In the infant’s case, I agree it is imprudent to posit any pre-meditated intention. My mention of the word “intention” was all related back to philosophy, so infants are somewhat irrelevant in this case. When I said “thought requires intention to think, and intentions depend on environment, including social circumstance”, this was in reference to philosophical thought - as consistent with how I followed up with this: “That is to say your rank correlates with your philosophical outlook and thoughts in general”.
I am not so naïve as to put all action down to intention - as shown by my recognition of things like reflex reactions lacking intention. You could put much infant movement down being to at least very similar to reflex reaction - to excess energy and simple immitation. There is more cognition going on, but you get my point about its seemingly mechanical nature.
There is also exploration and absent-mindedness, yes. Exploration could be intention to explore, though absent-mindedness is unintentional. Going back to my reference to philosophical thought, absent-mindedness is no more applicable to what I meant than infants. Is there such a thing as being accidentally philosophical?
So seeing as philosophical thought requires intentional thought, and intentional thought depends on social environment, it is entirely reasonable to base one’s philosophy on one’s social standing/rank/role.
What is the difference between intent and motive?
And is there a difference between intent and motive in philosophy?
Is motive what drives one to do something, which can be unintentional? At this point I could point out that strictly, intention only implies simple tendency or inclination - which may or may not be pre-meditated or consciously or morally desired. This gives it much more of the same feel as “motive” - though intention is generally used as pre-meditated and conscious as I’ll use it. Moral intentions can differ from what one “really” wants - I think this highlights much of any difference between intent and motive. Someone’s motive might be something they didn’t intend to act upon - in philosophy, someone might not intend to think in accordance with their social rank but that would be their motive for philosophising in the way they do. I would regard this as very poor philosophy, since good philosophy has a solid understanding of what went into such philosophy - otherwise it is not very deep and often very presumptive. So perhaps I should rephrase my 2nd question to “is there a difference between intent and motive in good philosophy?”
You will notice that I said “Most might say the idea or notion causes the action”. Before this I explained how I see causation (as, here, applied to intention): “a word for that which goes on in someone’s mind before they act in a certain way, which is associated with such action”. My view fits in with intent being “an approximation of an expected outcome” - except intention consistently does seem to coincide with action that attempts to satisfy that intention. In order to treat intention on its own, without it coinciding with any corresponding action as normal, one has to intend to keep one’s intentions contained with plenty of frontal cortex action. But normally it is more than just an approximation of an expected outcome.
A mechanism can be approximated, though obviously the human body is proving very complex to model so it’s not as precise as it could be. Intention is neuron firing, giving a picture of the intention (one’s outcome approximation), which also involves firing down the spinal cord and to the relevant muscles, and also activation of the limbic system such that the right chemicals are released for such action. There is stuff that reliably goes on in between the intention and the action. Whilst I am skeptical of the whole “causation” thing, it fits in this case just as well as any other case where the word is used.
I don’t go to the pool to philosophise (well, I probably philosophise everywhere), and I don’t go to ILP to swim. It’s not a good analogy. Of course philosophy can involve challenging the assumption of the existence of anything, even itself. There’s nothing abnormal about coming to ILP to challenge the assumption that it exists - I’m not expecting it to disappear if I conclude that it shouldn’t exist, though I do expect good philosophers to have challenged the existence of anything and everything. It’s a valid philosophical concern to consider at least the way in which philosophy forums exist - what the dynamics are that go into such a social environment - since socio-environmental factors effect every single philosophy that constitutes it.
Btw, did no one notice that Saturd (can’t mention his name lest he looks it up, now!) never came back after that belittling post of mine?
So what prize do I get? Cash?