Philosophia (2015) 43:741–746

DOI 10.1007/s11406-015-9626-2

Hard Problems of Intentionality

Marc Rowlands 1

Received: 22 October 2014 / Revised: 20 November 2014 / Accepted: 21 May 2015 /

Published online: 12 July 2015
# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Abstract This paper argues that Hutto and Satne’s three-pronged attempt to solve the
problem of intentionality – or, at least, to provide an outline of how this problem should
be approached – suffers from two shortcomings. First, the idea of Ur-intentionality is
problematic. Second, Hutto and Satne have not provided us with a way of getting from
Ur-intentionality to content intentionality.

Keywords Action . Content . Intentionality . Normativity

Intentionality engenders several hard problems. The first stems from intentionality’s
status as ‘directedness’ towards things. If we want to understand what this directedness
is, then we have to make it into our object of our thought, which means into an object of
our intentional directedness. So, we have to make the directedness of thought into an
object of directedness, without losing whichever of its features constitute it as directed-
ness. This is either (a) a super-duper-hard problem, or (b) a pseudo-problem. There is, of
course, something seemingly paradoxical in the idea that we can understand the
directedness of thought by focusing on an object of that directedness. But how do you
understand it without doing so? One way of understanding the phenomenological
tradition in philosophy – I’m not sure it is the right way, but it is my way – is as the
attempt to understand directedness as directedness rather than an object of directedness
by, in effect, sneaking up on it. You begin with the objects of directedness (suitably
epochéd) and then work backwards to extrapolate the intentional structures of the
consciousness to which they can appear this way. Results were mixed. I’ll not discuss
this problem since it is (a) very hard and (b) I’ve talked about it elsewhere (Rowlands
2010). Indeed, on my good days, I am almost satisfied with my pronouncements on this
matter.
There is another problem that particularly afflicts those who closely associate
intentionality with consciousness, in the sense of thinking that there can be no

* Marc Rowlands
mrowlands@miami.edu

1
Department of Philosophy, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL 33124, USA
742 Philosophia (2015) 43:741–746

intentionality in the absence of consciousness. If you think this, then you are likely to
be struck, at some time or other, by the thought that there could be a creature that stands
in all the right sorts of relations to an object – causal, informational, teleological,
informational-cum-teleological (take your pick according to your preferred theory of
intentionality) – but yet stands in no intentional relationship to this object. The
possibility of an intentional zombie is a corollary of the possibility of a phenomenal
zombie. This may or may not be a hard problem. Whether one regards it as such will
depend, to a considerable extent, on one’s attitude to the hard problem of conscious-
ness, the possibility of phenomenal zombies, etc. I’ll not discuss this because while the
problem may or may not be hard, it clearly is derivative.
So, I suppose the first thing I should say about Hutto and Satne’s bold and intriguing
paper is that I do not think there is just one problem of intentionality to solve. I know
there are several distinct problems, and I suspect there are many: a grotesque Gordian
monstrosity no less.
Hutto and Satne’s conception of the problem that needs to be solved is one
conceptually located in the naturalistic project, whose glory years encompassed most
of the of the 1980s and 1990s. When trying to explain this problem to students I – and I
suspect I’m not entirely idiosyncratic in this – usually avail of an execrably drawn,
vaguely human head and an equally poorly drawn external object (pine trees are easy)
and an arrow arcing out of the head toward the object. All we have to do, I tell them, is
understand the composition of this arrow. What sort of relation is it? Causal?
(problems) Informational? (problems) Teleosemantic (problems)? Problems.
Problems. Problems. Hutto and Satne’s attempt to deal with these problems involves
a divide and conquer strategy illustrated via the game of baseball. Unfortunately,
despite having lived in the US for much of my adult life, the game is a still mystery
to me (as will any game be that seems to have been designed around the concept of a
commercial break). If only they had used the game of cricket, for example, then I might
have found this a useful expository gambit (much of Rowlands 2006 involved gratu-
itous discussions of cricket). Nevertheless, I think I got the gist of their argument.
The Cartesian approach (in their sense) suffers from a range of familiar and related
problems, including the intensionality (with an ‘s’) of intentional ascriptions, grain of
content, indeterminacy, and so on. Indeed, I suspect that when presented with such a
theory, if one feels like shouting out ‘inscrutability of reference’ at any point, one may
well be on to something. These sorts of problems, Hutto and Satne argue, arise because
the job description of Cartesian approaches has been misconceived. Their remit is not,
in fact, to account for intentional content at all, and therefore not for the relation of
intentionality as it has commonly been understood, but for a different relation, which
they label ‘Ur-intentionality’.
Here, as I understand it, is the difference between intentionality and Ur-intentional-
ity. Ur-intentionality is a two-place relation between a subject (organism if your prefer)
and an object. But intentionality, in the full-blooded sense, is a three-place relation
between a subject, an object, and a mode of presentation (broadly understood) of that
object. In ordinary, pre-theoretical, discussions of intentionality – before we are assailed
by, as Fodor once put it, by the plague of frogs that has come to afflict our theoretical
discussions – the object of intentionality is generally taken to be a state-of-affairs. If I
think that the cat is on the mat then the intentional object of my thought is the cat’s
being on the mat. We wouldn’t want to say this is the fact that the cat is on the mat. For,
Philosophia (2015) 43:741–746 743

after all, my thought might be false. So, we are left with states-of affairs. They’re non-
standard states-of-affairs, admittedly. States-of-affairs are, typically, individuated
coarsely. But we don’t want it to be that the state-of-affairs that the cat is on the mat
is the same state-of-affairs as Felix being on the mat because I may not know that the
cat is Felix. So, we seem to require states-of-affairs individuated finely rather than
coarsely. (This is, presumably, why John McDowell prefers the term ‘thinkables’).
States-of-affairs, depending on their complexity are either identical with, or at least
involve, an object falling under a mode of presentation. In this case, the mode of
presentation of the cat is that he or she is on the mat. The cat is presented, in thought, as
standing in the relation of being on to the mat.
Put in these terms, the problem is this. How do we get from the two-place relation of
Ur-intentionality to the three-place relation of intentionality proper – content intention-
ality as we might call it? Hutto and Satne concede that even the most promising of the
Cartesian approaches – the teleosemantic - will not get us there. As Fodor put it,
BDarwin cares how many flies you eat, but not what description you eat them under^.
Hutto and Satne’s contention is that the other two approaches – the neo-behaviorist and
neo-pragmatist approaches can get us there. If so, this would be a result. Getting from
two-place Ur-intentionality to three-place content intentionality has as much legitimate
claim on the title of ‘hard’ as any other problem of intentionality. Indeed, I’m inclined
to think the relation of intentional directedness is precisely that in virtue of which an
object simpliciter is subsumed, or made to fall under, a mode of presentation (see
Rowlands 2010 for a defense of this claim). Unfortunately, however, I’m not inclined to
think Hutto and Satne have succeeded in this task.
The first point I should make is the idea of Ur-intentionality is deeply problematic.
Ur-intentionality is a relation to an object simpliciter – by which I shall mean an object
understood as not falling under any particular mode of presentation. However, there are
no objects simpliciter. The world is the totality of facts, not things, as someone once
said – and a fact is always, at minimum, an object falling under one or more modes of
presentation. Ur-intentionality, therefore, is parasitic on content-intentionality. To see
why consider an old favorite of the genre. The (relevant states of the) frog’s sight-strike-
feed mechanism, we might be tempted to say, is a relation to flies – flies simpliciter, not
flies under any particular mode of presentation. However, to describe the object as a fly
is already to subsume it under a mode of presentation. For the relevant states of the
mechanism are also related, in precisely the same way, to fly stages and
undetached fly parts. Therefore, one cannot unproblematically claim that the
mechanism detects flies – because it also, at the same time, detects fly-stages and
undetached fly parts. The object of Ur-intentionality can only be specified if we know
the mode of presentation under which it falls. But when an object is subsumed under a
mode of presentation, this yields a content and not a mere object. Therefore, Ur-
intentionality is parasitic upon content-intentionality.
Suppose, however, we can make sense of the idea of Ur-intentionality. There are still
immense problems getting from this to content intentionality – from a two places
relation linking a subject with an object to a three-place relation linking a subject, object
and mode of presentation. Hutto and Satne argue that the burden of this can be borne,
collectively, by second and third base. Key to their strategy here involves the distinction
between what they call intentional agents and intentional patients. As I understand this
distinction, an intentional patient is a subject of content or Ur-intentional states: an
744 Philosophia (2015) 43:741–746

individual that possesses such states. An intentional agent, on the other hand, is one
capable of ascribing intentional and Ur-intentional states to others. One key difference
between the two: BWhereas qualifying as an intentional agent requires content-
involving capacities, being an intentional patient need not.^ (p. 22) An intentional
patient need possess only Ur-intentional states. An intentional agent must possess
content-intentional states. If we can make sense of the idea of Ur-intentionality (which
I suspect we can't but will assume we can), this may be correct. But it is, I think,
genuinely, unclear how ascriptional capacities are going to introduce or inject content
intentionality into the world. We know that intentional agents possess content inten-
tionality, but as yet have no idea how this came to be. As far as I can see, nothing in
Hutto and Satne’s discussion of the second, neo-behavioral, base indicates how this is
going to happen. We are told that it is, Bonly by respecting the differences between
patients and agents that a story about the emergence of content can start to be told.^ But
there is no indication of the story we should now start to tell. We are cautioned against
instrumentalism about biological functions. I quite agree. But, again, this provides no
indication of how we are going to get from Ur-intentionality to content-intentionality.
We are warned to neither overplay nor underplay the differences between intentional
agents and intentional patients. But, again, this is not an account of how to get from
two-place to three-place intentionality. Finally, they conclude: BIn view of all this
second basers need to focus their energies on clarifying the special nature of our
ascriptional practices, and beware underplaying or overplaying the similarities between
intentional agents and patients. Bearing this in mind will allow second basers to appeal
to facts – facts about Ur-intentionality – needed to make sense of our scientific and
ascriptional practices.^ (p. 24). Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be an account of
how to get content intentionality. Even if first base can give us Ur-intentionality, we
have, as yet, no account of content intentionality.
Perhaps Hutto and Satne concede this. As they note: BBut the question remains how
did content ascribing practices come on the scene in the first place?^ (p. 24) But if this
is indeed a concession, then it is mysterious why we need a second based at all. (Why
not replace three bases with two – and let’s call them ‘wickets’ and place them roughly
22 yards apart in the middle of an oval field). The question, then, is can the neo-
pragmatist approach explain how to get from Ur-intentionality to content-intentionality.
I think the claim that it can is extremely doubtful.
Hutto and Satne have, in my view, misrepresented – and underestimated – the
problem with the neo-pragmatist account. As they see it, the problem is one of
explaining how one can conform without having the intelligence – hence the content-
intentionality – to understand and obey them. BElaborating a little, what the neo-
Pragmatist account sketched in 1.3 lacks is an account of how social practices are
possible without having concepts about the other’s beliefs, desires, intentions and thus
the concept of belief, intention or desire.^ To this end they posit a mechanism of social
conformism. But the problem they describe is not much of a problem at all. The real
problem with the neo-pragmatist account is much more basic and nasty. Norms are
things to which we conform, and let’s accept we can do this without being capable of
understanding them. Conforming is a type of doing. Doing is action, broadly construed.
And how do we conceptualize this?
One common way of understanding action makes it logically dependent on content.
Actions, in one sense, are individuated by their content in the sense that how many
Philosophia (2015) 43:741–746 745

actions you have in any given case depends on how many intentions there are.
I pat my head whilst rubbing my stomach. How many actions there are here
depends on how many intentions there are. One intention – to perform both
movements simultaneously – yields one action. Two intentions – that just happen to
contemporaneously activated – yield two actions. Clearly, we can’t assume this
concept of action: such actions are individuated by content and content is what
we are trying to explain.
The hope must be, therefore, that there must be a more primitive – non-
content-involving – concept of action that will serve Hutto and Satne’s pur-
poses. In particular, the hope must be that there is a form of action conceptu-
ally connected to Ur-intentionality, rather than content-intentionality. If we can
make sense of the idea of Ur-intentionality, there may be such a concept of
action. And even if we can't we should of course accept that there more
primitive concepts of action that are not individuated by way of the content
of intentional states (indeed, I argue for at least one version in my 2006). However, the
problem is that these other sorts of action, without a lot of further argument, appear
singularly unsuited for Hutto and Satne’s purposes. This is, in effect a consequence of a
problem identified by Wittgenstein: the rule-following paradox.
The basic problem is this. It is only when we subsume an object under a mode of
presentation – thus transforming it form an object simpliciter into a content – that we
can start to make sense of the possibility or error or a mistake. Suppose person
continues a mathematical progression as follows: 2, 4, 6, … 996, 998, 1000, 1004,
1008. Has he made a mistake? Well that depends under which we subsume his
behavior. If we subsume it under the +2 rule, then he has. If, on the other hand, we
subsume it under the +2 iff n<1000, +4 otherwise rule he has not. Behavior
can count as normative only under a description. The question, then, is whether
Ur-intentionality can supply the description. It is clear that it cannot. For Ur-
intentionality is supposed to be a relation to an object simpliciter. The absence
of a mode of presentation means that there would be nothing that could provide us with
the description. If the frog’s sight-strike-feed mechanism were really a relation to an
object simpliciter there would be no basis for describing it as fly-catching behavior, as
opposed to fly-stage-catching, undetached fly-part catching, ambient black object catch-
ing, etc. behavior.
The appeal to practice is based on the hope that action can provide us with the
requisite normativity to account for content intentionality. Normativity is at the absolute
heart of intentionality. An intentional content is something that stakes out a claim on the
world. If I think the cat is on the mat then the cat should be on the mat. If it not,
something has gone wrong.
In Ur-intentionality, there is no normativity. We get that only when we a
mode of presentation enters the picture. That is, normativity enters the picture
only with content intentionality. The problem of how to get from Ur-intention-
ality to content intentionality is, accordingly, the problem of how we get normativity into
the picture. The appeal to practice either: (1) begs the question, by assuming a concept
of action that is already normative because it is constitutively linked to the
normativity of content, or (2) fails to answer the question by assuming a concept of
action (linked to Ur-intentionality) that does not have the resources from which to derive
normativity.
746 Philosophia (2015) 43:741–746

In conclusion, I accept Hutto and Satne’s negative program. I think they have
provided a clear and compelling account of why intentionality is such a problem.
However, I do not think their positive program will work. This, of course, places them
in very good company.

References

Rowlands, M. (2006). Body language: Representation in action. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Rowlands, M. (2010). The new science of the mind: From extended mind to embodied phenomenology.
Cambridge: MIT Press.