Thought, Language, and the World: A Introduction to Intentionality in Philosophy

Philosophers often characterize intentionality in something like the following way: "well, intentionality is a broad topic that is relevant to a bigger question of what it means to have a mind and how it is that a mind can represent this or that in some psychological mode..." or they might say "...at the heart of intentionality lies the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind."[1] Certainly that offers a sense to it, but whatever intelligibility it yields is limited to those already familiar with its use (to some extent). In fact, I think it is best to introduce the topic via the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, since I think his descriptions invoke a feeling of perplexity which should be quite familiar to anyone who has philosophized about these sorts of things. Wittgenstein offers a simple characterization of the problem of intentionality, one that I think captures much of what is at stake when philosophers and/or other sorts of theorists attempt to discuss and/or construct theories about it:

How does thought manage to represent? -the answer might be 'Don't you really know? You certainly see it when you think.' For nothing is concealed. How does a sentence do it? Nothing is hidden...We feel that thoughts are like a landscape that we have seen and are supposed to describe, but don't remember exactly enough to describe how all the parts fitted together. Similarly, we think, we can't describe thought after the event because then the many delicate processes have been lost sight of. We would like as it were to see these intricacies under the magnifying glass. (Think of the proposition 'Everything is in flux.')[2]

The following captures our sense of language failing us when we try to explain or describe the goings-on of mental processes like thinking, conjecturing, and wishing:

Wishes, conjectures, beliefs, commands appear to be something unsatisfied, something in need of completion. Thus I would like to characterize my feeling of grasping a command as a feeling of an innervation. But the innervation in itself isn't anything unsatisfied, it doesn't leave anything open, or stand in need of completion. And I want to say, 'A wish is unsatisfied because it's a wish for something; opinion is unsatisfied, because it's the opinion that something is the case, something real, something outside the process of opining.[3]

This issue, or I might say 'the issues that surround intentionality' is fundamentally related to metaphysical and epistemological questions surrounding folk-psychological states like thinking, remembering, intending, et cetera (and their 'mental content'), the linguistic expression of those states, and the world-all those things to which 'intentional acts' are ('somehow') related.[4] Beyond this admittedly unsatisfactory description, which lends only the vague sense of intentionality as a notion involving the relationships between mentality, the use of language, and the objects/states of affair/events which one thinks or talks about, intentionality is a notoriously difficult topic to introduce. Somewhat ironically, one feels 'at home' in talking about 'what his thought is about'. Think of the possible cases one could construct involving intentionality:

1. "Well, I was thinking that you'd be better for this job than Susan would."
2. "What is this movie about? It makes no sense to me."
3. "So does this part of the story represent racial tensions in contemporary America?"
4. "When I said 'presidents' I meant 'US presidents'..."
5. "What did you mean when you said that 'gravity' meant something different for Einstein'?
6. "I see what you're pointing to but I don't remember its name."
7. "God, I expected him to be late but not this late."
8. "Dad said he was thinking about me on my birthday but I highly doubt that he really did...he would have called."

Grammatical similarities abound, or so it seems. Each sentence contains a folk-psychological state (e.g. expecting, believing, thinking, doubting, understanding) combined with some object to which that state is directed (e.g. a person, the picture, gravity). That sort of talk harmonizes with the sorts of philosophical distinctions that intentionality is characterized in terms of: contents vs. objects, an act vs. the referent of the act, the individuation of meaning vs. ideal definition, representation vs. that which is represented.

It should be clear at this point that going from thought to language doesn't involve a big leap: we often feel that language is the expression of thought. (Think: "I know what I'm thinking but I don't know the right words to describe it"). My point in presenting these 'everyday' cases is twofold: a) there are grammatical similarities here which compliment particular philosophical conceptions we have concerning the proper meaning of 'mental predicates', teleology, and the distinction between the content of something and what it denotes, to name a few; b) these expressions only make sense in particular social contexts. It is this latter point which is fundamental for the thrust of my argument.

[1] While it would not be an understatement to point out my use of poetic license, nevertheless it should be clear enough.

[2] From here on out I'll refer to Wittgenstein's Philosophical Grammar as (Wittgenstein, PG, page number) Wittgenstein, PG 104

[3] Wittgenstein, PG 132

[4] I understand that the use of 'folk-psychological' may seem to have a negative connotation. In fact, the closely related name of a branch of psychology commonly referred to as 'folk psychology' is sometimes used in a derogative way. However, in this exercise, whenever I use 'folk psychological' I am simply referring to the kinds of states that philosophers tend to think of as being thoroughly intentional.

Works Cited

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. The Blue and Brown Books. Oxford: Blackwell, 1958

---. Philosophical Grammar. Rush Rhees (ed.), A. Kenny (trans.) Oxford: University of California Press, 1974.

--.Philosophical Investigations.G.E.M. Anscombe and R. Rhees (eds.), G.E.M. Anscombe (trans.), Oxford: Blackwell, 1953.

---. Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1932-1935. A. Ambrose (ed.), Oxford: Blackwell, 1979.