Subclass of:

• sdh:C1 Entity Quality

Superclass of:

• sdh:C7 Intentional State
• sdh:C10 Intentional Event

Scope note:

This class comprises qualities of the mind of a single person, or the minds of intentional collectives, and captures the presence in their mind of propositions about entities of any kind. It is comprehensive of all intentional phenomena, be they static, in the sense of states of mind, or dynamic, in the sense of changes of mind or opinions evolving in time, i.e. new propositions replacing the former ones about the same objects. It is an abstract, uninstantiated class, providing its subclasses and descendants with the fundamental intension and relevant properties.

Intentionality is defined in philosophy as the power of minds to be directed at objects, i.e. entities, states of affairs, goals, or values (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). The intended entity is the object of the intention, its content is a proposition, or a fragment of it, or a complex set of propositions about this object. It is important to note that "intentionality" is not to be confused with "intention" as the purpose people have in mind when they act. The notion of intentionality applies primarily to the representations and individual or social connotations of things, not to the theory of human action.

The sdh:C4 Intention class, as a descendant of the crm:E2 Temporal Entity class, models the fact that propositions about objects, and the objects they concern, are present to human minds or intentional entities, be these taken individually or collectively, during a given time span. The intention therefore appears to be a time-related quality of a mind or minds be this realized in a more stable way, as in intentional states, or engaged in an evolutionary, dynamic process, e.g. discussing a topic or changing one's mind, which we define as an intentional event.

Given that they are intimately linked, the intended object is associated to the crm:E89 Propositional Object representing the content of the intention using the crm:P129 is about property and therefore no direct property associating the intention with the object is declared at this foundational level. This allows to identify the intentional content or representations present in the mind of different intentional entities, at different times, independently of the actual quality of each mind. 

As a subclass of sdh:C1 Entity Quality, the Intention class inherits the properties expressing the influence of a crm:E5 Event on the quality. E. g. a physical event like a volcanic eruption can generate mental endorsement of the proposition that assesses the seriousness of the situation and invites to flee.

Examples:

Before the 18th century, people generally believed that the Earth did not move and was situated at the center of the Universe (sdh:C7 Intentional State class)

Context notes:

"The proposition is the content of the intention, the intended entity its object. The content of the intention can be a fragment of proposition or complex sets of propositions." Cf. Searle John, Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization, Oxford University Press, 2010, 27-32.

In First Order Logic:

• C4(x) ⇒ C1(x)

Outgoing properties:

• sdh:P7 is intention of (has intention) (0,n:1,1) → sdh:C9 Intentional Entity
• sdh:P34 has content (is content of) (0,n:0,1) → crm:E89 Propositional Object
• sdh:P40 has context (is context of) (0,n:0,n) → sdh:C26 Representations

Incoming properties:

• sdh:C10 Intentional Event → sdh:P3 effects (is the result of) (0,n:0,n)
• sdh:C10 Intentional Event → sdh:P4 ends (is ended by) (0,n:0,n)