Terminers

[WIP]

What determines coherence? What makes a system's behavior over time (or over logical time or over different branches of the decision tree) "add up" to a coherent goal-directed behavior?

• Concerning intrapersonal diachronic coherence, one such a structure (and perhaps the most paradigmatic one) is intention, a behavior-controlling pro-attitude, potentially revisable (iff good reasons for revision obtain), produced either via deliberation or by a following a policy that says something like "In situation X, instantiate intention Y." or potentially slightly more flexibly "In situations satisfying the property P, with parameters x₁,x₂,x₃,…, instantiate intention Y=f(x₁,x₂,x₃,…).".
  • Going beyond "mere" diachronicity and expanding into considerations of different branches of the decision tree, there might be some sort of cross-simulation in order to produce an intention that maximins the expected gain across different possible timelines.
• Concerning interpersonal coherence, promises and contracts seem like central examples of things allowing humans to cohere into (relatively speaking, more of) a sort of unified/compositional agency. Like intentions, they are potentially revisable, if good reasons obtain. While costs can be imposed ex ante for cases of not following the promise/contract, these can be nullified, even if the "cancellation event" is unforeseen, but is also good, sufficiently justifying, so to speak.

Let's call the broader class of quasi-cognitive phenomena that encompass (i.a.) intentions, promises, and pacts, terminers. From Latin terminus ("end"), they are structures that put ends together in direct touch with appropriate means, efficiently ensuring those ends' satisfaction (to the extent that / as long as their satisfaction makes sense).

We might generalize it even more broadly. Policies are terminers, including policies responsible for generating policy-based intentions. Habits of thought and behavior are terminers, including habits of belief updating.

What is not a terminer? In Bratman's framework (or my tentative expansion of it), beliefs and desires are not terminers because they don't quite fully determine how means are put together towards ends. Rather, they are perhaps partly terminative, shaping a scope within which deliberation to shape intention then takes place with their participation.