280

INTRODUCTION TO ‘INTENTIONALITY: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH’ Philip David Zelazo

Dept. of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, M5S 1Al

The aim of this symposium is to address the origin of intentionality through conceptual clarification and consideration of empirical research on infancy. Efforts to understand mind in contradistinction to matter have often emphasized the importance of intentional&y, and a developmental approach to the fundamental nature of mind would seem to be especially promising; after all, mind apparently emerges from matter in the course of ontogeny. For Brentano, ’ ‘intentionality’ or ‘mental in-existence’ captured the fact that any conscious experience, no matter how minimal, is an experience of something--it has content contained within it, whether that content be a proposition regarding the King of France, or simply generalized anxiety. The same cannot be said of things that are merely physical (e.g., a rock). Brentano’s intentionality is thus a ground-level characteristic of consciousness.2 Some authors, such as Searle: make a finer distinction and reserve the term ‘intentionality’ for those mental states in which the content can be easily distinguished from the particular form of the state (e.g., as in belief). On both of these accounts, however, intentionality is a fundamental property of at least some mental states and it is not specifically a property of action. From a more empirical standpoint, William James proposed that the “pursuance of future ends and the choice of means for their attainmenF4 be the principal mark of mentality. As befits a functionalist, James focused our attention on the way in which mind is manifested in action. Undoubtedly, there are varieties of goal-directed behavior, only some of which are mindful. For most authors, intentional action is goal-directed behavior that is accompanied by (or caused by) a particular type of intentional state; namely, an intention.

Considerable work remains to be done to clarify our concept of intentionality and to coordinate it with cognate concepts such as consciousness and self control. However, a primary purpose of this symposium is to explore the extent to which our understanding of intentionality can be informed by empirical research on the development of understanding and action in infancy.

Each of the participants approaches the origin of intentionality from a different philosophical and psychological perspective. As a result, they offer alternative answers to the following questions: What is the relation between intentionality and awareness? What cognitive functions are required for intentional action? On what grounds can we call the behavior of infants ‘intentional’? What is the relation between intentionality and the understanding of intentionality in others ? What are the consequences of age-related changes in intentionality for infants’ behavior? No doubt, these are extremely difficult questions to answer, but they would seem to be difficult in direct proportion to their importance for an adequate understanding of mind.

‘Brentano, F. (1973). Psychology from an empirical standpoint. (0. Kraus, Ed.; Schattle, & L. L. McAlister, trans.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. (Original, 1874).

2Zelazo, P. D. (in press). Towards a characterization of minimal consciousness. New Ideas in Psychology.

3Searle, J. (1983). Intentionality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 4James, W. (1950). The principles of psychology, vol. 1. NY: Dover. (Original, 1890).