Suppose Alice intends to hit Bob with a stick. There are two ways that the stick could be involved in Alice’s intentions. First, Alice might not care that it is a stick she hits Bob with, but a stick happens to be ready to hand. In that case, her hitting Bob with a stick is a means to her hitting Bob.
Second, Alice might care about hitting Bob with a stick—perhaps she is punishing him for hitting a defenseless person with a stick and wants the punishment to match the crime. In that case, hitting Bob with a stick is not a means to her hitting Bob, as her hitting Bob does not figure in her intentions apart from the stick. But even in that case it seems right to say that Alice intends to hit Bob. For while it is false to say in general that
- if p entails q and Alice intends p then Alice intends q
(even if one adds that Alice knows about the entailment, or makes the entailment relevant in the sense of relevance logic), it seems that the following special case is true:
- if q is a specification of p and Alice intends q then Alice intends p.
Alice’s hitting Bob with a stick is a specification of Alice’s hitting Bob.
A similar point applies to conjunctions. If Alice intends to hit Bob with a stick and to insult him, she intends to hit Bob with a stick and she intends to insult him. But sometimes at least, hitting Bob with a stick and insulting him do not figure as independent intentions. Yet they are intended nonetheless. So we have another special case of (1):
- if p is a conjunct of q and Alice intends q then Alice intends p.
It is an unhappy situation that some special cases of (1) are true, but (1) is not true in general, and I do not know how to specify which special cases are true.
