ABSTRACT
The philosopher’s basis of skepticism has to do with the nature of rationality, intentionality, and linguistic behavior. This chapter suggests that any device capable of meeting Gricean conditions of non-natural meaning or Jonathan Bennett's conditions of genuine language use and rationality must have the ability to perform 'basic interagency attributions'. The task of determining the likelihood of there ever being a device that meets Grice-Bennett behavioral presuppositions by performing basic interagency attributions is accomplished by an assessment of the feasibility of constructing a basic interagency attribution program. The chapter looks at the relationship between the concept of intentionality and intentional system meant in the most general sense and the specific intentionality of interagency attribution. The inclusion of a plan enables rival accounts to be assessed, since some of the plan attributions will continue to make sense and some won’t as the behavior of the system being studied is monitored.
