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If you think of language for a moment as something that is independent and outside the mind, you will notice that statements or propositions or sentences possess 'aboutness', intentionality.
George Fox was a religious man' is about GF.
'Charles Dickens wrote "Dombey and Son"' is about Charles Dickens, and about the novel.
'I have this troublesome toothache' is about me and a toothache.
Thus: sentences seem to have intentionality.
But mental states have intentionality also.
Franz Brentano (1838-1917):
" Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the scholastics of the Middle Ages called the Intentional (and also mental) inexistence of an object, and what we would call, although in not entirely unambiguous terms, the reference to a content, a direction upon an object (by which we are not to understand a reality in this case) or immanent objectivity. Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself, although they do not all do so in the same way. In presentation, something is presented, in judgement something is affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired and so on. This intentional inexistence is characteristic exclusively of mental phenomena." F.Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, Engl. Trans., New York, 1973, Humanities Press. Originally published 1874.
Example: beliefs
Take the thought which I may report goes through my mind as I watch Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: the thought that my brother lives in London.
Here again is something that seems to have 'aboutness'. It seems to be about my brother and his living in London.
There is on the one hand my thought.
And on the other a fact.
And the thought seems to be 'about' the fact.
"A ubiquitous feature of mental states is that they have content: that is, they represent features of the world. When I see a tree, my perceptual state represents the tree. When I believe that the Earth is round, my belief represents a state of the Earth. This feature of mental states is often called intentionality, or aboutness." David Chalmers, Philosophy of Mind, New York, 2002, OUP, p.473.
Thus: two aboutnesses, two intentionalities, the intentionality of (a) sentences and (b) thoughts.
There is a suggestion then that these two intentionalities are connected - that the intentionality of mental states and the intentionality of language are connected.
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Review Questions
1. What is the difference between my thought being about my brother and a tidal wave being about the earthquake that produced it? This?
2. Do all mental items have intentionality? Eg do pains have it?
Suppose I have toothache. Does this ache 'point' to something beyond itself in the way that my belief that my brother lives in London points to something beyond itself, namely a state of affairs, my brother's living in London? Saith the wise
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Without thought, language items are meaningless, it is said. What are words when written or read by an intelligence collapse into mere marks on paper if intelligence is absent. Sounds uttered and heard by a language user can be meaningful, but in the void the same physical sounds become meaningless.
So it is held that the intentionality of language is to be explained by the intentionality of thought or consciousness.
Do you think the other claim might be defended, that the intentionality of thought might be explained in terms of the intentionality of language?
Sentences seem to be about their subjects or topics because of their meaning.
In general it seems to be the meaning of linguistic items that gives them their intentionality. Considered as marks on paper, a sentence doesn't have intentionality. It gets intentionality through meaning something.
In the jargon, this is the claim that it is the semantic dimension of language items that gives them their intentionality.
Prompt: what approach would you take, try and explain the intentionality of language items in terms of the intentionality of mental items, or vice versa?
An example of the thesis that mental intentionality explains linguistic meaning, and so linguistic intentionality, is the Gricean theory of meaning. H.P.Grice developed the thesis that the meaning of linguistic items is to be identified with the intentions of the utterer.
(Paul Grice, 1913-88, Fellow of St John's until emigrating to a chair in Berkeley in 1967)
I suppose the language of thought hypothesis would be an example of the other approach, that mental intentionality comes from linguistic (or quasi-linguistic) intentionality, although the language in question is not a natural language but a language of thought.
Whichever route you take, how might intentionality be explained by the physicalist?
Let me mention two approaches that are under active exploration: the causal-historical and the teleological.
I have already outlined the causal-historical.
The Churchlands discuss this in terms of the pit-organ of a rattlesnake.
You can imagine the pit organ, and the rest of the nervous system, as a tuned - like a net - to certain features of the environment. It is tuned to go off if a warm moving thing occurs within half a metre.
If you have a set of neural cells which go off in this type of circumstance surely you can say that these cells represent the presence of a warm moving thing in the environment.
(But, say the Churchlands, that doesn't mean there is anything with the structure
of language in the neural system.)
A teleological approach is set out in the paper by Millikan in the Reader. It develops the idea that a pattern of activity in the nervous system becomes a representation in virtue of its serving some biological function within the organism, a function that has been developed in the course of evolution.
Where are we if we take the view that physicalism cannot account for the intentionality of mental items? We would then be thinking that it is somehow an exclusive power of the conscious mind to 'point' to things. If you take that view you may not feel you should be pressed to address the question of how exactly it is supposed to do this. You may think: it just does, and that is the wonder of consciousness, the distinctive gift brought to the universe by the mind.
I said that thoughts appeared to have intentionality, and that sentences seemed to have it too. How might these two facts be connected?
Here is one possible way.
When a belief passes through my mind, say the belief that my brother is in London, it reflects a state of my brain.
And that state of my brain bears meaning, the same meaning as the sentence 'My brother is in London'.
The thesis that is expressed here is labelled 'the Representational Theory of Thinking'.
Here is another formulation:
is for there to be
(Lycan, in Lycan, p.277.)
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Review Question
Does a thought which you don't intentionally call up have intentionality? Saith the wise.
Revised 05:02:03
