# movements of the mind chapter 3 **Opening (not a real abstract):** Intention as Practical Memory 3.1 Introduction Intention is practical memory for work, actively regulating and maintaining action-relevant capacities. When an agent acts with an intention, her intention is integrated into action (Section 1.7). Such actions are fundamentally cognitive in having at their core the agent’s conception of what she is doing as the basis of her control. Intention’s influence in action is fundamentally dynamic, changing and adapting over time. To capture this, I speak of an agent’s being active in intending. In this and the next chapter, I develop this conception focusing on intentions that are poised to generate action, sometimes called proximal intentions (Mele 1992), and those that are engaged in action, sometimes called intentions-in-action (Searle 1983). I set aside distal intentions which are