ABSTRACT
In broadest terms, the theme of intentionality embraces a multitude of topics. Included are issues of action and cognition, systems of belief, and attributions of beliefs to others —all subjects that are difficult to investigate in organisms with which we have no common natural language (Dennett, 1981; Premack, 1986; Premack & Premack, 1983; Premack & Woodruff, 1978). Nevertheless, if intentions are revealed by a manifest concern with the effect of one’s actions on others, communicative behavior is the natural subject for investigations of intentionality-the combined operation of
beliefs and desires. It is a subject with an extensive literature (e.g., Bennett, 1976; Dennett, 1983; Searle, 1983), but the reflections of linguists and philosophers on intentionality are so often bound up with the exigencies of human language that it is impossible to assess their relevance to the communication of animals (Churchland, 1983). Rather than attempting to paraphrase animal behavior in the propositional terms of human language, zoologists may be well advised to develop their own methodology even though this may call for drastic simplifications, at least in the initial stages.
