[2] First, philosophers of mind distinguish between mind-to-world (i.e., mind-to-fit-world) and world-to-mind (i.e., world-to-fit-mind) directions of fit.
[3] Similarly, philosophers of language, in particular advocates of speech act theory such as John Searle, distinguish between word-to-world and world-to-word directions of fit.
Beliefs and descriptive statements are considered satisfactory when the states of affairs they represent match the world; i.e. when they are true.
Desires and orders are considered satisfactory when world matches the state of affairs they represent; i.e. when they are fulfilled.
A desire, on the other hand, normally expresses a yet to be realized state of affairs and so has a world-to-mind direction of fit.
a word-to-world fit occurs when, say, a sports journalist correctly names Jones as a goal scorer; while if the journalist mistakenly names Smith as the goal scorer, the printed account does not display a word-to-world fit, and must be altered such that it matches the real world.
Conversely, a world-to-word fit occurs when a fan of Smith's team opines that they deserved to win the match, even though they lost.
According to Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica, Part I, Question 21, Article 2), there are two kinds of "truth" (veritas), both understood as correspondence between mind (intellectus) or words (oratio) and world ("things", res): Truth consists in the equation of [thing and mind] (adaequatio rei et intellectus), as said above.
Austin did not use the distinction between different directions of fit to contrast commands or expressions of intention to assertions, or desires to beliefs.
[12] Although Elizabeth Anscombe never employed the term "the direction of fit", Searle has strongly argued[13] that the following passage from her work Intention was, by far, "the best illustration" of the distinction between the tasks of "[getting] the words (more strictly their propositional content) to match the world... [and that of getting] the world to match the words": §32.
[14]According to Velleman, when used in the domain of the philosophy of mind, the concept direction of fit represents the distinguishing feature between two types of intentional mental states: In some forms of mind-body dualism, a matching factum and faciendum must be present in a person's mind in order for him to act intentionally.
[19][20] The predictive coding framework of neural representations developed by neuroscientist Karl Friston and philosopher Andy Clark has similarly been observed to be an attempt to construe representations with dual direction of fit, uniting predictions (mind-to-world) and actions (world-to-mind).