Aspects of Intentionality

I argue that we sometimes visually perceive the intentions of others. Just as we can see something as blue or as moving to the left, so too can we see someone as intending to evade detection or as aiming to traverse a physical obstacle. I consider the typical subject presented with the Heider and Simmel movie, a widely studied ‘animacy’ stimulus, and I argue that this subject mentally attributes proximal intentions to some of the objects in the movie. I further (...) argue that these attributions are unrevisable in a certain sense and that this result can be used to as part of an argument that these attributions are not post-perceptual thoughts. Finally, I suggest that if these attributions are visual experiences, and more particularly visual illusions, their unrevisability can be satisfyingly explained, by appealing to the mechanisms which underlie visual illusions more generally. (shrink)

Ambivalence (as in practical conflicts, moral dilemmas, conflicting beliefs, and mixed feelings) is a central phenomenon of human life. Yet ambivalence is incompatible with entrenched philosophical conceptions of personhood, judgement, and action, and is denied or marginalised by thinkers of diverse concerns. This book takes a radical new stance, bringing the study of core philosophical issues together with that of ambivalence. The book proposes new accounts in several areas – including subjectivity, consciousness, rationality, and value – while elucidating a wide (...) range of phenomena expressive of ambivalence, from emotional ambivalence to self-deception. The book rejects the view that ambivalence makes a person divided, showing that our tension-fraught attitudes are profoundly unitary. Ambivalence is not tantamount to confusion or to paralysis: it is always basically rational, and often creative, active, and perceptive as well. The book develops themes from Wittgenstein, Davidson, Sartre, and Freud. It engages with contemporary debates in Analytic Philosophy in addition to work ranging from Aristotle to Cultural Studies and Empirical Psychology, and considers a rich set of examples from daily life and literature. (shrink)

The paper submits a criticism of the standard formulation of Wittgenstein’s rule-following paradox. According to the standard formulation, influenced by Kripke, the paradox invites us to consider what mental or behavioral items could constitute meaning. The author proposes instead an enactivist understanding of the paradox. On this account there is no essential gap between mental items and behavioral patterns such that the paradox enforces a choice between meaning being constituted either internally ‘in mind,’ or externally ‘in behavior.’ The paper begins (...) with an introduction to the paradox and then presents arguments against standard solutions. It ends with the enactivist proposal, admitting that although much more needs to be said before it can be established as a full-fledged alternative, it nonetheless holds some promise both for revising our understanding of the paradox and for the formulation of a novel solution. (shrink)

Kripke’s version of Wittgenstein’s rule-following paradox has been influential. My concern is with how it—and Wittgenstein’s views more generally—have been perceived as undercutting the individualistic picture of mathematical practice: the view that individuals— Robinson Crusoes —can, entirely independently of a community, engage in cogent mathematics, and indeed have “private languages.” What has been denied is that phrases like “correctly counting” can be applied to such individuals because these normative notions can only be applied cogently in a context involving community standards. (...) I attempt to show that this shocking corollary doesn’t follow even if Kripke’s Wittgensteinian objections to dispositional approaches to rule-following are largely right. My reason for claiming this is that there is another solution to the rule-following paradox, one that doesn’t favor community standards over individual ones. Furthermore, it doesn’t replace truth conditions with assertability conditions; and this latter maneuver is essential to Kripke’s sceptical solution favoring the community over the individual. (shrink)

We are the funny organisms that make and follow rules. To understand us, one must understand what is it to institute and follow a rule, to perform correctly or in error. This question is more important than it might at first seem for linguistic meaning is constituted by rules that govern uses of expressions. For example, the fact that 'squid' is correctly applied to squid and incorrectly applied to cuttlefish is part of what makes 'squid' mean what it does. Philosophers (...) sometimes argue further that all representations are rule-governed so that a theory of representation must explain the possibility of misrepresentation. ;The rule-following problem makes an explanation of correctness surprisingly difficult. Philosophers have also not been clear on just what is the problem with rules. I provide a statement of the features of rules and the problems they drive. I then show that some well-known accounts of rule following---Kripke's, Wright's, Blackburn's---are inadequate. My formulation also shows that some favored theories of content---causal, evolutionary, interpretivist---are inadequate. ;Positively, I argue that an essentially social and irreducibly normative organization---a practice---solves the rule-following problem. Therefore, only participants in social practices can follow rules and thence traffic in linguistic meaning. Still, an account of the correctness of a linguistic performance is not yet an explanation of its representational content. I argue that linguistic content is constituted by correctness facts but also by the representational purport of expressions. I explain an expression's purport to represent naturalistically in terms of syndromes of psychological and behavioral symptoms. A theory of linguistic representation, then, must join the non-natural social facts that constitute correctness with the natural individualistic facts that constitute representational purport. ;Such a hybrid theory reveals that thought and language are not as intimately connected as philosophers assume. Whereas linguistic content constitutively partakes of the social organization that sets humans apart from other creatures, thought content involves only refinements of the psycho-behavioral syndromes that we share with most vertebrates. It follows that linguistic content and thought content cannot be explained one in terms of the other. (shrink)

Here I outline an "embodied action" approach to Cognitive Science, whose central assumption is that human beings are essentially embodied, embedded in a world and situated in a social context. I present a naturalized account of intentionality from this perspective. ;I give a normative account of language-use, as the performance of speech acts as moves within shared norm-governed practices. I then show how the normative practice of giving reasons for actions licenses us to attribute intentional states to people as reasons (...) for their actions, and licenses us to expect people to be committed to acting in certain ways, based on the intentional states that they recognize are appropriately attributed to them. ;I also argue against a reduction of intentional states to the neurological mechanisms. My view is that the intentionality is institutional, and is conferred on actions that count as moves within norm-governed practices. It is only derivatively on internal neurological states. This, like the intentionality that we attribute to linguistic expressions, is abstracted from the kinds of actions they enable the agent possessing them to perform, and derived from the norm-governed practices in which such actions have their life. ;I conclude with a naturalistic account of the norms and practices within which human actions count as having content . I do not give a naturalistic justification for these norms, but a naturalistic explanation for how normativity in general arises . I appeal to forces of natural selection operating on groups, and practices as shared and enforced ways of acting that enabled different practices and the groups that practice them, to survive and prosper. This feeds into the crucial step in explaining intentionality naturalistically: explaining how the ability to attribute intentional states to others evolved alongside, and made possible, human linguistic interactions. It also evolved alongside the ability to attribute to oneself the intentional states that others are licensed to attribute to you, and the disposition to live up to this "self-conception" as someone with those beliefs, goals, and desires. (shrink)

This dissertation is in three chapters, each treating a different aspect of the nature of linguistic meaning. Together, they support the thesis that linguistic meaning is a non-naturalistic property which we can have reason to ascribe only to the expressions of public languages. ;The first chapter argues that meaning facts cannot be shown to be naturalistic facts by being shown to be reducible to teleological facts, and these in turn to naturalistic facts. Insofar as meaning facts can be reduced to (...) teleological facts, it is because telelological facts are normative; insofar as teleological facts can be reduced to naturalistic facts, it is because they are non-normative. Fred Dretske, Ruth Garrett Millikan and Jerry Fodor are each criticized for missing this point. ;The second chapter concerns rule-following and meaning scepticism. A sceptical argument based on epistemological considerations is set out and contrasted with Saul Kripke's argument for the conclusion that there is never a fact as to what one means by one's expressions. It is argued that the epistemological argument has broader implications than Kripke's. A solution to the sceptical problem raised, which relates one's epistemological access to the meanings of linguistic expressions to communal uses of the expressions, is presented in outline. ;The third chapter develops the solution to the epistemological problem raised in the second chapter. The thesis that one's only epistemological access to the meanings of expressions is via communal use, is defended against two objections. The first objection is that, insofar as it can be shown that one cannot have reason to believe that one knows the meanings of the expressions of a language independently of knowing a community's uses of the expressions, it can also be shown that one cannot have reason to believe that one knows the meanings of a community's language. The second objection is that insofar as one can have reason to believe that one knows the meanings of the expressions of a language by knowing its communal uses, one can also have reason to believe that one knows them independently of any community. Each objection is responded to in turn. (shrink)

At least prima facie, there is no doubt that the later Wittgenstein conceived intentionality as a normative notion, where the normativity in question is of a linguistic kind. As he repeatedly says, the (internal) agreement between thought and reality that makes a particular subsisting state of affairs be the fulfilment of a certain intentional state is to be found in language, and language is intrinsically normative. Or, to put it more precisely, it is a rule of grammar that the intentional (...) state that p is the state that p satisfies. Yet the arguments that one can reconstruct on a textual basis in order to support this conception do not seem entirely convincing. On the one hand, one can exploit a straightforward argument for a linguistically normative intentionality to the effect that there cannot be a priority of thought over public language. According to this argument, if there were a prelinguistic thought, this could only be expressed by an impossible private language. Yet this argument basically relies on the implicit but controversial premise that any language is a normatively imbued structure. On the other hand, one can retrace an indirect argument for a linguistically normative intentionality to the effect that public language cannot derive its meaningfulness from a prelinguistic thought not only originally, but also intrinsically, endowed with intentionality, for there is no such thing: any attempt at singling out such a thought is doomed to fail, for it faces an infinite regress problem. Yet even this argument relies on a tacit premise claiming that thought has a physical design component, it is a (psychic) fact. This premise cannot be taken for granted if one accepts that intentional states have both original and intrinsic intentionality. These two elements – having both original and intrinsic intentionality – can indeed be simultaneously accommodated if one maintains that intentional states are abstract particulars having no physical basis. At any rate, evicting intentionality from language as conceived by Wittgenstein, hence from normativity, does not show that Wittgenstein was wrong in thinking that meaning is an intrinsically normative notion. On the contrary, one can precisely combine a non-normative view of intentionality with a normative conception of meaning: the meaning of an expression is what the intending of an intentional content becomes once that intending is expressed by correctly using the expression in question. Moreover, appearances notwithstanding, there is room for attributing to the later Wittgenstein not the ambitious thesis that public language precedes thought in general (so that intentionality is a linguistically normative property), but just the more cautious thesis that complex thoughts require language in order for them to be articulated. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty’s notion of being motivated or solicited to act has recently been the focus of extensive investigation, yet work on this topic has tended to take the general notion of being motivated for granted. In this paper, I shall outline an account of what it is to be motivated. In particular, I shall focus on the relation between the affective character of states of being motivated and their intentional content, i.e. how things appear to the agent. Drawing on Husserl’s discussion (...) of perceptual awareness, I suggest that the intentional content of states of being motivated has a horizonal structure, in which both affective and perceptual features are implied. In states of being motivated, the agent becomes aware of certain possibilities for action, towards which they feel drawn. This structure is what Merleau-Ponty refers to as the “intentional arc” (1962, 136). (shrink)

This paper discusses issues relating to the normativity of prescriptive rules: what does it mean for a rule to be able to direct action, and what are the implications for the desirability of rule-based decision-making? It is argued that: cognitively, one must allow for more than a single answer to the first question ; and normatively, these different structures typically serve for different purposes in allocation of power and discretion. The next issue is the connection between rule-based decision-making and semantic (...) theories of language. On a meta-discursive level, the paper makes a twofold claim: that normative discourse is possible only on the basis of a sound cognitive inquiry, while cognitive inquiry alone is not sufficient to explain social action and interaction, lacking tools to deal with the contingent normative demands from decision-making systems, such as adjudication. The discussion of prescriptive rules serves as a case-study for this claim. These and related topics have been dealt with by Frederick Schauer. His model of rules as entrenched generalizations and mediators between "justifications " and action is the starting point of the present discussion, which, on most of the issues mentioned above, results in conclusions quite different from Schauer's. (shrink)

This article presents a critical edition from the six surviving witnesses of Landulph Caracciolo’s , Scriptum in I Sententiarum, d. 23, a text that has never appeared in print before. A short introduction begins to set Landulph’s treatment of intentions and intentionality in this text into its historical, philosophical, and theological context, in particular linking it to the positions of John Duns Scotus and Peter Auriol.

This dissertation aims at forging an archetectonic link between Kant's first and third Critiques within a cognitive-semantic framework. My aim is to show how the major conceptual innovations of Kant’s third Critique can be plausibly understood in terms of the theoretical aims of the first, (Critique of Pure Reason). However, unlike other cognition-oriented approaches to Kant's third Critique, which take the point of contact between the first and third Critique's to be the first Critique's Transcendental Analytic, I link these two (...) works via the first Critique's Transcendental Dialectic, specifically its discussions of the "ideas of pure reason." -/- According to Kant, the “ideas of pure reason” (IPRs) — viz., the notions of self, world-whole, and God — are innate content-bearing entities representing three types of transempirical object, none of which are possible objects of cognition. However, although Kant denies that these rather unique content-bearers can be used for purposes of “speculative cognition,” he does think that they have an internal functional value for human cognitive systems. Although under my analysis of their functional value the IPRs subserve a highest-order aim which derives from theoretical reason — namely, to ground and optimize cognitive systematicity — their directive content in fact renders their implementation(thus their form of intentionality) more characteristic of practical reason. Kant’s positive account of reason’s “interest” in and use of the IPRs exhibits a kind of cognitive pragmatism. -/- Of utmost concern to the cognitive-semantic enterprise, as I conceive it, is the development of (what might be called) a metaphysics of intentionality. A `metaphysics of intentionality', as I use the term, refers to a coherent set of postulative propositional cognitions (or, at any rate, content-bearing entities) implemented, first, for the sake of rationally explaining the phenomenological unity and object-directed character of our perceptual states and, second, to explain why the objects represented in such states are, or must be, law-governed and thus necessarily amenable to scientific investigation. On my view, the discussions in Kant’s third Critique nontrivially contribute to the development of a metaphysics of intentionality and thus to the larger cognitive-semantic enterprise of Kant's first Critique, and it is this link that lends Kant's third Critique a cognitive significance. -/- . (shrink)

Wittgenstein, in his first period, where he adopted a theory of meaning as representation, can be thought to consider language and reality as separated entities. However, in the second period, where the use theory of meaning is put forward, he can be thought to conceive language as something dependent on the human agencies that employ it, as something into which actions are interwoven. So, in his later work, Wittgenstein can be said to consider language as a unit together with reality (...) -as far as the notion of meaning is concerned. In this sense, his two theories of meaning are the opposites of one another. My claim, in this paper, is that the gist of this radical change on Wittgenstein’s position on the connection between language and reality can be found in the private language argument given in Philosophical Investigations. For, reminding that this is a semantic claim, I think, the repudiation of private language in Wittgenstein’s philosophy amounts to the repudiation of the representational relation between language and world -or reality- as distinct entities; and hence, the traditional dichotomy of mind-body or inner-outer which is inherited from Descartes. This, I think, also means the rejection of the traditional distinction of language (as a vehicle of thought) and world as two different realms where skepticism is possible. In parallel with the rejection of this dichotomy, in this paper, by focusing on Wittgenstein’s understanding of meaning by which his overall philosophy is structured, I will examine his rejection of the representational theory of meaning (to avoid skepticism) and evince the effect of it to his later understanding of meaning (or vice versa). I will come to the conclusion that the gist of the radical change in his view on meaning and language can be found in his private language argument. (shrink)

Grice's (1957) analysis of non-natural meaning generated a huge industry, where new analyses were put forward to respond to successively more complex counterexamples. Davis (2003) offers a novel and refreshingly simple analysis of meaning in terms of the expression of belief, where (roughly) an agent expresses the belief that p just in case she performs a publicly observable action with the intention that it be an indication that she occurrently believes that p. I argue that Davis's analysis fails to capture (...) the essentially overt nature of our meaning-intentions, and with it, a plausible sufficient condition for meaning. (shrink)

Abstract: The article considers how the relationship between consciousness and neural events in the brain should be viewed. The approach is that conscious experiences – perceptions, feelings and mental images – are the subjective versions of the neural events. It is the conscious experiences that are the essence of intentionality and meaning; the neural events do the causative work. From this viewpoint there are discussions of the neural representations that figure in thinking and their corresponding subjective experiences – in what (...) way neural events can be the representations of things in the world and the body, and how the subjectivity of conscious experiences converts causation into intentionality. Finally the article seeks to explain how, if consciousness has no causative efficacy, we can think about it at all, including a discussion of “zombies”, and discusses whether machines can think or be conscious.. (shrink)

John R. Searle is one of the world's leading philosophers. During his long and outstanding career, he has made groundbreaking and lasting contributions to the philosophy of language, to the philosophy of mind, as well as to the nature, structure, and functioning of social reality. This volume documents the 13th Münster Lectures on Philosophy with John R. Searle. It includes not only 11 critical papers on Searle's philosophy and Searle's replies to the papers, but also an original article by John (...) R. Searle on his overall philosophical enterprise entitled "The Basic Reality and the Human Reality". -/- "I think Münster is probably unique among contemporary universities in its ability to produce such a high level of philosophical production from their philosophy students." - John R. Searle. (shrink)