ABSTRACT
Is there something special about one’s attitude toward a prospective action when deciding or intending to do it? Philosophers often appeal to the idea of settling to distinguish intention from other attitudes toward some prospective φ-ing, such as expecting it or desiring it. But settle has become a term of art invoked in divergent ways. The first use of the term concerns the more immediate upshot of a decision on the psychology of the agent. Once a decision has been made and an intention formed, the agent is settled on a course of action to pursue. She stops considering alternatives and attends to means for bringing it about. Decision and intention thus play a distinctive role in the agent’s psychology and practical reasoning. Call this intransitive settling. In contrast, the transitive use of the term involves the thought that when, for example, you decide and intend to attend a lecture tomorrow, what you’re settling goes beyond your psychology, to take in worldly matters such as your being at the lecture. If we take this idea seriously, as I think we should, it might seem that we are led to an implausible picture of the agent reaching outside the temporal order to determine in direct fashion some future state of affairs. We can avoid this consequence while maintaining a robust transitive conception of settling. This will require articulating how one can act directly on a prior intention, and appreciating the role of intention in preserving reasons for action.
