There’s a lot you can write about intentions. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”, they say. “He/she did bad things but they had good intentions.” So what I’d like to propose today is that intentions are more highly developed in highly-developed organisms such as humans, and understanding intentions is one of the lubricants that helps our society function and us understand each other. I will only scratch the surface here, and to do so, I’ll begin with some examples.
A falcon will dive toward his prey, usually another bird in flight, and the falcon’s heading will not be where the prey is now, but rather where the prey is likely to be when he strikes. If he were to aim for the prey exactly where it is, the falcon would miss every time. He has to anticipate where the bird will be, so he can be at the same place at the same exact time, guaranteeing him a strike. Likewise for most hunting animals as they chase their prey. In a sense, they are estimating their prey’s intentions, of where they are headed. Or are they? Could it be just instinct that they have learned over millennia, among other instincts such as where to strike (for the kill), what prey to take on and what not, etc….?
Consider a situation where a co-worker gives another co-worker what she thinks is sugar to sweeten their coffee, but it’s actually poison. The unsuspecting co-worker dies of poisoning at the hands of their co-worker, who had no idea they were giving them poison, thinking it was sugar. Or what if the co-worker gives the other co-worker a packet of poison, expecting them to die of poisoning, but what they actually give them is sugar, and nothing happens? Those are two extreme cases where the intention is clearly very important.
Have you ever been in stop-and-go traffic, and you are watching a car on the adjacent lane just ahead of you, and you can tell they want to merge to your lane, without them giving you any signals? They don’t state their intentions by turning on their blinkers. They don’t open the window and wave for you to let them in. The car might not even be moving, but you KNOW that, as soon as a gap opens in front of you, they will merge? And as soon as you leave a large enough gap, they merge in front of you. How can you tell by just looking at the car, what their intentions were?
These are just a few examples of how we, as humans, can sense others’ intentions without having clear cues. I don’t know if this is something we are born with, a way to intuit what others are thinking of doing, but some of it is learned. Maybe we already come with the proper hardware (a complex brain) predisposed to accept social programming on how to figure out someone’s intentions. I think this is part of what gives us social or emotional intelligence, something not all of us have in spades. Some of us have more practical, or intellectual intelligence and we’re not as quick to catch someone’s intentions. But regardless, reading intentions is something that I think separates us from other species. What do you think?
Greg Lopez 