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14 - Intentionality and language

from Part III - Interaction and intersubjectivity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2014

By
Robert B. Brandom
Edited by
N. J. Enfield ,
Paul Kockelman  and
Jack Sidnell
N. J. Enfield
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute
Paul Kockelman
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
Jack Sidnell
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Summary

This chapter presents a battery of concepts, distinctions, terminology, and questions that are common currency among philosophers of mind and language who think about intentionality. It sketches a systematic, interlocking set of commitments regarding the relations among these concepts and distinctions, which underwrites a distinctive set of answers to some of the most important of those questions. There are two distinctions to keep in mind by the term intentionality, the distinction between practical and discursive intentionality, and the distinction between propositional and representational intentionality. Practical intentionality is the sort of directedness at objects that animals exhibit when they deal skillfully with their world. Discursive intentionality is that exhibited by concept-users in the richest sense. It is obvious that there can be practical intentionality without language. The capacity to make propositionally explicit claims and have conceptually contentful thoughts is intelligible only in the context of implicitly normative social linguistic practices.

Keywords

linguistic anthropologysocial historylanguage-society-history nexuscritical theoryhistorical linguistics
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology , pp. 347 - 363
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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