7.7—
Circularity and Regress

Finally, an account of the intentionality of mental states based upon interpretability, authoring intentions, or actual interpretations of mental representations would be circular and regressive. Consider first what would be involved in a claim that O 's mental state A means (that) P because it involves a representation MP that is either (a ) intended (by some agent A ) to mean (that) P or (b ) interpreted (by some symbol user H ) as meaning (that) P . If either account were correct, O could only be said to be in a mental state A that means (that) P if some organism O^* (possibly, but not necessarily, distinct from O) were in some particular intentional states—namely, those involved in (a ) intending that MP mean (that) P or in (b ) interpreting MP as meaning (that) P .

But if this is the case, the strategy for explaining the intentionality of mental states has serious problems. First, it is circular: the intentionality and meaningfulness of mental states is accounted for by appealing to the meaningfulness of symbols, while the meaningfulness of the symbols is accounted for by appealing to the mental states involved in bestowing meaning upon those symbols. Second, the account is regressive: each time we account for the intentionality of a mental state A of an organism O , we allude to the "meaningfulness" of a representation MP . But the kind of "meaningfulness" we invoke involves covert reference to the intentional states A^* of some organism O^* . But since we are looking for a general account of the intentionality of mental states—not just an account of O 's mental states—we must account for the intentionality of O ^* 's mental states as well. Presumably, to account for O^* 's mental state A^* , we would have to posit a meaningful representation MP ^* , whose meaningfulness would in turn have to be cashed out in terms of the interpretive acts of some organism O^** , and so on. The resulting account would not explain the intentionality of mental states in nonintentional terms; it could account for the intentionality of a given mental state only in terms of another mental state.

A very similar argument can be given against accounts where the "meaningfulness" of mental representations is to be understood in terms of interpretability under a convention. For while linguistic conventions

are not themselves mental states, they only obtain by virtue of several beings having a shared understanding of how certain symbols may be used. (Or, if one wishes to refer to the meaning assignments of idiolects as conventions, these obtain because one being has an understanding of how certain symbols may be used, and this understanding could, in principle, be shared by other language users as well.) And it is surely a necessary (if not a sufficient) condition for this shared understanding that the beings who share in it be in mental states that are similar in relevant ways. This, I take it, would have to be a part of the analysis of what it is for a group of language users to share a linguistic convention. But if this is the case, then a convention-based account of meaningfulness of mental representations is no better than an intention-based account, since it too ultimately depends upon allusions to intentional states and hence ends in the same kind of circularity and regress.