Evaluation of the Responses Made by Dretske as Pertains to Chisholms Claims - Assignment Example

Explain how Dretske responds to Chisholm's claim that intentionality cannot be naturalized. Do you think that Dretske's response is successful? Defend your answer. Introduction In the field of philosophy, the term intentional states is seen to mean the act of directing one’s personal thoughts towards some particular ideal or object (Millikan, 1984). It was the philosopher Fred Dretske who took to investigating the various claim that were made by the late Roderick Chisholm who postulated that intentional states could only possibly be mental states. In making this claim, Chisholm was seen to derive the claim mainly based on the thesis proposed by Franz Brentano the nineteenth century philosopher in his book “Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint”. This paper will attempt to evaluate the responses made by Dretske as pertains to Chisholm’s claims and determine their success. Chisholm’s Claim that Intentionality cannot be naturalized and Dretske’s Response to the Claim A key feature of various mental states is their actual content. An example being that in the event that I essentially believe it will snow, my actual belief as at the moment can be seen to represent a state of the weather and when I chance to see a dog, I become perpetually aware of that cat. My innate belief that it is eventually going to rain may be seen to be inaccurate or accurate, my perception as to the existence of the cat may be imprecise or precise and my desire to be loved my eventually be satisfied or unsatisfied. Brentano postulated that intentional states were essentially solely mental states and thus distinguished mental states from the physical states because they are objects of awareness and non-spatial in nature. Brentano further contends that this perceived ‘intentional inexistence’ is generally exclusive to psychical phenomena and that there is no physical phenomena that can essentially be said to have it (Feldman & Feldman 2008). The Intentionality of thought can basically be accounted through mental expectations, semantics and language. All these factors serve to actively demonstrate psychological intention and therefore cannot be explained in non-intentional or non-psychological terms. For Chisholm intentionality cannot essentially be naturalized because it is impossible to identify any such psychological fact with a physical fact. For Chisholm, the use of various intentional sentences essentially means that all our currently existing beliefs about various psychological phenomena an essentially be sufficiently expressed through them although it is impossible to do so for physical phenomena (Feldman & Feldman 2008). A good example of this is the sentence ‘Diogenes searching for an actual honest man”, this sentence can be perceived to be an intentional statement because it is seen not to rely on the relative veracity of there necessarily being an honest man or not. However, the statement “Diogenes essentially lives in a tub” can be perceived to not be an intentional sentence mainly because it is seen to mostly rely on the actual existence of the tub. Chisholm is seen to also recognize the fat that we tend to sometimes use various intentional sentences to try and express a number of physical facts and that statement of probability sentences that are used to describe various comparisons tend to be problematic (Feldman & Feldman 2008). However, Chisholm is seen to state that those intentional statements that are found to be the most relevant are usually those that happen to be primarily based on various psychological attitudes such as assuming, wishing, perceiving designing, believing and hoping. However, Dretske is seen to be keen to contend that for one to essentially fully understand that particular mind, it is fundamentally important that they are able to know how it works, and that for them to be able to sufficiently do this, it must entail a physical or naturalistic understanding of the mind. Dretske is seen to generally contradict Chisholm’s assertion that intentionality cannot essentially be naturalized or that various psychological phenomena cannot be expressed via physical means. Dretske is seen to argue that intentional ‘Ingredients’ are found to be necessary to understand an ‘intentional product’, this is similar to the manner in which a copper wire is found to be necessary to build an amplifier mainly because copper is able to conduct electricity. In order to establish his proposed theory that postulates that intentionality is generally already naturalized, Dretske uses the example of a compass. He points out that a compass is basically a physical artifact that is seen to have an intentional purpose that is however found to not be intrinsic to the compass itself but is intrinsic to the user. When one happens to talk about the use of a compass, this tends to give compass an intentional context. Therefore, we are able to have intentional phenomena (the compass) having an intensional context (its use or purpose) (Millikan, 1984). This intensionality is found to be as much a part of the intentional phenomena as its own original intentionality. According to Dretske, naturalized intentionality is seen to essentially exist in the entire physical and natural world in a number of different phenomena that are seen to basically express something else pertaining to the natural conditions that are seen to indicate exactly how the rest of the world generally works. Some of the examples provides by Dretske pertaining to this includes smoke, tree rings and dark clouds. Dretske is seen to also contend that the general construction of a thought essentially requires a property of misrepresentation or else we would not be able to have a naturalistic understanding of the various matters we think about, their meaning or even their content. However, just like a compass, for intentional phenomena to be able to misrepresent the main information that it was essentially designed so as to be able to deliver, it generally tends to rely on us to do it. The success or failure of physical phenomena is seen to be determined by our attitudes and purposes. It is essentially the power derived by these objects to be able to misrepresent that Dretske suggests is generally essential for the recipe of the mind he created mainly because it helps it acquire the innate ability to be able to detach meaning from cause. Through Dretske’s recipe for thought, he is seen to be positively asserting a relatively pure physicalist ontology of the mind. Unlike Chisholm, most physicalist philosophers as exemplified by Dretske, tend to perceive that there happens to be no unbridgeable gulf between the two states of physical and the mental (Jacob 2010), they also believe that reality can essentially be described using not only using intentionalist terms but also by using physicalist terms as well. Physicalists also object to Brentano’s thesis that is seen to postulate that there exists no physical phenomenon that can be able to manifest intentionality (Millikan, 1984). When Dretske attempts to naturalize intentionality by opting to ascribe a number of non-mental attributes to it, he is in essence seen to be trying to authorize the physicalism assertion that there is nothing in existence that is found to have a purely mental nature. For Dretske (Jacob 2010), information tends to exhibit some form of intentionality and is thus able to show not only the intentionality of belief but also the derived intentionality of a give utterance that can serve to misrepresent such information. By making his assessment of intentional inexistence, Brentano can essentially be seen to have been stating that there are some things that tend to exist only within the confines of our minds; these things are seen to include objects such as fire-breathing dragons or even unicorns. It is vital for intensionality to be completely separated from intentionality and sentences that attempt to report mental states need to be completely intensional. It is not possible for a given sentence to be intentional but yet be completely separated from intentionality. By maintaining that intentionality can essentially be naturalistically or physically reduced, Dretske is seen to be distinguishing between derived intensionality and intrinsic or original intentionality. Dretske is also seen to be maintaining a somewhat casual theory of intentionality as exemplified by metal states being representative of something; he is seen to have used the example of tree rings to be representing something. Dretske also argues that the main intentionality of mental states can be able to be reduced by their evolutionary biological function (Millikan, 1984). Conclusion Chisholm’s account of mental states is seen to be mainly based on semantics and linguistics. The response given by Dretske to Chisholm account postulating that intentionality is naturalized in all the world due to its intensional context is found to be valid. However, the second claim made by Brentano that intrinsic intentionality is generally sufficient for mentality is also valid as evidenced by physical effects of a seemingly purely mental cause that is seen in some diseases such as anorexia Nervosa (. It is therefore found that Dretske’s response to Chisholm that all intentional states tend to have a purely physical cause is generally found to be invalid mainly because it is seen to not take into consideration the aspect of mental states that can essentially be classified as being intentional and have causal roles. Bibliography Feldman, R & Feldman, F, 2008, ‘Roderick Chisholm’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, viewed 30June 2013, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chisholm/#MetIVBreThe. Jacob, P, 2010, ‘Intentionality’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,viewed 30May 2013, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intentionality/#9. U.K. National Health Service, Anorexia Nervosa, viewed 30May, 2013, http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Anorexia-nervosa/Pages/Introduction.aspx. Millikan, R. 1984. Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Read More