The phrase "an intention to decide" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when discussing plans or thoughts about making a decision in the future.
Example: "The committee expressed an intention to decide on the new policy by the end of the month."
Alternatives: "a desire to determine" or "a plan to conclude".
McCann aims to explain the intentionality of deciding by appeal to an intention to decide exactly as one does.
Notice that this is similar to McCann's view that deciding involves an intention to decide as one does.
It is thus difficult to see how an intention to decide what to do could give an agent guidance regarding the specific decision she makes.
Towards that end, consider Hugh McCann's view: according to McCann, the intentionality of deciding requires no prior motivational attitude such as an intention to decide what to do.
According to this thought, an agent exercises control over a decision D by exercising control in service of a motivational attitude M relevant to D, where M is distinct from an intention to decide what to do or an intention to decide exactly as one does.
It is much more plausible to think that the progression from an intention to decide what to do to an intention to do something particular involves the satisfaction of the older intention and thus the birth of a new intention.
As I noted above, given the control problem I have elucidated about deciding, we want to know more about how an agent implements the intention to decide what to do in deliberation (and at the moment of deciding).
But if deliberation itself can change an agent's preferences, then we want to know more about how an agent implements the intention to decide what to do in deliberation and at the moment of deciding.
On this suggestion, deliberation is viewed as activity initiated, guided and sustained by a relevant intention: the intention to decide what to do.
Analogously, an intention formation is produced when attention-mediated (perceptual or cognitive) feedback causes an adjustment in how the intention to decide what to do guides the sequencing of various mental operations, or in the generation of the mental operation of intention formation that fills in the details of the original intention's plan.
In this connection, it is worth noticing that the discussion in sections 3 and 4 of this paper makes plain that the intention to decide what to do plays a causal role in an agent's deliberation, in coordination with a wide range of mental operations.
