378G Week 3 Searle Ch. 2 The Basic Structure of Intentionality, Action & Meaning
What follows is a summary of Searle’s overall theory of intentionality.
1. The definition of intentionality: intentionality is directedness.
Mental states have original intentionality. Linguistic expressions have derived intentionality. Mental states have intentionality when they are directed at or of or about external states of affairs. Visual experiences are intentional but undirected anxieties are not.
2. Intentional states consist in content and a psychological mode, and often the content is a whole proposition.
Searle uses “S(p)” to represent an intentional state with mode S & content p. Not all psychological states have an entire proposition as their content. Thus we have (Bel(Clinton is president) & Hate(Harry).
3. Propositional intentional states typically have conditions of satisfaction and a direction of fit.
A belief is satisfied iff it is true & a desire is satisfied iff it is fulfilled & an intention will be satisfied iff it is carried out.
It is the responsibility of the belief to match an independently existing state of affairs; so Searle says that the belief has a mind-to-world direction of fit.
Desires, on the other hand, represent not how things in the world are but how we would like them to be. For a desire to be satisfied, the world has to be made to correspond with the desire; and for an intention to be carried out, the world has to be made to match the intention’s content. So desires & intentions are said to have world-to-mind directions of fit.
To test whether an intentional state has a mind to world direction of fit ask whether it makes sense to say that the state is true or false.
Searle says that it was because of the parallels between intentional states and speech acts that he was led to many of his ideas about the mind.
Statements are like beliefs in that they represent their conditions of satisfaction with word-to-world direction of fit. Orders & promises, like desires & intentions, represent their conditions of satisfaction with the world-to-word direction of fit.
4. Many entities in the world that are not parts of mind or language have conditions of satisfaction & directions of fit.
Beliefs, statements & maps hover above the world & point down at the world they represent. So word/mind-to-world direction of fit goes downward. Desires, orders, intentions & promises have a world-to-word direction of fit & they go upwards.
Searle concludes this section by saying, “The key to understanding rationality in action is to understand the relations of the gap to the upward direction of fit” /40.
5. Intentional states have intentional causation & some intentional states are causally self referential, having causality built into their conditions of satisfaction.
Searle’s idea of causation is: Something making something else happen. All causation is efficient causation.
Intentional causation is described this way: An intentional state causes its conditions of satisfaction or the state’s conditions of satisfaction cause the intentional state—i.e., an intentional state causes the state of affairs that it represents or the state of affairs it represents causes the intentional state. /41
E.g., if I want a drink of water, my desire may cause me to drink water & if I see that the cat is on the mat, then the cat’s being on the mat—that fact—causes the visual experience that has this state of affairs as its content.
In the case of visual perception, the direction of fit (mind to world) & the direction of causation (world to mind) are different.
Where we have
Vis. Exp. (that the cat is on the mat & the fact that the cat is on the mat causes this Vis. Exp.)
It is part of the conditions of satisfaction that the intentional state must cause its conditions of satisfaction conditions of satisfaction. The cases of intentional states that are causally self referential in this way are: perceptual experiences, memories & intentions. In the case of VisExp, the experience is satisfied only if the very state of affairs that it purports perceive causes that VisExp.
Searle distinguishes between Prior Intentions & Intentions in Action.
p.i.(that I raise my arm & that this prior intention causes that I raise my arm) = I have a prior intention whose conditions of satisfaction are that I raise my arm & that this prior intention is what causes me to raise my arm.
i.a.(my arm goes up & this i.a. causes that my arm goes up) = I have an intention in action whose conditions of satisfaction are that my arm goes up & that this very intention in action causes my arm to go up. In ordinary English, the closest word for an intention in action is “trying” /45.
6. The intentional structure of cognition & volition are mirror images of each other, with directions of fit & directions of causation running in opposite directions.
If a visual experience is to be satisfied, it causally self-referential component must be satisfied: the world state of affairs that is being perceived must cause the experience of perceiving. Action is parallel, but with opposite directions of fit & causation. The intention is carried out only if the intention causes the world to be the way it represents the world to be.
7. Deliberation typically leads to intentional action by way of prior intentions.
Searle characterizes action as intention in action + bodily movement. Deliberation based on beliefs & desires causes a prior intention, which causes an intention in action, which causes bodily movement.
Whereas the intention must cause the world to fit the intention, the world must cause the perception or memory to fit the world.
8. The structure of volition contains three gaps.
1 There is a gap between deliberation and prior intentions that result from the deliberation. If I am deliberation about whether or not to vote for the strike, there is a gap between my reasons for voting to strike & my forming the prior intention to so vote.
2 There is a gap between the prior intention & the intention in action—a gap between deciding to do something & actually trying to do it.
3 The third gap exists in temporally extended intentions in action, such as driving home or writing a book. I have to try a number of times to carry out the prior intention. I could abandon the project before completion.
9. Complex actions have an internal structure whereby that agent intends to do one thing by means of, or by way of, doing something else. These are the causal & constitutive relations.
We turn on the light by means of moving the switch or we vote by means of raising our arm.
Sitting at my computer typing these notes do not cause me to write them; my typing is constitutive of my writing these notes.
10. Meaning is a matter of the intentional imposition of conditions of satisfaction on conditions of satisfaction.
When a speaker says “It is raining” & means thereby that it is raining, then the conditions of satisfaction of his intentions in action are 1) that his intention in action should produce the utterance of “It is raining” & 2) that that utterance should have a condition of satisfaction with downward direction of fit that it is raining.
In the case of speaker meaning, the speaker intentionally imposes conditions of satisfaction on the sounds or marks he intentionally produces. It is possible for him to do this because the words in a sentence of a natural language have a form of intentionality that is derived from the intrinsic, observer-independent intentionality of the intentional states of human agents.
11. We need to distinguish between observer-independent and observer-dependent intentionality.
Intentional states have intrinsic, original, observer-independent intentionality. Words have observer-relative/dependent intentionality.
12. The distinction between objectivity & subjectivity is really a conflation of two distinctions, one ontological & one epistemic.
Pains, tickles & itches have subjective ontology. Mountains, molecules & glaciers have objective ontology.
To say that Rembrandt never left the Netherlands is to make an epistemically objective statement. To say that Rembrandt was the greatest painter to ever live in Amsterdam is to make an epistemically subjective statement, or so Searle says.
That “Rouge” means what it does in French depends on the ontologically subjective attitudes of French speakers. But we can still have epistemically objective knowledge about the meaning of “Rouge.” Meanings are ontologically subjective, but our knowledge of meanings is epistemically objective.
13. Collective intentionality enables the creation of institutional facts. Institutional facts are created in accordance with constitutive rules of the form “X counts as Y in C.”
Money, government & language have institutional facts created by collective intentionality. Objects are assigned functions & institutional facts are created. When X counts as Y in C, X has the status of functioning as Y in C—X has a status function. E.g., “It’s snowing” has the status function of counting as an English sentence that says that it is snowing in English, or a certain piece of paper has the status function of counting as a twenty-dollar bill in Canada.
A screwdriver performs its physical function in virtue of its physical structure, not in vitue of any function collectively given to it. English words can perform their function only because they are collectively recognized as having a certain status & with that a certain status function /57.
14. Intentionality functions only to determine conditions of satisfaction against a pre-intentional or nonintentional Background of abilities.
We have to presuppose a Background of abilities, capacities, tendencies & dispositions that people share in order for intentional states to determine specific conditions of satisfaction.
Searle says, “Apparent cases of cultural relativity of rationality are usually due to different cultural Backgrounds.
15. Intentionality with a “t” must be distinguished from intentionality with an “s.”
Statements have intentionality with an “s” when they do not permit substitution of codesignative expressions salve veritas & do not permit existential generalization. They fail these two tests of extensionality.
Conclusion
Actions (= intentions in action + bodily movements) are the conditions of satisfaction of prior intentions & bodily movements are the conditions of satisfaction of intentions in action.