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Zusatztext This ambitious book offers both an introduction to the controversy over intentionality as well as a set of new proposals for approaching the issue. Informationen zum Autor Professor William Lyons is a fellow of Trinity College, Dublin and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. His publications include The Dissapearence of Introspection (Bradford Books - The MIT Press, 1988) and Emotion (CUP, 1985) Klappentext Approaches to Intentionality is an authoritative and accessible account of a problem central to contemporary philosophy of mind. Lyons first gives a critical survey of the current debate about the nature of intentionality, then moves on to offer an original new theory. The book is written throughout in a clear, direct, and lively style. Vorwort An investigation of a central problem in the philosophy of mind Zusammenfassung Professor Lyons in this book both explores others' approaches to intentionality and expounds his own. Part I gives a critical account of the five most comprehensive and prominent contemporary approaches to intentionality. These approaches can be summarised as the instrumentalist approach, derived from Carnap and Quine and culminating in the work of Daniel Dennett; the linguistic approach, derived from the work of Chomsky and exhibited most fully in the work of Jerry Fodor; the biological approach, developed by Ruth Garrett Millikan, Colin McGinn, and others; the information-processing approach which has been given a definitve form in the work of Fred Dretske; and the functional role approach of Brian Loar.In Part II, Professor Lyons sets out a multi-level, developmental approach to intentionality. Drawing upon work in neurophysiology and psychology, the author argues that intentionality is to be found, in different forms, at the levels of brain functioning, prelinguistic consciousness, language, and at the holistic level of `whole person performance' which is demarcated by our ordinary everyday talk about beliefs, desires, hopes, intentions, and the other `propositional attitudes'.Written in a direct, clear, and lively style, the extended survey of contemporary debate in Part I will be invaluable to the student of philosophy of mind or cognitive science as well as to the scholars and graduate students who will find an original new theory to contend with in Part II....
