Tags / 33 quotes from 3 sources
#intentionality
Beyond Zero and One (Andrew Smart)
The physicalist starting point
Again, Searle lays out in very clear terms the basic issue about foundational ontology as it relates to consciousness: We know independently that the world consists entirely of physical particles in fields of force (or whatever the ultimately correct physics tell us are the…
The computational move
The real bone of contention between computationalists and others is whether to include computations in the list of observer-independent phenomena. Are computation and information like mass or the elementary particles? Or more dramatically, are computations even more fundamental…
Infinitely many goals explain any behavior
The problem arises because we know that we are intentional systems—our goals are somehow real because we feel like we have goals. Other people might attribute different goals to us. For example, perhaps a Freudian might explain your neurotic behavior in terms of your…
Introducing Artificial Intelligence (Henry Brighton and Howard Selina)
Searle's Chinese gym
Predictably, the resilient Searle stands firm and replies with the Chinese Gym. Instead of a room containing a lone Searle, he imagines a gym full of non-Chinese speakers, one for each neuron in the neural network.
Symbols by themselves are meaningless shapes
Searle’s argument concerns the inability of the symbols being manipulated to mean anything. By themselves, symbols are meaningless shapes realized by, in the case of a conventional computer, a pattern of electrical activity. Any meaning we confer to the symbols is parasitic on…
Hybrid systems escape Searle's closed world of symbols
It is the connectionist system that supplies the sensory images. By combining symbolic and connectionist systems, Harnard believes we can begin to break out of the closed world of meaningless symbols that Searle discusses.
Mind: A Brief Introduction (John R. Searle)
Intrinsic versus derived intentionality
Where the mind is concerned we also need a distinction between original or intrinsic intentionality on the one hand and derived intentionality on the other. For example I have in my head information about how to get to San Jose. I have a set of true beliefs about the way to San…
What philosophers mean by intentionality
“Intentionality” is a technical term used by philosophers to refer to that capacity of the mind by which mental states refer to, or are about, or are of objects and states of affairs in the world other than themselves. So, for example, if I have a belief, it must be a belief…
How thoughts reach out to the world
The special philosophical problem of intentionality is this: suppose that I now believe that George W. Bush is in Washington. The question arises, How can my thoughts, which are entirely inside my mind, reach out all the way to Washington, D.C.? If I think the sun is 93 million…
Materialism leaves something out
In this chapter I will present the most common arguments against materialism, concentrating on functionalism, because it is currently the most influential version of materialism. In general, these attacks have the same logical structure: the materialist account leaves out some…
The Chinese room threatened the citadel of functionalism
Forget about consciousness, which is scientifically irrelevant anyway. What matters about the mind is its capacity for information processing, and the modern computer at long last gives us the right model for understanding the information processing capacities of the mind. This…
Not all consciousness is intentional
This feature, whereby many of my experiences seem to refer to things beyond themselves, is the feature that philosophers have come to label “intentionality.” Not all consciousness is intentional, and not all intentionality is conscious, but there is a very serious and important…
Thinking about things that do not exist
To make matters even worse, it seems that I can sometimes think about objects that do not even exist. When I was a small child I believed that Santa Claus comes on Christmas Eve. Was my belief about Santa Claus? It certainly seems so, but how is that possible, since Santa Claus…
Three problems about intentionality
There are three problems about intentionality we need to address. First, how is intentionality possible at all; second, given that intentional states are possible, how is their content determined; and third, how does the whole system of intentionality work? Most of the…
Intentionality rather than information
Readers familiar with cognitive science will recognize that when we talk about intentionality we are discussing what in cognitive science is known as “information.” I prefer “intentionality” because “information” is systematically ambiguous between a genuinely…
How is intentionality possible at all
I. HOW IS INTENTIONALITY POSSIBLE AT ALL? This problem is supposed to be as difficult as the problem of consciousness, so the sorts of solutions that are supposed to solve it are much like the solutions proposed for the problem of consciousness. The dualistic solution is to say…
Demystifying intentionality through biology
We are speaking, as we did about consciousness, of a certain set of biological capacities of the mind. And it is best to start with the biological capacities that are primitive—for instance, hunger, thirst, the sex drive, perception, and intentional action. In the last chapter…
The formal structure of intentional states
At this point, it seems to me the best thing I can do is describe the formal structure of intentional states, because we will not get a grasp on how intentionality functions, until we see the structural features of intentional states, such as beliefs and desires, hopes and…
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…
Conditions of satisfaction
Whenever we have an intentional state that has a non-null direction of fit, the fit will either be achieved or not: the belief will be true, the desire will be fulfilled, the intention will be carried out or not, as the case might be. In such cases, we can say that the belief…
Memories that refer to their own causes
The most biologically basic intentional phenomena, including perceptual experiences, intentions to do something, and memories, have a peculiar logical feature in their conditions of satisfaction. It is part of the conditions of satisfaction of, for example, my memory that I…
The network and the background
Intentional states do not in general come in isolated units. If I believe, for example, that it is raining, I cannot just have that belief in isolation. I must believe, for example, that rain consists of drops of water, that these fall out of the sky, that they generally go…
Intentionality is representation of conditions of satisfaction
I have given a very brief sketch of the formal structure of intentionality. We can summarize it as follows. For any intentional state, there is a distinction between the type of state it is, and its content. Where the content is a whole proposition, it will represent states of…
Intentionality is the structure of our mental life
The formal structure of the intentionality that I have described is no trivial matter. This is in fact the structure of our conscious life. Indeed, it is the structure of our mental life, both conscious and unconscious. When we come to understand a social situation we are in…
Intentionality-with-a-t and intensionality-with-an-s
Intentionality-with-a-t, as we have seen, is that property of the mind by which it is directed at or about or of objects and states of affairs in the world independent of itself. Intensionality-with-an-s is opposed to extensionality. It is a property of certain sentences…
Nothing inherently intensional about intentionality
The important thing to remember about the distinction between intentionality-with-a-t and intensionality-with-an-s is that there is nothing inherently intensional about intentionality. A statement to the effect that Brutus believes that Caesar crossed the Rubicon is indeed an…
Internalism versus externalism
The view that I have been tacitly assuming throughout this book is a form of internalism. According to internalism, so construed, our intentional contents are entirely a matter of what is inside our heads. Of course they refer to objects and states of affairs in the world. That…
The components of a thought
We have already seen that an intentional state sets conditions of satisfaction. So for example, if I have the belief that Socrates drinks water then my belief will be true, and hence satisfied, if and only if Socrates drinks water. The questions we are asking now are, What…
Knowing what words mean
There are then two sets of questions about the components of the thought. First, how does each element relate to the condition that it determines and second, how does the agent relate to the determination of those conditions? Granted that “Socrates” refers to Socrates and…
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…
Consciousness anchors intentionality
The next step in nailing this whole account down to the real world is to point to the central role of consciousness. To have an intentional state consciously, for example to think consciously that Caesar crossed the Rubicon, is to be consciously aware of the conditions of…
Conscious thought makes content easy to explain
If you ask, How can a state of my brain have the content that Caesar crossed the Rubicon? it seems an impossibly difficult question. But if you ask, How can my conscious thought “Caesar crossed the Rubicon” have the content that Caesar crossed the Rubicon? Then it is no longer…
Consciousness coordinates vast amounts of information
I will spell out the relations between consciousness and intentionality in chapter 9. For the moment, just this: one huge evolutionary advantage of human consciousness is that we can coordinate a large amount of intentionality (“information”) simultaneously in a single unified…