The Intentional Stance
The intentional stance is a predictive strategy that interprets an entity's behavior by assuming it is a rational agent with beliefs and desires. It extends folk psychology beyond humans to animals, artifacts, and sub-personal systems, providing a powerful way to understand and anticipate actions without detailed knowledge of internal mechanisms.
THE IDEA
Murder in Trafalgar Square
Dennett describes Jacques, Sherlock, Tom, and Boris reaching the belief that a Frenchman committed murder in Trafalgar Square through different experiences. The example asks how we can identify a shared belief without first identifying a common neural encoding. It introduces intentionality: the way a mental state is about something. It does not establish that the people have no neural features in common.
An Older Brother Living in Cleveland
A thought experiment imagines a cognitive micro-neurosurgeon implanting the belief "I have an older brother living in Cleveland". What else would need to change for this to count as a belief? The person might need expectations about family history, memories, and answers to related questions. Dennett uses the example to argue that a belief depends on a wider network; an isolated verbal response might instead be a tic or prompt confabulation.
“Daddy is a Doctor”
A child can say that her father is a doctor while understanding only part of what those concepts involve. Her understanding develops as she learns more. The example explores how attributing a belief need not mean attributing complete comprehension.
Manifest Image and Scientific Image
Wilfrid Sellars distinguishes the manifest image of everyday life from the scientific image. We describe the world through people, promises, and familiar objects, and also through physical processes. Dennett connects this problem with von Uexküll’s Umwelt and Gibson’s affordances: different organisms respond to different features of their surroundings.
Folk Psychology
We regularly interpret other people through their beliefs, desires, and reasons. Dennett treats this as a practical competence and questions whether calling it a “theory of mind” prejudges how it works. His discussion of agent detection is part of that account, rather than proof that a single innate mechanism explains the whole ability.
The Intentional Stance
To adopt the intentional stance, treat an entity as an agent with beliefs and desires, then predict what it would do if it acted rationally on them. The physical stance instead predicts from physical laws; the design stance predicts from the entity’s function and expected operation.
A chess computer provides a useful example. You can anticipate a move by considering what it knows about the position and what would help it win, without tracing its circuitry or code. Dennett extends this strategy to animals and even simple devices such as thermostats. Using the stance does not require treating every such system as conscious or humanlike.
The strategy supplies a description of what a system can do while leaving open how its parts accomplish it. Dennett also uses intentional descriptions of simpler subsystems to connect explanations of a person’s behavior with accounts of underlying mechanisms.
When to use it
Predicting the moves of a chess-playing computer by assuming it wants to win and knows the rules.
Understanding the behavior of a pet (e.g., a dog wanting to go outside) without knowing its neural processes.
Designing a user interface by modeling the user's likely beliefs (e.g., what they think the button does) and desires (to complete a task).
Interpreting the actions of characters in a story or film by attributing rational motives based on their beliefs and desires.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Murder in Trafalgar Square
Dennett’s four characters reach a belief about the same murder through different experiences. The thought experiment asks what makes their beliefs the same at the level of content, without first requiring a shared description of the neural implementation.
The Chess-Playing Computer
When playing against a chess computer, you predict its moves by assuming it knows the rules, wants to win, and will make the best move. This is the intentional stance in action—you ignore the program's details and rely on rational assumptions.
The Thermostat
A thermostat can be described as wanting to maintain a set temperature, believing the current temperature, and acting to correct any discrepancy. This simple anthropomorphism helps explain its behavior without technical detail.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
Think of a situation where you successfully predicted someone's behavior by assuming they were rational. What beliefs and desires did you attribute to them? How would your prediction have differed if you had used the design stance or physical stance?
The text suggests that beliefs cannot exist in isolation. Have you ever had an experience where you realized that a belief you held implied other beliefs you hadn't considered? How did that affect your understanding?
Consider a non-human entity (a pet, a plant, or a machine) that you interact with. In what ways do you naturally apply the intentional stance to understand its behavior? What are the limits of that interpretation?
Often confused with
References
- Holism: A Shopper's Guide — Jerry Fodor and Ernest Lepore (1992)
- A Stroll Through the Worlds of Animals and Men — Jakob von Uexküll (1957)
- The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception — James J. Gibson (1979)
- Reductionistic Research Strategies and Their Biases — William C. Wimsatt (1980)
- Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man — Wilfrid Sellars (1963)
- Exploring the Natural Foundations of Religion — Justin L. Barrett (2000)
- The Intentional Stance — Daniel Dennett (1987)
- Kinds of Minds — Daniel Dennett (1996)
- Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon — Daniel Dennett (2006)
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking