Mind: A Brief Introduction (John R. Searle) / quote 117 of 138
Psychological mode, content and aspectual shape
Because intentional states are capable of referring to objects and states of affairs in the world beyond themselves, they must have some sort of content that determines this reference, and indeed we need to distinguish the content of the state from the type of state that it is. Thus I can believe that it will rain, hope that it will rain, fear that it will rain, or desire that it will rain. In each case there is the same content, that it will rain, but that content relates to the world in different psychological modes: belief, fear, hope, desire, etc. This distinction, by the way, exactly parallels the same distinction in language. Just as I can order you to leave the room, so I can predict that you will leave the room, and I can ask whether you will leave the room. In each case we have the same content, that you will leave the room, but it is presented in different sorts of speech acts. A good way to think of this is to think of the state as consisting in a psychological mode, such as belief or desire, with a propositional content, such as the proposition that it is raining. We can represent this as S(p), where the S stand for the mode or type of state and the p for the propositional content. Such states are often called “propositional attitudes.” Not all intentional states have an entire proposition as their content. One might just admire Eisenhower or love Marilyn, and in such cases the intentional state just refers to an object. Such states can be represented as S(n), where the n names or refers to an object. Notice that intentional representations are always under certain aspects and not others. For example, I might intentionally represent an object as the Evening Star and not as the Morning Star even though one and the same object is both. The aspect “celestial body that shines near the horizon in the evening” is not the same aspect as “celestial body that shines near the horizon in the morning.” Intentional states always have aspectual shapes, because all representation is under aspects. This is an important point, because any theory of intentionality must account for aspectual shape, and some materialist theories are unable to do so. I mentioned in chapter 3 that functionalism was unable to distinguish between the desire for water and the desire for H2O and this is because the causal relations on which functionalism relies to analyze intentionality do not have the aspectual shapes characteristic of genuine intentionality.