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Full Idea
I suggest that intentionality is grounded in the dispositionalities of agents. Dispositions are intrinsic to agents, so this places me on the side of the internalists and against the externalists.
Gist of Idea
Intentionality is based in dispositions, which are intrinsic to agents, suggesting internalism
Source
John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 18.4)
Book Ref
Heil,John: 'From an Ontological Point of View' [OUP 2005], p.214
A Reaction
I think this is a key idea, and the right view. The key question is whether we see intentionality as active or passive. The externalist view seems to see the brain as a passive organ which the world manipulates. If the brain is active, what is it doing?
| 3506 | We explain behaviour in terms of actual internal representations in the agent [Searle] |
| 3417 | Content depends on other content as well as the facts [Kim] |
| 3419 | Pain, our own existence, and negative existentials, are not external [Kim] |
| 3114 | Concepts aren't linked to stuff; they are what is caused by stuff [Fodor] |
| 2999 | Obsession with narrow content leads to various sorts of hopeless anti-realism [Fodor] |
| 7057 | Intentionality is based in dispositions, which are intrinsic to agents, suggesting internalism [Heil] |
| 3121 | If content is narrow, my perfect twin shares my concepts [Segal] |
| 6147 | The hypothesis of solipsism doesn't seem to be made incoherent by the nature of mental properties [Merricks] |
| 6146 | Before Creation it is assumed that God still had many many mental properties [Merricks] |
| 14711 | Rationalists say knowing an expression is identifying its extension using an internal cognitive state [Schroeter] |