Intentionality

 

What is intentionality?  Like any "internet" person I searched google for the definition of intentionality.  Like many things, the definition I found was a little more "academic" than I had hoped for.  When I see phrases like "the power of minds" I get wary and feel as though I am about to head down the wrong rabbit hole.  I did however, come across this description for "What does it mean to act with intentionality":

 a characteristic of an individual's acts that requires the individual (a) to have goals, desires, and standards; (b) to select behaviors that are in the service of attaining the goal (e.g., means to an end); and (c) to call into conscious awareness a desired future state.

This phrase is a more on the pragmatic side.  Nothing in it about "the power of minds".  Why the interest in intentionality?  First off the concept of intent and intentionality came up in several readings this past month.  It also came up in a few Youtube videos I watched too.  Like many concepts and ideas I began to see "intentionality" in a lot of  places.  For example, I do not recall if  Cait Flanders book specifically uses the term intentionality.  Thinking back however I certainly feel that intent was a big part of her decision to live with less.  Intent is an important concept in our society.  At a personal level we are usually more likely to forgive someone who acted without thinking than someone that willfully intended to cause us harm.  Intent is a vital concept in our criminal justice system.  Murder and Criminally negligent homicide are both crimes that resulted from the death of another human being.  Murder carries with it much stiffer prison terms.  What is the main difference between the two?  The difference is intent.  I am not a lawyer but as I see it a person is convicted of murder when it is proven that they willfully and intentionally decided to kill another person.  As for all the nuances between murder, manslaughter and negligence I will leave that up to judges, lawyers and the justice system.  I think I have made my point, intent is important.

 Since it is important I have decided to investigate it a little more and see how it affects our decision making process.  I think the the first factor is the depth (for lack of a better term) of the intentionality.  I guess you could also phrase it as "the degree of commitment".  We have all had this conversation with friends or family members.  

"Where do you want to have lunch?"  

I don't care where do you want to eat?"  

"I don't care you pick."

On and on it goes LOL.

This conversation would be very different if one of the parties had specific dietary needs.  In fact at one time I was the one with specific needs.  When I was training for Ironman races I had a mental list of what I could and could not eat.  The list was not a detailed itemized lists of do's and do not's.  Basically anything with a salad bar was good,  any fancy sauces like Big Mac special sauce and fried foods were out.  So most fast food places were eliminated.  A good burger joint was ok as long as it was a basic plain burger (no special sauce).  You would think that these rules would make it difficult to find a place to eat.  In fact the opposite was true.  The rules reduced the options and made it easier to make a decision.  So it seems that intentionality can streamline the decision process.

Another thought is the basis for the intent.  Someone with a health scare may make lifestyle changes.  A person who experiences a heart attack may intend to eat better and lose weight.  The intentionality may be spawned from the fear of having another and more serious heart attack.  The basis for intentionality is to get more likes on Tik Toc.  The basis may be to live a better life through de-cluttering or saving money.  If I recall my Ironman days I did not begin it with a great deal of intentionality.  The intentionality grew as I became more involved in the sport.  The actual progression of my Ironman journey deserves it own dedicated post.  Analyzing the basis of the intentionality is a deeply involved analysis and does deserve further thought.

My first thought of intentionality came in the form of an enigma.  After reading books on decisions I became uneasy with the conclusions the authors were drawing.  Before continuing I do highly recommend any of these authors and I fully support their work and their contributions.  However just because I support the work does not mean I cannot look critically at it.  My unease stemmed from some of the experiments the authors preformed and the conclusions drawn from them.  Most of the experiments were simple decisions type tests preformed on students.  I came to realize that my unease was based on intentionality.  What was the intent of the subjects of the experiments.  Were the students more interested in impressing their professors than making sound decisions?  Some of the experiments had the students working in pairs and in some cases simulating an adversarial relationship.  What if one student was simply out to mess with the other student.  I am sure that some of these anomalies were accounted for.  For example doing the same experiment with 100 students would factor out some of the differing intents.  However the fact that intent and intentionality was rarely mentioned left me with an uneasy felling.

Some of the books on Decision making

Misbehaving: The making of Behavioral Economics                    Richard Thaler

Nudge                                                                                             Richard Thaler

Predictably Irrational                                                                      Dan Ariely

Thinking                                                                                          John Brockman

I checked index of these books and the last one is the only one that had "intent" listed