published_or_final_version / Educational Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Intentionality is the concept of how mental states and their content relate to each other. Although intentionality was re-introduced to philosophy by the psychologist Franz Brentano, psychology has not empirically researched the concept. The present study reviews the history of intentionality, as it relates to psychology, and argues that people recognize their own and other people's intentionality through a logic-desire-belief structure. The logic-desire-belief structure was tested by having participants in an experiment read situations containing the structure and an intentional state. The results demonstrate that people are sensitive to the logic-desire-belief structure, and the structure may allow people to recognize intentionality. / Department of Psychological Science

Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College, Dept. of Philosophy, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College, Dept. of Philosophy, 2005. / Title, author from bound volume of Senior essays, Dept. of Philosophy. Includes bibliographical references.

Not available / text

Diss. Göteborg : Göteborgs universitet, 2007.

Thesis (M.S.)--Rutgers University, 2009. / "Graduate Program in Psychology." Includes bibliographical references (p. 26-27).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

My basic concern in this thesis is to examine the details behind Dennett's attempt to reconcile the notions of mechanism and responsibility. In the main this involves an examination of how he tries to secure a compatibilism between mechanistic and intentional explanations by developing a systematised conception of intentional explanation. I begin by briefly discussing the various notions needed for understanding what is at stake in the area and where the orthodoxy on the matter lies. As such the first three sections of the work are not focussed on Dennett's work itself and playa stage-setting role for the deeper work to follow. These notions include the likes of the rationale behind attributing moral responsibility, agency and action, mechanism and mechanistic explanation, and intentional explanation. I suggest that the basic intuition regarding mechanism and responsibility is such that the two are seen to be incompatible with each other. The main reason for this lies in an intuition that mechanism undermines intentional explanation and so renders the notion of action largely empty. Action, I show, is at the heart of our attribution of responsibility and is dependent on intentional explanation. Having presented these issues, I turn to the details of Dennett's 'intentional systems theory'. I argue that Dennett attempts to avoid the intuition that mechanism is incompatible with responsibility by developing a specialised account of intentional explanation. Dennett calls it the intentional stance. r highlight the two important features of this intentional stance, namely rationality and intentionality. r show that Dennett's position on rationality and intentionality is such that it does allow him to secure an explanatory compatibilism between mechanism and his sort of intentional explanation. I argue, however, that his sort of intentional explanation does not fulfil our requirements for ascribing agency or moral responsibility. This is accomplished in part by developing alternative conceptions of the two notions. Out of this I develop a different sort of intentional stance, which I call the folk stance. I show finaIly that Dennett's compatibilist move is incapable of being applied to the folkstance from which we do in fact make attributions of responsibility, and so conclude thatDennett fails to make the case for reconciling mechanism and responsibility.

Thesis (doctoral)--Lund, 1981. / Thesis t.p. laid in. Includes bibliographical references (p. 186-191) and index.