What does Searle mean?

John Searle, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

John Searle answers

The question is too broad to answer as asked. Let me take it in the most philosophically productive direction: what do I mean by the claim that intentional states are not self-interpreting? The thesis is this: intentional phenomena — beliefs, desires, experiences, meanings — only function within a set of Background capacities that are not themselves intentional.¹

Representation does not carry its own application conditions inside itself. The same literal meaning, the same intentional content, will determine different conditions of satisfaction given different Background practices.² The simplest demonstration is linguistic. Consider "cut the grass" versus "cut the cake" — the verb carries the same semantic content in both, yet we interpret the two acts quite differently, not because the meaning differs but because we have different practices regarding grass and cakes.³

Or consider "open the mountain" — there is nothing grammatically wrong with it, we understand each word perfectly well, and yet we have no idea what to do if someone orders it, because we have no Background practice of opening mountains.⁴ The deeper point is that the Background cannot itself be specified as a further set of rules or propositions.

If you try, you generate a regress: each proposition you write down to fix the interpretation of an intentional content itself requires further Background capacities for its own interpretation, and you never finish.⁵ Intentional contents are internally related, in a holistic way, to other intentional contents — the Network — and to these nonrepresentational capacities — the Background — such that they could not have the conditions of satisfaction they do except in that relation.⁶

So when someone asks what I mean, the answer already presupposes all of this: the words carry a literal meaning, but what you understand goes beyond that meaning, shaped by capacities neither of us could fully enumerate.

Sources

1. Intentional phenomena such as meanings, understandings, interpretations, beliefs, desires, and experiences only function within a set of Background capacities that are not themselves intentional.

   The Rediscovery of the Mind, pp. 179–180

2. one and the same sentence or expression with the same literal meaning will have different applications, will, for example, determine different sets of truth conditions, given different background practices.

   Consciousness and Language, pp. 160–161

3. 'cut' in 'Cut the grass' has a different interpretation from 'cut' in 'Cut the cake', not because of a difference in semantic content, but because of different practices that we have regarding grass and cakes.

   Consciousness and Language, pp. 160–161

4. If somebody orders me to open the mountain, I haven't the faintest idea what I am supposed to do.

   Intentionality, p. 147

5. if you try to specify the background practices as sets of rules or propositions, you get a regress — you never know when to stop because each of the propositions itself requires further background abilities for its interpretation, so you never get finished spelling out the background.

   Consciousness and Language, pp. 160–161

6. Intentional contents in general and experiences in particular are internally related in a holistic way to other Intentional contents (the Network) and to nonrepresentational capacities (the Background). They are internally related in the sense that they could not have the conditions of satisfaction that they do except in relation to the rest of the Network and the Background.

   Intentionality, p. 66