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The real trouble with intentionality

a
Wolfgang Barz
a
Institut für Philosophie, Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin,
Germany
Published online: 02 May 2008.

To cite this article: Wolfgang Barz (2008) The real trouble with intentionality, Philosophical
Explorations: An International Journal for the Philosophy of Mind and Action, 11:2, 79-92, DOI:
10.1080/13869790802015668

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 Philosophical Explorations
Vol. 11, No. 2, June 2008, 79 –92

The real trouble with intentionality

Wolfgang Barz

Institut für Philosophie, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

I argue that the project of naturalizing intentionality is misconceived. Intentionality should not be
considered as a challenge to our naturalistic world-view, but rather as something which gives rise
to a logical problem: how to save the principle of indiscernibility of identicals from apparent
counterexamples arising from intensional discourse.
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Keywords: intentionality; naturalism; F. Dretske; intensionality

1. Introduction
Mental states seem to have features which prevent them from being integrated into the physical
world. There are two such features which are generally blamed for making mental states alien
elements: phenomenal consciousness and intentionality. In the face of the persistence of these
features some philosophers take a resignative view and return to mind– body dualism. Other phi-
losophers think that this is a scandalous move, since it ignores an intuition that is fundamental to
our modern, naturalistic world-view: that the world is a conglomeration of elementary particles.
For this reason these philosophers take up an optimistic stance and hold on to the idea that the
intractability of phenomenal consciousness and intentionality will turn out to be superficial on
closer inspection. Hence they try to show how it is possible for phenomenal consciousness
and intentionality to occur in an entirely material world. Fred Dretske has characterized this
project jocularly, but strikingly, by the question: ‘Can you bake a mental cake using only physical
yeast and flour?’ (Dretske 1981, xi).
In this paper I try to argue that one of the two features generally regarded as problematic – to
wit: intentionality – has wrongly been suspected of conflicting with our naturalistic intuitions.
The fact that mental states display intentionality is no good reason to regard them as alien
elements in a physical world. If this diagnosis is correct then both the dualistically and the
naturalistically minded philosophers have to reconsider their attitudes regarding intentionality.
The dualist ought not to take intentionality as an indication of the non-physical nature of
mental states any longer. And the naturalist ought not to take intentionality as a motive for
naturalizing the mental.
In order to forestall possible misunderstandings I hasten to add that I do not want to claim that
intentionality is unproblematic in all respects. On the contrary, I believe that intentionality raises
deep philosophical problems. But these problems do not stem from an alleged incompatibility
with our naturalistic intuitions, but with certain logical intuitions. The difference between our nat-
uralistic and our logical intuitions is that the former lead us to a certain thesis about the substance
the objects filling the universe are made of – to wit: that all objects are conglomerations of

Email: wbarz@zedat.fu-berlin.de

ISSN 1386-9795 print/ISSN 1741-5918 online

# 2008 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13869790802015668
http://www.informaworld.com
 80 W. Barz

elementary particles – whereas the latter lead us to a certain thesis about the identity of objects no
matter what substance they are made of. The thesis I have in mind is generally called ‘principle of
indiscernibility of identicals’. It states that if objects are identical, then there is no attribute one of
them has and the other one lacks. Intentionality seems to be in conflict with this principle. There is
only one option to resolve this conflict: one should try to show that it is just a superficial one. For
our cognitive architecture would simply break down if we gave up the principle of indiscernibility
and believed that even if two objects were identical, there could be an attribute one of them has
and the other one lacks. Therefore, the real challenge raised by intentionality is not the question
of how to reconcile it with our naturalistic intuitions, but how to reconcile it with our logical intui-
tions. To reach this goal we need a philosophical procedure completely different from what the
naturalistically minded philosopher provides: we ought not to think about the physical realization
of mental states which exhibit intentionality, but we should think about the logical form of
sentences ascribing intentional states.
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I will proceed as follows. In Sections 2 and 3 I will spell out the notion of intentionality. In
Section 4 I will examine the problem of intentionality as specified by naturalists and try to
show that this problem does not exist. In Section 5 I will set forth what I take to be the real
challenge raised by intentionality. In the last two sections, I will argue that Fred Dretske’s
attempt to naturalize intentionality, unintentionally, supports my view.

2. What is intentionality?
The notion ‘intentionality’ is the result of Franz Brentano’s initiative to describe a certain feature
of mental states. According to Brentano the intentionality of mental states consists in their
being directed at objects. Brentano explains this as follows: to have an idea is to have an idea of
something, to think is to think about something, to desire is to desire something (cf. Brentano
[1874] 1973, 88).
The difficulty with Brentano’s metaphor of directedness lies in the fact that it assimilates inten-
tionality to relationality.1 Consider donations, embraces and kisses. There is nothing that could
prevent us from saying in Brentano’s manner that to donate is to make a donation of something,
to embrace is to put my arms about somebody or something and to kiss is to kiss somebody or
something. If the intentionality of mental states consists in their being directed at objects, then
donations, embraces and kisses exhibit intentionality as well. But this result is barely welcome.
We do not want donations, embraces and kisses to exhibit intentionality.
The solution to this problem lies in the observation that ideas, judgments and desires are
special kinds of relations. Assume that I know who Bill Clinton is, but I do not know that Bill
Clinton was president of the USA in 1998. Instead, I falsely believe that the president of the
USA in 1998 was George Bush, whom I dislike. Now, compare the situation in which I put my
arms about Bill Clinton with the situation in which I have a belief about Bill Clinton which I
would express using the sentence: ‘Bill Clinton is a nice person’. Whereas in the first situation it
is unproblematic to say that the object I bear a relation to is Bill Clinton, in the second situation
it certainly is problematic. For if Bill Clinton was the object of my belief, then the president of the
USA in 1998 would be the object of my belief as well. But this cannot be true, since I would not be
inclined to affirm the sentence ‘The man who was president of the USA in 1998 is a nice person’.
Though my belief is about Bill Clinton in a sense, it seems, however, that it is not about him in
another sense. This paradox does not occur in connection with the first situation: if Bill Clinton
is the object of my embrace, then the president of the USA in 1998 is the object of my
embrace as well. To sum up this point, we could say that intentional relations (e.g. believing
 The Real Trouble with Intentionality 81

something about someone) differ from ‘normal’ relations (e.g. putting my arms about someone)
in that they appear not to have simply objects (e.g. Bill Clinton) as second arguments, but objects
in some specific sense (e.g. Bill Clinton as Bill Clinton, and not as the man who was president of the
USA in 1998).
There is a second distinctive feature of intentional relations. Whereas ‘normal’ relations never
have non-existent objects as second arguments, intentional relations sometimes have. Consider
Conan Doyle believing that Sherlock Holmes is one of his characters. If we ignore the problems
raised in the paragraph above it seems perfectly reasonable to say that the person Doyle bears a
relation to is non-existent. But this could never be reasonably said in connection with ‘normal’
relations. Nobody can put his arms about a non-existing person.
The picture of intentionality resulting from these observations can be summarized as follows:
something exhibits intentionality if (1) it has a relational structure, (2) it seems to have objects of a
special kind as second arguments, and (3) it seems to be capable of taking non-existent objects as
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second arguments.

3. The distinctive features of intentionality from a logical point of view

The distinctive features of intentionality can be discovered by thinking about the things that
exhibit intentionality – most notably by thinking about beliefs. That is what I have just demon-
strated. If we want to analyse these distinctive features, however, it is advisable not to look at
beliefs, but to look at sentences ascribing beliefs. This is what I am going to do in the following.
The first thing to note is that both the fact that something exhibiting intentionality seems to
have objects of a special kind as second arguments, and the fact that it seems to be capable of
taking non-existent objects as second arguments, can be reformulated by referring to singular
terms occurring in ‘that’-clauses of belief-sentences. Roderick Chisholm was a pioneer in this
respect. We owe him the following reformulations:
(A) If we replace a singular term occurring in the ‘that’-clause of a belief-sentence with a coexten-
sional singular term we gamble with the truth-value of the whole sentence.
(B) If we replace a singular term occurring in the ‘that’-clause of a belief-sentence with an
antecedent existential quantifier we gamble with the truth-value of the whole sentence
(cf. Chisholm 1957, chap. 11).
Both claims can be illustrated by referring to our examples of the preceding section. Consider the
belief-sentence
(1) W.B. believes that Bill Clinton is a nice person.

Given the situation described in the preceding section (1) is true. The belief-sentence resulting
from replacing ‘Bill Clinton’ with ‘the man who was president of the USA in 1998’, however, is
false:
(2) W.B. believes that the man who was president of the USA in 1998 is a nice person.

To illustrate Chisholm’s second claim compare (3) with (4):

(3) Conan Doyle believes that Sherlock Holmes is one of his characters.
(4) (9x) (Conan Doyle believes that x is one of his characters).

Whereas (3) is true, (4) is false – since the person Conan Doyle believes to be one of his characters
does not exist.2
 82 W. Barz

Though Chisholm’s reformulations (A) and (B) seem to be appropriate at first sight, (B) will turn
out as superfluous on closer inspection. Consider the sentence
(5) Pegasus is hoofed and winged.

(5) is certainly true.3 If we apply existential generalization to (5), however, we obtain a false result:
(6) (9x) (x is hoofed and winged).

I take this observation as evidence for the fact that the failure of existential generalization is not
specific to sentences describing intentional phenomena. Rather such failure seems to be due to
the use of vacuous singular terms.
Quine took a different view on quantifying-in than Chisholm. He claims that applying existen-
tial generalization to belief-sentences leads, not to possibly false, but to unintelligible results. To
illustrate this point reconsider (1), replace ‘Bill Clinton’ with an existential quantifier and ask your-
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self whether the resulting sentence is true or false:

(7) (9x) (W.B. believes that x is a nice person).

I predict that, at first sight, you would be inclined to think that (7) is true, since the object sought-
after is Bill Clinton. Recall, however, that Bill Clinton is the same person as the man who was pre-
sident of the USA in 1998. Also recall that I do not believe that the man who was president of the
USA in 1998 is nice. Therefore, it seems that the object satisfying the operand of (7) simul-
taneously is an object which does not satisfy the operand of (7). This paradoxical result has
prompted Quine to think that antecedent quantifiers are unable to bind variables occurring
inside ‘that’-clauses of belief-sentences (cf. Quine 1960, 166). In any case, what is relevant for
my purpose is that the difficulties Quine observed in connection with quantifiers are caused by
the fact that replacing coextensional singular terms within ‘that’-clauses of belief-sentences poss-
ibly causes a change of truth-value. Therefore, I think we can skip Chisholm’s formulation (B). (A)
by itself is sufficient to cover all irregularities which are characteristic of intentional relations.
Since sentences which do not allow the substitution of coextensional expressions are generally
called intensional, we find that the intentionality of our beliefs manifests itself in the intensionality
of belief-sentences. Even if, as Searle has pointed out, it is a serious mistake to identify intention-
ality-with-a-t with intensionality-with-an-s (cf. Searle 1983, 24), there is nevertheless a close
relationship between the two. The intensionality of a sentence is an indication of the intention-
ality of the sentence’s subject matter: if a sentence displays intensionality, then its subject
matter has intentionality.
There is an immediate objection to this assumption, namely the objection that, if there was
any outcome of the intensionality/intentionality debate starting with Chisholm’s book Perceiving,
then it was the insight that intensionality is not the linguistic counterpart of intentionality. Did not
Cornman (cf. 1962) and others (see for example Cohen 1968; Marras 1968; Lycan 1969) point out
that some non-psychological sentences were intensional as well? And did not Chisholm have to
do a lot of tweaking to construct a more complex logical property that would pass for a linguistic
counterpart of intentionality (cf. Chisholm [1962] 1967a, b, 1963, 1964, 1967)? Therefore, it seems
that I am just ignoring the state-of-the-art in philosophy.
My response to this objection is to refer to a distinction which was drawn by Roger Scruton
(cf. 1971). Scruton pointed out that there are at least two4 uses of the term ‘intentionality’
which should be distinguished: (1) to name the property, however defined, which is actually
possessed by all and only mental states (‘the mental property’), and (2) to name the property
which according to Brentano is possessed by all and only mental states, and which Brentano
 The Real Trouble with Intentionality 83

described as being directed at objects (‘the Brentano property’). There is evidence that
Chisholm, and consequently the intensionality/intentionality literature referring to him, used
the term ‘intentionality’ in the first sense, but not in the second. Chisholm’s original aim was
to refute the Logical Behaviorists who claimed that every sentence used to describe a
psychological phenomenon could be translated without loss of meaning into a sentence
describing a physical phenomenon. In order to unhinge this kind of behaviorism Chisholm
sought after a linguistic counterpart of the mental property – or, to quote Chisholm, he
sought after ‘a logical criterion . . . that we may . . . use to distinguish the mental from
the physical’ (1967, 203). And he called this criterion ‘criterion of intentionality’ – but what he
really had in mind was a criterion of the mental. Unfortunately, this fact about Chisholm’s use
of the term ‘intentionality’ is obscured by the fact that in his early days Chisholm believed that
the linguistic counterpart of the mental property coincides with the linguistic counterpart of
the Brentano property, i.e. with intensionality (cf. 1956, 1957). Later on, after Cornman et al.
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had pointed out that some non-psychological sentences are intensional as well, Chisholm tried
out several other criteria of the mental which had nothing to do with the Brentano property,
but, misleadingly, kept on calling these candidates criteria of ‘intentionality’. Take, for example,
the following candidate: ‘We may say that a (simple) prefix M is intentional if, for every sentence
p, M(p) is logically contingent’ (Chisholm 1964, 95; see also Chisholm 1967, 203). Perhaps the
presence of an ‘intentional’ prefix is the linguistic counterpart of the mental property, but,
anyway, it could not pass for a linguistic counterpart of the Brentano property. For it simply
does not reflect the idea of being directed at objects. In a word: the participants of the intension-
ality/intentionality debate of the 1960s deliberated on the question whether there was a linguis-
tic counterpart of the mental property, a logical property shared by all and only psychological
sentences. But they did not enter into the question whether there was a linguistic counterpart
of the Brentano property, a logical property which could be used to explain what Brentano
had in mind when he spoke of something’s being directed at objects. Therefore, the result of
the intensionality/intentionality debate was that intensionality is not the linguistic counterpart
of the mental property. Since I am claiming that intensionality is the linguistic counterpart of
the Brentano property, my view does not conflict with this result.

4. The alleged problem of intentionality

I now turn to the classical conception of the problem of intentionality – I will call it the metaphys-
ical problem – which, on my view, is not a problem at all. The starting point of the metaphysical
problem is Brentano’s following remark:
Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the
intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and what we might call, though not wholly unambigu-
ously, reference to a content, direction toward an object (which is not to be understood here as
meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity . . . This intentional inexistence is characteristic exclusively
of mental phenomena. (Brentano 1874, 88)

Most philosophers interpret this passage as drawing a demarcation line between the domain of
the mental and the domain of the physical. Chisholm, for example, claims that ‘[a]ccording to
Brentano’s . . . thesis, intentionality is peculiar to psychological phenomena and thus provides
a criterion by means of which the mental may be distinguished from the nonmental’ (1967,
203). From this point of view, intentionality certainly is a challenge to our naturalistic world-
view, since it seems both as if (i) no physical phenomenon exhibited intentionality and as if (ii)
 84 W. Barz

all mental phenomena exhibited intentionality. Therefore, if Brentano’s thesis were true, we ought
to be concerned with how intentionality could ever have arisen from a material bedrock.
Brentano’s thesis, however, is false: neither is it true that no physical phenomenon exhibits
intentionality, nor is it true that all mental phenomena exhibit intentionality. Thus I see no chal-
lenge at all: intentionality, on the one hand, and even the most radical naturalistic intuitions, on
the other hand, can peacefully coexist.
In order to substantiate my point, I will show that there are manifestly physical phenomena
which exhibit intentionality (non-(i)). Since it is generally conceded that there are non-intentional
mental states, I take the existence of mental phenomena which lack intentionality (non-(ii)) for
granted.5
One day in 1943 a Swiss chemist did something nobody had done before: he swallowed a
small dose of lysergacid-diathylamid. Shortly after, he suffered from long-lasting hallucinations.
This was no accident, but a causal necessity. For LSD excites certain changes in the central
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nervous system which, in turn, cause hallucinations. We can express this fact as follows:
(8) It is causally necessary that the first person to do acid suffered from hallucinations.

Well, the man who discovered the hallucinatory effects of LSD was Albert Hofmann. His fate,
however, was not predetermined. Albert Hofmann did not have to accept a job with Sandoz
and he did not have to conduct experiments with a derivative of lysergacid. He could have
worked for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung instead. Hence it was somehow a matter of contingence
that just that man, Albert Hofmann, suffered from hallucinations in 1943. Therefore, the sentence
(9) It is causally necessary that Albert Hofmann suffered from hallucinations

is false. This story shows that singular terms occurring in ‘that’-clauses within the scope of the
causal-necessity-operator behave similarly to singular terms occurring in ‘that’-clauses of belief-
sentences: they cannot be replaced with coextensional terms without gambling with the truth-
value of the whole sentence (cf. Føllesdal 1965). That means that not only belief-sentences
exhibit intensionality-with-an-s, but sentences stating causal necessities as well. And that, in
turn, means that not only beliefs exhibit intentionality-with-a-t, but causal necessities as well.
Thus we arrive at the conclusion that there is at least one class of intentional physical phenomena:
causal necessities.
Many philosophers would disagree with my conclusion. ‘Causal necessities’, I hear them say,
‘are neither beliefs or desires, nor are they mental states sufficiently similar to beliefs and
desires. Therefore, it is illegitimate to call causal necessities intentional’. But this is not fair. I do
not claim that causal necessities are (mental states sufficiently similar to) beliefs or desires. I
just claim that they share a property with beliefs and desires – to wit: that they exhibit intention-
ality. My antagonist seems to understand the adjective ‘intentional’ in a rather different way than I
do. I take ‘intentional’ to mean ‘being directed at something in Brentano’s sense’ – but he takes
‘intentional’ to mean ‘being a belief or desire, or being a mental state sufficiently similar to a belief
or desire’. I think that much confusion in the debate about intentionality is due to that kind of
misunderstanding.
There even are philosophers who would raise the objection that causal necessities are mental
phenomena. ‘Perhaps it is not illegitimate to regard causal necessities as intentional’, they say,
‘but it is certainly wrong to regard causal necessities as physical phenomena’.6 I am a bit
puzzled by this objection, since if causal necessities are not physical phenomena, then, I think,
nothing is. The reason behind that objection may be a confusion of sentences stating causal
necessities with causal necessities themselves. Of course, sentences are insofar mental
 The Real Trouble with Intentionality 85

phenomena as they are the results of our thinking about the natural world. But causal necessities
themselves are not mental, since mother nature produces them without our help.
There is a last objection to my claim which I cannot dismiss just as easily: ‘Turn back at the end
of Section 2. At that point you claimed that it is a distinctive feature of intentional phenomena
that they are relationally structured. Causal necessities, however, are not relationally structured.
Therefore, it is illegitimate to call causal necessities intentional’. Well, I feel under attack at this
point. The only way out, it seems to me, is to claim that sentences stating causal necessities
are elliptical: the monadic phrase ‘it is causal necessary that x is so-and-so’ is short hand for ‘in
w it is causal necessary that x is so-and-so’ in which ‘w’ ranges over possible worlds. For that
matter, let us postulate a new verbal phrase which preserves the meaning of the relational
phrase, but is syntactically more similar to ‘x believes that y is so-and-so’: ‘w causally necessitates
that y is so-and-so’. Thus we can formulate causal necessities in such a way that their relational
structure becomes apparent.7 Now, we are not only allowed to say that beliefs are relations
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between persons and objects, but also that causal necessities are relations between worlds
and objects.
Thus the suspicion at the beginning of this section has been confirmed: intentionality does not
pose a challenge to the naturalist’s position, since not only mental phenomena exhibit intention-
ality. Quite the contrary, the cement of the universe itself, causality, is interspersed with intention-
ality as well. The metaphysical problem of intentionality is just an illusion.8

5. The real trouble with intentionality

Given this result you may think I intend to claim that intentionality is completely innocent in phi-
losophical respects. But that is not the case. There is a problem associated with intentionality, but
it is a problem which cannot be solved – as most naturalistically minded philosophers like to
think – by reconstructing intentionality on a material ground. Rather it is a problem which can
only be solved by reconstructing the logical form of sentences exhibiting intensionality. There-
fore, I will refer to it as the logical problem of intentionality.
Reconsider (A), which states that if we replace a singular term occurring in the ‘that’-clause of a
belief-sentence with a coextensional singular term we gamble with the truth-value of the whole
sentence. This observation should be cause for concern since, at first sight, it is in conflict with one
of our engrained logical intuitions, namely the principle of indiscernibility of identicals. This prin-
ciple states that if objects are identical there is no property which one possesses and the other
one lacks. It seems, however, that intentional phenomena could be used to construct cases con-
trary to this principle. Recall the situation in which I believed that Bill Clinton is a nice person, but
did not believe that the man who was president of the USA in 1998 is a nice person. It could be
argued with respect to this case that, though Bill Clinton and the man who was president of the
USA in 1998 are identical, the first person possesses a property the second person lacks – to wit:
the property of being believed by me to be a nice person. Thus it seems that the principle of
indiscernibility of identicals turns out to be false: even if two objects are identical, there could
nevertheless be a property which one possesses and the other one lacks.
This result is completely unacceptable. For if we gave up the principle of indiscernibility of
identicals we would not be able to differentiate between distinct objects any longer. Therefore,
something has to be done. The most prominent suggestion to save the principle of indiscernibil-
ity of identicals originates from Gottlob Frege ([1892] 1952). Frege suggests regarding singular
terms occurring in ‘that’-clauses of belief-sentences as referring to individual concepts.9 Frege’s
proposal makes it possible to ward off the attack on the principle of indiscernibility of identicals.
 86 W. Barz

The fact that we are not allowed to replace ‘Bill Clinton’ in ‘W.B. believes that Bill Clinton is a nice
person’ with ‘the man who was president of the USA in 1998’ is explained by the fact that
‘Bill Clinton’ and ‘the man who was president of the USA in 1998’ refer – when they occur in
‘that’-clauses of belief-sentences – not to one and the same person, but to different individual
concepts applying to one and the same person. Therefore, if I believe that Bill Clinton is a nice
person without believing that the man who was president of the USA in 1998 is a nice person,
it could not be argued that there is a property Bill Clinton has and the man who was president
of the USA lacks – since my belief that Bill Clinton is a nice person relates me to an individual
concept different from the one I would bear a relation to if I believed that the man who was
president of the United States in 1998 was a nice person.
I did not expand on Frege’s view, however, in order to side with him. Rather I mentioned
Frege’s solution to give an example of a theoretical reaction appropriate to the logical problem
raised by intentionality. I do not want to suggest that Frege is right in claiming that singular
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terms occurring in ‘that’-clauses of belief-sentences refer to individual concepts. Perhaps he is

wrong.10 But I do want to claim that the general theoretical stance Frege takes up on intention-
ality is appropriate. In particular, I maintain that Frege was on the right track when he tried
to meet with the obstacles formed by intentionality by thinking about the logical form of
belief-sentences – instead of thinking about the physical realization of beliefs. The real trouble
with intentionality is of a logical nature: intentionality seems to override the principle of indiscern-
ibility of identicals. And the right way to deal with this is to provide a theory of the logical form of
belief-sentences which is compatible with the principle of indiscernibility of identicals.
The most natural objection to my considerations up to this point is this: ‘I don’t believe any-
thing of what you’ve said. Your reasoning is based on an extremely idiosyncratic conception of
intentionality, i.e., the thesis that the intensionality of a sentence is sufficient for the intentionality
of its subject matter. If you were right about the concept of intentionality, causal necessities (and
a lot more other modalities) would be intentional indeed. There would be no metaphysical
problem and, consequently, the project of naturalizing intentionality would be misconceived.
But you are wrong about the concept of intentionality. Intensionality is – despite your efforts
in Sections 2 and 3 – not sufficient for intentionality. There is more to intentionality than just
intensionality. Therefore, first of all, causal necessities are not intentional, second of all, there is
a metaphysical problem, and, third of all, the project of naturalizing intentionality is well-
conceived.’
In order to keep track of the issue, I propose to label the different conceptions of intentionality
that are disputed: call the conception to which I adhere (‘intensionality is sufficient for intention-
ality’) weak conception of intentionality, the view to which my antagonist subscribes (‘intension-
ality is not sufficient for intentionality’) strong conception of intentionality. So the question is:
How should we conceive of intentionality – in the weak or in the strong sense?
I suggest a rather unusual way to decide the issue. I propose to leave the decision to a
philosopher who is known as a pioneer within the project of naturalizing intentionality: Fred
Dretske. This move is very obliging, since my antagonist could not have asked for a more
powerful assistance. It seems to be natural that Dretske will side with my antagonist, since the
naturalization project makes good sense only against the background of the strong conception
of intentionality. But, surprisingly, Dretske falls short of my antagonist’s expectations. I will argue
that Dretske adheres to the weak conception of intentionality. But what is even more surprising is
that his analysis of intentionality in Knowledge and the Flow of Information turns out to be a
naturalistically disguised Fregean-style semantics for intensional sentences. I take this as evidence
for my position.
 The Real Trouble with Intentionality 87

6. Dretske appearing as witness

In his paper ‘The Intentionality of Cognitive States’, which can be regarded as a blueprint for
Knowledge and the Flow of Information, Dretske says:
Any state of affairs having a propositional content whose expression is non-extensional I shall call an
intentional state. (Dretske 1980, 282)

And in a central passage of Knowledge and the Flow of Information, immediately after he
pointed out that sentences about the informational content of a signal are intensional, Dretske
claims:
Philosophers have a special terminology for describing such phenomena: intentionality (or, if we are
speaking of the sentences used to describe such phenomena: intensionality). (1981, 75)

There are many more passages in Knowledge and the Flow of Information that indicate that
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Dretske operates with the very same weak conception of intentionality I developed in Sections
2 and 3. The most convincing evidence, however, is the fact that Dretske regards causal necessi-
ties as intentional as well (cf. Dretske 1980, 287; 1981, 75; 1981, 172). Therefore, it comes as no
surprise that Dretske thinks that intentionality, ‘rather than being a “mark of the mental”, is a per-
vasive feature of all reality – mental and physical’ (1980, 285). Thus, to the horror of my antag-
onist, Dretske turns out to be a witness for my case: he not only testifies on behalf of the
weak conception of intentionality, but also on behalf of the view that there is no metaphysical
problem of intentionality.
But what about my claim that the real problem connected with intentionality is of a logical
nature and requires to think about the logical form of intensional discourse? Does Dretske
bear testimony to that claim also? At first sight that seems absurd. The declared intention of
the author of Knowledge and the Flow of Information is to ‘bake a mental cake using only physical
yeast and flour’. Certainly, this is not a logical, but metaphysical enterprise. But, as I foreshadowed
earlier, things are not quite as they appear to be.
Dretske claims, to put it roughly, that a mental representation has the propositional content
that something is F if and only if it carries the information that something is F.11 He explains
the notion of information-carrying as follows: s’s being F carries the information that h is G if
and only if the conditional probability of h’s being G, given s’s being F, is 1.12 The right-hand
side of this biconditional, Dretske claims, should be taken to be true only if it is causally necessary
that h is G if s is F (cf. Dretske 1981, 65, 245 fn.1).
Summarizing Dretske’s strategy, it could be said that he (1) reduces the intentionality of
mental representations to the intentionality of information-carrying structures, and then (2)
reduces the intentionality of information-carrying structures to the intentionality of causal
necessities. Dretske puts it as follows:
[T]he intentionality of our cognitive states has its source in the intentionality of informational
structures . . . And this intentionality derives, in turn, from the non-extensionality of statements
describing nomic dependencies . . . It seems, then, that the intentionality associated with our
cognitive states can be viewed as a manifestation of an underlying network of nomic regularities.
(Dretske 1980, 287)

The crucial point in Dretske’s considerations is that intentionality is preserved throughout all
steps of reduction. For even the entities referred to in the last step, i.e. causal necessities,
are intentional: as I argued, in accordance with Dretske, in Section 4, causal necessities exhibit
intentionality as well as beliefs.13
 88 W. Barz

After taking his reductionist project from the intentionality of mental representations to the
intentionality of causal necessities, Dretske asks himself how to explain their intentionality:
Information inherits its intentional properties from the lawful regularities on which it depends.
But . . . from whence comes the intentional character of law? (Dretske 1981, 77)

Dretske does not directly reply to this question in Knowledge and the Flow of Information, but
refers to his article ‘Laws of Nature’ (1977) instead. What Dretske claims here is surprising.
For he subscribes to the view that the intentional character of law is due to the fact that
general terms occurring in ‘that’-clauses of sentences stating causal necessities do not refer to
sets of individuals, but to properties:
Taking our cue from Frege, it may be argued that since the operator ‘it is a law that . . .’ converts the
otherwise transparent positions of ‘All F’s are G’ into opaque positions, we may conclude that this
occurs because within the context of this operator . . . the terms ‘F’ and ‘G’ do not have their usual refer-
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ents. There is a shift in what we are talking about. To say that it is a law that F’s are G is to say that ‘All F’s
are G’ is to be understood . . ., not as a statement about the extensions of the predicates ‘F’ and ‘G’, but as
a singular statement describing a relationship between the universal properties F-ness and G-ness.
(Dretske 1977, 252)

If we view this thesis, as Dretske suggests, as the answer to the question where the intentional
character of law comes from, then it seems that the project of naturalizing intentionality is a
curious enterprise. For the result which it leads to is the following: The intentionality of mental
states stems from the fact that predicates occurring in ‘that’-clauses of intensional sentences do
not refer to their usual referents (i.e. sets of individuals), but to properties. Dretske’s theory, it
could be said, does not really explain how intentionality emerges from a physical ground, but
leads to a thesis about the logical form of intensional sentences instead which is compatible
with the principle of indiscernibility of identicals. Dretske purports to reconcile intentionality
with our naturalistic world-view, but what he really does is to reconcile it with the principle of
indiscernibility of identicals. He, who started as a naturalizer, ends up as a Fregean.14
From my point of view, this is as it should be. For, as I argued in Sections 4 and 5, intentionality
does not pose a challenge to our naturalistic world-view. Rather, the trouble with intentionality is
that it generates counterexamples to the principle of indiscernibility of identicals. And a Fregean-
style semantics for intensional sentences, as adopted by Dretske, is appropriate to deal with it
(though, as I emphasized earlier, there may be alternatives). Therefore, I regard Dretske as
bearing witness not only to my conception of intentionality, but also to my view concerning
the real problem associated with intentionality.

7. A last objection
I know that even now my antagonist will not be satisfied: ‘Well, you may have identified a weak
spot in Dretske’s conceptual design. There is, in fact, something idiosyncratic about his use of the
word “intentional”. As your quotations show, what he really means by “intentional” is “inten-
sional”. Therefore, you seem to be right in claiming that Dretske’s project in Knowledge and the
Flow of Information is somehow curious. Dretske’s explanandum is not intentionality, properly
understood, but intentionality in the weak sense, or, what comes to the same thing, intensionality.
What he does in the course of his book is, consequently, not showing how intentionality emerges
from a purely physical ground, but how the intensionality of belief-sentences can be traced back
to the intensionality of sentences stating laws of nature which, in turn, is explained by adopting a
 The Real Trouble with Intentionality 89

Fregean-style semantics. But the fact that Dretske somehow failed in Knowledge and the Flow of
Information does not mean that the project of naturalizing intentionality in general is mis-
conceived. It does only mean that Dretske made the same mistake as you did: he confused
intentionality-with-a-t with intensionality-with-an-s.’
I am grateful for this objection, since it is grist for my mill. Dretske is not just anybody. He is
a very influential figure in the naturalization project. Knowledge and the Flow of Information
was inspiring reading for many participants in the project at least. Therefore, if the enterprise
of Knowledge and the Flow of Information suffers from a confusion of intentionality with
intensionality, it is highly probable that the enterprises of other naturalists suffer from this
confusion as well.
To substantiate this point, just take a look at Fodor’s former account of intentionality in his
paper ‘Psychosemantics or: Where Do Truth Conditions Come From?’ This paper defends the
view that the intentionality of mental states has its source in the teleology of our cognitive
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system. The basic idea is that a mental representation of type M has the propositional content
that something is F, if and only if F’s would cause M’s in one’s ‘belief box’ under normal conditions
of well functioning of one’s cognitive system. Fodor explains his overall strategy in the following
passage:

I’m proposing to . . . inherit the semanticity of mental representations – in particular, their possession
of truth conditions – from something about the teleology of cognitive systems. Still more particularly,
such facts as that S is the truth condition of M is not transparent for S . . . is going to be explained
by appeal to the fact that ‘the function of . . . is bringing it about that __’ is not transparent for __.
(Fodor [1984] 1990, 323)

From the point of view of my antagonist, this passage must sound strange. In the first sen-
tence quoted, Fodor seems to set the right explanatory goal: intentionality in the strong
sense (‘possession of truth conditions’). In the second sentence, however, which is intended
as an elucidation of the first, the explanatory goal shifts to intensionality (‘non-transparency
of S is the truth condition of M’). Consequently, Fodor does not explain intentionality in
terms of more fundamental natural phenomena, but explains the intensionality of sentences
ascribing truth conditions by appeal to the intensionality of sentences ascribing natural func-
tions. There is a close parallel here between Fodor and Dretske. The notion of function does
the same explanatory work for Fodor as the notion of information did for Dretske: both
notions are needed to explain why the content of mental representations is not expressible
in extensional language, and both notions are supposed to perform this task well because
they are non-mental, but nevertheless generate intensional contexts. Like Dretske, Fodor
just purports to analyse the intentionality of mental states. What he really does is to
analyse the intensionality of belief-sentences. Therefore, if Dretske is guilty of confusing inten-
tionality with intensionality, then Fodor – at least in his teleological period – must be
accounted guilty as well. But if Fodor is guilty of confusing intentionality with intensionality,
who of those who partake in the naturalization project are not?
Thus, my antagonist faces the following dilemma. There are only two options: either
Dretske is right in conceiving of intentionality in the weak sense, or he is wrong. Both
options, however, are likewise disastrous for the naturalization project. If Dretske, as I
suggest, is right about the concept of intentionality – i.e., if the intensionality of a sentence
suffices for the intentionality of its subject matter – then the naturalization project is ill-motiv-
ated, since there is no metaphysical problem. The real trouble with intentionality in the weak
sense is that it generates counterexamples to the principle of indiscernibility of identicals, a
 90 W. Barz

problem that needs logical treatment. On the other hand, if Dretske, as my antagonist
suggests, is wrong about the concept of intentionality – i.e., if the intensionality of a sentence
does not suffice for the intentionality of its subject matter – then the whole enterprise of nat-
uralizing intentionality was conceived in sin, since its explanandum is, contrary to what is
advertised, intensionality-with-an-s.15 However you look at it, there seems to be no way to
save the naturalization project.

Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Helen Bohse for correcting my English and giving me helpful comments.

Notes
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1. That is not to say that Brentano subscribes to the view that intentionality is the same as relationality.
Brentano leaves no doubt that intentionality is a peculiar relation that must not be confused with
normal relations like donations, embraces and kisses. I am not criticizing Brentano’s view here, but
only his metaphor of directedness.
2. To avoid a possible misunderstanding, note that Chisholm does not claim that replacing coextensional
singular terms in ‘that’-clauses of belief-sentences, respectively applying existential generalization to
belief-sentences, always leads to change of truth-value. Chisholm merely claims that change of
truth-value is possible in such cases.
3. The truth of (5) is, to be sure, not incontestable. There are philosophers who claim that (5), taken
literally, is false or lacks truth-value. In this spirit, David Lewis writes: ‘Thus if I say that Holmes liked
to show off, you will take it that I have asserted an abbreviated version of the true sentence “In the
Sherlock Holmes stories, Holmes liked to show off.” As for the embedded sentence “Holmes liked to
show off,” taken by itself with the prefixed operator neither explicitly present nor tacitly understood,
we may abandon it to the common fate of subject-predicate sentences with denotationless subject
terms: automatic falsity or lack of truth value, according to taste’ (1978, 38). I think Lewis is wrong.
But to quarrel with him would be a rather tedious affair. Therefore, I refrain from going further into
that question.
4. Actually Scruton distinguished between three such uses. For the sake of brevity I ignore the third use.
5. A representative example of the view that there are non-intentional mental states is Searle (1983, chap. 1).
There are, however, philosophers, calling themselves ‘representationalists’, who claim that all mental
phenomena exhibit, at least some rudimentary form of, intentionality. Cf. Harman (1990), Dretske
(1995), Tye (1995) and Crane (1998). Since I regard those philosophers to form a minority group, I
refrain from dealing with them.
6. This objection can be extrapolated from Simons who claims that ‘opacity is a necessary and sufficient
condition for the mental’ (1995, 132) and, consequently, tries to show that ‘modality . . . owes its very
existence to mind and language’ (1995, 140).
7. The reverse procedure, contraction, can be in turn applied to beliefs. This happens, for example, when
we are not interested in who believes something, but only in that it is believed by someone. In this case
we use the contracted phrase ‘it is believed that x is so-and-so’.
8. The observation that sentences stating causal necessities are intensional may be used to argue against
the viability of the naturalization project in the following way. The argument starts with the premise
that naturalization should be carried out by means of concepts that do not create intensional contexts.
Therefore, if the concept of causal necessity creates intensional contexts, it should be excluded from the
naturalizer’s vocabulary. But the concept of causal necessity is indispensable for any naturalization.
Thus, it seems that naturalization is impossible (cf. Rheinwald 1994). I do not want to go into that
 The Real Trouble with Intentionality 91

matter, however, since I hope to establish a more radical claim: even if the project of naturalization were
realisable, it would not meet the philosophical challenge raised by intentionality.
9. In claiming that Frege took singular terms which occur in ‘that’-clauses of belief-sentences to refer to
individual concepts I do not do justice to the original Frege, since he speaks, not of individual concepts,
but of senses. Perhaps it would be more appropriate in this context to refer to Rudolf Carnap or Alonzo
Church who identify Fregean senses with individual concepts – which is by no means an uncontrover-
sial theoretical move. To simplify matters I ignore such subtleties here.
10. There is a host of alternative accounts of the logical form of belief-sentences. The most prominent ones
are the metalinguistic account of Carnap (1947, sec. 13– 15), the fusion-account of Quine (1960, sec. 44),
and the paratactic account of Davidson (1969).
11. More precisely: a physical structure has the propositional content that something is F if and only if it
carries the information that something is F in completely digitalized form. To simplify matters I ignore
the notion of complete digitalization. Cf. Dretske (1981, chap. 7, especially 184– 5), where the notion
of complete digitalization is explained.
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12. In Knowledge and the Flow of Information Dretske conceives of information-carrying as a feature of
individual things. But Barry Loewer has pointed out, and rightly so, that to carry information is a
feature of propositions or event types. Therefore, I follow Loewer in my definition of information-carrying.
Cf. Loewer (1987, 289).
13. This is not quite right, since Dretske distinguishes between three ‘orders of intentionality’. Causal
necessities exhibit only the first order of intentionality, whereas beliefs exhibit the third order. Cf.
Dretske (1981, 172 – 30). Therefore, it is more appropriate to say that both causal necessities and
beliefs exhibit some order of intentionality.
14. By calling Dretske a Fregean I do not wish to suggest that Dretske appeals to Fregean senses in order to
explain the intensionality of sentences stating laws of nature. I use the label of ‘Fregeanism’ just to indi-
cate that Dretske appeals to the idea that the intensionality of such sentences is due to a shift of
reference.
15. That intensionality-with-an-s, and not intentionality-with-a-t, is the explanandum of the naturalization
project is clearly realized by Kriegel: ‘[T]he whole program of naturalist theories of intentionality is an
attempt to account for . . . intensionality . . . in terms of the relational properties of neurons’ (2003,
279). In contrast to me, however, Kriegel does not seem to have an issue with this program.

Notes on contributor
Wolfgang Barz is working as lecturer (wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) in the Philosophy Depart-
ment of the Free University Berlin. In 2002 he finished his PhD with a thesis that has been pub-
lished under the title ‘Das Problem der Intentionalität’ (Paderborn: mentis, 2004). He is currently
preparing his second PhD (Habilitation). His main research interests are in epistemology, meta-
physics and philosophy of mind and language.

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