Skip to main content
Log in

Intentionality as a Conceptually Primitive Relation

  • Published:
Acta Analytica Aims and scope Submit manuscript

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.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. 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.

  2. 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).

  3. See Jacquette (2001 and 2002).

  4. 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.

  5. David Hume (1978, p. 67).

  6. Ibid., p. 187.

  7. Ibid., p. 63.

  8. Ibid., p. 64.

  9. Franz Brentano (1995, especially p. 3, p. 5, p. 10, pp. 15–17, pp. 32–36, pp. 135–139, and Appendix 5).

  10. See my more detailed discussion of the history of Brentano and some of his school in Dale Jacquette (1991).

  11. 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.”

  12. Jerry A. Fodor (1987, p. 97).

  13. A more detailed discussion of Fodor’s argument about the nonfundamentality of intentionality appears in Jacquette (2009, pp. 143–145).

  14. I contrast extensional with intensional logical and semantic formalisms in Jacquette on “Intensional versus Extensional Logic and Semantics” (2010a, Chap. 5, pp. 97-140).

  15. See Jacquette (2010b, pp. 53–86).

  16. Herbert Feigl (1967, p. 150).

  17. Ibid.

  18. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1989, §33).

  19. Richard Rorty (1979, p. 22).

  20. Jacquette (1985).

  21. Kazimier Twardowski (1977, pp. 29–31).

  22. See Jacquette (1987 and 2006a).

  23. G.E.M. Anscombe (1965). A very different approach is adopted by Emmanuel Levinas (1998) in his essay, ‘Intentionality and Sensation’.

  24. David J. Chalmers (1996, 82–83). See Jacquette (2006b).

  25. Hilary Putnam (1975, especially pp. 223–227) and Putnam (1981, especially pp,18–25). See also the papers collected in Andrew Pessin and Sanford Goldberg (1996) and Christopher Norris (2002).

  26. I follow Hector-Neri Castañeda’s asterisk *…* convention for indicating the content of Husserlian noemata. See Castañeda (1975, p. 19).

  27. See Jacquette (2006a).

References

  • Anscombe, G. E. M. (1965). The Intentionality of Sensation: A Grammatical Feature. In R. J. Butler (Ed.), Analytic Philosophy: Second Series (pp. 158–180). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berkeley, G. (1998). A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brentano, F. (1874). Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt. Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brentano, F. (1995). Descriptive Psychology, translated and edited by B. Müller. London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Castañeda, H. N. (1975). Thinking and Doing: The Philosophical Foundations of Institutions. Dordrecht-Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chalmers, D. J. (1996). The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Feigl, H. (1967). The ‘Mental’ and the ‘Physical’: The Essay and a Postscript. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fodor, J. A. (1987). Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT/Bradford Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hume, D. (1978). In Selby-Bigge (Ed.), A treatise of human nature (pp. 1739–1740). Oxford: The Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jacquette, D. (1985). Sensation and Intentionality. Philosophical Studies, 47, 429–440.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jacquette, D. (1987). Twardowski on Content and Object. Conceptus: Zeitschrift für Philosophie, Österreichische Philosophen und ihr Einfluss auf die Analytische Philosophie der Gegenwart, 21(2), 193–199.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jacquette, D. (1991). The Origins of Gegenstandstheorie: Immanent and Transcendent Intentional Objects in Brentano, Twardowski, and Meinong. Brentano Studien, 3(1990–1991), 277–302.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jacquette, D. (2002). Brentano’s Scientific Revolution in Philosophy. Origins: The Common Sources of Analytic and Phenomenological Traditions. Southern Journal of Philosophy, Spindel Conference Supplement, 40, 193–221.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jacquette, D. (2001). Fin de Siècle Austrian Thought and the Rise of Scientific Philosophy. History of European Ideas, 27, 307–315.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jacquette, D. (2006a). Twardowski, Brentano’s Dilemma, and the Content–Object Distinction. In A. Chrudzimski & D. Lukasiewicz (Eds.), Actions, Products, and Things: Brentano and Polish Philosophy (pp. 9–33). Frankfurt: Ontos.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jacquette, D. (2006b). Supervenience of Qualia and Intentionality. Philo: A Journal of Philosophy, 9, 145–164.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jacquette, D. (2009). Philosophy of Mind: The Metaphysics of Consciousness. London: Continuum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jacquette, D. (2010a). Logic and How it Gets That Way. Durham: Acumen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jacquette, D. (2010b). Metaphysics of Meinongian Value Theory. Meinong Studies, 4, 53–86.

    Google Scholar 

  • Levinas, E. (1998). Intentionality and Sensation. In Discovering Existence with Husserl (pp. 135–150). Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

  • Norris, C. (2002). Hilary Putnam: Realism, Reason and the Uses of Uncertainty. Manchester: University of Manchester.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pessin, A., & Goldberg, S. (1996). The Twin Earth Chronicles: Twenty Years of Reflection on Hilary Putnam’s ‘The Meaning of Meaning’. Armonk: M. E. Sharpe.

    Google Scholar 

  • Putnam, H. (1975). The Meaning of Meaning. In Language and Reality, Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2 (pp. 215–271). Cambridge: Cambridge University.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Putnam, H. (1981). Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Rorty, R. (1979). Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schopenhauer, A. (1966). The World as Will and Representation [Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 1859], 2 vols., translated by E.F.J. Payne. New York: Dover Publications.

  • Twardowski, K. (1977). Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen [1894]. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wittgenstein L. (1989). Philosophical Investigations. 3rd edition, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dale Jacquette.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Jacquette, D. Intentionality as a Conceptually Primitive Relation. Acta Anal 26, 15–35 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-010-0117-6

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-010-0117-6

Keywords

Navigation