Talk:Intentional stance

"three layer" theory

This article is about Dennett's book and, reading it, his view is not about implementation but perspective. The only thing in common with the Variants is that there are three of them. I will remove this section if there is no comment in the next month or so as the comparison only waters down Dennett's argument by saying these others say the same thing when they don't. 149.170.167.130 (talk) 13:17, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

The essay I removed from the article is below:

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“...all there is to being a true believer is being a system whose behaviour is reliably predictable via the intentional strategy.” (Dennett, “True Believers”).

Dennett’s Intentional Strategy sets out the conditions for predicting the behaviour of an intentional object as follows: 1) Treat the object as a rational agent 2) Decide what beliefs and desires the object ought to have, given what sort of thing it is and what its circumstances are 3) Predict the object’s behaviour on the assumption that it will act “to further its goals in the light of its beliefs”2

This is meant to be an improvement on folk psychology, borrowing its terms and giving them a new meaning within the intentional systems theory (IST), which deals specifically with “the prediction and explanation from belief-desire profiles of the actions of whole systems, but treats the individual realisations of the systems as black boxes” It is also meant as a refutation of functionalist theories, which claim that intentional states are literally causal, and identity theories, which claim that belief a is identical with brain-state a. Instead, Dennett claims that our talk about minds does not refer to anything concrete, but to useful fictions, just as economists refer to imaginary entities like ‘the average taxpayer’. Dennett points out that our knowledge of folk psychology is a little like our knowledge of natural language ; we don’t learn it by definitions, but through use. Thus its continued existence rests not so much on it being a true account of mental activity as the fact that it works.

Dennett gives us two premisses about intentional states:

1) that intentional states are not concrete things, but concepts we have invented to be able to explain behaviour,

2) that there is no hope of getting rid of our talk of intentional states. As Jerry Fodor notes, “we have no idea of how to explain ourselves to ourselves except in a vocabulary which is saturated with belief/desire psychology.”

From these, he claims it follows that we should continue to talk about intentional states to explain and predict behaviour (albeit using his improved version of folk psychology, the intentional systems theory), but we should not then make the move to saying that we know what it is inside the system that is causing our theory to work. By treating intentional systems as ‘black boxes’, Dennett is able to extend the set to include not just humans and animals but plants, machines; theoretically even lightning. He can do this because now that the intentional states of humans are being treated as useful fictions, there is nothing special about them, within the theory, to make them ‘more real’ than the beliefs or desires of a photo-trophic plant or a thermostat. The most obvious objection to Dennett is the instinctive thought that it matters to us whether an object has an inner life or not. You don’t just imagine the intentional states of other people in order to predict their behaviour; the fact that they have thoughts and feelings just like you do is central to notions such as trust, friendship and love. The ‘Blockhead’ argument , as it is known, proposes that Jones has a twin who is in fact not a person but a very sophisticated robot, who looks and acts like Jones in every way, but who does not have any thoughts or feelings at all, just a chip which controls his behaviour ; in other words, ‘the lights are on but no one’s home’. According to the intentional systems theory, Jones and Blockhead have precisely the same beliefs and desires, but this seems false. The IST expert assigns the same mental states to Blockhead as he does to Jones, “whereas in fact (Blockhead) has not a thought in his head” The problem with this objection is it assumes that IST claims to tell us true things about our mental states, which it does not. In fact it remains agnostic about what beliefs and desires ‘really’ are in human beings, and uses intentional terms in a purely technical way to predict behaviour. Discovering that Blockhead is an automaton may have many implications for the people around him, but what it will not do is change the way they should reason about his behaviour. There is another objection, which attacks the premise that treating people as ideally rational creatures will yield the best predictions. Stephen Stich points out that people often have beliefs or desires which are irrational or bizarre, and IST doesn’t allow us to say anything about these. Of course if the person’s ‘environmental niche’ is examined closely enough, and the possibility of malfunction in their brain (which might affect their reasoning capacities) is looked into, it may be possible to formulate a predictive strategy specific to that person. Indeed this is what we often do when someone is behaving unpredictably - we look for the reasons why. This development takes away from the simplicity of the theory but is not explicitly an argument against it. A third objection takes the reverse case to the Blockhead example: a person who is completely paralysed. They have no behaviour and so IST should reason that therefore they have no intentional states. The solution to this is problematic: the IST expert looks to their circumstances and says: they probably have the belief that they are paralysed, and the desire that they weren’t, and I predict from these that their behaviour will be nil, hence, IST works. But could anything, then, be an intentional system? What about a lectern? Why not say that a lectern mourns the fact that it used to be a tree, and desires to be one again, but due to its circumstances it just stays where it is? This presents a strong challenge to the claim that IST can adequately account for beliefs and desires, for we surely do not want to say that a lectern is an intentional system. The rationale behind the intentional stance is based on evolutionary theory, assuming that the ability to make quick predictions of a system’s behaviour based on what we think it might be thinking was an evolutional advantage. The fact that our predictive powers are not perfect is a further result of the advantages sometimes accrued by acting contrary to expectations. If we take the intentional stance at face value; that is, as a conceptual tool and not as a literal definition of the mind, then it works in a roughly constructive empiricist fashion: to yield accurate results. “What is done, not how it is done, is what counts” ; and the intentional stance may help us to understand the mind better than many other available theories which make stronger claims but are more easily refuted. It is easy to make the objection that it falls short of telling us the whole story, but Dennett never meant it to be the whole picture. The challenge then is to come up a theory of consciousness which can adequately describe what significant difference, if any, there is between humans and other intentional systems. Such a theory would sharpen the distinctions between different levels of intentionality and perhaps satisfy those who are uncomfortable with Dennett’s attribution of beliefs and desires to any system which displays behaviour.

Bibliography

Dennett, D. - ‘Three kinds of intentional psychology’ (IP) in Heil, J. - Philosophy of Mind: A guide and anthology, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2004

Braddon-Mitchell, D., & Jackson, F. - Philosophy of Mind and Cognition, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1996

Dennett, D. - ‘True Believers’ (TB) in Dennett, D. - The Intentional Stance, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1987

Fodor, J. - Psychosemantics, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1987

Lycan, W. - Mind & Cognition, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1990

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Hmmmm???

I need some clarification on this, A. First of all, is it your intention that this articile be about the book Intentional Stance, the concept intentional stance or both. If it's about the book, I can include the template infobox book and you (I don't have a copy of the book unfortunanely nor am I close to a library) can fill out the details (publisher, etc.). If you are just covering the concept intentional stance, then you should try to include some alternative views and definitely add references (at least to Dennet himself!), further readin and so on: make it a full article, on other words. Second of all, I assume it was you that posted the above comments. If so, what was the problem with this material?? In the meantime, I'll just look it over for grammar, sentence structure and any obvious factual errors.--Lacatosias 15:23, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

The stuff above was by Kelly Martin, so I can't comment on their intentions.

However, I've always seen this article as being about the concept developed in The Intentional Stance and Consciousness Explained, not just that first book. You'll note that the article name lacks the "the" from the book title.

I'm all for additional references and some alternative views. Want to help out in this regard? Alienus 16:42, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

That's what I finally surmised. In any case, I basicaly reintroduced some of the interesting material regarding criticism and responses from what I found on this page back into the article. I aslo added the refenences. I don't have very much material of my own, but I do remember coming across one or two criticims of Dennett's evolutionary basis (or justification?) of the intentional stance. I don't know what Dennettìs reply would be, but this might be intersting to add as well. Perhaps tomorrow I will work on it a bit, since it's getting a bit late over here already. --Lacatosias 17:07, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good. I'll keep an eye on it and do a clean-up pass after you're mostly done. Alienus 17:39, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

  67.91.184.187 (talk) 19:07, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

The lectern argument

What are the sources for the claim that the third objection (about a lectern being an intentional system) is a "strong challenge" to ITS? This argument has a few big problems. It assumes that it is possible for there to be a totally-paralyzed person from which we would be unable to deduce in anyway their intent. Its an oversimplification to say that they have no measurable behavior at any level. The lectern claim also ignores how IST claims that an observer determines what stance to take with an object. An observer will look at a person and decide he is a rational agent, then determine his beliefs, desires, etc. For a lectern, an observer will look at it and see that it is a brainless inanimate object, then as a result look at it in a physical and/or design stance. At no point would someone deduce that a lectern is a rational being with an intentional system. — BRIAN0918 • 2007-03-05 17:42Z

I'm not familiar enough with the details of this objection to determine whether it is actually as weak as it seems or whether it is just badly stated by whoever wrote it up. It might even be OR, for all I know. I've never heard of it, except here. So,I would just put a tag on it (or remove it and replace with something more interesting as you see fit). I'm not going to search around for the objection myself to verify it.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 09:24, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Didn't you write that section? [1] — BRIAN0918 • 2007-03-06 14:07Z

No, I just copied it from up there at the top of this talk page. Not mine. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 14:26, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I see. Thanks for clearing that up. — BRIAN0918 • 2007-03-06 15:16Z

Logical Behaviourism

Moved to here as it is a new topic.

A friend of mine insists that IST is a form of logical behaviourism. Can anyone point me to a clear, explicit statement by Dennett on this matter? --Anonquick 15:26, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Book?

The Intentional Stance redirects here, but it's also the name of his 1987 book. Should it not have an article as well? Richard001 06:32, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Needs secondary sources

With secondary sources, this article is synthesis and OR (term paper?). Jojalozzo 16:18, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Suddenly Blackmore?

I get the impression something was edited out of the Meme section without regard to what's gone before. Suddenly there is a quote attributed to someone named Blackmore, without establishing Blackmore's relation to Dennett or to intential stance. It is left to the reader to puzzle it out by referring to the Blackmore link... but that's just not good encyclopedic writing style. rowley (talk) 20:03, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

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Difficult to understand

I've got to admit, having read this article, that the writing is difficult to understand. Maybe someone who really understands the material should write a paragraph as if explaining to a 10-year old. As it is, the wording makes an apparently very simple concept seem much more complicated than necessary. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.39.130.177 (talk) 04:36, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

I find the opening confusing. How about something like the following?

The intentional stance refers to a strategy of predicting and explaining the behavior of an object by reference to mental states. The term was coined by philosopher Daniel Dennett.

Oadys (talk) 13:28, 17 October 2023 (UTC)