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Cited by 398

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 158 of the 158 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Précis of The Intentional Stance

Dennett, Daniel C.·1988·Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Abstract

The intentional stance is the strategy of prediction and explanation that attributes beliefs, desires, and other “intentional” states to systems – living and nonliving – and predicts future behavior from what it would be rational for an agent to do, given those beliefs and desires. Any system whose performance can be thus predicted and explained is an intentional system, whatever its innards. The strategy of treating parts of the world as intentional systems is the foundation of “folk psychology,” but is also exploited (and is virtually unavoidable) in artificial intelligence and cognitive science more generally, as well as in evolutionary theory. An analysis of the role of the intentional stance and its presuppositions supports a naturalistic theory of mental states and events, their content or intentionality, and the relation between “mentalistic” levels of explanation and neurophysiological or mechanistic levels of explanation. As such, the analysis of the intentional stance grounds a theory of the mind and its relation to the body.

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Metadata

Authors
Dennett, D. C.
Venue
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Published
1988-09
Volume
11
Issue
3
Pages
495-505
ISSN
  • 0140-525X (ISSN-L)
  • 1469-1825
OpenAlex
W2144442672
Cited by
398
References
158
FWCI
5.86
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Précis of The Intentional Stance. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1017/s0140525x00058611
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Dennett, D. C. (1988). Précis of The Intentional Stance. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x00058611

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