Approaches to Intentionality By William Lyons BOOK REVIEWS Clarendon Press, 1995. Pp. 261. ISBN 0-19-823526-7. £30.00 In this clearly written, informative book Lyons provides a critical survey of some contemporary realist theories of intentionality (Part I) and also sketches his own theory - a layered, developmental 'in-the-head' realism (Part II). Lyons adopts a both/and approach: intentionality is in the brain, in consciousness, and is also a feature of language, though different forms of intentionality are at work in each case. Intentionality is not just a linguistic phenomenon, nor is it purely a brain matter; Lyons argues for gradated levels: brain, pre-linguistic consciousness, and adult language-user, with fully fledged propositional attitude intentionality only operative at the highest level. Part I is a reliable, up-to-date, critical survey of five leading contemporary accounts of intentionality, instrumentalism, representationalism, teleology, infor- mation processing and functionalism, exemplified by Dennett, Fodor, Millikan (coupled with McGinn), Dretske and Loar. Lyons begins by situating Dennett's instrumentalist approach historically in the tradition of Comte, Carnap and Quine. According to this tradition, there are only physical transactions in the world, so talk of intentionality is 'just talk' (p. 38), extremely useful, perhaps even indis- pensable for humans, but not ultimately part of the furniture of the world. As Lyons sums up this view: The mind has no intentionality for the simple reason that there is no mind, and the brain has no intentionality because it has neither states nor processes with content. Intentionality is merely a feature of a particular part of our language plus a strategy which generates that 'language game'. (p.27) Lyons sees Dennett's instrumentalism as in one sense 'reductionist' and, in another sense, simply 'dismissive' (p. 36) of intentionality. Lyons argues that Dennett is required to interpret the success of the intentional stance as really a lucky guess, whereas a more reasonable position would recognize that our predictive successes must be based on real knowledge inside the head of the interpreter. Instrumentalism, for Lyons, has done away with in-the-head content for no good reason. Representationalism (Fodor), on the other hand, is an 'industrial strength' (p. 55) 'in-the-head' realism about intentionality and mental content. Lyons presents Fodor as a rationalist and nativist heavily influenced by Chomsky. Lyons agrees with Fodor's view that the brain is not just a syntactic but a real semantic engine, driven by intentional states. However, Lyons parts company with Fodor on the postulation of a language of thought (LOT). For Fodor propositional attitudes are in the brain itself; the brain possesses a 'stiffened up version of our folk psychology' (p. 55). Lyons criticizes Fodor for being too literalist about LOT and here sides with the instrumentalist view that folk-psychology is a cultural arte- fact. However, he disagrees with the instrumentalist claim that there is no analogue for propositional attitudes and contents in the brain. There is some basis in the brain for Lyons, but not as Fodor envisions it. Lyons criticizes Fodor not just for his nativism but also for having no account of consciousness or of the learning process. Furthermore, as Lyons will argue in Part II, there are non-representa- tional, information-bearing states, e.g. 'grasps of and contacts with' (p. 62). 471