Mind: A Brief Introduction (John R. Searle) / quote 133 of 138
Life experience and innate capacities shape our desires
If we reject the externalist’s claim that intentional content is determined by external causal chains, what then does determine intentional content? Causally speaking, I do not think there is any general answer to this question except to say that our intentional contents are determined by a combination of our life experiences and our innate biological capacities. I have already given a sketch of how an animal’s feeling of thirst might be determined by neurobiological processes. If one were to change the example slightly so that I was not just thirsty in general but thirsty for a glass of draught Irish stout, or a 1953 Chateau Lafitte, then the story would become much more complicated. I would have to give an account of how my life experiences have led me to have certain sorts of taste experiences, that I was capable of recalling these in memory and capable of forming desires to repeat these experiences in the future. But if the story has to be more complicated to account for a specific desire, then it would become incredibly complicated if I tried to give an account of how one might have formed an intention with the content that I write the great American novel, marry a Republican, or explain intentionality in a single chapter.