The Intention Project

Abstract

In Western thought, the concept of intention is fundamental to our understanding of human behaviour. Intention is at the core of human achievement, the essence of purposive action, of agency, the means by which humankind constructs and makes sense of itself within the social world. Intention is vital to many bodies of knowledge, not just to law. We are able to observe the various ways in which criminal, contract and tort law allocate responsibility to individual legal actors and the role assigned to the concept of intention. The individualistic nature of intention—its starting premise that an individual mind is doing the intending—generates further legal problems for the attribution of collective responsibility. One of the most striking characteristics of human beings is their ability to work and act together in groups, and therefore the attribution of intention to groups is a common phenomenon.