intentionality

n., pl., -ties.

1. The state of having or being formed by an intention.
2. Philosophy. The property of being about or directed toward a subject, as inherent in conscious states, beliefs, or creations of the mind, such as sentences or books.

intentionality

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The directedness or ‘aboutness’ of many, if not all, conscious states. The term was used by the scholastics, but revived in the 19th century by Brentano. Our beliefs, thoughts, wishes, dreams, and desires are about things. Equally the words we use to express these beliefs and other mental states are about things. The problem of intentionality is that of understanding the relation obtaining between a mental state, or its expression, and the things it is about. A number of peculiarities attend this relation. First, if I am in some relation to a chair, for instance by sitting on it, then both it and I must exist. But while mostly one thinks about things that exist, sometimes (although this way of putting it has its problems) one has beliefs, hopes, and fears about things that do not, as when the child expects Santa Claus, and the adult fears Zeus. Secondly, if I sit on the chair, and the chair is the oldest antique in London, then I sit on the oldest antique in London. But if I plan to avoid the mad axeman, and the mad axeman is in fact my friendly postman, I do not therefore plan to avoid my friendly postman (see also extensional/intensional, referentially opaque/transparent). Intentional relations seem to depend on how the object is specified, or as Frege put it, on the mode of presentation of the object. This makes them quite unlike the relations whose logic we can understand by means of the predicate calculus, and this peculiarity has led some philosophers, notably Quine, to declare them unfit for use in serious science (see also eliminativism). More widespread is the view that since the concept is indispensable, we must either declare serious science unable to deal with the central feature of the mind, or explain how serious science may include intentionality. One approach is to suggest that while the linguistic forms in which we communicate fears and beliefs have a two-faced aspect, involving both the objects referred to, and the mode of presentation under which they are thought of, we can see the mind as essentially directed onto existent things, and extensionally related to them. Intentionality then becomes a feature of language, rather than a metaphysical or ontological peculiarity of the mental world.

A dimension in some causal attribution models that refers to the extent to which an act was done on purpose.

Intentionality is aboutness. Some things are about other things: a belief can be about icebergs, but an iceberg is not about anything; an idea can be about the number 7, but the number 7 is not about anything; a book or a film can be about Paris, but Paris is not about anything. Philosophers have long been concerned with the analysis of the phenomenon of intentionality, which has seemed to many to be a fundamental feature of mental states and events. It should be clear that this use of 'intentionality' and 'intentional' is a technical use, and should not be confused with the more familiar sense (discussed in the entry intention) of doing something deliberately or on purpose. Hopes and fears, for instance, are not things we do, not intentional acts in the latter, familiar sense, but they are intentional phenomena in the technical sense, for they are about or of something.

The term was coined by the Scholastics in the Middle Ages (see, for example, Aquinas, St Thomas), and derives from the Latin verb intendo, meaning to point (at) or aim (at) or extend (toward). Phenomena with intentionality point outside themselves, in effect to something else: whatever they are of or about. The term was revived in the 19th century by the philosopher and psychologist Franz Brentano, one of the most important predecessors of the school of phenomenology. Brentano claimed that intentionality is the defining distinction between the mental and the physical; all and only mental phenomena exhibit intentionality. Since intentionality is, he claimed, an irreducible feature of mental phenomena, and since no physical phenomena could exhibit it, mental phenomena could not be a species of physical phenomena. This claim, often called the Brentano thesis, or Brentano's irreducibility thesis, has often been cited to support the view that the mind cannot be the brain, but this is by no means generally accepted today.

There was a second revival of the term in the 1960s and 1970s by English and American philosophers in the analytic tradition. In response to seminal work by R. Chisholm and W. V. Quine, a vigorous attempt was made to develop an account of intentionality in harmony with the canons of modern logic and semantics. Since the phenomenological tradition, mainly on the Continent, has continued to exploit the concept of intentionality along rather different lines, the problem of intentionality is one of the best points of convergent concern in these two largely separate — and often antagonistic — research traditions.

In spite of the attention currently devoted to the concept, there is a striking lack of received wisdom about the proper analysis of intentionality. What agreement there is concerns the nature of the problems raised, and, while some of the proposed solutions are forbiddingly technical, the problems themselves readily emerge on a little reflection.

If we make an initial rough catalogue of the things that can be about things, it will include a great variety of mental states and events (ideas, beliefs, desires, thoughts, hopes, fears, perceptions, dreams, hallucinations, etc.), also various linguistic items (sentences, questions, poems, headlines, instructions, etc.), and perhaps other sorts of representations as well (pictures, charts, films, symphonic tone poems, computer programs, etc.). Many have thought that these linguistic and non-linguistic representations are only derivatively about anything. They depend for their intentionality on their being the creations and tools of creatures with minds, and particular representations derive their specific aboutness from the specific aboutness of the ideas, beliefs, and intentions of their creators. What makes the particular sequence of ink marks on the next line:

• Napoleon was exiled to Elba

about Napoleon is its role as a sentence in a language used by people who know about Napoleon, or at least have beliefs about Napoleon, and wish to communicate about Napoleon. What representations mean depends on what people mean by using them. This suggests that the primary or underived intentionality of mental states and events is a very special feature indeed — the source of all meaning in the world. On this view, sentences, pictures, diagrams, and the like are in effect prosthetic extensions of the minds of those who use them, having no intrinsic meaning but only the meaning they derive from their utilization.

With regard to conventional representational artefacts, this is surely a plausible view, but it is not so plausible to claim that all intentionality is either the underived intentionality of (purely) mental phenomena or the derived intentionality of such artefacts. An exposed cliff-face might be said by a geologist to store information about the Triassic period; impulse trains in nerve bundles might be said by a neuroscientist to carry information about state changes in the inner ear. How is this sort of aboutness related to the aboutness discussed by philosophers under the rubric of intentionality? It is tempting to suppose that some concept of information underlies all these phenomena, and could serve eventually to unify mind, matter, and meaning in a single theory.

Identifying intentionality with aboutness nicely locates the concept, but hardly clarifies it, for the ordinary word 'about' is perplexing on its own. A belief can be about Paris, but a belief can also apparently be about phlogiston — and there is no phlogiston for it to be about. This curious fact, the possible non-existence of the object of an intentional item, may seem to be an idle puzzle, but in fact it has proved extraordinarily resistant to either solution or dismissal. Brentano called this the intentional inexistence of the intentional objects of mental states and events, and it has many manifestations. I cannot want without wanting something, but what I want need not exist for me to want it. It can be true that I now want a 2-ton diamond even if there is not now and never has been or will be such a thing. People have believed in Poseidon, and children often believe in Santa Claus, and, while in one sense we can say these believers all believe in nothing, their beliefs are quite different states of mind — they have different objects — and both are to be distinguished from the state of mind of the sceptic or agnostic who can be said in quite a different sense to believe in nothing.

It might seem that there is a simple and straightforward solution to these problems: although Poseidon does not exist, an idea of Poseidon surely exists in each of the believers' minds, and this idea is the object of their belief. This will not do, however, for it is one thing to believe in the existence of the idea of Poseidon — we can all believe in the existence of that mental item — and quite another to believe in Poseidon. Similarly, what I might want could hardly be the idea in my mind of a 2-ton diamond, for that I already have. Moreover, when, as normally happens, the object of an intentional state does exist — for example, when I believe that London is crowded — that very object, London, the city itself and not my idea of it in my mind, is what my belief is about.

The relation, then, between a state of mind — or for that matter a sentence or picture — and its intentional object or objects is a very peculiar relation in three ways.

First, for ordinary relations, like x is sitting on y or x is employed by y, x and y are identifiable entities quite apart from whether they happen to be thus related to each other. The thing which is x would be the same x whether or not it were sitting on y or employed by y. But the same is not true of intentional 'relations'. One and the same belief cannot at one moment be about a frog (that it is green, say) and at another moment be about a house (that it is green). The latter is a different belief. What a belief is supposed to be about is crucial to which belief it is.

Second, for ordinary relations, each of the things related must exist (or have existed), but, as we have seen, intentional 'relations' can be to non-existents.

Third, ordinary relations obtain between things regardless of how they might be specified. If I am sitting next to Jones and Jones is the Mad Strangler, then it follows that I am sitting next to the Mad Strangler, whatever anybody may think. But if I believe that Jones is harmless, or hope that he will marry my sister, it does not at all follow that I believe that the Mad Strangler is harmless or hope that the Mad Strangler will marry my sister. Even if one is tempted to object that, in this case in one sense I do hope the Mad Strangler will marry her, there is clearly another sense in which I might hope this and do not.

For these reasons the normal logic of relations cannot accommodate the presumed relation between an intentional state and its intentional object or objects, but it has also not proved comfortable for theorists to deny on these grounds that there are such things as intentional relations — to hold that mental states, for instance, are only apparently relational. This, then, is the unsolved problem of intentionality.

Faced with this problem, the Anglo-American tradition, characteristically, has tended to favour a tactical retreat, to a logical analysis of the language we use to talk about intentional states, events, and other items. This move, from the direct analysis of the phenomena to the analysis of our ways of talking about the phenomena, has been aptly called 'semantic ascent' by Quine, and its immediate advantages are twofold. First, we set aside epistemological and metaphysical distractions such as: 'How can we ever know another person's mental state anyway?' and 'Are mental states a variety of physical state, or are they somehow immaterial or spiritual?' The things people say about mental states are in any event out in the public world where we can get at them and study them directly. Second, switching to language puts at our disposal a number of sophisticated techniques and theories developed by philosophers, logicians, and linguists. Semantic ascent is not guaranteed to solve any problems, of course, but it may permit them to be reformulated in ways more accessible to ultimate solution.

In its new guise, the problem of intentionality concerns the semantics of the so-called intentional idioms — '... believes that p', '... desires that q', '... dreams that r', etc. (where p, q, and r are replaced by clauses, such as 'frogs are green' or 'Labour is returned to power'). Linguistically and logically, intentional idioms are a subset of those that Quine calls 'referentially opaque'. What this means is that many normally valid logical moves are not valid for the clauses 'within the scope' of intentional idioms. For instance, normally, if two words happen to be words for the same thing, then one can freely substitute one for the other without affecting the truth of the whole sentence (although one may change its meaning, or effectiveness, or style). Thus, since 'Cicero' and 'Tully' are names for the same man, from the truth of 'Cicero was an orator' we can infer the truth of 'Tully was an orator'. By contrast, however, the same substitution is not always allowable in 'Tom believes that Cicero denounced Catiline', for Tom may believe that Cicero denounced Catiline but not believe that Tully did. So '... believes that p' is an opaque idiom.

Clearly this is just another (and more precise) way of putting the point made earlier, that intentional relations depend on how their objects are specified. The other points have analogues too. Thus, normally, a relational statement is false if one of the alleged relata does not exist; not so within the scope of opaque idioms. And, of course, the fact that the identity of a particular belief depends on the object or objects it is supposed to be about emerges on this treatment as the fact that the ascription of a particular belief depends crucially on the words used in the clause expressing it. We can see now that this condition is essentially the same as the first, and that the second condition (possible non-existence of the object) is also just a special case of opacity: believing that Santa Claus is generous and believing that Poseidon is generous are different beliefs, in spite of the fact that 'Santa Claus' and 'Poseidon' refer to 'the same thing', i.e. to nothing.

Seeing this unity in the various conditions of intentionality is one of the benefits of semantic ascent. Another is that it thus provides us with a relatively formal and uncontroversial test for the intentionality of idioms, and hence a test for appeals to intentionality in a theory. This is an interesting test, for theories relying on intentional idioms — such as classical 'rational agent' economics and cognitive psychology — cannot be formulated in any non-controversial way within standard logic, while it seems that other theories, pre-eminently in the physical sciences, can be so formulated. The logical oddity of intentional idioms, and their resistance to regimentation, led Quine and several other theorists to declare the bankruptcy of all intentional theories, on grounds of logical incoherence. The only sound alternatives within the social sciences, then, would have to be theories making no appeal to meaning or intentionality at all: purely behaviouristic or purely physiological theories. This claim strikes a familiar note: many psychologists and brain scientists have expressed great scepticism about the utility or permissibility of 'mentalistic' formulations in their fields — while others of course have held them to be indispensable. The philosophical analysis of intentionality yields a clear logical characterization of this fundamental theoretical division in the social sciences and biology: 'mentalistic' theories are all and only those making ineliminable use of intentional idioms, and hence inheriting the logical problems of construing those idioms coherently.

Dispensing with intentional theories is not an attractive option, however, for the abstemious behaviourisms and physiological theories so far proposed have signally failed to exhibit the predictive and explanatory power needed to account for the intelligent activities of human beings and other animals. A close examination of the most powerful of these theories reveals intentional idioms inexorably creeping in — for instance in the definition of the stimulus as the 'perceived' stimulus and the response as the 'intended' effect, or in the reliance on the imputation of 'information-bearing' properties to physiological constructs. Moreover, the apparent soundness of information-processing theories, and their utility in practice, has strengthened the conviction that somehow we must be able to make sense of the ineliminable intentional formulations they contain without compromising thoroughgoing materialism.

One avenue currently being explored apparently challenges the thesis that the intentionality of linguistic entities is derivative, and, turning that idea on its head, attempts to explain the intentionality of minds by analysing minds as systems of 'mental representations'; our thoughts and beliefs exhibit intentionality because they are couched somehow in a 'language of thought' physically embodied in our brains. The intentionality of 'expressions' in the language of thought is held to be primary — the intentionality of expressions in natural language, for instance, is supposed to be derived from it — but the hope of this research strategy is that the impressive resources of formal theories of semantics in logic, computation theory, and linguistics can render the puzzles about aboutness more tractable, and lead to their eventual solution in cognitivistic or information-theoretic theories of the mind. If, for instance, the theory of reference for expressions in public (natural or formal) languages can be exploited to produce a theory of reference for expressions in the language of thought, the problem of what mental states are about might be solved.

It is far from clear, however, that this is not a fundamental error, leading, for instance, to a vicious regress of languages and language users within the mind or brain, in spite of the beguiling constructions already devised and to some degree tested by the enthusiasts of this persuasion. It is too early to say, then, whether the semantic ascent of the analytic tradition in philosophy, and its ideological cousin, cognitive or computational psychology, will provide more durable solutions to the problems of intentionality than the more frankly metaphysical investigations of the phenomenologists.

(Published 1987)

— Daniel C. Dennett/John C. Haugeland

Bibliography
• Aquila, R. E. (1977). Intentionality: A Study of Mental Acts.
• Brentano, F. (1874). Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (rev. edn. 1925). (An English translation of excerpts can be found in Chisholm 1960.)
• Chisholm, R. (1957). Perceiving: A Philosophical Study.
• — —  (1960). Realism and the Background of Phenomenology.
• Dennett, D. C. (1978). Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology, chs. 1 and 4.
• — —  (2003). Freedom Evolves.
• Field, H. (1978). 'Mental representation'. Erkenntnis, 13.
• Fodor, J. (1975). The Language of Thought.
• Quine, W. V. O. (1960). Word and Object.
• Searle, J. (1983). Intentionality.

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