“How could something in your head point this abstract arrow at a thing in the world?”
Daniel Dennett, ‘Consciousness Explained’.
Abstract
In this essay I offer a theory of the outward directedness of intentional states, namely, an account of what makes intentional states directed at their respective intentional objects. The theory is meant to be complementary to the canonical interactivist account of mental content in that the latter emphasizes the predicative, intensional, and internal aspects of representation whereas here I shall focus on its denotative, extensional, and external aspects. Thus, the aim is to establish that the two projects are not only consistent but mutually supportive. Further, it is hoped that supplementing the interactivist conception of representation with a theory of intentional directedness along such lines will increase its overall appeal to critical readers. Based on the core idea that the directedness of a representation is a function of the manner in which it is constructed within, and contributes to the ongoing unfolding of a dynamical interactive loop connecting information to focused action, the theory is subsequently extended to cover many problem domains familiarly associated with representation and reference.
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Notes
A caveat: I use the term ‘intentional directedness’ in a technical sense corresponding to the fact that it is an essential feature of intentional states that they manifest a direction towards things external to themselves (where the latter may be concrete or abstract, real or imaginary, single or plural). Thus, as I use it, ID is meant to capture the tracking, or pointing aspect of intentionality. However, I wish to dissociate my use of this term from the stronger thesis that a specification of the intentional directedness of a mental state amounts to a specification of its representational content.
This contention is challenged by those who adhere to the thesis of ‘physical intentionality’ (Molnar 2003; Place 1996) according to which simple physical and chemical dispositions manifest a directedness strongly analogous to that which we find in psychological intentional states, thereby constituting a counter-case to Brentano’s thesis (intentionality being, on this account, the mark of the dispositional rather than the mental). Though I believe that these authors miss something important about the nature of intentional states no attempt to prove the point will be made here (but see, for example, chapter 5 in Bird 2007).
To the purist it must be conceded that this Fregean view is not entirely Frege’s (Frege was anxious to distinguish ‘sense’ from ‘intension’, and he stressed that only abstract entities, and not psychological states, are bearers of sense). Nevertheless, the view may be legitimately described as Fregean if for no other reason than that, in the context of modern philosophy of language, it is Frege who was particularly influential in cementing the idea that the extension of a semantically meaningful entity is determined by its internal (viz. intensional) meaning factor.
In what follows I discuss only a few aspects of these two versions of interactivist semantics, and then only generally. The reader interested in the (sometimes rather complex) details is advised to consult the original texts by these authors, and possibly also Shani (2006).
In Bickhard’s writings this constructive endeavor is almost invariably associated with a critical effort aimed at demonstrating the implausibility, and even incoherence, of the foundational assumptions guiding the encoding-based approaches to representation prevalent in the literature.
Several other important adequacy criteria are also satisfied by the interactivist model. We have already seen that it makes misrepresentation, and its detection, intelligible. Other allegedly satisfied desiderata include avoiding epiphenomenalism (Bickhard 2003; Shani 2007); accounting for the possibility of the emergence of representation (Bickhard 2001, 2004); and accommodating the intensional character of content (Shani 2009, 2010).
Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Quine, Searle, Kripke, Putnam, and Kaplan are only some of the familiar names that come to mind in this context.
It may be observed that even below the level of the emergence of object-representation external directedness is a real phenomenon; it is just that such directedness, is applied not to an object as such (that is insofar as it is recognized as a whole enduring object in which many properties reside in reciprocity) but, in a rather more selective and pragmatically “narrow minded” manner, only to certain limited features of the object whose interactive significance is markedly salient (e.g., being climbable, poisonous, slippery, etc. for an interesting discussion see Reed 1982).
Recursive self-maintenance is the capacity of a system to maintain its own self-maintaining organization: for example, by following an upstream glucose gradient so as to obtain the nutrients required to sustain the organism’s metabolism. Self-directedness, however, implies a greater degree of behavioral flexibility; it implies the system’s ability to modify its own strategies for recursive self-maintenance based on individual, or collective experience, or, in other words, on learning (e.g., the capacity to learn which flowers have a greater nectar yield, or when to initiate a chase).
It would be wrong to suggest that Bickhard’s account is in any way inimical to such considerations; however, his discussions of representation are almost invariably focused on internal factors, such as differentiations and indications, and on the functional presuppositions of indications—the directive “steering” role of representation is rarely, if ever, emphasized.
This critique is meant neither to deny the seductive suggestiveness of the logical spotlight theory, nor to belittle any specific version of it (whether Locke’s, or Frege’s, or Russell’s, or Carnap’s, or…).
It matters not that information semantics and teleosemantics emphasize certain additional conditions such as asymmetric dependency (Fodor 1990), or historical selection—whether evolutionary (e.g., Millikan 1984) or developmental (Dretske 1988)—for these are merely ways of securing the “right” kind of linear hookups.
Essentially, the qua problem is but a variant of a problem which appears, in a different guise, as Quine’s indeterminacy puzzle, as I show elsewhere (Shani 2005).
I prefer the term ‘proactive’ over the more frequently used label ‘enactive’ (e.g., Varela et al. 1991) because it conveys more clearly the idea that mental phenomena, so conceived, are not only active, rather than passive, but also forward looking, rather than reactive. But, such subtleties aside, the two terms are virtually identical.
‘Optimal’ here is, of course, a relative term contingent on various intermingled constraints. For example, the urgency of executing the goal at hand, tensions with other functional goals, intervening factors which may ease or aggravate the situation (such as, say, the conditions of the terrain) etc.
My initial exploration of this idea was made in an unpublished manuscript dated to 2001 (‘Regulatory Role Semantics’). I have since learned that many of the core insights with which I struggled in this fledgling manuscript have been developed independently, and in a rather more mature form, by Anderson and Rosenberg in the works cited below. Nevertheless, whatever unique character there is to the ideas I offer in the present paper traces its origins to this forlorn early manuscript.
By ‘intentional control’ it is meant that the said cognitive process is “subject to modification by processes of attention, short-term memory, valuation, assent and dissent, practiced learning, and consciously administered self-criticism and praise” (2008, 70).
Anderson and Rosenberg present two other senses in which (they believe) an action may be taken with respect to an entity, both involving the concept of an assumption of information which, as far as I can see, is equivalent to Bickhard’s notion of functional presupposition. Considerations of brevity and focus preclude me from discussing these additional senses any further.
To the protocol, I may add that I prefer to think of the monitored channels through which focus is consolidated as control channels comprising both feedback and feedforward modulations (see Grush 2004 for a discussion of the debate on this subject).
In general, many actions are quite complex and they may comprise of sub-actions and their own sub-foci. For example, during the chase the cheetah may attempt to avoid certain obstacles such as branches lying on the ground. Avoiding such obstacles may itself provide a temporary focus but such sub-foci are embedded within the inclusive context of the ultimate goal in that the adjustments taken with respect to them are part and parcel of the overall regulatory effort taken with respect to the primary focus—the chase (see Anderson and Rosenberg 2008, 76).
I say “more or less” because, as we will see shortly, my own account differs from Anderson and Rosenberg’s in that it allocates greater emphasis to the existence of a causal interactive loop connecting intentional states with their intentional objects, a difference which also translates into some disagreements concerning the interpretation of semantic data.
Anderson and Rosenberg may protest, somewhat justifiably, that their theory can accommodate much of what is being said here since they do not deny that many instances of action-guidance take this causal-interactive form. But, while this is true, it is also true that their account does not indicate that such causal-interactive loops are indeed the central template whose shape is presupposed in the workings of even considerably more abstract or detached forms of representation, as I argue below.
It follows from the view I defend that the unsuspecting lady is misrepresented as Mom both because ‘Mom’ is canonically directed at Mom (in the sense described above) and because (as a result) when it is used, even with respect to other women, it is used in such a way that the interactive properties being presupposed (hence implicitly predicated) are properties predominantly extracted from previous interactions with Mom, therefore reflecting the interactive profile of the mother (the stranger inevitably causes the child an interactive upset precisely because sooner or later the child discovers that she does not match with Mom as-she-knows-her).
Notice that direct guidance does not imply causal immediacy; rather, in our sense of direct guidance, representations may directly guide actions whose focal entities are mediated through long and fairly complicated chains of intervening factors (see section four). This is but a special case of the general rule that epistemic directness does not imply causal directness (see Bickhard and Richie 1983, 43–44).
There are, of course, fundamental limits on the degree of focus (in terms of its exactness, effectiveness, and so on) due, for example, to the uncertainty principle, or the exclusion principle; yet, it remains true that we can think and act with respect to subatomic entities.
Noticeably, I have switched here from the problem domain of aiming at individual objects to that of aiming at kinds. There reason this is being done without much explanatory ado is that I believe that the same basic principles securing directedness to individual objects are also operative in thinking about, and acting with respect to kinds (such parallels are commonplace in other naturalistic accounts of intentional directedness such as, for example, information semantics).
Notice that even when misidentifications lead to substantive change in the representation of an intentional object they are still incorporated into that representation (of the original object) rather than lead to referential bifurcation. For example, if you believe that your colleague Albert intentionally and rudely ignored you, based on a chance encounter with his twin brother Hugo of whose existence you are unaware, your resentment will be directed towards Albert, and may permanently change the relations between the two of you, confirming your opinion about Albert, however unfortunately constructed.
For example, if we are fond of horses, and the lodge where we have spent the night is not too far away, we may be inclined to look for the foggy field of yesterday only to discover our folly and have a good laugh.
The reader may have noticed the similarity of this analysis to the work of Gareth Evans, in particular in papers such as ‘the Causal Theory of Names’ (1973), which indeed had a considerable influence on my approach to the subject (in particular, thinking of the information ⇔ action-guidance loop in terms of dominance of influence).
Note also that while the interactive-loop approach requires (surprise!) interactions it does not anchor its assigned semantic valuations (whether extensional or intensional) in remote past events, as does for example Millikan’s theory (1984, 1993), but, rather, in the ongoing dynamics of interaction.
Of course, we can only expect partial resemblance given that real life is not narrated with the genius of an author, while, on the other hand, it is much more variegated in terms of the channels of information-gathering and action-guidance open for us.
The order of this progression seems to be in line with the interactivist account of the ascending abstractness of levels of representations (see Campbell and Bickhard 1986).
Needless to say, the converse is also true: the course, and character, of present interaction modifies future anticipations.
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Acknowledgments
This work was done under Global Research Network Program (collaborators: Sungho Choi, Huw Price, Alexander Bird, and Toby Handfield), which was supported by the Korea Research Foundation Grant funded by the Korean Government (MEST)(KRF-2008-220-A00001). I am indebted to Michael L. Anderson and Mark H. Bickhard for reading the manuscript and providing me with valuable comments.
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Shani, I. Aim that Bow! An Interactivist Gaze at the Problem of Intentional Tracking. Axiomathes 21, 67–97 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-010-9133-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-010-9133-9