Abstract
If conceptual analysis is possible for finite thinkers, then there must ultimately be a distinction between complex and primitive or irreducible and unanalyzable concepts, by which complex concepts are analyzed as relations among primitive concepts. This investigation considers the advantages of categorizing intentionality as a primitive rather than analyzable concept, in both a historical Brentanian context and in terms of contemporary philosophy of mind. Arguments in support of intentionality as a primitive relation are evaluated relative to objections, especially a recent criticism by Jerry A. Fodor. Against this background, the relation between qualia and intentionality in the understanding of consciousness is explored.
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Notes
George Berkeley (1998), A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Knowledge, especially Part I, §1–24, p. 103–111, in which Berkeley explains his object of inquiry and the methodology he proposes to follow. Philonous in Berkeley’s Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous is equally fond of criticizing the possibility of existence ‘without the mind’, by which we learn he does not merely mean finite human minds, but specifically includes God’s divine ‘infinite’ mind, and which he offers to prove by at least two arguments from his rigorous and uncompromisingly idealist empiricism.
Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, (1874, p. 115): “Every psychic phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called intentional (also indeed mental) in-existence of an object, and which we, although not with an entirely unambiguous expression, will call the relation to a content, the direction toward an object (by which here a reality is not understood), or an immanent objectivity. Every [psychic phenomenon] contains something as an object within itself, though not every one in the same way. In presentation something is presented, in judgment something acknowledged or rejected, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired, and so on” (my translation).
See the original title page of Hume’s Treatise (reference immediately below): A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects.
David Hume (1978, p. 67).
Ibid., p. 187.
Ibid., p. 63.
Ibid., p. 64.
Franz Brentano (1995, especially p. 3, p. 5, p. 10, pp. 15–17, pp. 32–36, pp. 135–139, and Appendix 5).
See my more detailed discussion of the history of Brentano and some of his school in Dale Jacquette (1991).
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (1966, vol. 1, p. 30): “And yet the existence of this whole world remains for ever dependent on that first eye that opened, were it even that of an insect. For such an eye necessarily brings about knowledge for which and in which alone the whole world is, and without which it is not even conceivable.”
Jerry A. Fodor (1987, p. 97).
A more detailed discussion of Fodor’s argument about the nonfundamentality of intentionality appears in Jacquette (2009, pp. 143–145).
I contrast extensional with intensional logical and semantic formalisms in Jacquette on “Intensional versus Extensional Logic and Semantics” (2010a, Chap. 5, pp. 97-140).
See Jacquette (2010b, pp. 53–86).
Herbert Feigl (1967, p. 150).
Ibid.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1989, §33).
Richard Rorty (1979, p. 22).
Jacquette (1985).
Kazimier Twardowski (1977, pp. 29–31).
I follow Hector-Neri Castañeda’s asterisk *…* convention for indicating the content of Husserlian noemata. See Castañeda (1975, p. 19).
See Jacquette (2006a).
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Jacquette, D. Intentionality as a Conceptually Primitive Relation. Acta Anal 26, 15–35 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-010-0117-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-010-0117-6