The Plausibility of Intentional Agency

There has been an enduring debate as to whether psychological and neuroscientific findings bring the conventional idea that we are intentional agents into question. I argue that certain assumptions about intentional behavior which underly this debate are problematic. From observations made in Chapter 1, I make the case for a longstanding dispositional alternative, which I argue is more ecologically valid and consistent with neo-behavioral and cognitive psychological observations. According to this alternative, intending to behave is a way of being disposed to behave, and all sorts of other dispositions or inclining factors – cognitive and/or behavioral, psychological and/or neural – may be operative which either facilitate, or impede, forming and/or manifesting an intention. The upshot is that, not only is it unclear how neuroscientific observations might provide evidence against the conventional notion that we are intentional agents, this notion is consistent with and brings together both experimental findings and ancient insights.