The Intentional Stance (Bradford Books)

736 Pages·1989·2.21 MB·English

by  Daniel C. Dennett

The Intentional Stance

Daniel C. Dennett

A
Bradford Book The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England

Seventh printing, 1998
First MIT Press paperback edition, 1989
© 1987 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be 'eproduced in
any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including
photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval)
without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book was set in Palatino by Achorn Graphic Services and
printed and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dennett, Daniel Clement. The intentional stance.
"A Bradford book."
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Intentionality (Philosophy) I. Title. B105.I56D46 1987
128'.3 87-3018
ISBN 0-262-04093-X (hardcover) 0-262-54053-3 (paperback)
Dedicated to the memory of Basil Turner, neighbor, friend, and
teacher.
{viii}
Contents

Preface ix

1 Setting Off on the Right Foot 1

2 True Believers 13

3 Three Kinds of Intentional Psychology 43

4 Making Sense of Ourselves 83

5 Beyond Belief 117

6 Styles of Mental Representation 213

7 Intentional Systems in Cognitive Ethology: The "Panglossian Paradigm"
Defended 237

8 Evolution, Error, and Intentionality 287
9 Fast Thinking 323

10 Mid-Term Examination: Compare and Contrast 339

Bibliography 351

Index 373

{ix}
Preface

The
theory of intentionality presented in this book has been gradually evolving over
about twenty years. While the central ideas found rudimentary expression in
Content and Consciousness in 1969, it was the publication in 1971 of
"Intentional Systems" that initiated the series of articles about what I call the
intentional stance and the objects one discovers from that stance: intentional
systems. The first three of these articles (Dennett 1971, 1973, 1976b) were
reprinted in Brainstorms in 1978, and critics and students often treat that book as
the canonical, target expression of my view.
I soon found, however, that the defense of my position was evolving further in
response to criticism, and so I was driven to compose a series of post-
Brainstorms essays in which I attempted to revise, re-express, and extend my
view.

Most of these essays were scattered, however, in relatively
inaccessible volumes, thanks to the inexorable effect of
Limelight Gravity: as one's ideas become a Center of Attention,
one is invited to contribute to more and more conferences,
which proceed to suck one's entire corpus into delayed
publication in conference proceedings and special-interest
anthologies. Nothing is left over to submit to refereed journals,
for ready reading. The point of this book is to overcome the bad
side effects of that otherwise gratifying diffusion.

Six of those scattered essays are reprinted in this volume
(chapters 2-7), introduced by an essay on their aspirations and
methodological presuppositions, tied together with reflections,
and followed by two new essays (chapters 8 and 9), in which
the themes and arguments of the preceding chapters converge
on some rather surprising claims about the relationship
between evolution, brain design, and intentionality. Chapter 10
is my attempt to adopt the stance of an impartial observer
toward my own work and describe its place in the development
of current thinking about "the intentionality of mental states."
{x}

This book does not present my whole view of the mind, but
only, one might say, the first half: content. The other half —
consciousness — is also in need of a second retelling (part
three of Brainstorms was the first), but that will require
another volume, to which I am currently devoting my attention.
Consciousness is regularly regarded, especially by people outside the field of
philosophy, as the outstanding (and utterly baffling) challenge to materialist
theories of the mind. And yet, curiously enough, most of the major participants
in the debates about mental content to which this volume is primarily addressed
have been conspicuously silent on the topic of consciousness. No theory, or even
theory-sketch, of consciousness is to be found in the writings of Fodor, Putnam,
Davidson, Stich, Harman, Dretske, or Burge, for instance. I, on the other hand,
do have a theory of consciousness (and have always had difficulty understanding
how the others can suppose they may ignore or postpone the issue), but its latest
version is too unwieldy for inclusion in this volume. Anyone impatient to see
how the new version of this second half of my theory of the mind comes out can
extrapolate (at my own risk) from the ideas expressed in such published and
forthcoming essays as "How to Study Human Consciousness Empirically: or,
Nothing Comes to Mind" (1982b), "Why Do We Think What We Do About Why
We Think What We Do?" (1982d), "Reflection, Language and Consciousness"
(Elbow Room, 1984d, pp. 34-43), "Julian Jaynes' Software Archeology" (1986d),
"Quining Qualia" (forthcoming d), and "The Self as the Center of Narrative
Gravity" (forthcoming g).
Another challenge, also popularly deemed insurmountable by
materialistic theories of the mind, is the problem of free will. I
have devoted a separate book to that challenge, Elbow Room,
so the topic will scarcely be mentioned again in these pages. If
there are other major challenges to my view, they have not yet
been drawn to my attention.

Since the previously published essays in this volume appeared
over a five-year span, punctuated by their share of controversy,
misconstrual, and amendment, it is no wonder that few have
been able to discern the resulting equilibrium position. I have
sometimes been described, in fact, as presenting a moving
target to my critics. There is some truth to this. I have been
ready to learn from my mistakes and willing to retract ill-
considered claims. Motion is relative, however, and when
something appears to an observer to be protean and
wandering, it may be because the observer is only gradually
coming to {xi} discern the shape it has had all along. Recently
I was congratulated by a neuroscientist for "coming around" to
a view I have unswervingly maintained since Content and
Consciousness in 1969, a sobering experience that has led me
to reassess my expository strategy over the years.
Rereading that book, now in paperback after being out of print for some years, I
am struck more by my doctrinal constancy than by my developments. Most of
the changes seem to me to be extensions, extrapolations, and further arguments,
not shifts. Be that as it may, I have probably seriously underestimated the
potential for misdirection in my playful and unsystematic style. In this book I do
my best, therefore, to come to a halt, draw my wagons into a circle, and present
and defend my considered view in a more orderly fashion.

Some of the previously unpublished parts of this book are
drawn from my Gavin David Young Lectures at the University
of Adelaide in 1984, from my lectures at the Ecole Normale
Superieure in Paris in 1985, and from lectures given at various
workshops, conferences, and colloquia in the last two or three
years, from which I gained a bounty of insights that have found
their way into this volume.

I am also grateful to many people for advice and criticism on
earlier drafts of the unpublished material in this volume:
especially to Kathleen Akins, who not only helped organize and
edit the entire book, but also convinced me to make major
revisions in the presentation and defense of my views; and to
Peter Bieri, Bo Dahlbom, Debra Edelstein, Doug Hofstadter,
Pierre Jacob, Jean Khalfa, Dan Lloyd, Ruth Millikan, and
Andrew Woodfield. I am also very pleased to add my voice to
the now traditional chorus of authorial praise for my good
friends Harry and Betty Stanton, who have made me so proud,
over the years, to be a Bradford Books author. And thanks, as
always, to my wife Susan for her support and forbearance, and
to my colleagues at Tufts.

Tufts
University
January 1987

{1}
1 Setting Off on the Right Foot

Talking
about the mind, for many people, is rather like talking about sex: slightly
embarrassing, undignified, maybe even disreputable. "Of course it exists," some
might say, "but do we have to talk about it?" Yes, we do. Many people would
rather talk about the brain (which, after all, is the mind) and would like to think
that all the wonderful things we need to say about people could be said without
lapsing into vulgar, undisciplined mentalistic talk, but it is now quite clear that
many things need saying that cannot be said in the restricted languages of
neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, or behavioristic psychology. It is not just the
arts and humanities that need to talk about the mind; the various puritanical
attempts to complete the biological and social sciences without ever talking
about it have by now amply revealed their futility.

In fact there is something approaching a new consensus among
cognitive scientists and the more liberated neuroscientists, to
the effect that there can be — must be, somehow — a
responsible, materialistic science not only of the brain, but also
of the mind. There is no consensus yet, however, about just how
this responsible science of the mind will be conducted.

This book is about how to talk about the mind. It is a
philosophical book, written by a philosopher and dealing
primarily with the issues as they have appeared in the
philosophical literature; but it is not for philosophers only.
Those in other disciplines who are newly eager, or at any rate
reluctantly willing, to indulge in various mentalistic sorts of
talk find that philosophers, who have never been shy about