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Intentionality and Interpretation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Gregory McCulloch
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Extract

According to Brentano in a much-quoted passage,

Every psychological phenomenon is characterized by…intentional inherent existence of … an object… In the idea something is conceived, in the judgement something is recognized or discovered, in loving loved, in hating hated, in desiring desired, and so on.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 43 , March 1998 , pp. 253 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1998

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References

1 Brentano, F., Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, ed. McAlister, L., trans. A. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell, and L. McAlister (New York: Humanities Press, 1973), p. 88Google Scholar.

2 For example, see Field, H., ‘Mental Representation’, Erkenntnis 13 (1978), 9–61CrossRefGoogle ScholarFodor, J., Psychosemantics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

3 Quine, W. V., Word and Object (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960), p. 79Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., p. 28.

5 Ibid., p. 221.

6 For ‘inscrutability’ see Quine, W. V., Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), p. 37Google Scholar; and for ‘indeterminacy’ Quine, W. V., Pursuit of Truth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, revised edition 1992), p. 50Google Scholar.

7 Quine, , Ontological Relativity, p. 5Google Scholar.

8 Indeed, later Quine seems to move significantly towards Davidson: see, e.g. Quine, Pursuit of Truth, §29.

9 See Davidson, D., Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 160Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., pp. 230–1.

11 Ibid., Essay 11; also Davidson, D., ‘Rational Animals’, in Actions and Events, ed. Lepore, E. and McLaughlin, B. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985)Google Scholar.

12 Davidson, , Inquiries, p. 154Google Scholar.

13 Fodor, , Psychosemantics, p. 52Google Scholar. Note that there is some absurdity in suggesting that disembodied brain could be hooked up to the world in just the way that an embodied brain is. This is not as trivial a point as it may look, given the possibility of behaviour-embracing mentalism (for which see immediately below).

14 See McCulloch, G., The Mind and Its World (London: Routledge, 1995), chapters 5–8Google Scholar

15 Quine, , Word and Object, p. 42Google Scholar. Occasion sentences are those which ‘command assent or dissent only if queried after an appropriate prompting stimulation’ (pp. 35’6).

16 Davidson, , Inquiries, p. 135Google Scholar.

17 Dummett, M., Frege: Philosophy of Language (London: Duckworth, 1973), p. 3Google Scholar.

18 Quine, W. V., ‘Events and Reification’, in Actions and Events, ed.Lepore and McLaughlin, p. 169Google Scholar; cf. Quine, Pursuit of Truth, chapter 2.

19 Davidson, , Inquiries, p. 215Google Scholar.

20 Ibid., p. 219.

21 Ibid., p. 222.

22 Ibid.

23 This appears to be the suggestion in Searle, J., ‘Indeterminacy, Empiricism and the First Person’, Journal of Philosophy 84 (1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, cf. Quine, , Ontological Relativity, pp. 28–9Google Scholar. There are similarities between Searle's diagnosis of what drives Quine and Davidson towards indeterminacy, and the one offered in the present lecture. But for a very big difference in the countersuggestions offered, see section V below. Thanks here to Barry C. Smith.

24 Quine, , Ontological Relativity, p. 26Google Scholar and Pursuit of Truth, pp. 37–8, respectively.

25 Dummett, , Frege, pp. 4–5Google Scholar.

26 Ibid., p. 5; emphasis added.

27 Davidson, , Inquiries, 220Google Scholar.

28 Compare Searle, ‘Indeterminacy’, 124–7, 136–7.

29 For much more on this, see G. McCulloch, ‘Bipartism and the Phenomenology of Content’ (forthcoming).

30 Quine, , Ontological Relativity, p. 27Google Scholar.

31 Davidson, , Inquiries, p. 235Google Scholar.

32 Pace Searle, ‘Indeterminacy’, 126, 126–7, 141, 145.

33 Strawson, G., Mental Reality (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), p.7Google Scholar, n4.

34 This is not to say that reflection on the radical case has no merit at all. On the vontrary, I thingk it can be used to make plausible the central insight of the Verstehen tradition that knowledge of minds as minds in fundamentally different from knowledge of body: see the brief mention of the epistemological Real Distinction in section VII below; also G. McCulloch, ‘An Essentially Dramatic Idiom: Quine and the Attitudes’ (forthocoming).

35 Thanks here to my colleagues Harold Noonan and Jose Zalabardo

36 McCulloch, The Mind and Its World, chapters 5–8, and McCulloch, G., From Malicious Demon to Evil Scientist: How Much World Does a Mind Need? (Inaugural Lecture, University of Birmingham, 1997)Google Scholar

37 Davidson, , Inquiries, p. 215Google Scholar.

38 Davidson, D., Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 214Google Scholar.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid.

41 McCulloch, From Malicious Demon to Evil Scientist.

42 Davidson, , Essays, p. 230Google Scholar.

43 Davidson, , Inquiries, p. 176Google Scholar.