Socially Constructed Intentionality

13.  Consider this:  intentionality not as a physiological, but a socially constructed state-of-affairs -- an intentionality game proper, chess.  In the case of chess, it begins within one-state-of-affairs -- a strictly given state-of-affairs in the starting arrangement of the chess pieces on the board -- and ends in checkmate  -- a state-of-affairs defined within certain conditions or criteria.   The desired state-of-affairs governs the utility of the instrumental acts, the moves one makes.  Moreover, the moves are bound, piece by piece, insofar as diagonal moves are permissible for the bishop, lateral moves for the rook.  Additional considerations:  it is possible, for example, to imagine two people at what appears to be chess.  Psychologically, one is making moves aimed at achieving checkmate, while the other is making random moves, going through the motions.  The other might be doing something, but it is something other than chess -- that is to say, the intentionality governing chess is given, and must be accepted as a given, if one is going to engage in chess.  Moreover, if the random moves are in fact random (or impermissible) for the various pieces, the one might stop play and ask the other, "are you cheating?"  Or more generally, "what are you doing?" The differentiation between the questions resides in the assumptions of the one.  The first, "are you cheating?" assumes the other is motivated by the desired state-of-affairs checkmate and is moving the piece to achieve a utility, but an impermissible utility under the definitional constraints on the pieces and ethical constraints of fair play.  The second, "what are you doing?" assumes the other is no longer engaged in the intentionality game of chess, that the moves are perhaps motivated, but motivated by something other than the desired state-of-affairs checkmate.  The moves, that is, no longer signify the governing intentionality and lapse into incomprehensibility.  I am suggesting, of course, that the intentionality game of "hunger" and the intentionality game of "chess" might be different in origin, but not in kind.  The socially constructed constraints on the pieces (rules proper) are directly analogous to the physiologically and ethically constructed constraints on ingestion, and are perhaps different in origin, but not in kind.  (Imagine watching someone swallowing nuts, not of the tree borne variety, but of the metallic variety, the sort one might find in a workshop.  Their behavior might look like "eating," we might even describe it as "eating," even "eating nuts," but we would assume that the behavior points to either ineffectual "eating," an instrumental act of highly questionable instrumentality, or an incomprehensible "eating," an act perhaps instrumental to an intentionality, but an act that fails to signify its intentionality, an act aimed at something other than the desired state-of-affairs of a satiated hunger.  Language helps to blur the picture here.)