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.We should stillhope science will eventually uncover the historical truth about theseAll but the last section of this chapter appears under the same title, in Y.Wilks andetiological details, but not because it will resolve all our AristotelianD.Partridge, eds., Source Book on the Foundations of Artificial Intelligence (Cambridge:"why" questions, even when they are cautiously and appropriately Cambridge University Press, 1987), and is reprinted with permission.posed.Evolution, Error, and Intentionality 289The Intentional Stance 288I lack specialized skills, knowledge and understanding, but nothing that isearlier act of provocation owes a special debt to the comments of Tyleressential to membership in the society of rational agents.With machines,Burge, Fred Dretske, Jerry Fodor, John Haugeland, Saul Kripke, Ruththough, and this includes the most sophisticated modern computers, it isMillikan, Hilary Putnam, Richard Rorty, and Stephen Stich, and todifferent.They do lack something that is essential, (p.23)many others, including especially Fred Adams, Peter Brown, JeromeFeldman, D.K.Modrak, Carolyn Ristau, Jonathan Schull, Stephen Others who have recently struggled with the problem of misrepre-White, and Andrew Woodfield.sentation or error also seemed to me to fall on Searle's side of thefence: in particular, Tyler Burge (1986) and Saul Kripke (1982, espe-The Great Divide I want to display resists a simple, straightforwardcially p.34ff).In fact, as we shall see, the problem of error impales allformulation, not surprisingly, but we can locate it by retracing theand only those who believe in original or intrinsic intentionality.steps of my exploration, which began with a discovery about somephilosophers' attitudes toward the interpretation of artifacts.The Are original intentionality and intrinsic intentionality the same thing?scales fell from my eyes during a discussion with Jerry Fodor and We will have to approach this question indirectly, by pursuing vari-some other philosophers about a draft of a chapter of Fodor's ous attempts to draw a sharp distinction between the way our mindsPsychosemantics (1987).Scales often fall from my eyes when discussing (or mental states) have meaning and the way other things do.We canthings with Fodor, but this was the first time, so far as I can recall, begin with a familiar and intuitive distinction discussed by Hauge-that I actually found myself muttering "Aha!" under my breath.The land.Our artifactschapter in question, "Meaning and the World Order," concerns Fred.only have meaning because we give it to them; their intentionality, likeDretske's attempts (1981, especially chapter 8; 1985; 1986) to solvethat of smoke signals and writing, is essentially borrowed, hence derivative.the problem of misrepresentation.As an aid to understanding theTo put it bluntly: computers themselves don't mean anything by their tokensissue, I had proposed to Fodor and the other participants in the (any more than books do) they only mean what we say they do.Genuineunderstanding, on the other hand, is intentional "in its own right" and notdiscussion that we first discuss a dead simple case of misrepresenta-derivatively from something else.(1981, pp.32-33)tion: a coin-slot testing apparatus on a vending machine accepting aslug."That sort of case is irrelevant," Fodor retorted instantly, "be-Consider an encyclopedia.It has derived intentionality.It containscause after all, John Searle is right about one thing; he's right aboutinformation about thousands of things in the world, but only insofarartifacts like that.They don't have any intrinsic or original intention-as it is a device designed and intended for our use.Suppose weality only derived intentionality.""automate" our encyclopedia, putting all its data into a computer andThe doctrine of original intentionality is the claim that whereasturning its index into the basis for an elaborate question-answeringsome of our artifacts may have intentionality derived from us, wesystem.No longer do we have to look up material in the volumes; wehave original (or intrinsic) intentionality, utterly underived.Aristotlesimply type in questions and receive answers.It might seem to naivesaid that God is the Unmoved Mover, and this doctrine announcesusers as if they were communicating with another person, anotherthat we are Unmeant Meaners.I have never believed in it and haveentity endowed with original intentionality, but we would know bet-often argued against it.As Searle has noted, "Dennett.believester.A question-answering system is still just a tool, and whateverthat nothing literally has any intrinsic intentional mental states" (1982,meaning or aboutness we vest in it is just a by-product of our prac-p.57), and in the long-running debate between us (Searle 1980b,tices in using the device to serve our own goals.It has no goals of its1982, 1984, 1985; Dennett 1980b; Hofstadter and Dennett 1981; Den-own, except for the artificial and derived goal of "understanding"nett 1982c, 1984b, forthcoming f), I had assumed that Fodor was onand "answering" our questions correctly.my side on this particular point.But suppose we endow our computer with somewhat more auton-Did Fodor really believe that Searle is right about this? He said so.omous, somewhat less slavish goals.For instance, a chess-playingDretske (1985) goes further, citing Searle's attack on artificial intelli-computer has the (artificial, derived) goal of defeating its human op-gence (Searle 1980) with approval, and drawing a sharp contrast be-ponent, of concealing what it "knows" from us, of tricking us per-tween people and computers:haps.But still, surely, it is only our tool or toy, and although many of290The Intentional Stance Evolution, Error, and Intentionality 291its internal states have a sort of aboutness or intentionality e.g., much a matter of physical law that objects of kind K would put thethere are states that represent (and hence are about) the current board device into state Q as that quarters would
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