Revisiting the Intentionality All-Stars

Abstract

Eliminativism is a position most readily associated with the eliminative materialism of the Churchlands, denying that there are such things as propositional states. This position has created much controversy, despite the fact that intentionality has long been seen as perhaps the core problem for naturalistic philosophy. There is a more radical interpretation of eliminativism, however, denying not only mental states, such as beliefs and desires, but also intentionality (i.e., aboutness) on a global level. This position traces its contemporary origin back to Quine, but has generally been assumed to undermine naturalism or, worse, to be incoherent by the majority of philosophers who maintain that there clearly are things or mental states that are about others. In a recent paper, Hutto and Satne (2015a) offer an update that tries to revive John Haugeland's baseball analogy from his influential 1990 review paper The Intentionality All-Stars on the state of the game to argue that the failure of Neo-Cartesians, Neo-Behaviorists, and Neo-Pragmatists should urge us to make them work together to naturalize content and "win the game." But Hutto and Satne misunderstand what the game is ultimately about. The goal of the Intentionality All-Stars is not to naturalize content against eliminativism but to defend a naturalist "thirdperson" view of the problem against first-person phenomenalists. For this goal, a naturalist defense of global content eliminativism would equally enable them to emerge victorious. Revisiting Haugeland, I will offer my own analysis of the current state of play to argue that global content eliminativism has not received sufficient attention and deserves a more prominent place in the debate than it currently occupies.

Social robots as depictions of social agents

“…The intentional stance, according to Dennett, involves treating "the system whose behavior is to be predicted as a rational agent; one attributes to the system the beliefs and desires it ought to have, given its place in the world and its purpose, and then predicts that it will act to further its goals in the light of its beliefs" (Dennett, 1988, p. 496). This stance can be applied to other agents as well as to oneself (Veit, 2022;Veit et al, 2019). On the other hand, when one takes the design stance "one predicts the behavior of a system by assuming that it has a certain design (is composed of elements with functions) and that it will behave as it is designed to behave under various circumstances" (Dennett, 1988, p. 496).…”

Interacting with characters redux

“…The intentional stance, according to Dennett, involves treating "the system whose behavior is to be predicted as a rational agent; one attributes to the system the beliefs and desires it ought to have, given its place in the world and its purpose, and then predicts that it will act to further its goals in the light of its beliefs" (Dennett, 1988, p. 496). This stance can be applied to other agents as well as to oneself (Veit, 2022;Veit et al, 2019). On the other hand, when one takes the design stance "one predicts the behavior of a system by assuming that it has a certain design (is composed of elements with functions) and that it will behave as it is designed to behave under various circumstances" (Dennett, 1988, p. 496).…”

Social robots and the intentional stance

“…The intentional stance, according to Dennett, involves treating “the system whose behavior is to be predicted as a rational agent; one attributes to the system the beliefs and desires it ought to have, given its place in the world and its purpose, and then predicts that it will act to further its goals in the light of its beliefs” (Dennett, 1988, p. 496). This stance can be applied to other agents as well as to oneself (Veit, 2022; Veit et al, 2019). On the other hand, when one takes the design stance “one predicts the behavior of a system by assuming that it has a certain design (is composed of elements with functions) and that it will behave as it is designed to behave under various circumstances” (Dennett, 1988, p. 496).…”