[Taraz]

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I find this sort of philosophical hand-wringing not very useful. You can call intent an "illusion" if you like, but it certainly objectively exists in some sense. You could certainly use "intent" in the sense that water intends to run down hill; I defy you to show that it doesn't. It demonstrates that it does. The reason that we don't do this is that it isn't a very useful way to think about the actions of water. It is, however, extremely useful to frame the study of human action in terms of intent. People act purposefully in specific ways utilizing specific means because they intend (whatever that entails) for certain outcomes to result, for certain ends to be reached. They could intend for different outcomes or ends to be reached, and then they would act in different ways. Getting all philosophically exercised about intent being an "illusion" only serves to obscure that human beings actually do have goals they are trying to reach, wants they are trying to satisfy. Whether these goals are chosen analogously to the way water "chooses" to flow downhill does not matter in the least.

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A major problem, as tame deuces alluded to, is that our actions quite often have little to do with our initial goals and intentions. We give post hoc explanations for a large percentage of our actions and we are very, very easily manipulated by outside factors.

While I don't think anyone would argue that we don't have any control over our actions, it is also very important to recognize that there are often much more powerful explanations for our actions aside from our intentions. Practically the entire field of social psychology is dedicated to discovering these other factors and we've learned quite a lot about how and why we act. I don't see how talking about this "obscures" the fact that we have intentions. It is every human's default belief that we have intent and it's not likely that anybody would deny this in any absolute sense.