Decomposing Intentionality: Perspectives on Inten- tionality Drawn from Language Research with Two Species of Chimpanzees' WILLIAM BECHTEL Department of Philosophy Georgia State Univerisity Atlanta, Georgia 30303-3083 U.S.A. ABSTRACT: In philosophy the term "intentionality" refers to the feature possessed by mental states of being about things other than themselves. A serious question has been how to explain the intentionality of mental states. This paper starts with linguistic representations, and explores how an organism might use linguistic symbols to represent other things. Two research projects of Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, one explicitly teaching two pan troglodytes to use lexigrams intentionally, and the other exploring the ability of several members of pan paniscus to learn lexigram use and comprehension of English speech spontaneously when raised in an appropriate environment, are examined to explore the acquisition process. Although it is controversial whether intentionality of mental states or linguistic symbols is primary, it is argued that the intentionality of linguistic symbols is primary and that studying how organisms learn to use linguistic symbols provides an avenue to understanding how intentionality is acquired by cognitive systems. KEY WORDS: Intentionality, chimpanzee language. 1. INTRODUCTION: INTENTIONALITY AS A PROBLEM FOR NATURAL SCIENCE Intentionality is the mark of the mental. So we were told by Brentano (1874/1973). By defining a mark Brentano set out to show how mental states were different from other kinds of states. Intentionality, for Brentano, refers to the fact that these states have content. They are about things. If I believe that Cathy is a florist, then my belief is about Cathy. I have represented Cathy in the capacity of a florist, and it is she that I have so represented, not someone else. This capacity to represent things and so have content is supposed to differentiate mental states from most other states of the world; purely physical states typically do not have such content. A rock or a lake does not represent other states of affairs. We might treat them as representations, but in themselves they are not representations. The words of a language seem to be the only physical entities that constitute an exception to this principle. They have content: the word rock refers to rocks. Possessing reference is a word's way of exhibiting intentionality. Biology and Philosophy 8: 1-32, 1993. © 1993 KluwerAcademic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.