Where does intentionality collide?

In the philosophy of mind, intentionality is the property by which a mental state is about or directed at something: a belief is about a fact, a fear is of a danger, a wish is for an outcome, so the state points beyond itself to an object that need not even exist. Brentano's 1874 Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint made this directedness the mark that separates the mental from the physical, and Husserl's later phenomenology built on it to study how consciousness is always consciousness of some object. This meaning names an intrinsic feature of a mind's own states, their built-in aboutness, and it is not a strategy an outside observer adopts nor a skill that an infant gradually acquires.[1]

Unit

One mental state's directedness at an object or content

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Analysed by philosophical argument, not measured; weighed by how a state's aboutness resists a purely physical description

The intentional stance is a strategy for predicting what a system will do by treating it as a rational agent that holds beliefs and desires and acts to further its goals. Dennett's 1971 paper Intentional Systems, later expanded in his 1987 book of the same theme, argued that we can predict a thermostat, a chess program, or a person by asking what it ought to believe and want given its situation, whatever the thing is made of, and without claiming it really has an inner life. This meaning is a method an observer chooses because it works, not a property the system carries on its own, and it stands apart from Brentano's intrinsic aboutness and from a child's developing grasp of other people's goals.[2]

Unit

A prediction strategy applied to one system's behaviour

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Judged by whether treating the system as a rational believer and wanter predicts its behaviour well

In developmental psychology, intentionality names the growing understanding that people act on purpose toward goals, and shared intentionality the capacity to hold a goal jointly with another person. Tomasello and colleagues' 2005 Understanding and sharing intentions argued that around the first birthday infants begin to read others as intentional agents and to share attention and goals with them, a step the authors treat as the root of human culture and language. This meaning is a measured capacity that emerges over development and can be tested in the lab, unlike Brentano's built-in aboutness of any mental state or Dennett's observer's stance toward any system at all.[3]

Unit

An infant's grasp that an act aims at a goal, per task

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Tested with gaze-following, imitation, and helping tasks scored for goal understanding