Approaches to Intentionality

Book excerpt: 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.