Intentions Are Rapid Premonitory Perspective Views of Schemes of Thought

   1) All Acts Have the Character of Being Intended

   All acts have in common the character of being intended or willed. But one act is distinguishable from another by the content of it, the expected result of it, which is here spoken of as its intent. There is no obvious way in which we can say what act it is which is thought of or is done except by specifying this intent of it. (Lewis, 1946, p. 367)

   2) Intentions Are Rapid Premonitory Perspective Views of Schemes of Thought

   And has the reader never asked himself what kind of a mental fact is his intention of saying a thing before he has said it? It is an entirely definite intention, distinct from all other intentions, an absolutely distinct state of consciousness, therefore; and yet how much of it consists of definite sensorial images, either of words or of things? Hardly anything! Linger, and the words and things come into the mind; the anticipatory intention, the divination is there no more. But as the words that replace it arrive, it welcomes them successively and calls them right if they agree with it, it rejects them and calls them wrong if they do not. It has therefore a nature of its own of the most positive sort, and yet what can we say about it without using words that belong to the later mental facts that replace it? The intention to- say-so- and-so is the only name it can receive. One may admit that a good third of our psychic life consists in these rapid premonitory perspective views of schemes of thought not yet articulate. (James, 1890, p. 253)