Origins of Intentionality

Origins of Intentionality

What is the origin of intentionality? There are three main areas to consider: perception, thought, and language. In the twentieth century it was fashionable to take linguistic intentionality as basic; the other two are then derived from it. The classical empiricists took perceptual intentionality as basic with thought and language parasitic on that. A third possibility would be that the intentionality of thought is basic with perception and language dependent on thought. These appear to exhaust the options, though in principle there could be combinations (e.g., language and perception are independently intentional and together they fix the intentionality of thought). Further formulations might introduce the concepts of behavior and consciousness: linguistic behavior fixes intentionality, or consciousness does. In other words, it might be linguistic use that fixes intentionality, or it might be conscious experience. In either case the origins of intentionality lie in facts we are aware of—outer acts of speech or inner acts of mind. But there is a third possibility: intentionality derives from something we are not aware of, something pre- or sub-conscious. This was in effect the view of the rationalists or nativists: the mind is innately equipped with subconscious mechanisms that develop into what we know as mature intentionality. These “innate ideas” are the real source of perceptual, cognitive, and linguistic intentionality. The interesting point here is that the origins of intentionality are taken to be unconscious. They derive from genetically determined states of the brain of which we have no conscious awareness. It isn’t consciousness per se that gives rise to intentionality, or observable linguistic use per se, but the underlying representational states of the brain that are encoded in the genes. The innate ideas shape sense experience and linguistic behavior, so producing what we are aware of; but they themselves exist in a state of unconsciousness. Perhaps this is why this type of theory has not attracted much attention: it deals in unobservable entities whose nature eludes us. These are the hidden springs of intentionality. Even if the empiricist theory is true, the intentionality of consciousness derives from an outside source; consciousness doesn’t itself produce intentionality. Neither does language use produce its own intentionality (how could it?); that comes from the innate store of representational items (ideas, concepts). We know there are unconscious processes involved in generating perceptual experience and linguistic use; according to the nativist theory, these include devices for generating intentionality. The origins of intentionality are thus hidden not open to inspection. They are hidden as the genes are hidden—and the genes are the things that generate bodies and minds. It isn’t that language creates conscious experience, or that conscious experience creates language; rather, both are created by unconscious innate ideas (plus some). Humans and animals are subject to the same biological law: pre-experiential and pre-linguistic intentionality that reveals itself in observable phenomena.[1]

[1] From a wider perspective, we may say that the linguistic theory of intentionality is itself an empiricist theory, since it locates the origin of intentionality in observable facts about the world—speech acts we can see and hear. The nativist theory, by contrast, traces intentionality back to its unconscious roots deep in the brain and the genes; the causes of intentionality are hidden causes—not perceptible by the senses. The linguistic turn took place within the empiricist circle. But the nativist-rationalist theory abandons such empiricism, even to the point of making the causes of intentionality unknowable (hence mysterious). Moreover, this theory is actually true.