the concepts of intentionality, responsibility (causal, legal, and moral), justice, negligence, blame and punishment. We will also look at cultural and historical variation in these relations and at children's developing understanding of the role of intentions in moral judgments.

Facilitator: Vicki Luu
Note-takers: Joanna Bulkley, Renate Kuder

1. Hamilton, V. L., & Sanders, J. (1992). Human action and responsibility. In V. L. Hamilton & J. Sanders, Everyday justice: Responsibility and the individual in Japan and the United States (pp. 12-20). New Haven: Yale University Press.

2. Weiner, B. (1995). The anatomy of responsibility. In B. Weiner, Judgments of responsibility: A foundation for a theory of social conduct (pp. 1-24). New York: Guilford.

3. Mele, A., & Sverdlik, S. (1996). Intention, intentional action, and moral responsibility. Philosophical Studies, 82, 265-287.

4. Kaplan, L. V. (1995). Intention and responsibility. In L. Rosen (Ed.), Other intentions: Cultural contexts and the attribution of inner states (pp. 118-140).

5. Nelson-LeGall, S. A. (1985). Motive-outcome matching and outcome foreseeability: Effects on attribution of intentionality and moral judgments. Developmental Psychology, 21, 323-337.

Optional:

• Grueneich, R. & Trabasso, T. (1981). The story as a social environment: Children's comprehension and evaluation of intentions and consequences. In J.H. Harvey (Ed.), Cognition, social behavior and the environment (pp. 265-287). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

• Zelazo, P.D., Helwig, C.C., & Lau, A. (1996) Intention, act, and outcome in behavioral prediction and moral judgment. Child Development, 67, 2478-2492.

Preview: A sophisticated grasp of intentionality seems to emerge spontaneously in the course of human development, with perhaps some exceptions: Certain disorders may specifically disrupt functioning in this arena. We will examine some recent evidence of such intentionality-related disorders, with an eye to what such evidence may reveal about the nature of intentional understanding more generally.

Facilitator: Mark Sabbagh
Note-takers: Vicki Luu, Diego Fernandez-Duque

1. Phillips, W., Baron-Cohen, S., & Rutter, M. (1992). The role of eye contact in goal detection: Evidence from normal infants and children with autism or mental handicap. Development and Psychopathology, 4, 375-383.

2. Sacks, O. (1995). An anthroplogist on Mars. In O. Sacks, An anthropologist on Mars (pp. 244-296). New York: Vintage Books.

3. Sabbagh (1997). Communicative intentions and language. Unpublished manuscript, University of Oregon.

4. Carpenter, M., & Bujak, J. (1997). Do young children with autism and developmental delays understand others' intentions? Poster presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development.

Preview:In this session we will discuss the evolutionary history of the ability to read intentions. Topics include (a) whether our closest primate relatives (the great apes) might have the abilities to infer intentions and to distinguish intentional from unintentional behavior, (b) what evolutionary advantage the onset of such abilities might have conferred, and (c) the implications these abilities might have had for the evolution of altruism and ethics.

Facilitator: Kristi Klein
Note-takers: Mark Sabbagh, Vicki Luu

1. Premack, D, & Woodruff, G. (1978). Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 4, 515-526. Plus commentaries by Savage-Rumbaugh et al., Bennett, Dennett, and Pylyshyn, and Authors' Response (Part I).

2. Povinelli, D.J., & Perilloux, H.K., Reaux, J.E., & Bierschwale, D. (in press). Young and juvenile chimpanzees' (Pan troglodytes) reactions to intentional versus accidental and inadvertent actions. Behavioral Processes.

3. Call, J. & Tomasello, M. (1997). Distinguishing intentional from accidental actions in oragutans (Pongo pygmaeus), chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), and human children (Homo sapiens). Manuscript under review.

4. Povinelli, D.J. & Godfrey, L.R. (1993). The chimpanzee's mind: How noble in reason? How absent of ethics? In M. H. Nitecki & D. V. Nitecki (Eds.), Evolutionary Ethics. Albany, New York: SUNY Press.

Optional:

• Dennett, D. (1996). Intentionality: The intentional systems approach. In Kinds of Minds (pp. 19-55), Basic Books.

Neural Basis of Intentional Understanding

* Brothers, L. (1994). Neurophysiology of the perception of intentions by primates. In M.S. Gazzaniga (Ed.), The Cognitive Neurosciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

* Syder, L.H., Batista, A. P., & Andersen, R. A. (1997). Coding of intention in the posterior parietal cortex. Nature, 386, 166-170.

Production of Intentional Action

* Miller, Galanter, & Pribram (1960). Plans, and the structure of behavior. New York: Holt.

* Ryan, T. A. (1970). Intentional behavior: An approach to human motivation. New York: Ronald Press

* Gallistel (1980) The organization of action: A new synthesis. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum.

* Bertenthal, B. I., & Pinto, J. (1993). Complementary processes in the perception and production of human movements. In L. B. Smith & E. Thelen (Eds.), A dynamic systems approach to development: Applications (pp. 209-239). Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books/MIT Press.