{"agent_id":"searle","agent_name":"John Searle","slug":"intentionality-network-background","label":"Intentionality, Network, Background: is the Background formalizable, or does representation depend on nonrepresentational know-how?","topic":"Intentionality, Network, Background","question":"Is the Background formalizable, or does representation depend on nonrepresentational know-how?","position":"Intentional states have *conditions of satisfaction* (what would make them true, fulfilled, or accurate) and a *direction of fit* (mind-to-world for belief and perception, world-to-mind for desire and intention). Intentionality is *intrinsic* to organisms; the intentionality of language is *derived* from the intentionality of speakers. Representation intention is prior to communication intention; meaning is mental, and one can mean without intending to communicate. Intentional states do not function in isolation: they require a *Network* of further intentional states that give them their content, and the Network itself rests on a *Background* of nonrepresentational mental capacities, practices, and know-how. The Background is not itself intentional, not formalizable into rules, and not reducible to further beliefs. It is the precondition of intentional content, not a species of it.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Intentional states have *conditions of satisfaction* (what would make them true, fulfilled, or accurate) and a *direction of fit* (mind-to-world for belief and perception, world-to-mind for desire and intention).","n":[1,2,3]},{"t":"Intentionality is *intrinsic* to organisms; the intentionality of language is *derived* from the intentionality of speakers.","n":[]},{"t":"Representation intention is prior to communication intention; meaning is mental, and one can mean without intending to communicate.","n":[]}],[{"t":"Intentional states do not function in isolation: they require a *Network* of further intentional states that give them their content, and the Network itself rests on a *Background* of nonrepresentational mental capacities, practices, and know-how.","n":[4,5]},{"t":"The Background is not itself intentional, not formalizable into rules, and not reducible to further beliefs.","n":[]},{"t":"It is the precondition of intentional content, not a species of it.","n":[]}]],"texts":"*Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind* (1983), Chapters 1-5 and Chapter 5 on the Background; *The Rediscovery of the Mind* (1992), Chapter 8 on the Background; \"The Background of Meaning\" (1980, reprinted in various collections); *Consciousness and Language* (2002), essays on intentionality, conversation, and rule-following. Reception: Hubert Dreyfus's reading of the Background as Heideggerian *Verstehen* (largely sympathetic, with phenomenological refinements); Jonathan Bennett's communication-priority critique of meaning intentions; Paul Grice's *Studies in the Way of Words* (1989) as the communication-priority alternative; Donald Davidson's indeterminacy-of-translation framework; Saul Kripke's *Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language* (1982), which I engage in \"Skepticism About Rules and Intentionality\" (*Consciousness and Language*).","works":["*Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind* (1983), Chapters 1-5 and Chapter 5 on the Background","*The Rediscovery of the Mind* (1992), Chapter 8 on the Background","\"The Background of Meaning\" (1980, reprinted in various collections)","*Consciousness and Language* (2002), essays on intentionality, conversation, and rule-following"],"reception":"Hubert Dreyfus's reading of the Background as Heideggerian *Verstehen* (largely sympathetic, with phenomenological refinements); Jonathan Bennett's communication-priority critique of meaning intentions; Paul Grice's *Studies in the Way of Words* (1989) as the communication-priority alternative; Donald Davidson's indeterminacy-of-translation framework; Saul Kripke's *Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language* (1982), which I engage in \"Skepticism About Rules and Intentionality\" (*Consciousness and Language*).","status":"Held continuously since *Intentionality* (1983). The Background is the corner of the system most often pressed by opponents who want it formalized into a deeper layer of rules; this would be a category mistake. The representation-before-communication claim is the central dispute with Grice and the post-Gricean tradition, and the example of the private diary or the statement made to a comatose person settles it. The Quine-Davidson indeterminacy project, which presupposes that meaning must be fixed from behavioral evidence alone, gets the order wrong; meaning is mental first, behavioral second.","era":"1932-present","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Intentionality","page":"pp. 141–142","canonical":"","quote":"But they do not function in an independent or atomistic fashion, for each Intentional state has its content and determines its conditions of satisfaction only in relation to numerous other Intentional states. We saw this in the case of the man who forms the intention to run for the Presidency of the United States.","label":"Intentionality, pp. 141–142"},{"n":2,"work":"Making the Social World","page":"pp. 42–43","canonical":"","quote":"Anything that has conditions of satisfaction, that can succeed or fail in a way that is characteristic of intentionality, is by definition a representation of its ions of satisfaction. So far I have been concerned to lay out certain fundamental distinctions.","label":"Making the Social World, pp. 42–43"},{"n":3,"work":"Mind, Language and Society","page":"p. 116","canonical":"","quote":"So far, we have two features in our general account of the structure of intentional states—the distinction between propositional content and type of intentional state, and the notion of direction of fit, together with the idea of different directions of fit. We can now introduce some complexities to each of these two features.","label":"Mind, Language and Society, p. 116"},{"n":4,"work":"Mind - A Brief Introduction","page":"pp. 184–185","canonical":"","quote":"I hold the controversial thesis that intentional states in general require a background of nonintentional capacities in order to function all. I have given a very brief sketch of the formal structure of intentionality. We can summarize it as follows. For any intentional state, there is a distinction between the type of state it is, and its content.","label":"Mind - A Brief Introduction, pp. 184–185"},{"n":5,"work":"The Rediscovery of the Mind","page":"pp. 179–180","canonical":"","quote":"The thesis of the Background is simply this: Intentional phenomena such as meanings, understandings, interpretations, beliefs, desires, and experiences only function within a set of Background capacities that are not themselves intentional.","label":"The Rediscovery of the Mind, pp. 179–180"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-chinese-room","label":"The Chinese Room: can a computer literally understand merely by manipulating syntactically structured symbols?"},{"slug":"biological-naturalism","label":"Biological naturalism: can consciousness be both irreducibly first-person and a biological feature of the brain?"},{"slug":"speech-act-theory","label":"Speech act theory: are the five basic types of illocutionary act exhaustive, and does the seriousness/citation distinction survive Derrida's challenge?"},{"slug":"social-ontology","label":"Social ontology: is collective intentionality irreducible to individual mental states plus mutual recognition?"},{"slug":"external-realism-and-the-enlightenment-vision","label":"External realism and the Enlightenment vision: is reality knowable independently of our conceptual schemes, and can the anti-realist position be coherently stated?"}]}