Abstract
In paradigmatic cases of intentional actions, when an agent φ-s intentionally, they believe that they’re φ-ing. Not only is it justified for them to maintain the belief while φ-ing intentionally, but it was also justified for them to acquire the belief—before they believe that they’re φ-ing. Call the latter ex ante agential justification. What explains this ex ante agential justification? This paper examines the idea that an agent’s epistemic warrant for forming first-person beliefs about what they’re doing is evidence-based. It’s argued that this idea faces a timing problem: any evidence accessible to an agent before they form first-person beliefs about what they’re doing is, at best, evidence about what they will do, not what they are doing. A solution is offered that comes with a price in one’s metaphysics of time.