And, ultimately, it is these capacities to form intentions...

And, ultimately, it is these capacities to form intentions and to carry them through which make sense, not only of the practice of “holding people responsible”, but of other normative phenomena such as the apportioning of praise and blame. The intrinsic nature of intentions gives rise in this way to important normative principles. As R.

Jay Wallace puts it, the intentional actions, and ultimately the intentions, of morally responsible people “are thought to reflect specially on them as agents, opening them to a kind of moral appraisal that does more than record a causal connection between them and the consequences of their actions”.[^43] In order for agents to be the subjects of judgments of praise and blame it is necessary that agents be autonomous beings, and the role played by intended action in the constitution of this autonomy is a rich and still untapped source of insight.