To Adopt the Intentional Stance

We begin our commentary with a bit of common-sense or everyday psychology, because intention is a notion that originates in our everyday understanding of human action. This introductory analysis allows us then to attend efficiently to Lewis's article. We conclude by mentioning some related research of our own. Much of our everyday reasoning about people is concerned with the psychological causes of, or explanations for, their behavior. Why did he take that job? Why is she going to Alaska? Why is he divorcing his second wife? In attempting to explain these sorts of things we seek motivations, and an important everyday construct is desire-what the person wants. In this everyday conception (see Wellman, 1990), a desire is a mental state or attitude about an object or event that motivates possible actions toward that object or event. To elaborate, we can compare desires to other sorts of explanatory constructs such as drives and tropisms. For example, both drives (e.g., he is hungry) and desires (e.g., he wants an apple) are constructs ordinarily used to describe internal motivational states behind certain actions, such as relieving hunger or obtaining an apple. But in specifics and in emphasis, drives and desires are quite different sorts of everyday descriptions. Drives describe something like the organism's internal physiological state, whereas desires focus on a specific object (or event or state of affairs) that is sought. Drives are relatively silent about objects, whereas desires are silent about physiology. For example, being hungry can be satisfied by an apple, a banana, or a hamburger. The object is not (essentially) described by stating the drive. But "wanting an apple" is not satisfied by a banana; the object is essential. In short, although drives and desires are similar in some respects, they are different in that desires, not drives, encompass a specified object. What about tropisms? Tropisms seem to have an object directedness, as for example, plants that grow toward sunlight or mosquitoes that seek blood. However, in everyday conception, desires are psychological states whereas tropisms are not. The flower does not want to grow to the sun, the mosquito does not desire blood. How do we differentiate the two? An answer seems to lie in the relationship between desires and other psychological states. Desires are intimately linked to companion psychological states, in particular, to emotions. Tropisms, in contrast, are not linked to emotions. The flower is not happy when it orients toward the sun; the mosquito is not sad if everyone at the picnic is wearing insect repellent. But if Bill wants an apple, he will be happy or pleased to get one and sad or angry or disappointed not to. A consideration of the everyday notion of desire is helpful in discussing two importantly different senses of the word intention. Intention, in the everyday colloquial sense, involves a purpose or goal. Perhaps the simplest such intention is a desire; if Bill buys an apple because he wants one, then he does so intentionally. Intention in the broader philosophical sense refers to a class of mental states known as intentional states or propositional attitudes. These mental states are attitudes toward a proposition, or mental states "about" some external real-world object or state of affairs. In this sense having a thought about an apple, a memory of an apple, as well as a goal to get an apple, are all "intentional. " Lewis tends to obscure this distinction in his article, but it is important to keep straight. Desires are especially intriguing because they partake of both senses. Wanting an apple is "about" an apple and hence is a classic intentional state in the philosophical sense. Wanting an apple also implies a goal-directed state in the more everyday sense of intention. Now we turn to Lewis's article. Lewis addresses issues of intention in children; his focus and his terminology have their roots, initially, in such everyday notions as goals, desires, and purposes. Here is the thrust of Lewis's complex article, as we see it: The article begins with an inspiration, encompasses an intriguing empirical phenomenon, identifies a conceptual problem, and proposes a solution which attempts to advance the inspiration and circumvent the problem. In more detail, Lewis asks when we can attribute intentions to the child, and what forms intention might take within and between levels of development. The inspiration behind this endeavor seems to be that a good deal can potentially be understood about intention by tracing it to its earliest roots. Lewis tries to advance this initial inspiration in several ways. One way is to discuss some intriguing data from infants. The intrigue of these data as we see them concerns the implication of emotions for analyses of intentions. Here Lewis trades on the common-sense notion that desires are intimately tied to emotions somewhat as described earlier. Lewis finds that 2-month-old infants, for example, will increase their arm pulling to activate the presentation of a pleasurable stimulus. Critically, in addition to increased arm pulling, when the arm pulling succeeds, his young subjects show increased interest and joy. When the contingency is changed, and arm pulling no longer produces the expected result, the infants show anger, frustration, and surprise. According to a common-sense psychological framework, if infants show happiness when the arm pulling works and sadness or anger when it does not work, it is sensible and illuminating to say that they desire the event to happen, and in this limited sense to say that they are acting intentionally. All this seems well and good-to trace the origins of intention is admirable, and studies with infants linking their actions and emotions may, if fully developed, reveal unexpected competencies. At this point (at least as we reconstruct his argument) Lewis goes on to sketch a developmental theory of intention. This theory has a peculiar shape to it, however, and this shape stems from Lewis's attempt to craft a theory designed to solve what he sees as a deep problem. There are two components to this problem. First, he does not want to claim that 2-month-old infants are revealing full adult intentionality. But their behavior may prove to be motivated by something like desires. Thus, Lewis advocates that we adopt a broad view of intention, broad enough so that his 2-montholds and adults exist on the same continuum. Second, when Lewis considers the origin of intentionality in the child he feels he faces a logical or conceptual obstacle. Crudely put, the obstacle is how to get intention out of a system if it is not