than engage in political violence. What has therefore not been explained so far is how studies can be conducted from the perspective of the people who engage in political violence. This section is devoted to this task.
Examining political violence via belief systems involves the question how people’s belief systems are connected to their actions. This connection can be established by particular beliefs about intentions to perform certain actions. I call these beliefs decisions.20 In the following section, I introduce decisions. Decisions connect beliefs to behavior, which shows how cognitive mapping can bridge the gap between actors and external structures.
Internal Structure
Decisions involve intentions. Intention is based on the notion of intentionality. Intentionality in the sense introduced by Franz Brentano refers to a “mental phenomenon” that “is characterized by … what we might call … reference to a content, a direction towards an object (which is not understood here as meaning a thing)” (2015: 92). This reference is also contained by my earlier definition of beliefs, which treats beliefs as mental states related to certain objects. Specifically, intentionality addresses the same relation between mental states and objects: mental state → object.
Every belief involves intentionality. Beliefs that are decisions moreover directly address an intention and a particular object: actions.21 Following the internal structure of intentionality (mental state → object), decisions involve a directed connection between the intention and the action in the order intention → action. This can be considered to establish a directed connection between the subject and the action. This can be expressed as
INTENTION → OBJECT
subject → action
Furthermore, actions can be considered interventions of the subject on the external world. This means that they involve an additional directed connection toward the world, so that action → world. Decisions then include two directed connections between the subject, the action, and the world. The first arrow represents the directedness of the intention, and the second that of the intended action:22 subject → action → world.
Planning
Intentions indicate that the subjects who consider an action also carry out the action. My understanding of this follows Michael Bratman’s definition of intentions, by which they contain (partial) plans to perform actions (1987). Planning can be considered a mental state in which the subject is in control of an object. This subject-object connection is stronger than assigning certain properties to an object because it addresses an intervention of the subject on the world. This means that decisions can be considered as beliefs that involve stronger mental states than other beliefs introduced earlier.
External and Internal Obstacles
Planning an action also has a temporal dimension: it is directed toward the future, in which the action will be conducted (or in which it will be continued).23 This indicates that decisions are temporally prior to actions. It also indicates that deciding to perform an action is not the same as performing the action.24 In the words of John Searle, there is a “gap” (2001: 61).
As a result, it is possible that even though people decide to perform certain actions, they do not actually do so. This could be the case because of external obstacles that prevent the performance of the action—an example is the failure of the detonation of the bombs placed on German trains in 2006. It could also be the case because of internal obstacles, such as people obtaining new knowledge on which they form different intentions in favor of different actions, or people suffering from weakness of will (Searle 2001).
According to Searle, the primary feature of “the gap” is, however, not temporal. Rather, the gap indicates that “we do not normally experience the stages of our deliberation and voluntary actions as having causally sufficient conditions or as setting causally sufficient conditions for the next stage” (Searle 2001: 50: 61–96). This emphasizes that, like the connections between beliefs (see “Belief Connections”), the connections between decisions and behavior are not causal—once a decision occurs, it does not necessarily translate into behavior.
Table 7: Decisions, Actions, Intentions, and Self-Knowledge
Self-Knowledge
Planning also implies self-knowledge, that is, the subject knows he is planning to do X (one cannot plan something without having knowledge about what it is that one is doing). Since political violence involves high risks, the actors studied in this book actually planned their actions and have self-knowledge. However, on a more general level, it is not necessary that subjects plan their actions. For instance, my shaking of somebody’s hand may not be planned or include self-knowledge (but only self-awareness). Other actions, such as my turning right on my way to work may neither be planned nor include self-knowledge (and not even self-awareness). In fact, subjects may not even have self-knowledge or self-awareness related to their own beliefs, as is suggested by the impossibility of calling upon all the beliefs that one holds when asked to do so.
Given these considerations, there seem to be numerous actions that are not planned. Since I define intention by reference to planning, such actions do not involve intentions, which means that such actions do not involve decisions, either. Consequently, there can be actions without decisions. Table 7 provides a summary.
Desires
Planning also suggests that somebody wants to do something, which is often understood as an indication of desire. Basically, this addresses the question what is logically prior to the intention, whether desire → intention → action.25 Based on this, it can be questioned whether intentions are mental states.26
Wanting may but need not indicate a desire; someone may want to perform an action but not have a desire to do so. An example is the following sentence, which contradicts my dislike of cleaning up and suggests that intentions can be considered mental states, rather than desires: “I want to clean up my room.” Since people can believe they have feelings, which include desires (see beliefs of Type 5), it is nevertheless possible that intentions are ultimately based on desires. Here, it is helpful to consider another example, which corresponds to what I like after traveling for a long period of time: “I believe that I want to go home.” In this example, wanting may indeed be understood to indicate a desire—however, by saying “I want,” it is possible for me to describe a desire in the propositional content of a belief. This shows that people who feel desires can describe these desires and believe they feel these desires—which suggests it is helpful to not treat intentions as desires. It also supports the view that intentions are plans in which people have some kind of mental control over something, such as desires. In the last example, for instance, it would have been possible for me to plan to perform another action that does not correspond to my desire—or to do nothing.
Goals
The previous section related political violence to three observable things: (1) means (physical force), (2) perpetrators (civil), and (3) target (state). What has not been addressed, however, is the mental component of political violence, its goals. As described in the Introduction, there is consensus that people do not engage in political violence for the mere sake of using physical force. Rather, political violence is a type of behavior thought to involve goals.
Goals are particular types of beliefs that may motivate certain decisions, such as decisions to take up arms. Like decisions, goals establish a connection between the actor (who believes
