Philosophy in Review XXXV (December 2015), no.

Carl B. Sachs. Intentionality and the Myths of the Given: Between Pragmatism and
Phenomenology. Pickering & Chatto 2014. 208 pp. $150.00 USD (Hardcover ISBN
9781848935075).

This book offers a new account of intentionality, one that offers a different perspective and new
solutions to an old set of problems. At the center of Sachs’s book is his theory of bifurcated inten-
tionality. In his attempt to do full justice to both our rationality and our animality, Sachs draws on
contemporary analytic neo-pragmatism as well as the phenomenological tradition.
Sachs is inspired by John Haugeland’s suggestion that neo-behaviorism might be compatible
with neo-pragmatism on intentionality, if it could be divided into primitive and higher types, the
former in accord with what we share with non-linguistic animals, the latter unique to language ani-
mals such as ourselves. Sachs departs from Haugeland’s proposal by dropping neo-behaviorism as
the best option for developing the primitive form of intentionality for one along lines traced by
Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of embodiment, a form of intentionality Sachs calls somatic inten-
tionality to differentiate it from the socio-linguistic version. This second, higher level of intentional-
ity Sachs calls discursive intentionality and his account adheres closely to Robert Brandom’s neo-
pragmatist account of original intentionality. Taking a transcendental approach rooted in cognitive
semantics, Sachs’s bifurcated intentionality is compatible with a liberal naturalism committed to
‘empirically-specifiable role-players’ for ‘transcendentally-specifiable roles’.
Sachs accepts much of Brandom’s account of the capacity of beings with minds like ours for
engaging in the game of ‘giving and asking for reasons’ to account for discursive intentionality. He
turns to Merleau-Ponty in his account of the somatic branch, which accounts for the capacities unique
to organisms with bodies like ours. Sachs argues that somatic and discursive intentionality ‘are indi-
vidually necessary and jointly sufficient for all reasoning with empirical content, and thus are essen-
tially bound up with perception and action’ (2). He aims to show that both discursive and somatic
intentionality must be considered equally original in their respective spheres.
The plural ‘Myths’ in the title refers to a distinction Sachs argues is implicit in Sellars’s cri-
tique of Lewis between an epistemological and a semantic version of the Myth of the Given. Faithful
to Sellarsian orthodoxy, Sachs assiduously avoids both Myths. Not all that is given, however, is mythical,
and Sachs finds an acceptable, non-mythical version of the Given in Merleau-Ponty, the perceptuo-
practical Given that constrains cognitive capacities without playing any foundational role. That is,
the perceptuo-practical Given allows for nonconceptual content that avoids the Myth of the Given.
This constraint offered by the perceptuo-practical Given is Sachs’s answer to what he calls
the demand for transcendental friction, the requirement that ‘it must be possible, by reflecting on our
most basic conceptual and perceptual capacities and incapacities, to guarantee that we are in cogni-
tive contact with a world we discover and do not create’ (13). That we need to meet this demand,
and that Brandom and McDowell have each failed to do so, is one of the main problems Sachs tackles
in the book, since it is the primary rationale for developing a new account of intentionality. According
to Sachs the problem with Brandom and McDowell is that they think only the conceptual is inten-
tional. Despite differences, this is their shared premise. But where this leads McDowell to develop a
conceptualist account to save experience, it leads Brandom to excise experience altogether. Sachs’s
most original contribution is to isolate and attack their common presupposition by developing the
notion of nonconceptual somatic intentionality whereby the habitual interaction between the organ

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ism and the environment may be understood to be a kind of intentionality to complement Brandom’s
account of our socio-linguistic capacities, one that offers more by way of ‘friction’ than mere causa-
tion.
Sachs develops his theory throughout the first five chapters before turning to contemporary
problems in chapter six. The first chapter offers a brief sketch of bifurcated intentionality, a summary
of Sachs’s motivations and influences, and an explanation of his methodological standpoint, including
his commitment to naturalism. Chapters two and three delve into the relevant history, focusing on
the Sellars-Lewis debate. Here Sachs argues convincingly that Sellars has the Myth of the semantic
Given in mind in his critique of Lewis, thus establishing the historical pedigree for the semantic
version of the Myth of the Given.
Chapter four is important mainly because of the burden it bears in Sachs’s overall argument. It
also continues the stage-setting by examining Brandom’s and McDowell’s arguments against non-
conceptual content, and argues that they both fail to meet the demand for transcendental friction.
Sachs agrees with Brandom that the very idea of experience requires nonconceptual content, but disagrees
with both Brandom and McDowell on the question whether nonconceptual content necessarily
commits one to a mythical Given. This proposal is at the heart of Sachs’s understanding of bifurcated
intentionality. Although earlier chapters are light on criticism of Brandom, here we get a clear and
often compelling critique of Brandom’s blithe rejection of experience—indeed, it is one of the highlights
of the book. It is here that the case is most persuasively made for the viability of a different kind of
intentionality.
Previous chapters are light on phenomenology. Chapter five makes good on earlier promissory
notes by focusing on Merleau-Ponty’s account of lived embodiment. Drawing lines of comparison
with Sellars, including their shared rejection of the sensory-cognitive continuum, Sachs rounds out
his original take on somatic intentionality. In this chapter Sachs also draws out the perceptuo-
practical Given from Merleau-Ponty’s work, and presents a persuasive argument that it satisfies the
demand for transcendental friction without falling foul of any mythical nonsense such as besets the
epistemic and semantic versions. We are not only creatures of rules, conceptual norms of doxastic
scorekeeping, but also creatures of bodily habits, and this is the basis for Sachs’s argument for the
idea of habitual normativity, a kind of normativity ‘that our habitual ways of engaging with objects
are subject to implicit norms of correctness, insofar as our engagement with objects comes with
varying degrees of success and failure, and that this engagement is bodily and habitual in that it is
not instituted by the social practices of deontic scorekeepers’ (102). He also makes the case that the
perceptuo-practical given is not mythical on the grounds that ‘it lacks the right kind of logical or
epistemic structure and normative force to play the kind of semantic or epistemic role’ to be mythical.
Likewise, the perceptuo-practical Given ‘lacks the authority that deontic scorekeepers exercise with
regard to each other’ and so, presumably doesn’t compete with the conceptual. ‘The difference’,
Sachs explains, ‘is that habitual normativity is located at the organism-environment relation-
ship…whereas deontic normativity is located at the level of the social practices between organisms.
The kinds of normativity at work constrain perception, thought, and action in different dimensions,
and are orthogonal to one another, although in normal human life they interpenetrate so smoothly as
to be, strictly speaking, inseparable’ (126). Sachs also distinguishes a non-apperceptive conscious-
ness that ‘makes rational animals like us a kind of animal’ (130).
The sixth and final chapter completes Sachs’s picture of intentionality by applying it to several
contemporary problems, where, he argues, it fares well compared to existing options. The most
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intriguing, and increasingly timely, issue taken up in this chapter is the Dreyfus-McDowell debate.
Sachs also considers Alex Rosenberg’s eliminative challenge to the very idea of intentionality. This
also allows Sachs the opportunity to sketch his understanding of how intentionality might be natu-
ralized if we drop the standard picture of naturalism for reductive, scientific naturalism. It is here,
perhaps, that the influence of John Dewey, which Sachs acknowledges in the introduction, makes
itself felt strongest.
There is little to complain about, overall. The argument is clear, and consistently argued
throughout. Although it is refreshing to see such a robust engagement between analytic and conti-
nental ‘camps’ in philosophy, one that doubts ‘there are any substantive philosophical views found
in one camp that are not found in the other’, the book is, on the whole, light on the phenomenology.
One remedy for this might have been to include the material from the substantive appendix which
deals more widely with the phenomenological tradition in an examination whether phenomenology
necessarily commits the Myth of the Given. This is also more than tangentially relevant to the main
argument of the book, and deserves its own chapter.
The book will be of interest to a wide audience. Anyone whose research involves the intersection
of analytic neo-pragmatism and phenomenology will need to read the book, but it will also be
interesting to those engaged with Merleau-Ponty, who may want to see what the more analytic-
minded of their colleagues find promising in the work of the phenomenologist. Finally, graduate
students approaching the questions and problems that are the focus of the book, or who are interested
in the history of the Myth(s) of the Given,will find the book has clear and helpful explanations of the
relevant philosophical background.
Perhaps the most outstanding aspect of the book is the theory of bifurcated intentionality. It
promises to make experience one of our words again, and to make the primacy of practice extend
again beyond the penumbra of socio-linguistic games, as important as the giving and asking for rea-
sons are for sapient animals like us. Sachs does not solve all the problems raised by intentionality,
but in the spirit of classical pragmatism, he is keeping the conversation going.

Phillip W. Schoenberg, University of New Mexico

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