More On Signaling Intentionality & It's Role In Restitution
**Unedited**
Intentions are highly ambiguous to both us and those around us. Furthermore, our intentions are elusive and at best, tentative. We are constantly engaged in a set of present actions to signal our future intentions to those whose around us (even if our true intentions are different) while simultaneously relying on cues to remember our past intentions.
In spite of all of this, intentionality is still the hallmark rulings within our legal system.
Intentionality can be thought of as a state of mind like that of a memory. We often describe our present and past states of mind using descriptions of our intention. However, the reader should be cautious of such descriptions as the further you are from the present the less probable your memory will serve to capture your actual intent. In fact, according to an article in Psychology Today, our memory is quite "adaptive", reshaping itself to accommodate our needs, and thus less complete than we think. These facts are apparent in our legal system where witnesses are notoriously subject to miss-remembering their facts or intentions. According to the article above, false confession (confessing to a crime you did not commit) may account for 24% of the 289 convictions reversed by DNA evidence. All of this serves to tell us there is a difference between communicating our intention and our actual intention just like there is a difference between our projected intention and what others perceive as our intention.
The following paper published in the British Journal of Psychology (Kvavilashvili) found that remembering intention and remembering the particular content connected with said intention may actually be two separate forms of memory. If I ask you to take a message for me and relay it to your boss I would be asking you to engage in two different memory activities. 1) Remember the content of my message. 2) Remember to deliver it. If you agree to the above favor you would have dual intentions, however, it is the latter that is more often forgotten than the former. In spite of your intentions you forgot to deliver the message. This idea of 'remembering intention' was researched in the paper above by giving 80 students a series of three tests in two different locations. After the first test the student was reminded that they needed to return to this room after completing the second test but while the student was leaving they were stopped by the first tester and asked what seemed like an innocuous request, if they could ask the next experimenter "what data [insert surname] obtained yesterday" and relay the message back to them when they return. Thus, the students had the possibility of remembering or forgetting intention (the intent to relay the message) and remembering or forgetting the content of the message (the surname). There were four possibilities that were measured.
1. They were able to recall both the request for data and the surname
2. They recalled the request for data but not the surname
3. They were able to recall the surname is reminded of the request for data
4. They were not able to recall the surname even if reminded of the request for date.
The results are reproduced below
The results help sustain the idea that, even when the content of our intention is retained to memory does not mean that the probability of remembering the content at the appropriate moment will increase. In other words, being able to recall the content of an intention (remembering the surname) did nothing to trigger the subject to carry out the intention (relaying the request for data)
Most of us have seen the classic video where participants are asked to count the number of basketball passes between a group of individuals only to miss the person in the gorilla suit standing in the middle of the set for a full five seconds. These, and other, tests show how oblivious we can be to our surroundings while even in intense moments of focus. Such absentmindedness is more common that we would like and interrupts our day-to-day intentionality. In fact, absentmindedness could be defined as forgetting our past intentions. We may have intended to stop by the store to pickup some milk but may drive right by while listening to an interesting talk on NPR. Since most of our days have become mindlessly automated we must relay on external cues to help remember our past intentions (for example, a call or text from our spouse not to forget the milk). Otherwise, we find ourselves helplessly wondering what we were going to say mid sentence or why we walked into the kitchen.
In addition the "Was-Not-My-Intention" claims are necessarily past tense. It makes no sense to make a statement about the unintentional nature of a future action, since by forming the statement you form your intent. It seems to be logically contradicting. An analogy would be an apology. You may apologize in the present but it always references some action of the past. An apology for a future action would still have been decided upon in the past. For example, if I apologize to my boss for calling in sick tomorrow I must have made the decision prior to the apology.
With the above in mind, it seems somewhat disingenuous to entrust someone with the ability to demonstrate the intentionality of another individual or, for that matter, their self. This is why I have written elsewhere on the blog that intentionality is like remorse in that it should have no bearing on restitution (except as a restitution discount variable). In this way, our intentions can be thought of in the context of a memory or in the context of preference either way I see no bearing on the consequence of an action or a ruling on said actions restitution. What does it even mean to say a person "intends a consequence?" Whenever evaluating intention is applied, it assumes some arbitrary starting point in time. For example, a person may intend to loose 50lbs believe that 200lbs is a much healthier weight to maintain. In legal jargon, he may both foresee it and desire it and thus ruled that it is his intention to cut his weight from 250 down to 200lbs. However, this ruling of intention assumes the starting point began at 250lbs. This same individual would probably tell you that he never foresaw or desired to weigh 250lbs in the first place, only to then desire and foresee his way to loosing it. If one picks the right starting point all actions seem intended to fit whatever narrative we choose. I shall refer to this phenomena as the "Fallacy of Local Linearity" since every curve can be viewed as linear from the right point of reference. Furthermore, all of this discussion of someones intention/preference for the consequence of an action is moot. All true preferences are demonstrated through our actions. Discussing the desire or intention to loose 50lbs demonstrates nothing more than the preference for discussions involving loosing weight. It is merely the action of talking about action
In a perfect world we wouldn't need to signal or make deceleration's of our intention as this would be apparent in our actions. The problem is that our intentions do not always align with out actions. Thus, there will always be accidents, mistakes and malice. No one would debate this fact. Yet, there is nothing innate in the ruling process that must establish and use intention when ruling on restitution. In a free society all ruling would be to make the victim whole, we would never make the victim
1) Pay for police protection that failed to protect them
2) Pay to house the transgressor while they serve time to pay back society instead of the victim.
Malice or no malice, it is not the decision of the court to discount restitution to the victim based on their perceived notions of intentionality. It is up to the victim to decide if they want restitution to be discounted as a function of intent. The court can still make a ruling on intention. In fact, it may be within the interests of all parties that they do but this ruling is for propagation reasons only--they are reporting matters of interest to the public. The insurance company may have a vested interest in logging this type of information for future cases involving the transgressor etc, just like credit agencies log our credit history.
References:
Kvavilashvili, L. (1987), Remembering intention as a distinct form of memory. British Journal of Psychology, 78: 507-518. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.1987.tb02265.x