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The Problem of Intentionality

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1The Problem of Intentionality: A Cardinal Difficulty for PhysicalismOrWhat Happens to the World When a Mind Shows Up?Joel SteinmetzI. What is the Socratic Club?• Content: Issues related to the truth or falsity of the Christian faith• Method: In the Socratic spirit to follow the argument wherever it leads• Motivation: “In any fairly large and talkative community such as a university there is always thedanger that those who think alike should gravitate together into coteries where they will henceforthencounter opposition only in the emasculated form of rumour that the outsiders say thus and thus.The absent are easily refuted, complacent dogmatism thrives, and differences of opinion areembittered by group hostility. Each group hears not the best, but the worst, that the other groupcan say. In the Socratic all this was changed. Here a man could get the case for Christianity withoutall the paraphernalia of pietism and the case against it without the irrelevant sansculottisme of ourcommon anti-God weeklies. At the very least we helped civilize one another…. Everyone foundhow little he had known about everyone else.”1II. What is the problem of intentionality (a brief historical intro)?• The way in which intentionality is understood, or the aspect of intentionality that is emphasized,focuses the way in which intentionality is problematic.Analytic vs. Continental divide:• Phenomenology: explain the essential structures of intentionality; how does objectivity arise fromsubjectivity?• Analytic: intentionality is mark of mental; how can we explain, or incorporate, intentional mentalstates into a physicalist account of the world?• Why a physicalist account of the world? “These days we’re all materialists for much the reason thatChurchill gave for being a democrat: the alternatives seem even worse. Correspondingly, there’s anew research agenda: to reconcile our materialism with the psychological facts; to explain howminds qua material objects could have the properties they do.” (Jerry Fodor)III. Why is intentionality a problem for physicalism?1. What is Physicalism?• Physicalism: the view that reality, or at any rate the domain of concrete particulars, properties, andrelations, is of a piece with the world investigate by the physical sciences.2• “Human beings, I assume, are part of the natural order. They are physical objects whose mentalcapacities and dispositions—specifically their representational capacities—need to be explained interms of natural relations between natural objects and systems of natural objects.”3 (By “natural”Stalnaker means “physical”)• “A materialist confronts the task of explaining, or explaining away, this intentional feature ofcognitive states. Some account must be given of how a purely physical system could occupy states 1 C.S. Lewis, “The Founding of the Oxford Socratic Club,” in God in the Dock.2 John Haldane, “Naturalism and The Problem of Intentionality,” Inquiry 32 (1989): 306.3 Robert Stalnaker, Inquiry (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1984), p. x.2having a content of this sort. Or, failing this, some explanation must be given of why wesystematically delude ourselves into thinking that we occupy states of this sort.”42. What is intentionality?• “The feature by which our mental states are directed at, or about, or refer to, or are of objects andstates of affairs in the world other than themselves.” (John Searle) E.g., beliefs, desires, hopes,fears, loves, hates, etc.• Brentano’s problem, according to Haldane: the “aboutness” of thought involves two components:content and reference.53. Why is intentionality a problem for physicalism?• “For various familiar reasons, intentional or representational relations seem unlike the relationsholding between things and events in the natural world: causal interactions, spatiotemporal relations,various notions of similarity and difference. One can, it seems, picture, describe, or think aboutsuch things as gods and golden mountains even if they do not exist…. Some philosophers haveused these distinctive features of intentional relations to argue that they are irreducible to naturalrelations. From this conclusion it is argued that mental phenomena cannot be a species of naturalphenomena. Any of account of thinking things as natural objects in the material world, thesephilosophers argue, is bound to leave something out.”6• According to Haldane, what must get left out of physicalist descriptions of human psychologicalphenomena are particular aspects of intentional states.• Haldane’s argument:1. Intrinsically intentional states exist.2. Descriptions of intentional states must be given in non-extensional language because theyinvolve modes of presentation, representations, and/or aspectual shapes.3. Physicalism must explain and describe all phenomena using only physical relations betweenphysical objects. This type of description, at least in principle, must use extensional languageonly.4. No extensional statement can entail a non-extensional one.5. Therefore, the description that physicalism can give of the world cannot include thedescription of intentional phenomena.6. And since cognitive states are intrinsically intentional.7. Therefore, the description that physicalism can give of the world cannot include cognitivestates in general.• Cognitive state: intrinsically contentful state, i.e., if in being in such a state one is ipso facto apprised ofsome representational element.7 Further, “Intentionality is characteristic of all cognitive activity.”8(Intrinsic as opposed to taking some intentional stance a là Dennett) 4 Fred Dretske, “The Intentionality of Cognitive States,” in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. V, eds. Peter French et al.,(Minneapolis, MN.: University of Minnesota Press, 1980), p. 282.5 See John Haldane, “Brentano’s Problem,” Grazer Philosophische Sudien 34 (1989): 1-32.6 Stalnaker, p. 6.7 Haldane, “Problem of Intentionality,” p. 307.8 Haldane, “Problem of Intentionality,” p. 308.3Information vs. Intentional:• Informational state: causal consequences of systematic physical reactions to environmentalfeatures, e.g., the fluctuating temperature in a room. Descriptions of these states are extensional.• Intentional state: “aboutness” of thought that has both content and reference, e.g., the belief thatthe temperature in a room systematically varies. Descriptions of


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