{"id":14506,"date":"2026-10-15T10:12:53","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T17:12:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/?p=14506"},"modified":"2026-10-15T10:12:53","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T17:12:53","slug":"semantic-engines-consciousness-intentionality-and-understanding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2026\/10\/15\/semantic-engines-consciousness-intentionality-and-understanding\/","title":{"rendered":"Semantic Engines, Consciousness, Intentionality, and Understanding"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Haugeland<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The basic idea of cognitive science is that intelligent beings are semantic engines – in other words, automatic formal systems with interpretations <\/span>under which they consistently make sense. [This puts] \u00a0psychology and <\/span>artificial intelligence on a more or less equal footing: people and intelligent computers [are] different manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon. (p. 15)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

“The basic idea of cognitive science” is what John Searle calls Strong Artificial Intelligence.\u00a0 “On the Strong AI view, the appropriately programmed digital computer does not just simulate having a mind, it literally has a mind.” (Mind: A Brief Introduction<\/em>, Oxford UP 2004, p. 66) Searle does not, however, endorse Haugeland’s view. The latter — call it H — implies that there is no good reason to think that the\u00a0 (natural) intelligence in us\u00a0 must be any different\u00a0 in kind from the (artificial) intelligence that is now present in some computers.\u00a0 \u00a0My view is that there is good reason to doubt it, and what’s more, deny it.<\/p>\n

But if I have reason to deny (H), then it is incumbent upon me to explain why. No bare assertions allowed. (Quod gratis asseritur gratis negatur<\/em>.) I will defend what Hauegeland calls the Hollow Shell Strategy.\u00a0 The following quotations are from an\u00a0 accurate summary<\/a> of Haugeland’s above-cited article, a summary\u00a0 written by someone else.<\/p>\n

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Hollow Shell: however well a semantic engine acts as if it understands, it <\/span>can\u2019t really do so because it\u2019s missing some vital ingredient \u201cX\u201d. A robot <\/span>based on a semantic engine would be a sham no matter how good it got. <\/span>Candidates for \u201cX\u201d are consciousness, original intentionality and caring.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I will consider in this post just consciousness and original intentionality.<\/p>\n

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X = Consciousness: however smart computers might seem, they can\u2019t really <\/span>understand anything because they aren\u2019t conscious. It\u2019s natural to suppose <\/span>something difficult and important has been left out. Haugeland responds by <\/span>saying that no one understands consciousness \u2013 it\u2019s mysterious regardless of your viewpoint. So, how do we know (a) that understanding is impossible <\/span>without consciousness or (b) that semantic engines won\u2019t ever have <\/span>consciousness?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

NON-INTENTIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS<\/p>\n

The first step\u00a0 is to distinguish between consciousness (no-intentional conciousness) and consciousness-of. The latter is what philosophers call intentionality or object-directedness.\u00a0 A conscious state need not be an intentional or object-directed state.\u00a0 Felt sensations of pain and pleasure, for example, needn’t present an object: they needn’t be of or about anything in the way my noticing that the door is about the door’s being ajar. I have found that it is very difficult to get this distinction across to some people. I’ll try once more.<\/p>\n

You are pedaling your bike and you feel\u00a0 something you describe as ‘pain in the right knee.’ Is that felt pain literally in your knee? No.\u00a0 What is literally inside the knee is at most the cause<\/em> of the felt pain:\u00a0 an X-ray reveals that you are ‘bone-on-bone’: the meniscus has worn away and the femur is grinding against the tibia.\u00a0 The X-ray reveals the cause. The cause is physical; the pain you feel is not physical, but mental. Follow me so far?<\/p>\n

The felt pain — the pain as sensory quale — does not show up on the X-ray slide, nor will the felt pain be empirically detected by an orthopaedic surgeon who cuts into the knee and looks around in there.\u00a0 The point is this: the felt pain is a conscious state that is not an intentional state.\u00a0 The conscious state has no intentional object;\u00a0 it is not object-directed; it does not present an object to the person in the state; it does not ‘take an accusative.’ These are four different ways of saying the same thing.<\/p>\n

So far I have made two simple distinctions. The first is between the physical\/material cause of the felt pain and the felt pain as mental \/conscious sensory quale. The second is between conscious states that are not object-directed and those that are.<\/p>\n

What is a conscious state? A conscious state is an occurrent episode of awareness. I have just alluded to a third distinction between the occurrent and the dispositional.\u00a0 Another technical term is ‘act,’ not to be confused with ‘action.’ (A fourth distinction.) An act is an occurrent episode of awareness (consciousness) that takes an object. No act without an object and no object without an act.\u00a0 ‘Object’ in this context means intentional object, where such an object may or may not exist without prejudice to its being an intentional object.\u00a0 So we distinguish between merely intentional objects and intentional objects that also exist in reality, i.e., extra-mentally. (I’ve just made a fifth distinction).\u00a0 If I ever get a tattoo, it will read Distinguo ergo sum<\/em>.<\/p>\n

There are other points to be made but I must move on.<\/p>\n

If we use ‘qualia’ to refer to the non-intentional conscious states one of which I\u00a0 have just\u00a0 described, then Daniel Dennett is a qualia-denier. His opposite number is Thomas Nagel, a qualia-affirmer. To put it bluntly and polemically: Thomas Nagel is for me the real thing as philosophers go; Daniel Dennett is a brilliant sophist. But he is indeed brilliant and creative and his work cannot be ignored. His work functions as a very useful and richly elaborated foil<\/em> against which to develop saner and sounder theories, theories that have a chance of being true.<\/p>\n

Killer Quotation from Nagel from a \u00a0NYRB review<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

I am reminded of the Marx Brothers line: \u201cWho are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?\u201d Dennett asks us to turn our backs on what is glaringly obvious\u2014that in consciousness we are immediately aware of real subjective experiences of color, flavor, sound, touch, etc. that cannot be fully described in neural terms even though they have a neural cause (or perhaps have neural as well as experiential aspects). And he asks us to do this because the reality of such phenomena is incompatible with the scientific materialism that in his view sets the outer bounds of reality. He is, in Aristotle\u2019s words, \u201cmaintaining a thesis at all costs.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That’s right. When a line of reasoning issues in an absurdity such as the absurdity that consciousness and its deliverances are illusions, then what you have is a reductio ad absurdum<\/em> of one or more of the premises with which the reasoning began. \u00a0Dennett assumes physicalism and that everything can be explained in physical terms. \u00a0This leads to absurdity. But Dennett, blinded by his own brilliance \u2014 don’t forget, he counts himself one of the ‘brights’<\/a> \u2014 bites the bullet. He’d rather break his teeth than examine his assumptions.<\/p>\n

Another thing struck me. Dennett makes much of Wilfrid Sellars’ distinction between the manifest and scientific images. ‘Image’ is not quite the right word. An image is someone’s image. But whose image is the scientific image? Who is its subject? It is arguably our image no less than the manifest image. \u00a0Nagel quotes Dennett as saying of the manifest image: “It\u2019s the world according to us<\/em>.” \u00a0But the same, or something very similar, is true of the scientific image: it’s the world in itself according to us<\/em>. \u00a0Talk of molecules, atoms, electrons, quarks, and strings is our talk just as much as talk of colors and plants and animals and haircuts and home runs.<\/p>\n

The world of physics is the world as it is in itself according to us<\/em>. \u00a0Arguably, the ‘according to us’ gets the upper hand over the ‘in itself’ relativizing what comes within the former’s \u00a0scope much like Kant’s transcendental prefix, Ich denke<\/em>. \u00a0Das ‘ich denke’ muss alle meine Vorstellungen begleiten koennen . . . .<\/em> \u00a0“The ”I think’ must be able to accompany all my representations.” (KdrV<\/em>, B 131-2)<\/p>\n

Arguably, the world of physics is a mind-involving construct arrived at by excluding the mental and abstracting away from the first-person point of view and the life world (Husserl’s Lebenswelt<\/em>) it reveals. \u00a0I am alluding to an idealist approach to the problem of integrating the first- and third-person points of view. \u00a0It has its own problems. But why is it inferior to a view like Dennett’s which eliminates as illusory obvious data that are plainly not illusory?<\/p>\n

Time was when absolute idealism was the default position in philosophy. Think back to the days of Bradley and Bosanquet. But reaction set in, times have changed, and the Zeitgeist<\/em> is now against the privileging of Mind and for the apotheosis of Matter. \u00a0(But again, matter as construed by us. Arguably, the scientific realist reifies theoretical constructs that we create and employ to make sense of experience.) \u00a0Because idealism is out of vogue, the best and brightest are not drawn to its defense, and the brilliant few it attracts are too few to make much headway against the prevailing winds.<\/p>\n

Now I’ll tell you what I really think. The problem of integrating the first- and third-person points of view is genuine and perhaps the deepest of all philosophical problems. But it is insoluble by us. \u00a0If it does have a solution, however, it certainly won’t be anything like Dennett’s.<\/p>\n

Although Dennett’s positive theory is worthless, his excesses are extremely useful in helping us see just how deep and many-sided and intractable the problem is.<\/p>\n

IS CONSCIOUSNESS MYSTERIOUS?<\/p>\n

Haugeland says it is above.<\/p>\n

My response is that consciousness is mysterious only if you insist on trying to understand it in materialist or\u00a0 naturalist terms.\u00a0 For if you try to understand it in these terms, then you are approaching it from a third-person point of view and are bound to miss it.\u00a0 From the first-person point of view, it is self-evidently<\/em> certain<\/em> that there is consciousness.\u00a0 Nagel 1; Dennett 0.<\/p>\n

It is also self-evidently certain<\/em> that there is consciousness of objects<\/em>. ‘Consciousness of objects’ is a genitivus objectivus<\/em>. So consciousness of objects = object-directed consciousness.\u00a0 If something is appearing to you, you are conscious of it.<\/p>\n

Is anything appearing to you right now?\u00a0 How about the computer in front of you, the desk upon which it sits, and so on.\u00a0 Plenty of objects are appearing. This is undeniable.\u00a0 The question is not whether appearing objects exist apart from their appearing. The question is whether any objects are appearing. You will miss the simple point I am making if you think that consciousness, to be real, must itself appear as a particular object among objects.\u00a0 It does not and cannot since it is what makes possible the appearing of objects in the first place.<\/p>\n

Do you understand the sentences you are now reading? You do. So\u00a0 the\u00a0 sentences and the words\u00a0 in them are\u00a0 appearing.\u00a0 \u00a0If there were no object-directed consciousness, you would not understand anything you are reading or hearing.\u00a0 Indeed, you would not be reading or hearing at all. Are the words appearing to a Cartesian res cogitans<\/em>, an immaterial thinking substance? I didn’t say anything about that. I am simply pointing out the obvious phenomenological fact that objects are appearing. The words you are reading are appearing to you as objects of visual consciousness.<\/p>\n

So the answer to (a) above in the second quotation is this:\u00a0 we know that understanding without consciousness is impossible because\u00a0 without consciousness nothing would appear that could be understood or not understood.\u00a0 ‘Consciousness’ here is of course\u00a0 consciousness-of.<\/p>\n

As for (b) — How do we know that semantic engines (automatic formal systems) won’t ever\u00a0 have consciousness?\u00a0 — the question makes no sense since it contradicts the very idea of a semantic engine.\u00a0 For Haugeland, a semantic engine is one in which the “semantics takes care of itself” once the proper syntactic operations are up and running. But there is no semantics in such a contraption and the semantics cannot “take care of itself” because you cannot get meaning from merely syntactic manipulations of uninterpreted symbols.\u00a0 \u00a0What makes a symbol a full-fledged symbol is its interpreation by an Original Intender (an Original Sinn<\/em>-er, to make Fregean un out f it).<\/p>\n

Computers running programs are wholly meaning -free in and of themselves. All meaning originates from us.<\/p>\n

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X = Original Intentionality: a semantic engine’s tokens only have meaning because we give meaning to them; their intentionality is derivative, and they don\u2019t mean anything by their tokens any more than books do. Genuine understanding is intentional in its own right and isn\u2019t derived from something else. Haugeland\u2019s response is that actions prove intentionality. Books don\u2019t act, so their intentionality is the author\u2019s, but this isn\u2019t a real counter-example. Robots might be made which act in an intelligent, self-motivated and responsive manner \u2013 and seem to act on its opinions, defend them or modify them, which would suggest that they were the robot\u2019s own opinions. So, the response is similar to the last one; original intentionality depends on whether the object has a suitable structure and \/ or dispositions relative to its environment, so how do we know semantic engines can\u2019t have it?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Haugeland’s response to the objection from original intentionality gives me no good reason to change my view.\u00a0 He allows that the derivative intentionality of a book comes from the original intentionality of its author but disallows books as counterexamples because they don’t act. That’s true of most books: they just ‘sit’ on the shelf and don’t do anything.\u00a0 But audio books speak to us, thereby acting.\u00a0 Will Haugeland say that audio books are self-motivated and act in an intelligent way?\u00a0 I hope not. As for robots, all Haugeland is able to show is that robots SIMULATE human actions and SIMULATE human thought processes. Beyond that, he is simply begging the question.<\/p>\n

I do grant, however, that it really would be wonderful if we could understand the mind-brain relation in us as just a special case of the relation of software to hardware \/wetware in a machine running a program. It it easy to understand how cognitive scientists got unduly exited over the prospects of this research program.<\/p>\n

The fundamental error of Dennett, Haugeland, et al. is the mistake of thinking that an exhaustive understanding of everything is achievable from a third-person point of view.\u00a0 And so Dennett attempts the absurd task of explaining consciousness by explaining it away — which issues in the self-refuting claim that consciousness is an illusion.\u00a0 I explain this in detail in my Substack article Can Consciousness be Explained? Dennett Debunked<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Haugeland: The basic idea of cognitive science is that intelligent beings are semantic engines – in other words, automatic formal systems with interpretations under which they consistently make sense. [This puts] \u00a0psychology and artificial intelligence on a more or less equal footing: people and intelligent computers [are] different manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon. … Continue reading “Semantic Engines, Consciousness, Intentionality, and Understanding”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,96,366,100,54,225],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-consciousness-and-qualia","category-dennett","category-intentionality","category-mind","category-nagel-thomas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14506"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14535,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14506\/revisions\/14535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}