Social Action Explanation and Intentions in Sociology and Social Sciences

The relationship between actions and intentions has always been at the centre of an articulated debate within philosophy and social sciences. On the one hand, there is a growing trend to naturalize the concept of intention: this is based on wide empirical evidence, above all in the neuroscientific field, and suggests that human action mainly depends on cerebral and biological mechanisms. On the other hand, especially in the sociological field, there is a strong tradition linking intentions to social action explanation, bringing them back to reasoning and rationality in the broadest sense. Also, within the psychological field there is an interesting growing literature focusing on the importance of understanding the mental mechanisms underlying intentional action in describing and anticipating various cognitive errors till conspiracy theories. This paper aims to browse some of the contributions within this topic.