LAS RELACIONES DE LAS PERSONAS: CONSIGO MISMO

The modern representationalist stance embodied by the cognitive view has developed as a result of the inability of functionalist theories of mind to account for mental content. While functionalist theories of mind allowed mental states like being in pain, for example, to be multiply realized by defining types of mental states according to their functional role (thus improving substantially upon identity theories of mind), they failed to provide an account for intentional mental states as well as for sensations (see Chapter I).

‘The functionalist thinks of mental states as causal intermediaries between perceptual inputs and behavioural outputs. This is an advance on thinking of them simply as physical states. But, for all that, functionalism still presents mental states as part of a system of causal pushes and pulls inside the head.’186

Modern representationalist theories of mind recognized and addressed this problem by postulating, that in addition to their functional roles, mental states also encode meanings. This assumption made a significant contribution to the picture of the mind as a physical symbol system, and the LOT hypothesis. Because the content of mental representations can be described as attitudes or relations towards propositions it is also called propositional content, and the content laden mental states are often referred to as propositional attitudes (PAs). Within the context of the cognitive view, the possession of PAs by human beings is accounted for by the claim that the internal mental states (i.e. tokenings of inner mental representations) encode the respective propositional attitudes. Fodor´s language of thought hypothesis, discussed in the previous chapter is widely conceived of as the most thorough account of a physical symbol system within which inner mental representations are realized:

‘At the heart of the theory is the postulation of a language of thought: an infinite set of `mental representations´ which function both as the immediate objects of propositional attitudes, and

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as the domains of mental processes.’ More precisely, the representational theory of mind is the conjunction of the following 2 claims: 1. (the nature of prepositional attitudes): For any organism O, and any attitude A toward the proposition P, there is a (computational/functional) relation R and a mental representation MP such that MP means that P, and O has A iff R to MP… . 2. (the nature of mental processes): Mental processes are causal consequences of tokenings of mental representations.‘187

Moreover, it has also been pointed out that

‘…the feature of `propositional attitudes´ known as `intentionality´ itself forces upon us a theory of mental representations. The intentionality of a thought consists in the fact that verbs of propositional attitude are about or directed, in a curious way, upon the situation specified in the proposition they contain.’ 188

The conception of mental processes as the causal consequences of tokenings of inner mental representations, i.e. mental states, as envisaged by Fodor (see above) is important because it provides the crucial link between mental representations and a causal reductionist explanation of human action and behaviour. Mental representations are conceived as the inner termini of the causal chains that instigate action. Consequently, they assume a causal functional role in the explanation of action, which is analogous to the role microscopic unobservables play in the explanation of the behaviour of macroscopic objects. The property of intentionality is the decisive feature in virtue of which mental representations are able to fulfil their causal role. Without the property of intentionality, it is thought, there can be no causal explanation of behaviour (see: Chapter I, Sec. 3.1, 3.2).

Intentionality is a property of both content laden mental states, like beliefs, desires, hopes etc., and linguistic tokens like (written) sentences or utterances. They can be about distant or non-existent affairs or they can be descriptions of, or utterances about, actual goings on. Although there is a close connection between the mind and intentionality189 it is important to note that not all content-laden mental states are intentional states. Mental states, like sensations of pain or pleasure, lack intentionality. In the present context, intentionality is to be understood as a property

187

Fodor (1987), p.16f

188

Preston (1997), p.8

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of certain content-laden mental states190, as well as of linguistic entities, like utterances, expressions etc.. Moreover, because intentionality is characteristic of both certain content-laden mental states and linguistic tokens it appears to provide a link between mental content and linguistic meaning. Because content-laden mental states can be expressed as propositional attitudes, and the expression of propositional attitudes by human beings is a way of communicating mental states through language, the expression of PAs provides crucial evidence for the ascription of mental states. It is in this way that mental content and linguistic meanings are crucially linked up.

To develop a satisfactory account of the intentionality of mental states and linguistic meaning has been a long standing problem within the philosophy of mind and contemporary cognitive science. To many, intentionality appears to be an utterly mysterious property. How is it that mental states, thought and language can be about something? The fact that intentionality seems to escape our usually highly successful explanations in terms of physical properties makes this feature even more puzzling. The sciences can easily explain a person’s height, mass, weight, colour of hair, eyes or skin etc., but they can’t explain my hope that I may dance with Cécile for OUDT this year, or my desire to strangle my new bulldog puppy Giacomo, because he has chewed up the body of my favourite Fender Stratocaster and left significant ‘bite- marks’. And while the quality and character of my voice (i.e. its pitch, frequency etc.) can be analysed in physical terms, the fact that my wish to dance with Cécile concerns a non-existent state of affairs, and that my desire to strangle Giacomo is about a hypothetical action that would never actually be carried out, can not be explained in terms of natural science. A characteristic divide seems to exist between the properties of human beings and their minds. Consequently, the question how the property of intentionality fits into our naturalistic framework of nature, and how it can be integrated into our general scientific view of the world, forces itself upon us.

In order to address these questions in a naturalistic manner, modern representationalism adopts a strategy of explanatory priority. It attempts to explain

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Note: Because content can be stated using a that-clause, it is also called propositional content. Content-laden mental states are propositional attitudes because they can be individuated as attitudes or relations towards propositions.

linguistic meaning as resulting from mental content and then to give a reductionist account of the latter. Naturally, this account gravitates around the notion of inner mental representations, which are thought to stand in causal relations to the world. Thus, mental content is naturalized by way of providing a causal explanation of content:

‘What we want at a minimum is something of the form ‘R represents S’ is true iff C where the vocabulary in which condition C is couched contains neither intentional nor semantic expressions.’191

This approach is exemplified in the cognitive view in general and Fodor´s language of thought hypothesis in particular, where the explanation of mental content takes the form of a purely descriptive causal theory. The adoption of this explanatory strategy implies the assumption that inner mental representations possess natural, underived or intrinsic content (as opposed to conventional or derived content/intentionality) in virtue of the causal relations in which they stand. The meaning of language is then explained as deriving from the content of mental states192, which itself is explained by reduction to non-intentional phenomena.

In addition, this reductionist explanatory strategy is also thought to provide an account for two further characteristic properties of mental content, besides intentionality: Its structure and normativity. The normativity of content is linked to the conceptualisation of intentionality by means of PAs and propositional content, as PAs specify a condition for the world to satisfy, if the attitude is to be fulfilled. In addition, mental states stand in logical and rational relations to each other193. Furthermore, it has been claimed that understanding a thought, i.e. entertaining a PA, is a structured ability in as much as it presupposes connections and links to other thoughts (or PAs). That is, if one is able to understand the thought like <this bulldog is naughty>, one must also be able to understand other thoughts which contain the concepts of bulldog and naughty, which convey, for example, that there are bulldogs that aren’t naughty or that there are other dogs besides bulldogs, which are naughty too. Both the normativity and the systematicity of content, and thus the normativity of thought

191

Fodor (1991) p.32

192

I.e., from tokenings of inner mental representations in a language of thought.

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are explained by postulating the existence of causal relations between mental representations.

The following discussion will examine the plausibility of the representationalist account of intentionality and the normativity and structure of content, which has been outlined above. Particular emphasis will be placed on examining the notion of

explanatory priority and the hypothesized causal role of mental states. In the course of this investigation, some of the criticism and ideas regarding the conceptions of a medium of thought, mental states and the structure of thought discussed and introduced in preceding chapters will be revisited to the extent that they have a direct bearing on the issues examined in the present chapter. The alternative account of intentionality and mental content will draw heavily on Wittgenstein’s conception of language and his ideas about grammar and rules.

2. Examining the Representationalist Account of Intentionality, and the