Maverick Philosopher

IS THERE INTENTIONALITY IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD?

CRITICAL REMARKS ON DRETSKE

‘Intentionality’ is the philosophical term of art for that property of (some) mental states whereby they are (non-derivatively) of, or about, or directed to, an object. The state of perceiving, for example is necessarily object-directed. One cannot just perceive; if one perceives, then one perceives something. The same goes for intending (in the narrow sense), believing, imagining, recollecting, wishing, willing, desiring, loving, hating, judging, knowing, etc. Such mental states refer beyond themselves to objects that may or may not exist, or, in the case of propositional accusatives, may or may not be true. Thus Bush’s belief that Saddam possessed WMDs is the belief it is, and has the aboutness it has, whether or not the proposition the belief is about is true or false.

Franz Brentano took intentionality to be the criterion whereby physical and mental phenomena are distinguished. For Brentano, (i) all mental phenomena are intentional, (ii) all intentional phenomena are mental, and (iii) no mental phenomenon is physical. (Franz Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (1874), Bk. II, Ch. 1.) But we are now living in naturalistic times. The widespread conviction that physicalism or materialism or naturalism in some version or other just must be true has made it seem important to 'naturalize' intentionality, to show how intentional phenomena such as beliefs and desires can be explained physicalistically. For if they cannot be so explained, if they cannot be identified with physical phenomena, how can they be real? As Jerry Fodor puts it, "If aboutness is real, it must be really something else." (Jerry A. Fodor, Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1987), p. 97) This is Fodor’s paradoxical way of saying that there is a problem about explaining how intentionality — the ‘unnatural’ property of reference to what need not exist or be true — can be real given that only natural items are real.

This concern gives rise to what may be called the 'naturalization project,' the attempt to show that intentional phenomena are either identical to or supervenient upon physical phenomena. Others do not see much of a problem here. Fred Dretske, for example, holds that "there is no need to naturalize intentionality" since "It is already a familiar part of our physical world." (Fred Dretske, "If You Can't Make One, You Don't Know How It Works," Midwest Studies in Philosophy XIX, eds. French, et al. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), p. 471.) He means original, not derived or borrowed intentionality of the kind found in words and maps. A map, for example, is about a portion of terrain. But the map’s aboutness is not intrinsic to it, but borrowed from us, who interpret the map as about the terrain. Our interpreting, however, and our comparing of map and terrain, are presumably instances of original intentionality. Dretske's view, then, is that there is original or intrinsic intentionality in natural systems below the level of mind. Not only are mental intentional phenomena really physical, but there are nonmental intentional phenomena. If Dretske is right, we should not be puzzled by mental intentional phenomena, nor should we take them as posing any threat to a thoroughgoing naturalism.

Dretske invites us to consider a compass the needle of which normally (i.e., when it is functioning properly and is used correctly) points to magnetic (as opposed to geographic) North. Dretske holds that this pointing or indicating is a case of original intentionality: the compass’ “being a reliable indicator does not itself depend on us." (Ibid., p. 471.) It is unlike a map which gets its intentionality from us. So far, so good.

But what makes the needle's pointing to magnetic North an intentional phenomenon? Note that Dretske's claim is not that the needle's behavior is in some metaphorical or 'as-if' sense intentional, but that it is genuinely intentional. Now one mark of intentionality is aspectuality. "Anything exhibiting this mark is about something else under an aspect." (Ibid.) The idea is a familiar one. To be aware (whether in perception, imagination, memory...) of something x is to be aware of it as something F. Necessarily, awareness is always awareness of something as something. Furthermore, even if every F is a G, I can be aware of x as F without being aware of x as G. Indeed, this is so even if necessarily (whether metaphysically or nomologically) every F is a G. Thus I can be aware of a moving object as a cat, without being aware of it as spatially extended, as an animal, as a mammal, as an animal that cools itself by panting as opposed to sweating, as my cat, as the same cat I saw an hour ago, etc. Dretske sees the same structure in compass needles:

Compass needles are about geographical regions or directions under one aspect (as, say, the direction of the pole) and not others (as the habitat of polar bears). This is the same way our thoughts are about a place under one aspect (as where I was born) but not another (as where you were born). (Ibid.)

Dretske's argument seems to be this:

a. Anything that is about objects under some aspects but not others in the way our thoughts are is an intentional state.

b. Compass states are about objects under some aspects but not others in the way our thoughts are.

Therefore

c. Compass states are intentional states.

This strikes me as a breathtakingly bad argument the badness of which should be evident from my (deductively valid) reconstruction. First of all, to say that the needle is 'about' the polar region as magnetic North is just to say that its pointing in that direction is caused by the magnetic properties of the polar region. What else could 'about' mean here? It is obvious that the needle is not conscious of magnetic North, or of anything else. A compass needle cannot intend or mean anything, any more than a pile of bear scat can intend or mean anything. Of course, one can say such things as, 'This fresh bear scat means that a bear was in the vicinity recently,' but this use of 'means' expresses derivative intentionality, intentionality of the kind which presupposes the original intentionality of minds. And to say that the compass needle's pointing is not 'about' the polar region as bear-inhabited is just to say that its pointing in that direction is not caused by the 'ursine' properties of the polar region, even though the 'ursine' and magnetic properties are coexemplified. Premise (b), then, is simply and strikingly false.

It is widely accepted that causation is always causation in respect of specific properties. Thus a knife cuts through tendons in virtue of its sharpness and not in virtue of its being two feet long, but fits into the drawer in virtue of its being two feet long but not in virtue of its sharpness. The properties may even be necessarily coextensive. Triangularity and trilaterality are necessarily coextensive properties: there is no possible world in which one but not the other is exemplified. Nevertheless, it is in virtue of the triangularity, but not the trilaterality, of a piece of metal that I have three bloody points on the palm of my hand.

What Dretske is doing in the quoted passage, then, is assimilating the aspectuality of intentionality to the 'aspectuality' of causation:

INTENTIONALITY: if x is about y, then x is about y under some aspect F, and x can be about y under F without being about y under G even if necessarily every F is a G.

CAUSATION: if x is caused by y, then x is caused by y in virtue of some property F of y, and x can be caused by y in virtue of F without being caused by y in virtue of G of y even if necessarily every F is a G.

No doubt there is an interesting structural analogy between the aspectuality of intentionality and the 'aspectuality' of causation. But does this analogy warrant saying that the compass needle is about a place in the same way (Dretske's words) that our thoughts are about a place? I would think not. First of all, to use ‘about’ and ‘of’ in connection with the pointing of compass needles is a misuse of terms, or at best a misleading idiosyncrasy. There may be as-ness in the compass example, but there is no of-ness. Genuine intentionality involves both as-ness and of-ness. Second, even if we acquiesce in Dretske's terminological mischief, a compass needle is not 'about' or 'of' a place the way consciousness is — on pain of an egregious equivocation. Consciousness presents its object, makes or lets it appear, which is something it could not do apart from consciousness; the needle does not present its 'object,' nor does it make or let it appear. Strictly speaking, the needle's pointing does not have an object; it has a cause. Nor does the needle present its 'object' under an 'aspect.' One cannot speak literally of aspects here, because nothing is appearing to the needle or to the compass. ‘Aspect’ by its very etymology (ad-spectare) is a mind-involving term. What we have here again is terminological inflation. Furthermore, the needle's pointing to magnetic North is a purely physical, publicly observable, pointing. In this sense, consciousness does not 'point' to its object; it is rather the presentation of its object. I cannot examine your states of consciousness to see what they are about the way I can examine compass needles, weather vanes, etc. to see what they are pointing at. And I do not examine my own states of consciousness to see what they are about. I may examine a state of my body such as a skin rash to inquire about its underlying cause, but I never examine my conscious experiences to see what they are of or about. Experiences are not signs of their objects. Husserl refuted this 'sign-theory' of consciousness long ago. (Cf. Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations vol. II, trans. J. N. Findlay (New York: The Humanities Press, 1970), pp. 593-596.)

Thus it is only by equivocating on such key words as 'about' and 'aspect' that Dretske can come to ascribe original intentionality to compass needles, clouds, smoke, tree rings, and the like. But he may be committing another mistake, namely, that of inferring that if something is not a case of derived intentionality, then it must be a case of original intentionality. For there is the possibility that it is a case of what Searle calls ‘as-if’ intentionality, which of course is not intentionality at all. A good example is a thermostat which, as we say, ‘senses’ a change in room temperature. Such talk is harmless in everyday life but misleading to some philosophers. Clearly, the thermostat does not literally sense anything; it is not conscious of a change in temperature. ‘Sensors’ in general, whether electrical, mechanical, electromagnetic, photoelectric, etc., do not literally sense anything. Sentience is a mode of consciousness, and no such contraption as a thermostat is conscious. Or do you want to say that a chocolate bar melting in a hot car literally feels the heat? Yet thermostats behave as if they sense a change in temperature; it is as if they possess intentional states. The same holds for the pointing of the compass needle. From the fact that this is not a case of derived intentionality, it does not follow that it is a case of original intentionality. What follows is that it is not a case of intentionality at all, but merely behaves as if it were a case of intentionality. As Colin McGinn puts it, "When we think we are conceiving of content in the absence of consciousness we are really treating a system as if it were conscious, while simultaneously denying that this is what we are up to."(Colin McGinn, The Problem of Consciousness (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1991), p. 33. McGinn does not endorse this view.)

To deny the distinction between intrinsic and 'as-if' intentionality would be to embrace the view that all natural phenomena are intentional. For all natural phenomena have causes, and causation, as noted, is always in respect of properties. But it is surely obvious that not all natural phenomena are intentional in the very same way conscious phenomena are intentional. If they were, absolutely everything would be conscious, which is absurd.

What one could say, perhaps, is that that there are two kinds of intentionality, or two kinds of content. There is unconscious intentionality and there is conscious intentionality. In this way one might hope to avoid the absurd conclusion that every natural phenomenon exhibits conscious intentionality. McGinn speaks in this connection of "two species of content, personal and subpersonal..." He continues:

I doubt that the self-same kind of content possessed by a conscious perceptual experience, say, could be possessed independently of consciousness; such content seems essentially conscious, shot through with subjectivity. This is because of the Janus-faced character of conscious content: it involves presence to the subject, and hence a subjective point of view. Remove the inward-looking face and you remove something integral — what the world seems like to the subject. (Ibid. p. 34)

This is right, and spells the doom of the naturalization project, the attempt to account for such intentional phenomena as beliefs and desires in wholly physicalistic terms. For what it implies is that there can be no third-person, wholly objective, understanding of conscious intentionality. But without an understanding of conscious intentionality, there is no understanding of mind.

But even more fundamentally, could there be two kinds of original intentionality? Is this a coherent proposal? If there are two kinds or species of original intentionality, conscious and unconscious, then there must be a genus of which they are the species. But what could this genus be? We saw, pace Dretske, that the pointing of the compass needle is not about magnetic North in the same sense that a thought is about magnetic North. It is only by equivocating on 'of' and 'about' that one could think otherwise. Thus there is no generic aboutness. If there is no generic aboutness, there can be no kinds or species of aboutness. Clearly, what we must say is that unconscious intentionality is no more a kind of intentionality than artificial leather is a kind of leather. In 'artificial leather,' 'artificial' does not specify, but shifts, the sense of 'leather.' Similarly, 'unconscious' does not specify, but shifts, the sense of 'intentionality.' Unconscious intentionality, then, is as-if intentionality. And McGinn's subpersonal contents are as-if contents.