That difference is easy to miss because English uses the same word in several constructions:

I intend to leave tomorrow.                 a future-directed intention
I opened the window to cool the room.       an intention with which I acted
I opened the window intentionally.          an intentional action

The philosophy of intention asks what unifies these forms. The question matters because intention sits between thought and action: it helps explain why a bodily movement counts as something a person is doing, how plans coordinate conduct over time, and when an outcome belongs to an agent in a responsibility-relevant way.

The practical force of “I intend”

Compare three statements:

I would like to learn Italian.
I believe learning Italian would be useful.
I intend to enroll in the autumn course.

The first reports a desire. The second reports an evaluation. The third normally changes the practical situation. It gives the speaker a reason to check the schedule, reserve money, avoid conflicting commitments, and decide how to travel to class.

An intention therefore has conduct-guiding force. It need not be irreversible, and it does not guarantee success. But while it remains in place, it constrains later deliberation. Someone who continually treats every settled intention as an entirely new question will have difficulty sustaining any extended project.

This is one reason Michael Bratman treats intentions as planning states. Human beings have limited time, attention, memory, and foresight. We cannot reconsider every option at every moment. Intentions let us settle some questions provisionally so that we can reason about means, coordinate with our future selves, and make our conduct predictable to other people. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Action

Intention is not desire, prediction, or motive

Several attitudes can concern the same action without being identical.

A person can desire what they do not intend to pursue. They can predict an outcome they are trying to prevent. They can act from several motives while intending only one course of action. They can also form an intention reluctantly, without strongly wanting the action itself.

These distinctions matter whenever we try to infer intention from emotion, preference, or consequence. Wanting an outcome is evidence about intention, but it is not conclusive evidence.

Actions are intentional under descriptions

Suppose Elena flips a switch. In doing so, she:

• turns on a light;
• illuminates the garden;
• alerts a neighbor;
• startles a bird.

One physical movement admits several true descriptions. Elena may know that she is turning on the light and do so for that reason. She may not know that the switch also controls the garden lamp. She may foresee that the neighbor will notice without acting in order to alert them. She may have no idea that a bird is nearby.

It would therefore be too crude to label the entire causal chain either intentional or unintentional. An action can be intentional under one description and not under another.

This insight is central to G. E. M. Anscombe’s account of action. The question “Why?” has a special role when it asks for the agent’s reason for acting. An answer can reveal how several movements form one intelligible action:

Why are you moving those boards?
To repair the steps.
Why repair the steps?
So the entrance is safe before the guests arrive.

The answers do more than name earlier mental events. They display the practical order within the action itself. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: G. E. M. Anscombe

Plans connect intention across time

Many intentions are incomplete when formed. “I intend to move next year” leaves the city, date, budget, and method unsettled. That incompleteness is normal. A workable plan combines commitment with room for later specification.

Intentions commonly generate three pressures:

1. Consistency. Incompatible intentions cannot all guide successful action.
2. Means-end coherence. If an end is intended and a necessary means is known, the means must eventually enter the plan or the end must be reconsidered.
3. Stability. An intention must resist casual reconsideration long enough to perform its coordinating role.

None of these pressures is absolute. New evidence, changed circumstances, moral reflection, or a better opportunity can justify revision. Rational stability is not stubbornness. It is the ability to keep a practical question settled until there is a relevant reason to reopen it.

Bratman’s planning theory makes this temporal role central: intentions help resource-limited agents coordinate complex projects with themselves and with others. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Intention

Foreseen consequences are not automatically intended

Responsibility becomes difficult when an agent foresees a consequence but does not pursue it as an end.

Imagine a surgeon who performs a painful procedure to prevent a life-threatening infection. The pain is foreseen and knowingly caused. It is not therefore automatically the surgeon’s intention. The intended end is treating the infection; the pain may be accepted as a cost.

This does not make the consequence morally irrelevant. Foreseeability, probability, available alternatives, negligence, and proportionality can all affect responsibility. The point is narrower:

Causing, foreseeing, accepting, risking, and intending an outcome are different relations to that outcome.

Legal and moral reasoning often depends on these distinctions. A harmful result alone does not reveal the intention with which someone acted. Conversely, saying “I did not intend the harm” does not answer whether the risk was reckless or the action unjustified.

Intention is not intentionality

In philosophy of mind, intentionality means the aboutness or directedness of mental states. A belief can be about tomorrow’s weather; a fear can be directed at a dog; a memory can concern a childhood room.

These states have intentionality even when no action is intended. I may fear an exam without intending it, remember a journey without planning another one, or believe that a storm is coming while trying to prevent damage.

The shared linguistic root can therefore mislead. Intention is one kind of practical attitude. Intentionality is a much broader feature attributed to thought and experience. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Intentionality

How much can intention be observed?

Agents often have distinctive knowledge of what they are doing. Someone writing a sentence normally does not discover their action by watching their fingers as an external observer would. Yet self-knowledge is not infallible. People can rationalize, misunderstand mixed motives, forget prior commitments, or use “intention” strategically after an outcome is known.

Third parties face the opposite problem. They observe words, choices, preparation, patterns, and consequences, but they do not directly inspect another person’s practical commitment.

A careful judgment therefore separates several kinds of evidence:

what the person said they intended
what preparations they made
what alternatives they rejected
what they knew about likely consequences
how their later actions fit the stated plan
what remains uncertain

No single item is decisive in every case. Explicit statements matter, but so do planning and conduct. Outcomes matter, but they cannot be read backward as complete proof of intention.

A working definition

The concept can now be stated more precisely:

An intention is a practical commitment through which an agent settles on an action or end, guides present or future conduct, and makes further planning and coordination possible.

This definition leaves open important philosophical disputes. Must intending involve believing that one will act? Can an action be intentional without a prior intention? How should intention relate to reasons, desire, and practical knowledge? The debates remain active because intention is expected to explain several things at once.

Still, the central contrast is stable. A desire presents an outcome as attractive. A belief presents a proposition as true. An intention presents an action or end as something the agent is committed to bringing about.

Sources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Intention
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Action
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: G. E. M. Anscombe
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Intentionality
• Michael Bratman, Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason