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How “Authentic Intentionality” can be Enabled: a Neurocomputational Hypothesis

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Abstract

According to John Haugeland, the capacity for “authentic intentionality” depends on a commitment to constitutive standards of objectivity. One of the consequences of Haugeland’s view is that a neurocomputational explanation cannot be adequate to understand “authentic intentionality”. This paper gives grounds to resist such a consequence. It provides the beginning of an account of authentic intentionality in terms of neurocomputational enabling conditions. It argues that the standards, which constitute the domain of objects that can be represented, reflect the statistical structure of the environments where brain sensory systems evolved and develop. The objection that I equivocate on what Haugeland means by “commitment to standards” is rebutted by introducing the notion of “florid, self-conscious representing”. Were the hypothesis presented plausible, computational neuroscience would offer a promising framework for a better understanding of the conditions for meaningful representation.

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Notes

  1. Often ‘content’ is used solely to deal with linguistic-like mental representations. However, one common assumptions of computational neuroscience—the field I am going to explore, is that the nervous systems represent without the need of positing linguistic-like items. Hence, I shall adopt the term more broadly; ‘content’ and ‘meaning’ will be used interchangeably.

  2. ‘Enable’ is here used as a “making-possible” relationship. ‘Enabling conditions’ are sufficient to make possible some personal-level fact such as authentic intentionality (see McDowell 1994; Hurley 2008).

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Acknowledgements

I am sincerely grateful to Peggy Seriès and Andy Clark for their encouragement and for their generous comments and criticisms on earlier versions of this paper. This research was partly funded by an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Studentship, awarded by the School of Informatics of the University of Edinburgh. The usual disclaimers about any error or mistake in the paper apply.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Dugald Stewart Building, 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AD, Scotland, UK

    Matteo Colombo

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Colombo, M. How “Authentic Intentionality” can be Enabled: a Neurocomputational Hypothesis. Minds & Machines 20, 183–202 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-010-9192-0

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