Processes and Artifacts

This chapter proposes a model of intention as diachronically directed to an end. Thus, intention is conceived as an activity, process, or bringing about of an object or state of affairs. This model explains how we effectively produce artifacts and specific kinds of artifacts which are institutional facts, including law. The model of intention as a mental state is rejected since it cannot explain how mental states are effectively connectevd to its intended effects. The alternative solution advanced by classical tradition and some contemporary authors, such as Anscombe, provides the idea of intention as a process of bringing about something. Intentions run parallel to our capacities for reasoning and this process creates an order to reasons that makes intelligible the product of the process. This sheds new light on the idea that law is an artifact and therefore something that we bring about in the world.