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Teleonomic functions and intrinsic intentionality: Dretske's theory as a test case [An article from: Cognitive Systems Research] | ![Teleonomic functions and intrinsic intentionality: Dretske's theory as a test case [An article from: Cognitive Systems Research]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41FWP1RKRDL._SL160_.jpg)
 enlarge | Author: I. Shani
Publisher: Elsevier
Buy New: $7.95
Format: Html
Media: Digital
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Product Description
This digital document is a journal article from Cognitive Systems Research, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Description:
Fred Dretske's theory of indicatory functions [Dretske, F. (1988). Explaining behavior: reasons in a world of causes. Cambridge, MA: MIT/Bradford; Dretske, F. (1994). A recipe for thought. Originally published as ''If You Can't Make One, You Don't Know How It Works.'' In P. French, T. Uehling, & H. Wettstein (eds.), Midwest studies in philosophy: Vol. 19. Reprinted in D. J. Chalmers (2002) (pp. 468-482).] is undoubtedly one of the more ambitious attempts to articulate a sound naturalistic foundation for an adequate theory of intentional content. In what follows I argue that, contrary to Dretske's explicit intentions, his theory fails a crucial adequacy test - that of accounting for mental content as a system-intrinsic property. Once examined in light of the first-person perspective of an embodied psychological agent, I argue, it becomes clear that neither 'indication', nor 'function', as used by Dretske, can be consistently applied. Dretske's theory of indicatory functions is, thus, doubly incoherent. It is then argued that the problems identified here stretch far beyond Dretske's specific theory - covering the better part of contemporary attempts to naturalize content. I conclude by suggesting that these general problems of representation, exemplified so vividly in Dretske's theory, also testify to the inadequacy of the quest to reduce teleological phenomena (function and purpose) to predominantly mechanistic variables.
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