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The intentional stance is a term coined by
philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
Daniel Dennett Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relat ...
for the level of
abstraction Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or " concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An abst ...
in which we view the behavior of an entity in terms of
mental properties A mental state, or a mental property, is a state of mind of a person. Mental states comprise a diverse class, including perception, pain experience, belief, desire, intention, emotion, and memory. There is controversy concerning the exact definitio ...
. It is part of a theory of
mental content The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...
proposed by Dennett, which provides the underpinnings of his later works on
free will Free will is the capacity of agents to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded. Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, culpability, sin, and other judgements which apply only to ac ...
,
consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
,
folk psychology In philosophy of mind and cognitive science, folk psychology, or commonsense psychology, is a human capacity to explain and predict the behavior and mental state of other people. Processes and items encountered in daily life such as pain, pleasure ...
, and
evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
.


Dennett and intentionality

Dennett (1971, p. 87) states that he took the concept of "
intentionality ''Intentionality'' is the power of minds to be about something: to represent or to stand for things, properties and states of affairs. Intentionality is primarily ascribed to mental states, like perceptions, beliefs or desires, which is why it ha ...
" from the work of the German philosopher
Franz Brentano Franz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Josef Brentano (; ; 16 January 1838 – 17 March 1917) was an influential German philosopher, psychologist, and former Catholic priest (withdrawn in 1873 due to the definition of papal infallibility in matters o ...
. When clarifying the distinction between mental phenomena (viz., mental activity) and physical phenomena, Brentano (p. 97) argued that, in contrast with physical phenomena, the "distinguishing characteristic of all mental phenomena" was "the reference to something as an object" – a characteristic he called "''intentional inexistence''". Dennett constantly speaks of the "'' aboutness''" of ''intentionality''; for example: "the aboutness of the pencil marks composing a shopping list is derived from the intentions of the person whose list it is" (Dennett, 1995, p. 240).
John Searle John Rogers Searle (; born July 31, 1932) is an American philosopher widely noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. He began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1959, and was Willis S. and Mari ...
(1999, pp. 85) stresses that "competence" in predicting/explaining human behaviour involves being able to both recognize others as "''intentional''" beings, and interpret others' minds as having "intentional states" (e.g., beliefs and desires): :"The primary evolutionary role of the mind is to relate us in certain ways to the environment, and especially to other people. My subjective states relate me to the rest of the world, and the general name of that relationship is "intentionality." These subjective states include beliefs and desires, intentions and perceptions, as well as loves and hates, fears and hopes. "Intentionality," to repeat, is the general term for all the various forms by which the mind can be directed at, or be about, or of, objects and states of affairs in the world." (p.85) According to Dennett (1987, pp. 48–49),
folk psychology In philosophy of mind and cognitive science, folk psychology, or commonsense psychology, is a human capacity to explain and predict the behavior and mental state of other people. Processes and items encountered in daily life such as pain, pleasure ...
provides a systematic, "reason-giving explanation" for a particular action, and an account of the historical origins of that action, based on deeply embedded assumptions about the agent; namely that: :(a) the agent's action was entirely rational; :(b) the agent's action was entirely reasonable (in the prevailing circumstances); :(c) the agent held certain ''beliefs''; :(d) the agent ''desired'' certain things; and :(e) the agent's future action could be systematically predicted from the ''beliefs'' and ''desires'' so ascribed. This approach is also consistent with the earlier work of
Fritz Heider Fritz Heider (19 February 1896 – 2 January 1988) was an Austrian psychologist whose work was related to the Gestalt school. In 1958 he published ''The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations'', which expanded upon his creations of balance theory ...
and
Marianne Simmel Marianne Leonore Simmel (3 January 1923 – 24 March 2010) was a German-American psychologist with a special interest in cognitive neuropsychology. The granddaughter of famed sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel, she was born into an assimilat ...
, whose joint study revealed that, when subjects were presented with an animated display of 2-dimensional shapes, they were inclined to ascribe intentions to the shapes. Further, Dennett (1987, p. 52) argues that, based on our fixed personal views of what all humans ought to believe, desire and do, we predict (or explain) the beliefs, desires and actions of others "by calculating in a normative system"; and, driven by the reasonable assumption that all humans are rational beings – who do ''have'' specific beliefs and desires and do ''act'' on the basis of those beliefs and desires in order to get what they want – these predictions/explanations are based on four simple rules: # The agent's ''beliefs'' are those a rational individual ought to have (i.e., given their "perceptual capacities", "epistemic needs" and "biography"); # In general, these beliefs "are both true and relevant to
heir Inheritance is the practice of receiving private property, titles, debts, entitlements, privileges, rights, and obligations upon the death of an individual. The rules of inheritance differ among societies and have changed over time. Offic ...
life; # The agent's ''desires'' are those a rational individual ought to have (i.e., given their "biological needs", and "the most practicable means of satisfying them") in order to further their "survival" and "procreation" needs; and # The agent's behaviour will be composed of those acts a rational individual holding those ''beliefs'' (and having those ''desires'') ought to perform.


Dennett's three levels

The core idea is that, when understanding, explaining, and/or predicting the behavior of an object, we can choose to view it at varying levels of abstraction. The more concrete the level, the more accurate ''in principle'' our predictions are; the more abstract, the greater the computational power we gain by zooming out and skipping over the irrelevant details. Dennett defines three levels of abstraction, attained by adopting one of three entirely different "stances", or intellectual strategies: the physical stance; the design stance; and the intentional stance: * The most concrete is the ''physical stance'', the domain of physics and chemistry, which makes predictions from knowledge of the physical constitution of the system and the physical laws that govern its operation; and thus, given a particular set of physical laws and initial conditions, and a particular configuration, a specific future state is predicted (this could also be called the "''structure stance''"). At this level, we are concerned with such things as mass, energy, velocity, and chemical composition. When we predict where a ball is going to land based on its current trajectory, we are taking the physical stance. Another example of this stance comes when we look at a strip made up of two types of metal bonded together and predict how it will bend as the temperature changes, based on the physical properties of the two metals. * Somewhat more abstract is the ''design stance'', the domain of biology and engineering, which requires no knowledge of the physical constitution or the physical laws that govern a system's operation. Based on an implicit assumption that there is no malfunction in the system, predictions are made from knowledge of the purpose of the system's design (this could also be called the "''teleological stance''"). At this level, we are concerned with such things as purpose, function and design. When we predict that a bird will fly when it flaps its wings on the basis that wings are made for flying, we are taking the design stance. Likewise, we can understand the bimetallic strip as a particular type of thermometer, not concerning ourselves with the details of how this type of thermometer happens to work. We can also recognize the purpose that this thermometer serves inside a thermostat and even generalize to other kinds of thermostats that might use a different sort of thermometer. We can even explain the thermostat in terms of what it's good for, saying that it keeps track of the temperature and turns on the heater whenever it gets below a minimum, turning it off once it reaches a maximum. * Most abstract is the ''intentional stance'', the domain of software and minds, which requires no knowledge of either structure or design, and " larifiesthe logic of mentalistic explanations of behaviour, their predictive power, and their relation to other forms of explanation" (Bolton & Hill, 1996, p. 24). Predictions are made on the basis of ''explanations'' expressed in terms of meaningful mental states; and, given the task of predicting or explaining the behaviour of a specific agent (a person, animal, corporation, artifact, nation, etc.), it is implicitly assumed that the agent will always act on the basis of its ''beliefs'' and ''desires'' in order to get precisely what it wants (this could also be called the "''folk psychology stance''"). At this level, we are concerned with such things as belief, thinking and intent. When we predict that the bird will fly away because it knows the cat is coming and is afraid of getting eaten, we are taking the intentional stance. Another example would be when we predict that Mary will leave the theater and drive to the restaurant because she sees that the movie is over and is hungry. * In 1971, Dennett also postulated that, whilst "the intentional stance ''presupposes'' neither lower stance", there may well be a fourth, higher level: a "truly moral stance toward the system" – the "''personal stance''" – which not only "presupposes the intentional stance" (viz., treats the system as ''rational'') but also "views it as a person" (1971/1978, p. 240). A key point is that switching to a higher level of abstraction has its risks as well as its benefits. For example, when we view both a bimetallic strip and a tube of mercury as thermometers, we can lose track of the fact that they differ in accuracy and temperature range, leading to false predictions as soon as the thermometer is used outside the circumstances for which it was designed. The actions of a mercury thermometer heated to 500 °C can no longer be predicted on the basis of treating it as a thermometer; we have to sink down to the physical stance to understand it as a melted and boiled piece of junk. For that matter, the "actions" of a dead bird are not predictable in terms of beliefs or desires. Even when there is no immediate error, a higher-level stance can simply fail to be useful. If we were to try to understand the thermostat at the level of the intentional stance, ascribing to it beliefs about how hot it is and a desire to keep the temperature just right, we would gain no traction over the problem as compared to staying at the design stance, but we would generate theoretical commitments that expose us to absurdities, such as the possibility of the thermostat not being in the mood to work today because the weather is so nice. Whether to take a particular stance, then, is determined by how successful that stance is when applied. Dennett argues that it is best to understand human behavior at the level of the intentional stance, without making any specific commitments to any deeper reality of the artifacts of
folk psychology In philosophy of mind and cognitive science, folk psychology, or commonsense psychology, is a human capacity to explain and predict the behavior and mental state of other people. Processes and items encountered in daily life such as pain, pleasure ...
. In addition to the controversy inherent in this, there is also some dispute about the extent to which Dennett is committing to
realism Realism, Realistic, or Realists may refer to: In the arts *Realism (arts), the general attempt to depict subjects truthfully in different forms of the arts Arts movements related to realism include: * Classical Realism *Literary realism, a mov ...
about mental properties. Initially, Dennett's interpretation was seen as leaning more towards
instrumentalism In philosophy of science and in epistemology, instrumentalism is a methodological view that ideas are useful instruments, and that the worth of an idea is based on how effective it is in explaining and predicting phenomena. According to instrumenta ...
, but over the years, as this idea has been used to support more extensive theories of
consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
, it has been taken as being more like Realism. His own words hint at something in the middle, as he suggests that the self is as real as a center of gravity, "an
abstract object In metaphysics, the distinction between abstract and concrete refers to a divide between two types of entities. Many philosophers hold that this difference has fundamental metaphysical significance. Examples of concrete objects include plants, h ...
, a theorist's fiction", but operationally valid. As a way of thinking about things, Dennett's intentional stance is entirely consistent with everyday commonsense understanding; and, thus, it meets Eleanor Rosch's (1978, p. 28) criterion of the "maximum information with the least cognitive effort". Rosch argues that, implicit within any system of categorization, are the assumptions that: :(a) the major purpose of any system of categorization is to reduce the randomness of the universe by providing "maximum information with the least cognitive effort", and :(b) the real world is structured and systematic, rather than being arbitrary or unpredictable. Thus, if a particular way of categorizing information does, indeed, "provide maximum information with the least cognitive effort", ''it can only do so because the structure of that particular system of categories corresponds with the perceived structure of the real world''. Also, the intentional stance meets the criteria Dennett specified (1995, pp. 50–51) for algorithms: :(1) ''Substrate Neutrality'': It is a "mechanism" that produces results regardless of the material used to perform the procedure ("the power of the procedure is due to its logical structure, not the causal powers of the materials used in the instantiation"). :(2) ''Underlying Mindlessness'': Each constituent step, and each transition between each step, is so utterly simple, that they can be performed by a "dutiful idiot". :(3) ''Guaranteed Results'': "Whatever it is that an algorithm does, it always does it, if it is executed without misstep. An algorithm is a foolproof recipe."


Variants of Dennett's three stances

The general notion of a three level system was widespread in the late 1970s/early 1980s; for example, when discussing the mental representation of information from a
cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
perspective, Glass and his colleagues (1979, p. 24) distinguished three important aspects of representation: :(a) the ''content'' ("what is being represented"); :(b) the ''code'' ("the format of the representation"); and :(c) the ''medium'' ("the physical realization of the code"). Other significant cognitive scientists who also advocated a three level system were
Allen Newell Allen Newell (March 19, 1927 – July 19, 1992) was a researcher in computer science and cognitive psychology at the RAND Corporation and at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, Tepper School of Business, and Depart ...
, Zenon Pylyshyn, and David Marr. The parallels between the four representations (each of which implicitly assumed that computers ''and'' human minds displayed each of the three distinct levels) are detailed in the following table:


Objections and replies

The most obvious objection to Dennett is the intuition that it "matters" to us whether an object has an inner life or not. The claim is that we don't just imagine the intentional states of other people in order to predict their behaviour; the fact that they have thoughts and feelings just like we do is central to notions such as trust, friendship and love. The Blockhead argument proposes that someone, Jones, has a twin who is in fact not a person but a very sophisticated robot which looks and acts like Jones in every way, but who (it is claimed) somehow does not have any thoughts or feelings at all, just a chip which controls his behaviour; in other words, "the lights are on but no one's home". According to the intentional systems theory (IST), Jones and the robot have precisely the same beliefs and desires, but this is claimed to be false. The IST expert assigns the same mental states to Blockhead as he does to Jones, "whereas in fact lockheadhas not a thought in his head." Dennett has argued against this by denying the premise, on the basis that the robot is a philosophical zombie and therefore metaphysically impossible. In other words, if something acts in all ways conscious, it necessarily is, as consciousness is defined in terms of behavioral capacity, not ineffable
qualia In philosophy of mind, qualia ( or ; singular form: quale) are defined as individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term ''qualia'' derives from the Latin neuter plural form (''qualia'') of the Latin adjective '' quālis'' () ...
. Another objection attacks the premise that treating people as ideally rational creatures will yield the best predictions. Stephen Stich argues that people often have beliefs or desires which are irrational or bizarre, and IST doesn't allow us to say anything about these. If the person's "environmental niche" is examined closely enough, and the possibility of malfunction in their brain (which might affect their reasoning capacities) is looked into, it may be possible to formulate a predictive strategy specific to that person. Indeed this is what we often do when someone is behaving unpredictably — we look for the reasons why. In other words, we can only deal with irrationality by contrasting it against the background assumption of rationality. This development significantly undermines the claims of the intentional stance argument. The rationale behind the intentional stance is based on evolutionary theory, particularly the notion that the ability to make quick predictions of a system's behaviour based on what we think it might be thinking was an evolutionary adaptive advantage. The fact that our predictive powers are not perfect is a further result of the advantages sometimes accrued by acting contrary to expectations.


Neural evidence

Philip Robbins and Anthony I. Jack suggest that "Dennett's philosophical distinction between the physical and intentional stances has a lot going for it" from the perspective of psychology and neuroscience. They review studies on abilities to adopt an intentional stance (variously called "mindreading," "mentalizing," or "theory of mind") as distinct from adopting a physical stance ("folk physics," "intuitive physics," or "theory of body").
Autism The autism spectrum, often referred to as just autism or in the context of a professional diagnosis autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or autism spectrum condition (ASC), is a neurodevelopmental condition (or conditions) characterized by difficulti ...
seems to be a deficit in the intentional stance with preservation of the physical stance, while
Williams syndrome Williams syndrome (WS) is a genetic disorder that affects many parts of the body. Facial features frequently include a broad forehead, underdeveloped chin, short nose, and full cheeks. Mild to moderate intellectual disability is observed in people ...
can involve deficits in the physical stance with preservation of the intentional stance. This tentatively suggests a double dissociation of intentional and physical stances in the brain. However, most studies have found no evidence of impairment in autistic individuals' ability to understand other people's basic intentions or goals; instead, data suggests that impairments are found in understanding more complex social emotions or in considering others' viewpoints. Robbins and Jack point to a 2003 study in which participants viewed animated geometric shapes in different "vignettes," some of which could be interpreted as constituting social interaction, while others suggested mechanical behavior. Viewing social interactions elicited activity in brain regions associated with identifying faces and biological objects (posterior temporal cortex), as well as emotion processing (right amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex). Meanwhile, the mechanical interactions activated regions related to identifying objects like tools that can be manipulated (posterior temporal lobe). The authors suggest "that these findings reveal putative 'core systems' for social and mechanical understanding that are divisible into constituent parts or elements with distinct processing and storage capabilities."


Phenomenal stance

Robbins and Jack argue for an additional stance beyond the three that Dennett outlined. They call it the ''phenomenal stance'': Attributing consciousness, emotions, and inner experience to a mind. The
explanatory gap In the philosophy of mind and consciousness, the explanatory gap is the proposed difficulty that physicalist philosophies have in explaining how physical properties give rise to the way things feel subjectively when they are experienced. It is a ...
of the
hard problem of consciousness The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why and how humans have qualia or phenomenal experiences. This is in contrast to the "easy problems" of explaining the physical systems that give us and other animals the ability to ...
illustrates this tendency of people to see phenomenal experience as different from physical processes. The authors suggest that psychopathy may represent a deficit in the phenomenal but not intentional stance, while people with autism appear to have intact moral sensibilities, just not mind-reading abilities. These examples suggest a double dissociation between the intentional and phenomenal stances. In a follow-up paper, Robbins and Jack describe four experiments about how the intentional and phenomenal stances relate to feelings of moral concern. The first two experiments showed that talking about lobsters as strongly emotional led to a much greater sentiment that lobsters deserved welfare protections than did talking about lobsters as highly intelligent. The third and fourth studies found that perceiving an agent as vulnerable led to greater attributions of phenomenal experience. Also, people who scored higher on the empathetic-concern subscale of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index had generally higher absolute attributions of mental experience. Bryce Huebner (2010) performed two
experimental philosophy Experimental philosophy is an emerging field of philosophical inquiry Edmonds, David and Warburton, NigelPhilosophy’s great experiment, ''Prospect'', March 1, 2009 that makes use of empirical data—often gathered through surveys which probe ...
studies to test students' ascriptions of various mental states to humans compared with cyborgs and robots. Experiment 1 showed that while students attributed both beliefs and pains most strongly to humans, they were more willing to attribute beliefs than pains to robots and cyborgs. " ese data seem to confirm that commonsense psychology does draw a distinction between phenomenal and non-phenomenal states—and this distinction seems to be dependent on the structural properties of an entity in a way that ascriptions of non-phenomenal states are not." However, this conclusion is only tentative in view of the high variance among participants. Experiment 2 showed analogous results: Both beliefs and happiness were ascribed most strongly to biological humans, and ascriptions of happiness to robots or cyborgs were less common than ascriptions of beliefs.


See also

*
Four causes The four causes or four explanations are, in Aristotelian thought, four fundamental types of answer to the question "why?", in analysis of change or movement in nature: the material, the formal, the efficient, and the final. Aristotle wrote th ...
*
Telos Telos (; ) is a term used by philosopher Aristotle to refer to the final cause of a natural organ or entity, or of a work of human art. Intentional actualization of potential or inherent purpose,"Telos.''Philosophy Terms'' Retrieved 3 May 2020. ...
*
Teleology Teleology (from and )Partridge, Eric. 1977''Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English'' London: Routledge, p. 4187. or finalityDubray, Charles. 2020 912Teleology" In ''The Catholic Encyclopedia'' 14. New York: Robert Appleton ...
*
Conceptual blending In cognitive linguistics, conceptual blending, also called conceptual integration or view application, is a theory of cognition developed by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner. According to this theory, elements and vital relations from diverse sce ...
*
Folk psychology In philosophy of mind and cognitive science, folk psychology, or commonsense psychology, is a human capacity to explain and predict the behavior and mental state of other people. Processes and items encountered in daily life such as pain, pleasure ...
* High- and low-level description *
Instrumentalism In philosophy of science and in epistemology, instrumentalism is a methodological view that ideas are useful instruments, and that the worth of an idea is based on how effective it is in explaining and predicting phenomena. According to instrumenta ...
*
Intention Intentions are mental states in which the agent commits themselves to a course of action. Having the plan to visit the zoo tomorrow is an example of an intention. The action plan is the ''content'' of the intention while the commitment is the ''a ...
*
Intentionality ''Intentionality'' is the power of minds to be about something: to represent or to stand for things, properties and states of affairs. Intentionality is primarily ascribed to mental states, like perceptions, beliefs or desires, which is why it ha ...
*
Level of analysis The term "level of analysis" is used in the social sciences to point to the location, size, or scale of a research target. "Level of analysis" is distinct from the term " unit of observation" in that the former refers to a more or less integrated ...
*
Life stance A person's life stance, or lifestance, is their relation with what they accept as being of ultimate importance. It involves the presuppositions and theories upon which such a stance could be made, a belief system, and a commitment to potentials wor ...
* Marr's levels of analysis * Naturalization of intentionality * Operationalism *
Philosophical realism Philosophical realism is usually not treated as a position of its own but as a stance towards other subject matters. Realism about a certain kind of thing (like numbers or morality) is the thesis that this kind of thing has ''mind-independent e ...
*
Philosophy of mind Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its relationship with the body. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are add ...
*
Stance (linguistics) In linguistics, stance is the way in which speakers position themselves in relation to the ongoing interaction, in terms of evaluation, intentionality, epistemology or social relations. When a speaker describes an object in a way that expresses thei ...
*
Theory of mind In psychology, theory of mind refers to the capacity to understand other people by ascribing mental states to them (that is, surmising what is happening in their mind). This includes the knowledge that others' mental states may be different fro ...
*
The Philosophy of 'As if' ''The Philosophy of 'As if': A System of the Theoretical, Practical and Religious Fictions of Mankind'' (german: Die Philosophie des Als Ob) is a 1911 book by the German philosopher Hans Vaihinger, based on his dissertation of 1877. The work for w ...


Footnotes


References

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"Intentional Systems", ''The Journal of Philosophy'', Vol.68, No. 4, (25 February 1971), pp.87-106.
* Dennett, D.C., (1971/1978) "Mechanism and Responsibility", reprinted in pp. 233–255 in Dennett, D.C., ''Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology'', Bradford Books, (Montgomery), 1978 (originally published in 1971). * Dennett, D.C., (1975
"Brain Writing and Mind Reading", ''Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science'', 7: 403-415.
* Dennett, D., (1987) "True Believers" in Dennett, D. ''The Intentional Stance'', The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1987 * (First published 1987). * Dennett, D.C., (1995) ''Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life'', Simon & Schuster, (New York), 1995. * Daniel C. Dennett (1997)
"Chapter 3. True Believers: The Intentional Strategy and Why it Works"
in
John Haugeland John Haugeland (; March 13, 1945 – June 23, 2010) was a professor of philosophy, specializing in the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, phenomenology, and Heidegger. He spent most of his career at the University of Pittsburgh, followed ...

''Mind Design II: Philosophy, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence''
Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (first published in ''Scientific Explanation'', 1981, edited by A.F. Heath, Oxford: Oxford University Press; originally presented as a Herbert Spencer lecture at Oxford in November 1979; also published as chapter 2 in Dennett's book ''The Intentional Stance''). * Dennett, D. "Three kinds of intentional psychology" (IP) in Heil, J. - ''Philosophy of Mind: A guide and anthology'', Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2004
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"The Knowledge Level", ''Artificial Intelligence'', Vol.18, No.1, (January 1982), pp.87-127.
* Newell, A. (1988), "The intentional stance and the knowledge level", ''Behavioral and Brain Sciences'', Vol.11, No.3, (September 1988), pp. 520–522. * Papineau, D., "Instrumentalism", p. 410 in Honderich, T. (ed.), ''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, (Oxford), 1995. * Perkins, David N., "Why the Human Perceiver is a Bad Machine", pp. 341–364 in Beck, J. Hope, B. & Rosenfeld, A. (eds.), ''Human and Machine Vision'', Academic Press, (New York), 1983. * Piaget, J. & Inhelder, B. Leake, L., Burrell, P. & Fishbein, H.D. eds.), ''The Origin of the Idea of Chance in Children'', Routledge & Kegan Paul, (London), 1975 [French original 1951 * Pylyshyn, Z.W.
"Computing in Cognitive Science", pp.51-91 in Posner, M.I.(ed.), ''Foundations of Cognitive Science'', The MIT Press, (Cambridge), 1989.
* Rosch, E., "Principles of Categorization", pp. 27–48 in Rosch, E. & Lloyd, B.B. (eds), ''Cognition and Categorization'', Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, (Hillsdale), 1978. * Searle, J., ''Mind, Language and Society: Philosophy in the Real World'', Phoenix, (London), 1999. * Siegert, R.J., "Culture, Cognition, and Schizophrenia", pp. 171–189 in Schumaker, J.F. & Ward, T. (eds.), ''Cultural Cognition and Psychopathology'', Praeger, (Westport), 2001. * Swinburne, R., ''Epistemic Justification'', Oxford University Press, (Oxford), 2001. {{Dennett Abstraction Cognitive psychology Cognitive science Consciousness studies Intention Concepts in the philosophy of mind Psycholinguistics