 If intention involves belief, what more does it require? On the simplest proposal, to intend an action is to believe that one will perform it and to have an appropriate guiding desire (Audi 1973, p. 395). But a mere conjunction seems insufficient: the desire and belief could be utterly unrelated (Davis 1984, pp. 141–2). This prompts the suggestion that, when S intends to do A, his belief rests on his desire: to intend an action is to believe that one will perform it on the ground that one wants to do so (Davis 1984, p. 147; see also Grice 1971, pp. 278–9). The principal defect of this account is that it makes the belief component of intention epiphenomenal. This belief merely registers one’s activity: the motivational work is done by a prior desire. (Something similar is true on more subtle theories that divorce the motivational role of intention from belief; as, for instance, Ross 2009, pp. 250–1.) If the claim that intention involves belief is to capture the essence of the will, not a superficial fact about the word ‘intend,’ the belief must be implicated in the functions of intending and the explanation of action. (For objections of this kind, see Bratman 1987, pp. 19–20 and Mele 1992, Ch. 8 on ‘intention*’; on the role of beliefs in planning for the future, see Velleman 1989, Ch. 8; Velleman 2007; Marušić and Schwenkler 2018, §2.3; Alonso 2020; Alonso 2021.)