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Intentions and Action Goals

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Human Action Control

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Abstract

How exactly do you tie your shoelaces? Very few people can give a sensible answer to that without using one of these two strategies: either they actually start to tie their shoelaces, observe what they do, and report on that, or they imagine the actions involved and report on what they see before their “mind’s eye.” Both strategies demonstrate the same: we know surprisingly little about our own actions and appear to have no privileged access to the knowledge that allows their execution. Although we are able to perform goal-directed, intentional actions, we actually do not know how or why we can do so. The present chapter attempts to resolve this mystery.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Bernhard Hommel & Stephen B. R. E. Brown

  2. Institute of Psychology, Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Dieter Nattkemper

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  1. Bernhard Hommel
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  2. Stephen B. R. E. Brown
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  3. Dieter Nattkemper
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Hommel, B., Brown, S.B.R.E., Nattkemper, D. (2016). Intentions and Action Goals. In: Human Action Control. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09244-7_3

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