Intentionality

Abstract

This chapter presents a taxonomy of the sorts of mental events that explain the why behind actions—paradigmatically, the agent ’s beliefs and desires . First, there are propositional attitudes : These sorts of mental states are formulated in terms of an agent ’s attitude toward a proposition . Such a mental state that has content is also called an intentional state: For instance, emotions are intentional state, and this differentiates them from sensations such as pain and from moods such as being sad, brooding or cheerful. In this chapter, I describe mind as a jigsaw puzzle —a puzzle without borders which can grow indefinitely. Each new belief must find a place where it fits with adjacent beliefs and also coheres with the emerging picture. The second part of this chapter is aimed to describe the place of these mental states in agency. A desire -belief pair allows rationalizing the action: This is the reason I could give if someone asked me—Why did you do this? Donald Davidson, in his Causal Theory of Action, went one dramatic step further: He contended that this reason is also the real cause of the action. In other words, the reason of an action causes this action, like insulin causes a decrease in blood glucose. The realization of an action is connected to a set of pertinent mental states , the person acting after having all well considered. This conception of action eschews deterministic laws, but does acknowledge the force of mechanisms, in a quasi-physiology of Mind.