The Intentionality of Gladness

by

IVAR SEGELBERG

1. It has often been supposed that the word .about, in ))A is glad about h u indicates a causal relation. ))A is glad about h)) would then mean ),A is glad and h is the cause of A’s gladness.. However, it is easy to see that this analysis is not correct. A can be .glad aboutu h even if h is the object for an hallucination or other illusion. Of course, h cannot be the cause of A’s gladness in this case. Indeed, there is a distinction between .being glad about. and .being glad because of. something. The words .be- cause of, in the latter expression indicate a causal relation.

2. It is still possible that .A is glad about h. means that A is glad and that A thinks his gladness is caused by h.

This analysis is also excluded, however, since it is possible to be glad about a coming event. If A is glad about an event h which is yet to come, it is not reasonable to suppose that A con- siders h to have given rise to his gladness.

3. If we still wish to interpret .about. to mean a causal relation, some such reasoning as the following might be put forward: If A is glad about h, A thinks that h is real (now or in the future) ; ))A is glad about hn might then be taken to mean ,A believes in the reality of h, and this belief is the cause of A’s gladness..

An objection to this analysis is: It is possible to have a cer- tain conviction, and this conviction may be the cause of a cer- tain state of gladness without any connection between the con- viction and the state of gladness being experienced. But it is

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necessary to have some sort of conception of this connection in order to be really able to speak about .gladness aboutp.

4. This defect of the analysis may be avoided if the analysis is completed with the proposition >,A thinks that the belief in h is the cause of A’s gladness.. With this addition, the analysis of the proposition .A is glad about h:, is expressed by the conjunc- tion of the following propositions:

( a ) A is glad. (6) A believes that h is real. ( c ) A’s belief in the reality of h is the cause of A’s gladness. (d) A is aware that his belief in the reality of h is the cause

of his gladness. (ad (6)) It is disputable whether PA is glad about h, does

really imply that A believes in the reality of h. If someone loses himself in a film, it may happen that he becomes glad about something which happens in the film. But he need not think that this happening is real.

Two senses of .believe,, ought to be distinguished here, - we can speak about phenomenal belief and functional belief. We mean by phenomend belief, a certain sort of experience. By functional belief, we mean a system of ways of reacting which characterises a person who has a particular conviction.

If a person really becomes glad about a happening in a film, then he experiences something which is not different from what he would call belief in ordinary conscious experience.

But, the functional equivalent (F’) of the phenomenal belief (Ph’) in a happening in a film is essentially different from the functional equivalent (F’) of the phenomenal belief (PhZ) in a real happening. In the case of F’, one sits still on a seat and does not try to involve oneself in the development of the action; if someone asks whether the happenings are real or not, one an- swers in the negative. In the case of F‘, the reactions are quite different.

When one is glad about a happening in a film, one believes in the phenomenal sense in the reality of the happening. But the functional equivalent of this belief is so different from the

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functional equivalent to belief in a real happening, that it is not suitable to call both ways of reacting functional belief. Thus, if belief is used in the functional sense, it is not possible to say that a person believes in the reality of a film happening which he is glad about.

(ad (c)) Even if it is true that .A is glad about h. implies a belief, on the part of A, in the reality of h, it is not equally obvious that the statement implies that this belief is the cause of A’s gladness.

It is conceivable that A’s state of gladness has been brought about by chemical influences, and that the state of gladness has a secondary association with A’s belief in the reality of h. The state of gladness has then developed into gladness about h. So, it does not seem that, because a state of gladness is gladness about h, the gladness is caused by belief in the reality of h.

(ad ( d ) ) If proposition ( d ) is true, .gladness about h. is a comparatively complicated phenomenon, which includes reflec- tion about the actual state of gladness and its causal relations. But .gladness about, seems to occur at lower stages of devel- opment, as with animals, small children and people with un- developed intellects, where such reflections certainly do not take place. Of course it could be objected to this argument that ))gladness about, cannot be applied in the same sense to the stages of development in question, as it can to normal adult persons. When we think we have found ,gladness about. in the case of a dog, what we have really found would just be a state of gladness caused by h. But this objection hardly seems to be tenable.

For adult persons, a state of gladness without object and glad- ness directed toward an object correspond to different kinds of behaviour, and it seems that there is the same difference of be- haviour in the case of small children, for instance.

But it also seems to be possible to discern introspectively that the state which is called .gladness about h~ does not involve any reflection on the causal relations of the state of gladness. When a person is ))glad about h,, he believes (in the phenomenal sense)

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in the reality of h, and, furthermore, he experiences a connec- tion between the belief in the reality of h and the state of glad- ness. But this connection has not the character of an idea of the causal relation between the belief and the gladness.

When the gladness is directed toward an object, the subject has an experience of gladness (g) and a simultaneous idea ( i) of what the gladness is about. But it is clear that .A is glad about h. is not the same as .A simultaneously has g and in. It is quite possible to think of something, x, and to be glad at the Jume time without being glad about x. The relation between g and i, when they constitute a state of gladness about the object of i, seems to be the following:

There is an experience e for which (a) g and i are non-overlapping components of e, (b) e has no component which overlaps both g and i. If these conditions hold good, there is a state of what we have

called .gladness about,. If they do not hold good, it is not pos- sible to talk about .gladness about,. The causal relations of the state of gladness are irrelevant in this connection, and so is the presence or absence of awareness of the causal relations of the state of gladness.