--- title: What did Daniel Dennett mean by the intentional stance? description: The intentional stance, as the American philosopher Daniel Dennett (1942 to 2024) described it, is the strategy of predicting what something will do by treating it as if it were a rational agent with beliefs and desires, whether it is… url: "https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/wiki/what-did-daniel-dennett-mean-by-the-intentional-stance/" updated: "2026-11-10" category: People tags: - animism - beliefs and desires - centre of narrative gravity - "collective-awareness" - consciousness - Daniel Dennett - design stance - everything is conscious - folk psychology - Gilbert Ryle - intentional stance - Jerry Fodor - Kinds of Minds - overattribution - physical stance - Real Patterns - The Intentional Stance - timescale chauvinism --- # What did Daniel Dennett mean by the intentional stance? The intentional stance, as the American philosopher Daniel Dennett (1942 to 2024) described it, is the strategy of predicting what something will do by treating it as if it were a rational agent with beliefs and desires, whether it is a person, an animal, a plant or a chess-playing computer. Dennett held that the beliefs we attribute this way are real in the way a centre of gravity is real, as patterns in behaviour, not as hidden objects in a head. Therapeutic Shamanism shares his point that people fail to see minds that work at a different speed or scale from their own, but it holds that consciousness is present in everything whether or not anyone takes a stance towards it. ## Who was Daniel Dennett? One of the best-known philosophers of mind of his time, and a leading defender of a fully naturalistic account of the mind. He was born in Boston in 1942, studied at Harvard and then at Oxford under Gilbert Ryle, and spent most of his career at Tufts University, where he directed its centre for cognitive studies. He died in Portland, Maine, in April 2024.^[1](#note-1) His books include *The Intentional Stance* (1987), *Consciousness Explained* (1991), *Darwin's Dangerous Idea* (1995), *Kinds of Minds* (1996), *Breaking the Spell* (2006) and a memoir, *I've Been Thinking* (2023). He was also known as one of the leading voices of the 'New Atheism', alongside Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens.^[2](#note-2) 1. "Daniel C. Dennett, philosopher and evolution enthusiast, dies at 82", NCSE (2024); "Daniel Dennett", *Wikipedia*. 2. "Daniel Dennett", *Wikipedia*. ## What is the intentional stance? A way of predicting and explaining what something does by treating it "as if it were a rational agent" who chooses its actions in the light of its beliefs and desires.^[3](#note-3) It is the stance people take towards one another all the time. She is reaching for the umbrella because she believes it will rain and does not want to get wet. Dennett set it beside two other stances. The physical stance predicts from physics alone, the way a stone let go of will fall; nobody needs to give the stone beliefs, only weight. The design stance predicts from what a thing was made to do; an alarm clock will ring at seven because that is how it was designed to work, and nobody needs to know its wiring. The intentional stance goes one step further and is riskier, but much quicker. His favourite example is a chess-playing computer. Whatever its programming, the best way to predict its next move is to think of it as a player that wants to win and knows the rules, and then work out the best move.^[4](#note-4) Dennett saw the stance as the key to understanding all kinds of minds, because it uses the likenesses between us and other beings to find out how they differ. He also said that it must be used with caution, walking "a tightrope between vacuous metaphor on the one hand and literal falsehood on the other".^[5](#note-5) 1. Daniel C. Dennett, *Kinds of Minds: Toward an Understanding of Consciousness* (BasicBooks, 1996), p. 27. 2. Daniel C. Dennett, *Kinds of Minds* (BasicBooks, 1996), pp. 28 to 31. 3. Daniel C. Dennett, *Kinds of Minds* (BasicBooks, 1996), p. 27. ## Is the intentional stance just pretending? Dennett said not, and this is where the arguments started. Some readers took him to mean that beliefs and desires are useful fictions, a convenient way of talking with nothing real behind it. His reply, in the paper "Real Patterns" (1991), was that beliefs are real in the way a centre of gravity is real. Nobody will find a centre of gravity by cutting an object open, yet it is no fiction; it picks out a real pattern in how the object behaves. In the same way, the patterns the intentional stance picks out in behaviour are really there, which he called a "mild realism" about beliefs.^[6](#note-6) Critics pushed from both sides. The philosopher Jerry Fodor held what Dennett called an "industrial-strength Realism", in which a belief is only real if it is a structure in the brain, so Dennett's patterns are not enough. From the other side, the 'eliminative materialism' of the philosopher P. M. Churchland expects brain science to replace talk of beliefs altogether. Dennett answered that both views ask for more than is needed, and that the everyday practice of attributing beliefs works far too well to be thrown away.^[7](#note-7) 1. Daniel C. Dennett, "Real Patterns", *The Journal of Philosophy* 88, no. 1 (1991). 2. Daniel C. Dennett, "Real Patterns", *The Journal of Philosophy* 88, no. 1 (1991). ## What did he say about plants and slow minds? That our sense of what has a mind follows our own pace. Watching flowers grow, bud and bloom in a few seconds of time-lapse film, people are "drawn almost irresistibly into the intentional stance"; the plant seems to strive, race its neighbour for the light and duck and weave like a boxer. Speed things up or slow them down and the same patterns can seem to show a mind or hide one. Dennett called the habit of judging minds by our own tempo 'timescale chauvinism', and noted a matching bias of size, since if gnats were the size of seagulls, more people would be sure they had minds.^[8](#note-8) He also held that the two possible errors are not equal. Treating something as having a mind when it does not is a silly mistake; treating something as mindless when it has a mind could be a grave wrong. So, though science should be cautious, "the ethical course is to err on the side of overattribution".^[9](#note-9) See [Do animals think and feel?](/wiki/do-animals-think-and-feel/) and [Does it matter whether an animal is sentient?](/wiki/does-it-matter-whether-an-animal-is-sentient/) 1. Daniel C. Dennett, *Kinds of Minds* (BasicBooks, 1996), pp. 61 to 62. 2. Daniel C. Dennett, *Kinds of Minds* (BasicBooks, 1996), p. 6. ## How does Dennett's work connect with Therapeutic Shamanism? Most closely in his timescale chauvinism. In Therapeutic Shamanism there are many different kinds of consciousness, and most Western people struggle to recognise consciousness in things that are very different from them; they can see it in the eyes of a chimpanzee or a dog, because that consciousness is like our own, and they lose sight of it in a snake, an earthworm, a tree or a rock.^[10](#note-10) Humans sit at one end of a continuum, the most self-aware species and so the least collectively aware, so cut off that collective-awareness is barely recognised as consciousness at all.^[11](#note-11) And consciousness operates at different speeds, so that what does not seem conscious at our speed may become apparent if we slow down enough.^[12](#note-12) Dennett reached a version of this point by argument, from the side of science; in Therapeutic Shamanism it is something people discover by slowing down and paying attention. See [What does it mean to say the world is alive and full of persons?](/wiki/what-does-it-mean-to-say-the-world-is-alive-and-full-of-persons/) and [What does science say about plant intelligence?](/wiki/what-does-science-say-about-plant-intelligence/) There is a second meeting point in his account of the self. Dennett described the self as a 'centre of narrative gravity', a fiction in the same sense that a centre of gravity is one, an abstraction that picks out something real in how a person lives and tells their life.^[13](#note-13) In Therapeutic Shamanism the middle-world self**Middle-world self.** The everyday self (ego, persona, head-and-heart), made of our stories and experiences. A genuine and needed part of the Inner Tribe: of service, not in command. [Read the full answer](/wiki/what-are-soul-spirit-the-middle-world-self-and-the-body/) is also a construct, a complex thought-form**Thought-form.** A human-created living being: an ideology, religion, corporation, conspiracy theory or platform that has taken on a life of its own. Genuinely alive, but soul-less in the deep sense: natural things alone are full of Soul. [More about this](/wiki/what-is-a-thought-form/) woven from the stories we tell ourselves, the roles we play and the beliefs we take on.^[14](#note-14) Being a construct does not make it unreal; it is real at its own level, and it is only one of the parts of the self**Parts of the self.** There are four parts of the self, the realm-corresponding members of the Inner Tribe: the Body and the middle-world self (both of the middle-world), the Soul (of the Lower-World) and the Spirit (of the Upper-World). The Aware Self, also called the Witness, is not a fifth part but a capacity: the awareness that can watch all four, with compassion and equanimity. [Read the full answer](/wiki/what-are-the-different-parts-of-the-self-in-therapeutic-shamanism/).^[15](#note-15) See [Who is Thomas Metzinger?](/wiki/who-is-thomas-metzinger/) 1. Paul Francis, [*The Shamanic Journey*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/the-shamanic-journey/), Chapter Two, "What Is 'Spirit'?". 2. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Two, "A Different Kind of Consciousness". 3. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Two, "Exercise 8: Everything Is Conscious and Sacred". 4. "Daniel Dennett", *Wikipedia*. 5. Paul Francis, [*Rewilding Yourself*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/rewilding-yourself/), Chapter Seven, "What Happens When We Die?". 6. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Four, "The Ego (Middle-World Soul)". ## Where does Therapeutic Shamanism see things differently? On whether minds are found or only attributed. For Dennett the intentional stance is something an observer takes, a strategy chosen because it predicts well, and the question of which things truly have minds is answered from science. He was plain that the line falls well above the simplest things, writing that "no carbon atom or water molecule has a mind".^[16](#note-16) He was speaking of minds; Therapeutic Shamanism speaks of consciousness, and holds that it runs all the way through. Everything is made of Spirit, Spirit is conscious, and so everything is conscious, stones, rivers and human-made objects included; things very different from us are still conscious, just in a way that is different from us.^[17](#note-17) So the aliveness of a tree or a river is not a stance someone takes towards it, useful or not. It is there, and the work is to recognise it and come into relationship with it. The other difference is one of method. Dennett judged minds from the outside, by how well a way of talking predicts behaviour. Therapeutic Shamanism starts from direct experience, in journeys and in everyday life, and invites people to allow the possibility that something is conscious and notice what happens. See [What is animism?](/wiki/what-is-animism/) and [What did Hans Vaihinger mean by the philosophy of "as if"?](/wiki/what-did-hans-vaihinger-mean-by-the-philosophy-of-as-if/) 1. Daniel C. Dennett, *Kinds of Minds* (BasicBooks, 1996), p. 19. 2. Paul Francis, [*The Shamanic Journey*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/the-shamanic-journey/), Chapter Two, "What Is 'Spirit'?". - [Do animals think and feel?](/wiki/do-animals-think-and-feel/) - [What does it mean to say the world is alive and full of persons?](/wiki/what-does-it-mean-to-say-the-world-is-alive-and-full-of-persons/) - [What did Gilbert Ryle mean by a category mistake?](/wiki/what-did-gilbert-ryle-mean-by-a-category-mistake/) - [Who is Thomas Metzinger?](/wiki/who-is-thomas-metzinger/) - [What is the extended mind?](/wiki/what-is-the-extended-mind/) - [Is the living world intelligent?](/wiki/is-the-living-world-intelligent/) - [*The Shamanic Journey*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/the-shamanic-journey/) (Chapter Two, everything made of Spirit and conscious) - [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/) (Chapter Two, a different kind of consciousness) - [all courses](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/shamanic-courses/)