Analysis Of Daniel Dennett's Intentional Instrumentalism

Intentionality is the essential issue focused by contemporary philosophy, psychology and sociology. And intentional instrumentalism is one of the representative theory which is formed during the course of exploring human mind by contemporary philosophy of mind (the other is intentional realism). This paper is based on the background and tendency of development of philosophical ration. It analyzes the main development and characters of modern philosophy of mind. It also illustrates Daniel Dennett's theoretic idea, who is the core theorist of intentional instrumentalism, and its status in philosophy of mind. From the perspective of Daniel Dennett's idea of intentional strategy making the choice to the stance of instrumentalism, this paper mainly discusses its main content and natural character, that is, the division of three stances is the theoretic presupposition of intentional strategy; Rational agent is the important foundation of constructing intentional strategy; and the presume of intentional system rationality is the key issue of ensuring the reliability of intentional strategy. In addition, this paper also analyzes Daniel Dennett's intentional instrumentalism and the theoretic significance of intentional strategy. It points out that this theory not only revises machine functionalism, which is represented by H.Putarn, but also is the basic idea for the further development of functionalism. It offers, from philosophy aspect, the necessary theoretic idea for the form and development of cognition. And it also puts forward instrumentalist defend for commonsense psychology, which has more influence. Against to the questioning and critiques by intentional realism and eliminativism, this paper deeper discusses theoretic problems in Daniel Dennett's intentional strategy. It shows that the presume of intentional system rationality is the most challenge of this theory at present.