Intentionality|What Part Do You Play, Part 1

Have you ever asked yourself, "What is society?" Have you ever been really excited by a protest or saddened about a news story. What we refer to as society is not tangible or physical and yet is undeniably real. We all contribute to society in some way or another and often think very little of it. If everyone in our society lost the ability to aquire any sense data (taste, touch, smell, sound, sight) would the reality, as we know it socially, cease to exist.

First let's consider the notion of social. Something is social when meaning is agreed upon by at least two people. Therefore, meaning is shared and as such language is an artificial byproduct of a more natural experience common to many or at least two people. In this there is much that I borrow about language and meaning from Reid, Wittgenstein and Searle.

Now let's narrow the concept from between two people to the individual. In other words, what kind of negotiations or transactions are going on in the mind of either of the individuals. Hopefully this simplifies matters. We will eventually build from individual reality back to social reality--I realize that the existence of other realities and even heterogeneous realities is arguable but indulge me--this is a sandcastle afterall.

So, reality for the individual. Thoughts, feelings and desires are voluntary but like blinking an eye, breathing or swallowing we usually manifest them with an auto-pilot efficiency. This is not to be confused with what has come to be called involuntary actions, e.g. digestion, hair growth, blood circulation. It is an odd feature of the individual that some things can be controlled while others occur whether we think and/or desire them or not. For the moment I propose that reality for the individual comes in both flavors, voluntary and involuntary, and as such it astounds me that I can ever find my car keys (well, at least sometimes I find them).

From the notion that reality for an individual exists in at least two forms of activities I would like to consider that voluntary is nearly the same as intentional. Thus, the other consideration of the involuntary being unintentional and for my purposes will not be discussed further. That said, I do happen to think that unintentional states have a troubling consequence on an individual's reality.

It would be a shame to consider intentionality without first considering Anscombe's implication of direction of fit. This briefly establishes belief (cognition) and desire (conation) so have a gander:

Intention (1957) is also the classic source for the idea that there is a difference in 'direction of fit' between cognitive states like beliefs and conative states like desire. (This theme is later taken up and discussed by Searle in Intentionality (1983)). Cognitive states describe the world and are causally derived from the facts or objects they depict. Conative states do not describe the world, but aim to bring something about in the world. Anscombe used the example of a shopping list to illustrate the difference (see Intention (1957), par.32). The list can be a straightforward observational report of what is actually bought (thereby acting like a cognitive state), or it can function as a conative state such as a command or desire, dictating what the agent should buy. If the agent fails to buy what is listed, we do not say that the list is untrue or incorrect; we say that the mistake is in the action, not the belief. According to Anscombe, this difference in direction of fit is a major difference between speculative knowledge (theoretical, empirical knowledge) and practical knowledge (knowledge of actions and morals). Whereas 'speculative knowledge' is 'derived from the objects known', practical knowledge is--in a phrase Anscombe lifts from Aquinas--'the cause of what it understands' (see Intention (1957), par.87).
(ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._E._M._Anscombe)

That's all for the moment. In the next post I hope to develop an application of intentionality by considering Kolbe's theory of conative modes. The basic concept being that individuals each have a conative style that can be seen in their actions.