AGAINST DERIVED INTENTIONALITY
David Cole
July 11, 2009 – ~6200 words. light rev April 23, 2010; rev Sept 1 2010
Intentionality is a property of an important class of things: things that represent, or are
about something. Thus a belief or sentence or story is about something, a painting or
photo is of something, a sign is a sign of something, and a desire is a desire for
something. These disparate things all display intentionality. They have content; they
represent some state of affairs beyond themselves. The represented state of affairs need
not be actual, and is not in the cases of false belief, unfulfilled desire, or Salvadore Dali
painting.
Many hold a dualism: they hold that we must distinguish between derived intentionality
and underived (or “original” or “intrinsic”) intentionality. The intentionality of written
language is derived; the intentionality of mental states (e.g. beliefs) is intrinsic. The
former intentionality is importantly different from the latter phenomenon, and is
secondary because derived intentionality depends upon underived intentionality for its
existence.
As Fodor 2009 puts it:
“…the critically important fact [is] that the (derived) intensionality of what happens on
the outside [of the head] depends ontologically on the (underived) intensionality of what
happens on the inside. Externalism needs internalism; but not vice versa. External
representation is a side-show; internal representation is ineliminably the main event.”
[Fodor uses “intension” where some use “intention”.]
The distinction between original and derived intentionality is intuitive enough: Thoughts
have original intentionality, while pieces of writing have derived intentionality – their
intentionality or content exists solely in virtue of the original intentionality of the minds
that create or interpret the writing. What’s true of writing is true of artifacts that
represent generally – computers, clocks, weather gauges, etc. They have states that
represent and hence have intentionality, but only derivatively. John Searle was one who
first emphasized the dualism (Searle 1980, 1984). Thus philosophers of mind and
language who are at loggerheads about most everything, such as Jerry Fodor and John
Searle, agree on this intentionality dualism. Should we be worried? I think so.
If we do worry, we will not be entirely alone. Not all accept intentionality dualism.
Daniel Dennett rejects it. Dennett embraces an intentionality monism, holding that all
intentionality is derived. The intentionality of books and that of memories inside
someone’s head do not differ significantly in this respect – intentionality of any sort
requires taking an interpretive stance.
I believe both of these approaches to intentionality, dualism and Dennett’s monism, are
mistaken. I will make a case that there is no derived intentionality, intentionality that
essentially depends upon interpretation or the intentions of a designer. This leads me to
believe there is one kind of intentionality, and it can be in or outside the head. I’ll
broach this heresy by way of critical discussion of the arguments for derived
intentionality. In the course of that I’ll pick apart a few strands of the tangled web of
epistemic and semantic issues that I believe have undermined thinking clearly about
intentionality. And I’ll sketch a positive account of intentionality that accords it a full
stature as a feature of the world not generally dependent upon acts of interpretation or
states of consciousness.
Intentionality Dualism
Let us begin by looking more closely at the distinction between original and derived
intentionality as set out by Searle. Searle tells us that mental states (e.g. propositional
attitudes) display original intentionality, while language only has derived intentionality.
As a paradigm example of original intentionality Searle 1984 (p. 77) gives us:
Robert believes that Ronald Reagan is President.
By contrast he offers the following as a clear example of derived intentionality:
“Es regnet” means it’s raining.
Of the quoted embedded German sentence he says:
“That very sentence might have meant something else or nothing at all” (p. 78).
To be sure, there is a difference between these examples. But on the face of it, the
comparison displays a certain fault: there is a difference in the way the representations
are picked out, or “individuated”. This is significant because the apparent difference
between the intentionality in the two cases may be nothing more than an artifact of this
difference in description. In the first case, the example of “original intentionality”, the
belief is being described by its content or semantics – the belief that it is snowing is
essentially (“intrinsically”?) the belief that it is snowing. Change anything about its
meaning, what it is about, and it would be a different belief. But this leaves open the
possibility that the physical state in the believer’s brain that records and is the physical
basis of that belief might, depending on the rest of the brain and the causes of the brain
state, “have meant something else or nothing at all”.
Unlike Robert’s mental state, Searle characterizes the German sentence on the basis of its
syntax. Those German words – the marks “es regnet” - might have meant something else
or nothing at all. But if instead we use the same content-based individuated that Searle
used for the belief, e.g. “Otto just said that it is raining” then we have also individuated
language in terms of its semantics, parallel to the way Searle individuated the mental
state. And Otto’s saying that it is raining cannot have meant something else, or else it
would not be an instance of saying that it is raining.
Note that the same distinction between two methods of individuation can be made even
with instances of signs that are not directly produced by a human or something with
consciousness. My microwave dings. The ding means something, but the ding might
have meant something else, or nothing at all. But if we say that my microwave signaled
that its cooking time is complete, then that signaling can’t mean something else. As in
Searle’s examples, the difference is not in the phenomena, but in the method of
individuation.
Given their physical description, brain states might have had other, or no, content, as
might the German words. Given their semantic descriptions, the examples of language
and of mental states have their respective meaning properties essentially. Thus we have
not at the outset been given clear evidence of a fundamental difference between the two
cases, and hence motivation for intentionality dualism.
Intentionality monism
Dennett agrees with Fodor and Searle that language and other artifacts are paradigms of
derived intentionality. But Dennett then goes on to argue that the requirement of
interpretation that makes the intentionality of language derived applies also to inner states
that Fodor and Searle have taken to have a different and more fundamental “intrinsic”
form of intentionality. Regarding language Dennett agrees completely with the dualists.
He says:
“The point about the dependent status of artifactual representations is undeniable.
Manifestly the pencil marks in themselves don’t mean a thing. This is particularly clear
in the cases of ambiguous sentences. The philosopher W. V. O. Quine gives us the nice
example:
Our mothers bore us.
What is this thing about? … You have to ask the person who created the sentence.
Nothing about the marks in themselves could possibly determine the answer. They
certainly don’t have intrinsic intentionality, whatever that might be. If they mean
anything at all, it is because of the role they play in a system of representation that is
anchored to the minds of the representers. (Dennett 1997 “Intentionality” in Kind of
Minds p. 51)
Where Dennett disagrees with intentionality dualists is in holding that all intentionality is
of this derived type. And Dennett holds that the failure by intentionality dualists to
appreciate this is a mistake of the utmost importance. He writes (Dennett and Haugeland
1987):
“I have argued in … The Intentional Stance (Dennett, 1987) that clinging to the doctrine
of original intentionality is the primary source of perplexity in contemporary AngloAmerican philosophy of mind…..”
However I believe that in Dennett’s treatment of intentionality we can discern a problem
that afflicts many discussions of intentionality and representation. Intentionality dualists,
as well as those monists who see all intentionality as derived, show a lamentable
tendency to conflate epistemology and semantics. Consider Dennett’s argument that it is
obvious that the quoted sentence has derived intentionality. The argument turns on the
point that to know what an ambiguous sentence means, you have to ask the author. You
can’t tell from the marks themselves what they mean.
These are epistemic complaints. How one can tell what something means, and what it
means, are two importantly different things. One is semantic, the other epistemic. In fact,
perhaps conflating these is in fact “the primary source of perplexity in contemporary
philosophy of mind” - and philosophy of language and semantic theory. Consider natural
signs. One can often figure out what something means by knowing what caused it. The
world is such that some causes have unique effects – in the wild, smoke generally means
fire. Other phenomena - spots on skin, say, to take a Grice example - can mean more
than one thing. You can’t tell what the spots mean, what they are signs of, what disease
is causing them in a particular case, without some more diagnostic efforts. But these
epistemic problems have nothing to do with meaning, the significance of the symptoms
and signs.
Even when a sign (e.g. a tokening of “Fire!”) is directly caused by human agency (still
the typical case with language, even as machines become increasingly talkative), the
meaning arguably comes from the conventional link with a state of the world (the
presence of a fire). With a tokening of something we have not encountered before –
“Gavagai”, perchance – it is not our possibly mistaken interpretation that determines the
meaning, but rather, if it is meaningful, the meaning is determined by a conventional
connection with the world. “Nothing about the marks in themselves” determines the
meaning, to be sure, but that is not because meaning is derived, but rather because
meaning always depends on factors external to “the marks in themselves”.
Let us return to consider Searle’s intentionality dualism for a moment. It seems likely that
a conflation of epistemic and semantic issues may be at work in Searle’s later treatments
of intentionality as well. Searle is struck by the fact that mental states such as one’s
belief don’t require an interpretation step. They are experienced as having content; the
conscious experience itself lets us know what the satisfaction conditions of our belief are.
A written sentence may be ambiguous; a thought is not.
Three points: first, yet again this is an epistemic point, not a semantic point. Knowing
what a state of my brain means is distinct from what it means. The intentionality – a
semantic property of aboutness – is not determined by how I come to know about it.
Even when a state is experienced as wearing its significance on its sleeve, that epistemic
fact about the state, while undoubtedly interesting, is distinct from its intentionality.
Second, it is not clear, as Dennett notes, that this state of consciousness is not the result of
a process of unconscious interpretation. Perhaps I am only conscious of states that I can
interpret and indeed have unconsciously interpreted, but I have other representational
states with content that I cannot interpret and so they necessarily remain unconscious.
Perhaps I have more beliefs than I can express in language or that I can be conscious of.
Perhaps, e.g., there are emotional states that are intentional but localized in e.g. the
amygdala and not fully available to cortex and interpretation.
Third, it is not at all clear that this epistemic privilege is more than trivial. I knows what
I knows – I can disquote my thoughts and have the satisfaction conditions manifest. My
thought “it is raining” means that it is raining. This will always be true, and may cause
wonder at the transparency of consciousness, but it is not clear what it buys. In
particular, as again Dennett notes, there appear to be externalist considerations that count
against any robust knowledge of satisfaction conditions of mental states. I think “water,
water everywhere!” – now is this satisfied by a superabundance of H2O, or of XYZ?
Turning inward does not afford an answer.
Back to intentionality monism. Dennett 1987 offers us two additional arguments that all
intentionality is derived. Dennett and the dualists take it as given that derived
intentionality is a feature of artifacts. In many cases, the source of the artifact is the
source of the intentionality; intentionality is not intrinsic to states of an artifact. But,
Dennett argues, WE are artifacts, designed by evolution. Evolution is (presumably) not a
conscious agent, but it is the source of our design, including the design of our cognitive
system. We are built by the Blind Watchmaker, and so if all artifacts have derived
intentionality, then we do.
Dennett goes on to argue, against others who take evolution and design seriously
(especially Dretske) that "If we are such artifacts, not only have we no guaranteed
privileged access to the deeper facts that fix the meanings of our thoughts, but there are
no such deeper facts.” [Dennett’s emphasis]
Dretske and Millikan have tried to find such content-determining “deeper facts” in a
principled way by identifying what Millikan (1984) calls the “proper function” of
representational states. The problem, Dennett claims, is that there is no fact of the matter
about proper function. There is no answer from evolution as to whether frog visual
systems are fly or moving dark spot detectors, or whether our visual bilateral symmetry
detector is a predator detector, prey detector, mate detector, etc. Function is
indeterminate in nature, and so assigning one function of the many possible is a matter of
interpretation. This is true of evolved systems generally, not just in the special case of
representation in cognitive science. Hence the intentionality of cognitive states is
necessarily based on an interpretation of their function – and this dependence of content
on interpretation again makes the intentionality of mental states as derived as that of a
text external to the head.
So it seems that on Dennett’s view, the intentionality of mental states is doubly derived.
First, it depends on “Nature's purposes”, and intentionality that depends on a designer's
purposes is derived. Second, Nature’s purposes (evolutionary factors) are too ambiguous
and indeterminate to support specific attribution of function and content. And so
interpretation is required to assign determinate content – and requiring interpretation is
surely a sufficient condition for making the content derived intentionality. Let us call the
first of these arguments, the argument that states that depend upon a designer can only
have derived intentionality, the Argument from Design. Let us call the argument that
artifacts have their intentionality only through an intelligent agent’s acts of interpretation,
the Indeterminacy Argument.
As it stands, I don’t believe the examples we are given support the conclusion. I will
focus on the Interpretation Argument. Dennett’s first argument, the Argument from
Design, it seems to me, is not compelling. For one thing, Unintelligent Design is
arguably not design at all. Hence it is not clear that we are artifacts in the usual sense, as
a product of real agents and their intentions. To call everything that has survived a
process of change an “artifact” is to stretch the concept beyond its ability to do the useful
work we need it for in everyday life.
Second, artifact or not, it seems implausible that the intentionality of my and your current
mental states turns on some ancient etiological fact about the species. Whether the first
humans were designed by evolution, by God, by gods, or were the products of a lightning
strike in SwampEden has, it seems to me, no bearing on whether our mental states now
have original or derived intentionality. It is reasonable to hold that the first mutant
creature with conscious perceptual states had states that carried information about and
were used as representations of its world (I’ll discuss this further discussion below). And
no matter what our ultimate origins, all of us here now have a long pedigree of beings
endowed with intentional states recursively begetting. Thus whether something is
ultimately descended from an artifact is not in itself a determinate of whether its
representing states have derived or original intentionality. Dennett sometimes seems to
agree with this denial of a crucial difference between organisms and artifacts, but decides
to go with “all intentionality is derived”. The path not taken, the neglected monism,
comports better with the externalist considerations that Dennett sometimes raises.
I find Dennett’s second, Indeterminacy, argument to be more interesting. Dennett holds
that all attribution of function or content requires interpretation. But at the outset there is
something paradoxical about this position. What, after all, is interpretation? An
interpretation is an interpretation of something, it must have an intentional object, and
hence any interpretation is an intentional state. If all intentional states require
interpretation, and interpretations are themselves intentional states, then we appear to
have a pernicious regress.
Second, just how ambiguous really is the biological function of hearts? How
indeterminate is the function of a frog’s visual system? How free are we to interpret and
assign functions to these systems? There is a requirement of interpretation only if
biological function is deeply indeterminate. Frogs notoriously will eat seductively
dangled BB’s until they sink with lead-bellies through their lily pads to the bottom of the
pond. So is the frog visual system a BB detector? A fly detector? A moving-black-spot
detector? Millikan and Dretske would like to appeal to evolutionary history for a
principled way of rejecting these alternate attributions of function, and to permit saying
the frogs are making a mistake when they down a pound of BBs. The frog visual system
evolved as a fly detector, not a BB detector. But, presses Dennett, what entitles them to
say this, rather than say that the system is a moving-dark-spot detector?
It is not clear to me that these are rival characterizations. The frog visual system does
incorporate a moving-dark-spot detector. In environments that prevailed during frog
evolution, flies were the predominate generators of moving-dark-spots on frog retinas,
and so the frog visual system also functioned as a fly detector. But this second, it seems
to me, is a privileged description. The key to its privilege lies in counterfactuals. Had the
main source of moving-black-spots not been edible flies (say they had been robotic BBs),
the frog would not have evolved the moving spot detector system, no matter how that
system is characterized. So it is the fact that moving spots meant flies that led to this
feature of the frog visual system. In general, animals evolve to have detectors of salient
features of their environments. The detectors are perforce largely “indirect” – predator
detection is via scent, sounds, and optical properties. But “predator” and “scent” are not
rival characterizations of the detection system. Organisms detect prey or predator by
their scent – one is more mediate than the other. This is at best a distinction between
narrow and wide function, and is not a case of indeterminacy. And, crucial to the issue at
hand, this entire functional chain exists apart from interpretation – frogs were detecting
flies via the moving spots flies make on frog retinas long before any interpreter engaged
in the practice of attributing content to frog brain states. The biological function of the
states – what they did that promoted froggy gene pool enlargement - is not a product of
interpretation. Clearly there is more to be said, but the moral I draw is that this particular
worry about evolutionary function has not been shown to be a sufficient basis for holding
that all intentionality is derived.
Dennett illustrates his case that all intentionality is derived using a story of an artifact, a
vending machine containing a coin detector he calls a two-bitser. We are to suppose that
this vending machine subsystem was designed and used in the U.S. to distinguish U.S.
quarters from other coins and slugs. However at some point it is moved to Panama (the
poor man’s Twin Earth, Dennett tells us), where it now distinguishes Panamanian
quarter-Balboas from slugs (these Panamanian coins were the same shape, size and
material as a U.S. quarter). Dennett argues that there is no principled way of saying
whether the machine is a two-bitser or a q-Balber – it all depends on your purposes. He
draws the same moral with regard to evolution. As a non-frog example, Dennett notes
that the human visual system has vertical axis symmetry detectors. It seems likely these
evolved to pick out animals seen full frontal – that is, to detect an animal that is looking
at you. So is this a predator detector? A detector of prey that is on to one? A detector of
interested potential mates? A detector of bilaterally symmetrical images on ones retina?
A detector of animals generally? Goodness gracious! It is all so indeterminate.
I suggest it is not so indeterminate, largely, as before, because these are not mutually
exclusive options. Visual systems evolved to detect a variety of things, and evolved to do
so using edge detectors, contrast detectors, motion detectors – and symmetry detectors.
The visual symmetry detector functions as a component of detectors of predators, prey,
and mates. For each target, there are additional components in the system that
discriminate between predator, prey and mate. In particular, there are two levels that
create distinct possibilities of mistakes. The visual symmetry detecting subsystem
malfunctions when it gives false positives or negatives to visual symmetry. This is part
of a larger system that uses the information from the symmetry detector to classify things
are potential predators, prey, mates, or Buicks. Bilateral symmetry abounds. The larger
systems that include the symmetry detector malfunction when they give false positives or
negatives to the (potentially detectable) presence of prey, predator or mate, respectively,
and the larger systems can malfunction even when the symmetry detector is working
well.
A Pleistocene mammal could have a mal-functioning visual symmetry detector, that is, a
healthy or diseased system. There is an objective difference between health and disease
for these structures. There are historical facts about the matter that are relevant to
determining the function of the systems – the contribution the system makes to survival
and fitness: what individual was saved from death by what abilities; how many viable
offspring did it have. These first of these considerations - what saved it – is a
counterfactual consideration, a modal type not favored by empiricists such as Dennett,
Quine, and others. What system saves an organism from a challenge is a system that, had
it failed in the presence of the challenge, would have resulted in the death of the
organism, whereas its failure in the absence of that challenge would not have harmed its
possessor. But if we allow that there are objectively true counterfactuals, made true by
natural law and not dependent upon interpretation, then we can hold that there are
objective facts about how components of a complex system functioned to make it
biologically fit by enabling it to survive and reproduce. Figuring out what those
counterfactuals and functions are is a formidable task, but it is not made impossible
because there are no facts to be discovered, as Dennett asserts.
In the artifact case at hand, we can hold that the two-bitser became a q-balber when the
counterfactuals surrounding its survival changed. In the U.S., the two bitser presumably
would have further entrenched its position had it rejected difficult-to-exchange quarterbalboas as well as slugs. On the other hand, it would have doomed itself had it rejected
quarters and only accepted quarter Balboas. The counterfactuals change as soon as it is
moved from the U.S. to Panama. And they change no matter what caused the move –
intentional human acts or a freak tidal wave. The purposes of users are important, to be
sure, but not because of the function-endowing powers of their interpretation – rather
because of the effect of the acts of users on the survival prospects of the machine. But it
is those prospects, however produced, that are determinate of function. The same will be
true of frogs. If a brave new world comes about in which flies are poisonous and dancing
tiny metallic spheres are nutritious, then the frog visual system acquires a new biological
function using old resources. And the function changes whether there are any interpreters
standing around or not. Externalism is not indeterminism.
Summary
The morals I derive from the preceding discussion are several:
1. Searle's argument for intentionality dualism fails because he uses different methods of
individuation for his examples.
2. Dennett's first argument that all intentionality is derived, based on the ambiguity of an
English sentence, fails because it conflates epistemic and semantic matters.
3. Dennett's second argument that all intentionality is derived, the Argument from
Design, fails for several reasons, the most important of which is that the remote etiology
of our species is irrelevant to the content of our current states.
4. Dennett's third argument that all intentionality is derived, the Indeterminacy Argument,
fails for multiple reasons: it appears to involve a regress; it appears to set up narrow and
wide functional descriptions are rivals creating indeterminacy, and finally because it
remains possible that external factors determine function and content, not interpretation
by human agents.
5. It is possible Searle also conflates content with epistemic issues in his emphasis on the
role of consciousness in mental states.
6. I have emphasized that in thinking about meaning and intentionality, we must start by
distinguishing semantic and epistemic aspects of the phenomenon. A crucial corollary is
that to regard something as a sign of something does not make it a sign of that thing.
Interpretation of signs is second order intentionality – it is a theory about the semantic or
intentional status of signs. Interpretation of a sign is a belief or hypothesis about what a
sign is about. As such, an interpretation of a sign is not itself a semantic status of the sign
and can’t “confer” a semantic status on something that doesn’t have one. Thus it is a
serious, albeit natural, mistake to conflate second order intentionality with first order.
We do create meaning when we interpret, in that we form second-order intentional states,
but we don’t endow first order representations with meaning merely by thinking they
have meaning.
All signs may require interpretation to be useful, but that is a complicated epistemic
process of coming to know what information a sign purports to carry. This is secondorder intentionality; it is not part of meaning or first order intentionality.
And finally,
7. We should explore the possibility that all intentionality is of the same sort, underived,
and based upon connections with the world. Disparate things - photographs, smoke,
animal vocalizations, have properties that track and carry information about other things.
This simple fact seems promising as the locus of the one, true, original, intentionality.
______________________[end MPS version]
Rethinking Intentionality
Examples of the independence of intentionality and interpretation abound. What sign
you are born under does not have the significance that astrology fans think it has.
Astrology fans cannot literally “attach significance” to signs that don’t have them – they
can merely think they have significance. Arrangements of tea leaves in a cup are not
signs of a human future beyond dishwashing. A wart on a nose is not a sign that she who
bears the nose that bears the wart is a witch. Yet all these and much more have been
taken as signs and have been interpreted as having a meaning they did not have. The
“semiotics” tradition has often treated meaning as similar to social status, a social
construct that exists in virtue of how something is treated. This perniciously conflates
significance with beliefs about significance, first and second-order intentionality.
But it seems clear that semantic facts are discovered. It can be discovered that S is a sign
of something M. The significance of S can be a discovery only because S had its
significance all along, unappreciated, waiting to be discovered. Thus leaf yellowing is
often a sign of nitrogen deficiency. Foaming at the mouth can be a sign of rabies.
Elevated body temperature is a sign of infection by microorganisms. And so forth – these
signs were around since the beginnings of life, however for a great while no one knew
how to read them.
Thus it seems to me that the correct way to look at intentionality, being about something,
is semantic realism. Intentionality and the sign-signified relation is a feature of the
world. What makes something about something else, a representation or sign of
something, is an objective logical connection created by the place of the two in a system
of causal links. In particular, for S to be a sign of M, S must occur only if M is the case.
Whether something is in such a relation to other things – whether it is a sign of something
– is a fact about the world. As a result, meaning is not a result of interpretation, it is
something to be discovered, and is not dependent upon being discovered. There are
unappreciated signs out there. And merely thinking that something is a reliable sign of
something does not make it a sign of anything.
This logical relation (S occurs only if M is the case) is typically mediated by a network of
causal relations. But it is a logical relation, not equivalent to a causal connection. The
same logical relationship that makes leaf yellowing a sign of nitrogen deficiency makes a
certain brain state of a perceiver a sign of leaf yellowing – the function of the
representing state is to be tokened only if the represented state exists. There is no
intrinsic semantic difference between the brain state and the state in the world, except the
brain state is private and especially poised for controlling action. Animals evolved to
have sensors and internal states that represent the world outside them. They do not need
to interpret these brain states, nor does anyone else – the brain states have the
significance they do because of their connection to events in the world, and they can
control behavior without the mediation of an interpretive process. The behavior the states
control suggests the evolutionary factors that resulted in the sensors and hence content of
the sensors (what they detect), but the behavioral response is not constitutive of that
content.
So it seems intentionality monists are correct – there is no principled semantic difference
between representations inside and outside the head. But this is not because all
representations need interpretation and are hence derived. The marks on the paper are
about what they are because of their connection with states in the world. We need to ask
the author of “Our mothers bore us” to know what the meaning only because the structure
of the marks does not uniquely reflect a particular etiology or causal history. The same
was true of “idiot lights” that grace the dashboard of cars – does the lit up trouble light
mean the oil pressure is low? A cylinder is misfiring? Or merely that it is time to check
the catalytic converter? The light is ambiguous – but this is an epistemic problem, not a
semantic problem. This time it turns out its lighting means that the oil pressure is low.
Languages and indicators are generally constructed so as to minimize ambiguity – the
context in which they appear generally resolves their etiology. If a red pilot light is on; it
means something has power – but what? The location of the pilot light typically
disambiguates. And so it is with indexicals. Tokens of “I’m hungry” mean different
things – are signs of different states of the world – as the speaker varies.
Those who reject “original” or “intrinsic” intentionality may do so because it seems
magical and unexplained. But original intentionality is not magical – it is just aboutness,
the property of being a representation, a sign of, that is not dependent upon interpretation.
Thus I can have a brain state that represents the completion of microwaving my coffee.
This state typically is caused by, and so depends on, another sign – the beep of the
microwave oven. Thus one could say my brain state has derived intentionality – it
depends on another representation, one that is more closely coupled with the completion
of the cooking time than is my thought (I am more often mistaken, thinking it surely must
be done by now, or, failing to hear the beep, thinking it is not complete when it is). The
beep is the original, my belief derives from it. But this does not make my intentionality
derived in the sense that it requires interpretation to have its content. It gets its
significance from its connection with the temp of the coffee, and that connection is the
product of causal links.
I began this essay by quoting Fodor’s 2009 account of intentionality dualism. Fodor’s
discussion is in the context of a nice counterexample Fodor offers to Andy Clark’s
“extended mind” thesis. But Fodor’s own discussion does not support his intentionality
dualism. Suppose the “derived” in “derived intentionality” means something like
“dependent upon the thoughts and purposes of minds in creating the thing”, as does
Fodor (2009). Thus we might hold that inscriptions in Otto’s notebook mean something
because there was something he meant (meant to record) when he made them. On this
account, a thing’s having derived intentionality thus depends on someone’s thinking
about it (having beliefs, desires, intentions and so forth in relation to which the thing is,
as philosophers say, the ‘intensional object’). Then on standard Gricean grounds, in
which a speech act is intended to produce effects in an auditor (e.g. belief), when Otto
tells Inga where the museum is, the representation in her head satisfies the defining
characteristic of derived intentionality just as does the recording in his notebook– there
was something Otto intended to record in Inga’s head. The paradigm of original
intentionality, beliefs, are typically derived. So once again there is trouble with
intentionality dualism.
We can extend the thought experiment to show the irrelevance of original and derived
when it comes to intentionality. Suppose that when diagnosed with Alzheimers Otto
prayed for a miracle. And a miracle he got. Not the remission of the disease, but rather
God sent, perhaps as part of a public works program, an army of tiny angels to inhabit
Otto’s head. These angelic agents were so small that a gigabyte could dance on the head
of a pin. They were sent to take over the job of Otto’s failing neural net. So when a
memory should have been laid down in synaptic strengths, the angels make a note of the
information in their tiny notebooks. And when Otto needs to recall, the angels consult
and fire tiny blasts of neuro-transmitter in all the right places to produce effective recall.
Thus Otto regains full memory function.
So what here is “derived” and what is “original”? And how does it make any difference?
Indeed, for all I know the hypothetical situation of Otto’s Angels is my own actual
situation. But, at such a low level of function, it makes no difference to me how my
memory works, as long as it works.
Let us turn to a final consideration against derived intentionality. The dependence of
derived intentionality on underived intentionality is supposed to be an essential property
– no mind, no meaning. As Fodor put it, the show inside the head is “ineliminably the
main event”. But in each case where a representation is created by a mind, we can
construct a case where a representation of that same type and with the same information
content resulted from a non-mental process. So the marks in Otto’s notebook might have
been produced not by him but by a swamp-computer that runs swamp-Google-maps.
Conversely, future scientists might find that the smoke that means fire has all along been
produced by tiny Phlogistoners, little intelligent heraclitean creatures that live only in
fires and who celebrate their existence by an ancient ceremony centered on emitting
smoke from their ears. Surely what matters for intentionality is not the presence or
absence of agency but whether the process reliably produces tokens of the sign only on
condition of the existence of the signified. If the link is reliable, the linguistic
representation in Otto’s notebook, whether produced by Otto or a machine, would
preserve its sensitivity to the state of the world, would conform to English grammatical
conventions, and would be about the museum. And if smoke turned out to be produced
by nano-agents it would not change the status of smoke as a sign of fire. If no
representation has “the inner” as an essential condition for its existence, no representation
has derived intentionality.
We can apply these considerations to organisms that are not products of any form of
design or agency: Swampmen. Those (Davidson, Millikan, Dretske, etc.) who think that
swampmen cannot have beliefs may be correct – at the moment of creation. At creation,
a swampman has internal states that were not produced by a reliable tracking process.
But the moment Swampman interacts with his environment, he uses reliable information
gathering systems to go into states that track states outside him. The tracking is not
coincidence, it is nomic and counterfactual: if the sun were bright, then he would go into
a unique internal state. He registers odors, sounds, etc. as reliably as I do. Thus it seems
he very shortly can come to have beliefs about his world and other intentional states.
Swampman’s reliable sensory systems enable them to function for him as sensors; he
uses them to gather information about the world. This enables him to survive and
potentially to reproduce - it makes him fit.
Contra Millikan and Dretske, I can’t see that there is anything crucially special about
reproduction in determining function. A sorites applies. If x has no function for y, then it
has no function for progeny of y born into the same environment. That is, to have a
function for progeny born into a similar environment, it must have had the function for
the parent. For function of an organ must be in terms of the contribution the subsystem
makes to the fitness of the organism, that is, the ability to reproduce. This contribution
does not require actual reproduction, it is entirely counterfactual. So there can be no
difference between an organism that reproduces at time t and one that instead lives past
time t – the end result is just the presence of an organism of that phenotype and genotype
at different times. If x contributes nothing to a systems ability to reproduce, then how
could it contribute something to a possibly identical copy of itself, the product of
reproduction? So – sorites - if organ x has no function for the first creature bearing it, it
has no function for any descendent bearing x.
The key factor is the reliability of the link to the world. A reliable device or process –
one that accurately tracks something – can be created by an unreliable process (lightning
hitting swamp gasses). There is no oddity here. Highly reliable systems such as the
human visual system are the result of the genetic copying errors that created mutations.
The reliable sensory systems got copied because they were reliable – being copied did
not make them any more reliable than they already were. Unreliable processes are just
unreliable, not completely incapable. Don’t count on a mutation in the visual system to
be an improvement, but sift enough mutations and you will surely see improved seeing.
But then Mother Nature never counts on much anyway.
Thus we have here no good reason to distinguish “original” from “derived” intentionality.
Intentionality, aboutness, originates in a fact about the world: in virtue of causal
connections, states of the world carry information about other states. The information
states can be in a head, on an instrument display, in the air as sounds made by humans or
devices or avalanches, and as marks, whether made on a muddy trail by animal paws, or
made on paper by humans. These all share the same “original” form of intentionality:
unique causal links to the world that make the sign a necessary condition of the signified.
All signs may require interpretation to be useful, but that is a complicated epistemic
process of coming to know what information a sign purports to carry. This is secondorder intentionality; it is not part of meaning or first order intentionality.
References:
Dennett, D. 1987 The Intentional Stance MIT Press.
Esp. Chapter 8: “Evolution, Error and Intentionality"
Dennett, D. 1997 Kinds of Minds New York: Basic Books
Dennett, D. and Haugeland, J. 1987 “Intentionality” in R. L. Gregory (ed.) The Oxford
Companion to the Mind. Oxford University Press
Fodor, J. 2009 “Where is my Mind?” Review of Andy Clark: Supersizing the Mind, in
London Review of Books 12 Feb 2009
Searle, J. 1980 Minds, Brains and Programs Behavioural and Brain Sciences
Searle, J. 1984 “Intentionality and its Place in Nature” Synthese 61/1 pp. 3-16.
Reprinted in Searle, Consciousness and Language Cambridge University Press