Categories of Intentionality

Categories of Intentionality

It’s time to get serious about intentionality. I mean we need to develop a systematic taxonomy of it—a classificatory scheme. And we need to include the whole it, not just this or that type. We also need to clean up and systematize the terminology, because the word “intentionality” hinders comprehension: it has no verb form (except “intend”, which is misleading) and it suggests intention too forcefully. I propose recruiting “reference” as our theoretical term, so that we can use “refer” as the verbal form. So, we need to construct a taxonomy of linguistic and mental reference—everything that can be said to refer in the sense intended by “intentionality”. We need a taxonomy of reference in general; and we need to establish priorities.

I will start with language—not because it is the most basic but because it is the most familiar and well-trodden. And I will distinguish four types of linguistic reference: nominal, descriptive, indexical, and general. There are different terms for these categories in the literature, but I think we can all agree if I say that these correspond to proper names, definite descriptions, demonstrative pronouns, and general terms (or predicates). These are all ways in which utterances can refer, and each has received its fair share of logical and linguistic treatment. In this connection we encounter such concepts as acquaintance knowledge and descriptive knowledge, sense and reference, context and causality, character and content, direct reference, rigid designation, intension and extension, predicate reference. It is generally agreed (though not universally) that we have here four distinct types of reference—four varieties of linguistic intentionality. The concept of reference is divisible into these four types.

Now we must ask if there are other bearers of reference apart from language. It is no great stretch to include cognitive states: thoughts, beliefs, and knowledge. Thoughts can be name-involving, descriptive, indexical, and general—and so can belief and knowledge. Thoughts can refer in these four ways. Some may say this is because there is a language of thought; others may take the cognitive case to be sui generis. We are certainly not speaking of the same thing when we say that thoughts (etc.) have intentionality or make reference. But it doesn’t stop there: we also have perception to consider. Again, it seems reasonable to attribute reference to perceptual states: I can see John, see the man in the corner, see that woman over there, and see the color red. Each of these is a different kind of perceptual intentionality requiring separate treatment. Different things are going on in my mind when I have the perceptual states in question—different mental acts are being performed, often simultaneously. Similarly for conative states: I can desire to go to France, desire to climb the highest mountain in the world, desire that piece of cake, desire to spread good will everywhere. Desire has the same four-way division of types of intentionality. And emotion lines up in turn: I can be angry at John, angry at the man (whoever he is) that spilt the milk, angry at that guy with the megaphone, and angry at fascism. All in all, then, we have twenty types of intentionality: four times five. There are five different types of mental state (including language) and four different types of referential device. They crowd together in the mental landscape as we perceive, think, desire, feel, and speak. The intentional zoo has many species in it.

So far, so smooth; not much to get worked up about here. But things become murkier when we inquire into priorities: which, if any, of these categories is basic? I certainly don’t think language is; in fact, I think it is the least basic. I am inclined to think that desire and emotion are basic, because more primitive evolutionarily. Perceptual reference exists in service to conation and emotion—desire for food and shelter and emotions of fear and aggression. The organism must secure food and shelter and it must avoid predators and seek mates. It senses what it needs to sense in order to survive. Reference derives ultimately from the conative and the affective—the desire-emotion complex. No doubt this primitive intentionality is modified when uploaded into other faculties, but the rudiments pre-exist these faculties. The question is difficult, but presumably it has an answer. Reference is not exactly clear and uncontroversial. What we can say is that a properly inclusive theory of intentionality will have to take in a lot more than is conventionally recognized. The varieties of reference are more extensive than the literature would suggest.  At any rate, we now have a taxonomy to work with.[1]

[1] I have referred (linguistically, mentally) to a vast literature in this short essay, as old hands will recognize: Brentano, Pierce, Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Quine, Strawson, Kripke, Kaplan, Evans, Burge, Donnellan, and others. These estimable thinkers have tended to focus on reference in language and left the other kinds to fend for themselves; I am trying to rectify this tremendous oversight, not to say injustice. Where is desire in all this? Where is anger? Such linguistic chauvinism! I am preaching inclusiveness.