INFORMATIONAL SEMANTICS: A BOTTOM-UP STRATEGY

One of the two tasks facing intentional realism, I claimed in the first chapter, is to show how the semantic properties of an individual's propositional attitudes can arise, if not out of completely non-semantic, non-intentional properties and relations, at least out of less than fully semantic, less than fully intentional properties and relations. The task amounts to analyzing the notion of aboutness or representation. What underlying non-semantic properties and relations may confer upon a system its ability to represent (or be about) other things and states of affairs? This is what the naturalization of intentionality consists in.

There are three main approaches to this task, two of which rely on an informational approach, one of which is purely teleological. Though I do believe that an informational approach must be supplemented by teleological concepts in order to offer a satisfactory solution to some of the puzzles of intentionality, I do, however, think that information is a genuine ingredient of intentionality. Vindication of my claim that a mixed informational and teleological approach can solve (some of) the puzzles of intentionality will have to wait until the third and fourth chapters.

In this chapter, I will present the basic ideas of the informational approach. Informational semantics – as I will call the approach – has been developed by a number of philosophers – including Barwise & Perry (1983), Dretske (1981), Evans (1982), Fodor (1984; 1987b), Israel & Perry (1990), Stalnaker (1984), Stampe (1977).