A Kantian Stance on the Intentional Stance

I examine the way in which Daniel Dennett (1987, 1995) uses his 'intentional'and 'design' stances to make the claim that intentionality is derived fromdesign. I suggest that Dennett is best understood as attempting to supplyan objective, nonintentional, naturalistic rationale for our use of intentionalconcepts. However, I demonstrate that his overall picture presupposesprior application of the intentional stance in a preconditional, ineliminable,'sense-giving' role. Construed as such, Dennett's account is almostidentical to the account of biological teleology offered by Kant in TheCritique of Judgement, with the consequence that Dennett's naturalism isuntenable. My conclusions lead to doubts concerning the legitimacy of anyaccount attempting to naturalise intentionality by extracting normativityfrom biology and also point to a novel account of biological function.