ABSTRACT
Within the philosophy of agency more energy is devoted to understanding intentional actions than to understanding intentional agency. But what intentional agents are, deserves our attention. Controversies about intentional action sometimes turn on claims about the nature of intentional agency, and outside of the philosophy of agency, questions about intentional agents arise in many contexts. Advances in artificial intelligence have given rise to machines that produce complex behaviour. Are they intentional agents? And if we, adult humans, are intentional agents, what qualifies us for this? In this essay, I consider whether there is a philosophically fruitful category of intentional agent, and if so, what kinds of characteristics distinguish intentional agents – do they have to have intentional states, a capacity for rational thought, a capacity to exercise control over their own behaviour? In closing, I suggest that having a first-person perspective is also necessary for intentional agency.
