Justice Cabantangan
Georgia State University
While playing a video game like 2016’s God of War, if I were asked what I intended to do at some point during gameplay, I would respond with: “I intend to protect my son Atreus,” “I intend to fire Runic Arrows,” and the like. While these phrases assume the form of ordinary expressions of intention, the contents of these intentions are far from ordinary. The actions intended are all virtual – that is, mere (audiovisual, textual, etc.) representations of actions. This presents a puzzle to the cognitivist of intention, who holds that an intention to x either entails or is identical to the belief that one will x. If intending to protect my son Atreus is or entails a belief that I will protect my son Atreus, but I know that there is no Atreus and no protecting to perform, then having such an intention leads me to hold contradictory beliefs: that I will and will not protect my son Atreus. My aim is to argue that a solution to a similar problem in the philosophy of emotions can be adapted to answer this puzzle. In his seminal paper Fearing Fictions, Kendall Walton argues that the emotions we have towards fictional targets are quasi-emotions – distinct from regular emotions. This is so because such emotions do not function like regular emotions and seem to be responsive to normative considerations that regular emotions are not responsive to. Thus, these emotions should be understood as quasi-emotions and thereby treated differently from emotions sans phrase. I argue that intentions to virtually act, likewise, lack the function of regular intentions: they do not make the action intended more likely to occur. Further, they are normatively distinct from regular intentions: fictional truths like “the Runic Arrows will set fire to the brush” and “I want to access a chest behind the brush” figure into our practical reasoning over intentions to virtually act. Thus, I conclude that these intentions should be understood as quasi-intentions and thereby treated differently from intentions sans phrase.
Chair: Melina Bardt
Time: September 11th, 17:00 – 17:30
Location: SR 1.006 (online)
SOPhiA 2026 