Abstract

When I intend to J, I may be wrong about what I intend but not about who intends it. In this sense, action intentions appear immune to error. A standard explanation of this immunity is that the subject of the intention is not represented in the content of the intention in the first place. When I think that we intend to J, it seems obvious that I can misjudge who ‘we’ are. This may seem to indicate that the ‘we’ must be represented in the content of the intention. This argument from misidentification is an objection against purely perspectival accounts of the distinction between I- and we-intentions. However, in several relevant respects we-intentions and I-intentions are on a par in relation to errors in identification, and the argument from misidentification against the perspectival account of the distinction backfires.