Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

Intentionality is that property of many mental states and events by which they are directed at or about or of objects and states of affairs in the world" (ibid.

The first step would be one that many philosophers have resisted and that is to see linguistic meaning, the meaning of sentences and speech acts, as an extension of the more biologically fundamental forms of intentionality that we have in belief, desire, memory and intention, and to see those in turn as developments of even more fundamental forms of intentionality, especially, perception and intentional action.

Among the most basic forms of intentionality, the most biologically primitive, along with hunger, thirst and sexual desire, are perception and intention-in-action.

Given perceptions and actions, animals have the capacity to develop memories and prior intentions, as well as beliefs and desires and other forms of intentionality, such as expectation and fear, anger and aggression.

I believe we should see the biological foundations of language in prelinguistic intentionality.

Our initial question should be, What are the similarities and differences between the prelinguistic forms of consciousness and intentionality and the linguistic forms?

We do not know how in fact language evolved, and in the absence of fossil evidence we may never know exactly how it evolved, but we do know that it did evolve, and we ought at least to be able to answer the question, What are the logical, conceptual relations between prelinguistic forms of consciousness and intentionality and the evolved linguistic forms?

Features Common to Prelinguistic Intentionality and Language I have already said that the hominids have conscious perceptions and intentional actions together with conscious thought processes, all of these in a prelinguistic form.

These prelinguistic forms of intentionality already have some crucial logical properties.

Specifically, because perceptions, intentions, beliefs, desires, and so on, are forms of intentionality, they carry within them the determination of conditions of success or failure.