Three bad arguments for intentional property epiphenomenalism

Abstract

As I sit at my desk on a warm and sunny day, I begin to desire a cold drink. Because I believe I can get cold drinking water from the fountain in the hallway I leave my office and go down to the fountain where I satisfy my thirst. Having done so, I return to my office. It's a boring story, but one that illustrates the common sense view that intentional states, such as beliefs and desires, cause behaviors and do so because of their intentional content. Had I not desired a cold drink or not believed that the fountain would provide cold water, I would not have acted as I did. However, even if a causal story about intentional states is implicit in common sense and not everyone agrees it is (Dennett 1987, Bennett 1990) that story need not be true. Many reasons might be found to reject it. One could be an anti-realist of one sort or another about propositional attitudes; if there really are no beliefs or desires then obviously any story that appeals to them as causes must be false. According to the neuro-scientific eliminativists (P. M. Churchland, 1981; P. S. Churchland 1986), brain science will show us that the real causes of human behavior are so unlike beliefs and desires that propositional attitudes will join phlogiston and caloric in the dustbin of mistaken theoretical posits. One could also take an instrumentalist or quasi-realist view of propositional attitudes by allowing that statements about beliefs and desires can be literally true, but holding that their truth consists entirely in facts about patterns of actual and counterfac tual behavior (Dennett 1987, 1991). On such a view, belief and desire talk makes no reference to internal causes of behavior or to any states or events below the personal level (i.e., below the level of facts about the whole person and her behavior). Eliminativists and instrumentalists are alike in denying that there are any beliefs or desires that act as causes of behavior; the success of either version of anti-realism would suffice to refute the common sense causal story. However, defeating anti-realism would not conversely suffice to save the causal story. Showing that there really are propositional attitudes and that they are among the causes of our behavior would not vindicate