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Intentionality and Perception a Study of John Searle’S Philosophy

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Intentionality and Perception a Study of John Searle’S Philosophy Intentionality and Perception A Study of John Searle’s Philosophy Inauguraldissertation Zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Philosophischen Fakultät der Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg vorgelegt von: Anar Jafarov Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Andreas Kemmerling Zweitgutachter: Prof. Dr. Peter McLaughlin Datum: 05. 02. 2019 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………… v ABBREVIATIONS……………………………………………………………….... vi INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER I / General Remarks on Searle’s Notion of Intentionality 5 1. Mind and intentionality……………………………………………………….... 6 2. Intentionality as directedness ………………………………………………...... 9 3. Intrinsic, derived, and as if intentionality……………………………………..... 13 3.1. Dennett’s criticism……………………………………………………….... 14 4. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………… 19 CHAPTER II / The Fundamentals of Searle’s Theory of Intentionality 20 1. Intentionality as representation………………………………………………..... 20 2. Logical analysis and logical properties ………………....………………........... 23 3. Psychological mode and direction of fit ………………………....…………...... 27 3.1 The problems with the notion of direction of fit …………………………... 29 3.2 Back to the relationship between psychological mode and direction of fit ... 32 4. Conditions of Satisfaction and Intentional Content ………………...……….... 34 4.1 Conditions of satisfaction ……………………………………………….... 34 4.2 On the relationship between intentional content and conditions of satisfaction …………………………………………...... 40 5. Conclusion …………………………………………………………………….. 50 CHAPTER III / The Hypothesis of the Background 51 1. Motivations for the idea of the Background ……………..……………...…...... 52 1.1. Motivation from the literal meaning …………………………………….... 52 1.2. Motivation from the notion of Network ………………………………...... 57 1.3. Motivation from the regress argument and from the consideration of physical skills ……………………………. 61 2. Non-representationality of the Background …………………………………… 62 ii 3. The Background as a mental feature ………………………………………….. 63 4. Conclusion …………………………………………………………………….. 67 CHAPTER IV / Arguments for the Intentionality of Perceptual Experiences 69 1. Argument from Basic Features ……………………………………………….. 70 1.1. Intentional content ……………………………………………………….. 70 1.2. Direction of fit …………………………………………………………... 70 1.3. Causal self-referentiality (reflexivity) …………………………………… 71 2. Argument from Transparency ………………………………………………… 72 3. Conditions of satisfaction: The continuation of Argument from Basic Features …………………….…………………….………………... 72 3.1. Dretske’s criticism ………………………………………………………. 74 3.2. Expounding the central theses ………………………………………….... 77 4. Arguments for the propositionality of the content of a visual experience ….... 80 4.1. The first argument ……………………………………………………….. 80 4.2. The syntactical argument ………………………………………………... 83 5. Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………. 85 CHAPTER V / Special Features of Perceptual Intentionality 86 1. Consciousness ………………………………………………………………… 86 2. Direct causation experienced …………………………………………………. 90 3. Presentationality ………………………………………………………………. 92 3.1. Non-detachability and indexicality ……………………………………… 93 3.2. Continuousness and determinacy ………………………………………. 94 4. Hierarchical structuredness …………………………………………………... 95 5. Conclusion ………………………………………………………………….... 96 CHAPTER VI / The Central Thesis of the Theory of Perception Reconsidered 97 1. Searle’s new method ….………………………………………………………. 97 2. Answering the question of how phenomenological features of visual experiences determine conditions of satisfaction ……………………. 102 3. Conditions of satisfaction determined by the phenomenological features of a visual experience ...……………………………………………………….. 103 4. Conclusion …………………………………………………………………….. 106 iii CHAPTER VII / The Background of Visual Experiences 107 1. The examples from INT ……………………………………………………… 107 2. The examples from STT ……………………………………………………… 112 3. Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………. 114 CHAPTER VIII / Naïve Realism 116 1. General features of Searle’s Naïve Realism ...………………………………... 117 2. “The Bad Argument” …………………………………………………………. 119 2.1. On Step Three of the Argument …………………………………………. 121 3. Searle’s objection to the Argument from Illusion …….………………………. 124 4. The classical theories ……………………………………………………....…. 126 4.1. Berkeley …………………………………………………………………. 128 4.2. Ayer ……………………………………………………………………… 129 5. Disjunctivism ………………………………………………………………..... 130 5.1. Stipulation vs. Hypothesis ……………………………………………….. 131 5.2. The central claim of Disjunctivism ……………………………………… 133 5.3. The commonality thesis as a threat to Naïve Realism? ………………….. 136 5.4. Searle’s criticism of Campbell .…………………………………………... 137 6. “The Bad Argument” and intentionality …………………………………….... 139 7. Conclusion ………………………………………………………...…...……... 140 CONCLUSION 142 REFERENCES 147 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many thanks to Andreas Kemmerling for his helpful comments and to those who participated in his Monday colloquiums which took place at Heidelberg University. I have benefited greatly from discussing this material with them. I also want to thank Thomas Fuchs and Christian Tewes. A portion of this dissertation was discussed in a colloquium organised by them. Special thanks to Peter McLaughlin for the consent he gave to assess my dissertation. In addition, my thanks are due to my family members. I am very grateful for the unconditional love and care which they provided me with in writing this dissertation. v ABBREVIATIONS The following abbreviations of the names of Searle's works are employed throughout. INT Intentionality: an Essay in the Philosophy of Mind, New York: Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1983. RM The Rediscovery of the Mind, Cambridge: The MIT Press 1992. STT Seeing Things as They Are: A Theory of Perception, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2015. vi INTRODUCTION In this PhD dissertation, I undertake to study the theory of intentionality and perception developed in the works of the American philosopher John Searle. The term ‘intentionality’ derives from the Latin word intentio, which is the noun form of the verb intendere. It literally means being directed towards some target or thing.1 In philosophy, however, ‘intentionality’ is used as a technical term. Therefore, its literal meaning should not be confused with its philosophical meaning. Intentionality, philosophers say, is the property of mental states that they are about objects and states of affairs in the world. Most events and states of the mental lives of human beings or other higher cognitive mammals – perception, belief, desire, hope, love, hate, fear, etc. – exhibit this important feature. What unifies such mental states is that they all are about something other than themselves. For example, when I see a tree, my perceptual experience is about a tree; when I have a belief that my pen is in my bag, my belief is about the state of affairs that my pen is in my bag; and so on. In this dissertation, I especially focus on the intentionality of perception. Peter Strawson once wrote that “a philosopher’s views on [perception] are a key to his theory of knowledge and to his metaphysics”.2 I want to add that this is true for a theory of intentionality as well. Perception, as Searle puts it, is the primary medium by virtue of which subjects are related to the world. Therefore, questions on perception (such as “What is perception?”, “Does perception give us direct access to the world?”, “Does perception represent the world in the way beliefs or desires do?”, “How can an account of perceptual intentionality fit into a broader account of intentionality?”, etc.) have never drifted far from philosophical attention. Most philosophers who have developed theories of intentionality have also taken great pains to examine perception as well. John Rogers Searle (born 1932) is not an exception in that sense. He is a well-known philosopher of our period,3 who synthesised his theory of intentionality with his theory of 1 Cf. Jacob (2014). 2 Strawson (1979), 41. 3 Searle pursued his graduate degrees at Oxford. At the University of Oxford, he got to know John Austin and Peter Strawson and was raised under the influence of their philosophical ideas. In 1959, Searle began to work at 1 perception. Generally speaking, Searle’s research interest embraces a variety of topics which belong to a range of different areas of philosophical interest. He has written a number of different books on philosophy of mind, social philosophy, and philosophy of science. Nevertheless, Searle’s magnum opus, Speech Acts (1969), was devoted to the problems of philosophy of language, which stood at the center of his early philosophical inquiry. Since his focus of research line in Speech Acts was also continued in Expression and Meaning (1979), and since this work has greatly motivated Searle’s theory of intentionality, in this introduction I deem it useful to briefly consider its main topic. In Speech Acts, Searle focuses on how speech acts – the minimal units of language – work.4 However, he soon realises that, to better understand how speech acts function, he has to consider intentions. The reason for this is that, when people communicate, they do it intentionally. So Searle comes to the idea that the analysis of speech acts involves the concept of intention. According to this analysis, when the speaker says something to the hearer, he issues a speech act with the intention of letting the hearer to know what he (the speaker) says. For example, when I say to my friend “It is raining”, I issue a speech act with the intention of letting my friend to know what the weather is.5 There is
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