Normativity and Intentionality

Abstract

The hard problem of intentionality is to explain what makes it the case that an arbitrary sentence or thought has the semantic properties that it does rather than some other semantic properties or none at all. Some hold that intentionality is normative, and that this has a crucial bearing on the hard problem of intentionality. This chapter investigates whether this is so. It is possible to distinguish four versions of the thesis that intentionality is normative: grasp of a concept or meaning involves following a rule or making a normative judgment of some kind; the concepts of meaning and content are normative; meaning and content are sources of normativity; the semantic facts are in some sense reducible to the normative (and natural) facts. I discuss all four versions of the thesis, and argue that the normativity of intentionality has little bearing on the hard problem of intentionality.