Discrimination in action

Abstract Not all actions are intentional actions. What separates merely doing something from intentionally doing something? One point of separation seems to be luck. Too much luck, or luck of a certain variety, seems to undermine the possibility of acting intentionally. This naturally leads to the idea that intentional action presupposes reliable success. I argue against this idea. Taking inspiration from Gareth Evans’ account of singular thought, I argue that what separates mere action from intentional action in lucky successes is a difference in one's discriminative capacity. In order to intentionally act, an agent must possess the capacity to discriminate successful ways of doing what they try to do from ways of failing to do what they try to do.