Mark Sainsbury on Intentional Relations

Following A. N. Prior, Sainsbury sets up the problem of intentionality as follows:

We are faced with a paradox: some intentional states are relational and some are not. But all intentional states are the same kind of thing, and things of the same kind are either all relational or all non-relational.  (Intentional Relations, 327)

Cast in the mold of an aporetic triad:

1) Some intentional states are relational and some are not.

2) All intentional states are the same kind of thing.

3) Things of the same kind are either all relational or all non-relational.

These propositions are individually plausible but jointly inconsistent. Sainsbury solves the problem by rejecting (1).  He maintains that all intentional states are relational.  Whether I am thinking about Obama, who exists, or about Pegasus, who does not exist, a relation is involved.  In both cases, the relation connects the subject or his mental state to a representation. The representation, in turn, either represents something that exists 'in the world' or it does not.  In the first case, there is me, my intentional or object-directed mental state, the concept OBAMA, and the man himself in the external world.  In the second case, there is me, my intentional or object-directed mental state, the concept PEGASUS, and that's it: there is nothing in reality that the Pegasus representation represents.  

Sainsbury is not saying that when I think about Obama, I am thinking about a representation. Plainly, I am thinking about a man, and a man is not a representation in a mind.  While Sainsbury advocates a representationalist theory of mind (RTM), he essays to steer clear of ". . . a disastrous turn that a representationalist view may take: instead of saying that the intentional states are about what their representations are about, the fatal temptation for British Empiricist thinkers (and others) is to regard the intentional states as about the representations (“ideas”) themselves." (330)  On Sainsbury's RTM,

For representationalists, all intentional states, including perceptual states, are relational, but the representations are not the “objects” of the states in the sense of what the states are about. Rather, the representations are what bring represented objects “before the mind”. Analogously, we see by using our eyes, but we do not see our eyes. Using our eyes does not make our vision indirect. (330)

This implies that representations are not representatives or stand-ins or epistemic deputies or cognitive intermediaries interposed between mind and world. They are not like pictures. A picture of Obama is an object of vision just as Obama himself is.  But Sainsburian representations "neither react appropriately with light nor emit odiferous molecules." (330)  Pictures of Obama and Obama in the flesh do both. Representations are in the mind but not before the mind. They are "exercised" in intentional states without being the objects of such states:

Intentional states are not normally about the representations they exercise. The representation is not the state’s “object”, as that is often used. Rather, the state’s object is whatever, if anything, the representation refers to, or is about. The notion of “aboutness” needed to make this true is itself intensional: a representation may be about Pegasus, and a thought about Pegasus involves a representation about him. (338)

Sainsbury's solution to the problem codified in the above inconsistent triad involves two steps. The first is to reject (1) and hold that all intentional states are relational.  They are genuine relations, not merely relation-like. The second step is to import relationality into the mind: every intentional state is a relational state that connects two intramental existing items, one being the intentional state itself, the other being the representation, whether it be a truth-evaluable representation, which S. calls a thought, or a non-truth-evaluable representation, which S. calls a concept.  

It is easy to see that one could take the first step without taking the second. One could hold that all intentional states are relations but that these relations tie intentional states to mind-transcendent items, whether existent, like Obama, or nonexistent, like Pegasus. But this is the way of Meinong or quasi-Meinong, not the way of Sainsbury. He argues in the paper in question against Meinong for reasons I will not go into here.

In sum, intentional states are relations, but they are neither relations to mental objects nor are they relations to extramental objects.  They are relations to representations which are neither.  A mental object is (or can be) both in the mind and before the mind.  And extramental object is (or can be) before the mind but not in the mind. A Sainsburian representation is in the mind but not before the mind (except in cases of reflection as when I reflect on the concept OBAMA as opposed to thinking about him directly).

The article ends as follows:

Metaphysical relationality is the fundamental feature of intentional states, the nature they all share. In the original puzzle, it was claimed that Raoul’s thinking about Pegasus is not relational, since there is no such thing as Pegasus, whereas his thinking about Obama is relational, since there is such a thing as Obama. But in both cases the claims are made true by Raoul being in a two-place relational state, involving a Pegasus-representation in one case and an Obama representation in the other. The metaphysical underpinning of thinking about Pegasus is just as relational as his thinking about Obama. For the Pegasus case, that is not because there really is such a nonexistent object as Pegasus, but because the truth-making state is a relational one, holding between Raoul and, in the typical case, the concept PEGASUS. For the Obama case, the state is relational in the relevant way not because there is such an object as Obama, but because the truth-making state is a relational one, holding between Raoul and, in the typical case, the concept OBAMA.

CRITIQUE

Does this solve our problem? I don't see that it does.  First of all, we are left with the problem of the intentionality of representations. What makes an Obama representation about Obama?  Sainsbury's solution to the Prior puzzle is to reject the first limb of the aporetic triad by maintaining that ALL intentional states are relational.  But since these relations are all intramental we are left with the problem of external reference.  We are left with no account of the of-ness or aboutness of representations.  We need an account not only of noetic intentionality but of noematic intentionality as well, to press some Husserlian jargon into service.

Second, it is not clear from this article what exactly representations are. We are told that "representations are what bring represented objects 'before the mind'." How exactly?  Talk of the "exercise" of representations suggests that they are dispositions.  Is the concept OBAMA in Raoul his being disposed to identify exactly one thing as Obama?  But how could an occurrent episode of thinking-of be accounted for dispositionally? Besides, the concept OBAMA would have to be a haecceity-concept and I have more than once pointed out the difficulties with such a posit.

 

Comments

[oz]

“Sainsbury's solution to the Prior puzzle is to reject the first limb of the aporetic triad by maintaining that ALL intentional states are relational.”

Are you sure you have interpreted him correctly? In Thinking about Things, 27–8, (quoted in R&I pp 27-28) he says that in the sentences “The story is about Prince Andrei” and “The story is about Napoleon”, the words “The story is about – ” do not introduce a relation in either case.

“Intentional Relations” was written earlier, but I can’t see where he says what you attribute to him above.

[BV]

I linked to the article. Did you read it? Not only did I link to it, I quoted chunks of it. Right at the beginning of the last block quotation we read, "Metaphysical relationality is the fundamental feature of intentional states, the nature they all share." Note the 'all.'

Read the opening sentence of the second paragraph.

I suggest that you take the time to read the article carefully and then read my summary and critique carefully.

[oz]

I read that article and I am familiar with Sainsbury’s broader thinking on this.

Sainsbury’s view is that “Jake is thinking about Prince Andrei” does not express a relation. I.e. while it is a relational expression, it does not express or signify a relation between Jake and Prince Andrei (for there is no such person as Prince Andrei).

His view is perfectly consistent with his view that the truth condition of e.g. “Jake is thinking about Prince Andrei” involves Jake being in “a two-place relational state”. This should be obvious from the last part where he says that the state is “relational in the relevant way not because there is such an object as Obama, but because the truth-making state is a relational one, holding between Raoul and, in the typical case, the concept OBAMA.”

In my example, the truth-making state would hold between Jake and the concept PRINCE ANDREI.

I concede that Sainsbury is not always the clearest of writers.

[oz]

Or perhaps I am misreading your reading of Sainsbury. Apologies if so.

But then you might have been clearer that on Sainsbury's view, what makes "Jake is thinking of Andrei" true is not a relation between Jake and someone called 'Andrei'.

On the possibility of singular concepts, that is a separate question.

[oz]

“What makes an Obama representation about Obama?” I.e. what makes

(*) this mental representation is about Obama

true?

My answer (possibly not Sainsbury’s) is to note that sentence (1) contains a token of the proper name ‘Obama’, and I assume that in the context it is used, it makes sense, i.e. has a sense (not necessarily a referent). Then I claim that the representation must contain some mental token which has the very same sense.

The condition for two singular term tokens to have the same sense is that there must be the right kind of anaphoric connection (‘co-reference’) between them. The nature of that connection is spelled out at great length in R&I.

[BV]

>>Sainsbury’s view is that “Jake is thinking about Prince Andrei” does not express a relation. I.e. while it is a relational expression, it does not express or signify a relation between Jake and Prince Andrei (for there is no such person as Prince Andrei).<<

You are missing the point of the article (and that is all I am basing myself on). S. is saying that a relation obtains between the thinker and a representation both in the case of thinking about Obama and in the case of thinking about Pegasus. So he solves the Prior puzzle by rejecting my (1) in the OP. S. makes it very clear that he is proposing a representationalist theory of intentionality.

[BV]

>>But then you might have been clearer that on Sainsbury's view, what makes "Jake is thinking of Andrei" true is not a relation between Jake and someone called 'Andrei'.<<

I was very clear about that.

[oz]

OK. Turning to Sainsbury's view, rather than your view of his view. I am puzzled about his opening sentence.

In some intentional states, the mind is related to the world. When I think about Obama, I stand in a relation to him: the state I am in could not exist unless he exists.

My emphasis. Can you make sense of that? In the context of his stated view in that article, I mean?

[BV]

The opening sentences are indeed puzzling. They do not cohere with what he says in the main body of the article. What he wants to say is that intentionality involves a relation both when one thinks about what exists and when one thinks about what does not exist. The relation, however, ties the subject to a representation. Concepts are one species of representation. So when I think of Obama I am related to the concept OBAMA and when I think of Pegasus I am related to the concept PEGASUS. Since both concepts exist, we have a genuine relation in both cases despite the fact that nothing in reality answers to the concept PEGASUS while something does in the case of the concept OBAMA.

Charitably viewed, all he is doing at the outset is making the obvious point that some intentional states have existing intentional objects and some do not.

[BV]

"the state I am in could not exist unless he exists." This could mean that Obama himself enters into the content of my thought of him. But then how would this jibe with Sainsbury's later talk of the concept OBAMA? No concept can capture the haecceity of a singular item. How could a representation of that very man Obama not have Obama himself as a constituent?

Is this what is bugging you, Ed?

[oz]

>Is this what is bugging you, Ed?

Indeed it is. The essence of a representational state, as I understand it, is its Cartesian indifference to what is external. If the talk of 'the concept OBAMA' is to be interpreted representationally, then a mental state that includes that concept must exist whether or not Obama exists. But that does not jibe with his statement that "the state I am in could not exist unless he exists."

What is the next step? Note that a key thesis of R&I is that there can be singular concepts.

[BV]

This morning I began studying Sainsbury's "Intentionality without Exotica." I am five pages into it. I will write a post on it later after I finish studying it. He distinguishes internal versus external singularity. More later. I will see what you have to say about singular concepts. S. speaks of "individual concepts."