Premium
Realism, Instrumentalism, and the Intentional Stance *
Author(s) -
Bechtel William
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.498
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 1551-6709
pISSN - 0364-0213
DOI - 10.1207/s15516709cog0904_5
Subject(s) - attribution , instrumentalism , construal level theory , psychology , epistemology , perspective (graphical) , temptation , cognitive psychology , social psychology , cognition , philosophy , computer science , neuroscience , artificial intelligence
One of Dennett's principal arguments for an instrumentalistic construal of intentional attributions (e.g., attributions of belief, etc.) is that such attributions are environment relative. I argue that one can and should adopt a realist perspective toward such attributions, but accommodate their environmental relativity by treating intentional properties as relational properties. By doing so one acquires a useful perspective on experimental cognitive psychology; in particular, one can overcome the temptation to treat ecological accounts and information processing accounts as incompatible alternatives and come to see them as mutually supportive. Treating intentional properties as relational may be counter‐intuitive, but I provide examples of how other sciences have had to treat what seem to be intrinsic properties as relational.