Media of Reason by Matthias Vogel

Author:Matthias Vogel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2012-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 3.3 The development of intentionality: Phase 3

PHASE 4: LINGUISTIC COMMUNICATION OR THE DEVELOPMENT OF C-INTENTIONALITY

With phase 4 we finally reach the level of intentional states whose content has a propositional form; that is, we reach the level of those states whose identity and content can be provided by means of the standard interpretationist theory with recourse to their position in an inferentially structured network. Here it is clear that inferential networks are constituted by certain normative relations, which, in the final analysis, are based on the truth-aptness of many elements of such networks. In the context of these reflections I will not go further into whether the specifics of these C-intentional states ought rather to be described with a Davidsonian or a Brandomian vocabulary. Within the framework of the four-phase model, I can limit myself to explaining how the level of C-intentionality behaves in a genetic respect to the preceding forms of intentionality.

If we explain the specifics of B-intentional states at a fundamental level by maintaining that they are states that have a compositional identity, then C-intentional states can be understood as a level at which medial expressions (or B-intentional states) are linked in a network of normative relations, and indeed the type of normative relations that a radical interpreter assumes if she correlates expressions of a being with states of affairs and other expressions of this being. However, herewith something comes into play at the level of propositional attitudes that opens the primarily dyadic communication of level 3 to the world and thus to objectivity. Relations among medial expressions and experiences of the producers and recipients of the expressions are no longer in the foreground; instead, relations between medial expressions and states of affairs in the world are. While I could take recourse in the communicative structures of affect-centered communication in order to introduce the B-intentional states, the development of propositional states can be explained, on the one hand, with recourse to structures of instrumental communication, on the other hand, however, also with recourse to the mechanisms of medial communication. For basic forms of linguistic communication can be described against the background of the preceding phases as forms of communication in which the reference to the world—which comes to expression at the level of instrumental communication through pointing—is differentiated and explicitly articulated with the medial means developed in phase 3.

The basic idea for the characterization of linguistic communication thus ought to be that some of the introduced medial expressions acquire new roles that are increasingly subject to normative restrictions in the course of the development. Hereby the normatively determined roles acquire a dominant status; this is expressed in the fact that the compositional identity is subordinated to the interpretability of linguistic expressions. Insofar, namely, as an interpreter of linguistic expressions must assume that the speaker fulfills the demands of minimal rationality, she places the expressions in a normative context in which they can play the role of declarations, desires, commands, etc. While the compositional identity of nonlinguistic expressions

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