We can adopt the intentional stance very widely, even when we do not
seriously suppose that we are dealing with a rational agent. For example,
plants move their leaves, tracking the motion of the sun across the sky
(phototropicbehaviour). We canWgure out the orientation of a plant’s
leaves several hours hence by supposing that itwantsto have its leaves
facing the sun andbelievesthat the sun is wherever in the sky it in fact is. As
a predictive strategy this has quite a lot to be said in its favour. In
particular, it is marvellously economical. By contrast, the attempt to
calculate the position of the plant’s leaves by means of basic physics and
chemistry, combined with information about the physico-chemical com-
position of the plant’s cells, the intensity of photon bombardment from
various angles, and so on, would be a hopelessly complicated task.
On the one hand, Dennett wants to maintain that there are ‘true be-
lievers’ (for example, people)in contrast withcases where we resort to
useful metaphors and other non-serious attributions of intentional states
(as with the phototropic behaviour of plants). On the other hand, he thinks
that the diVerence betweentruebelievers and others is a matter of degree –
it is just a diVerence in the volume and the detail of the predictions
warranted by application of the intentional strategy. So it seems that there
is a straightforward contrast between Dennett’s position and ours. Den-
nett thinks that people have intentional states because (that is,in so far as)
the intentional strategy works as a predictor of their behaviour. We think
that the intentional strategy works as a way of predicting people’s behav-
iourbecause(this is a causal-explanatory ‘because’) people have inten-
tional states.
Yet Dennett also adds a pro-realist rider (1987, pp.29–35). Thetrue
believers are the systems whose behaviour is predicted both reliably,
voluminously andvariously– in contrast to things like thermostats and
plants, whose behaviour is reliably predicted from the vantage of the
intentional stance, but with little volume or variation. Now such a true
believer must in fact be connected with its environment in a delicate and
intricate manner, and in particular its behaviour must be regulated by
internal stateswhich are sensitive to the environment in which the inten-
tional system is embedded. These internal states we treat asrepresen-
tations. So far as we can see, this concedes that true believers are the ones
whichactually have beliefs. Once the realist rider is added, Dennett’s
position becomes rather like Ptolemy’s astronomyplusthe claim that we
would not be successful in ‘saving the phenomena’ unless planets really
were circling on epicycles which were circling on deferents which were
circling around the Earth. But we do not want to get bogged down in
interpreting interpretationalists and other anti- or quasi-realists. (For
more on Dennett’s position see Dahlbom, 1993; especially the papers by
30 Folk-psychological commitments