Abstract
This paper addresses the title question and provides an argument for the conclusion that so-called phenomenal intentionality, in both its relational and non-relational construals, cannot be identified with intentionality meant as the property for a mental state to be about something. A main premise of the argument presented in support of that conclusion is that a necessary requirement for a property to be identified with intentionality is that it satisfy the features taken to be definitory of it, namely: the possible non-existence of the intentional object (the fact that an intentional state may be directed towards something that does not exist) and aspectuality (the fact that what is intended is always intended in some way, under some specific aspect, from a particular perspective). By taking this premise on board, I attempt to show that phenomenal intentionality cannot be identified with intentionality because, appearances notwithstanding, it ultimately satisfies neither of the two above mentioned features.
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Notes
The conclusion of my argument is of course compatible with the idea that so-called phenomenal intentionality is relevant for intentionality. I, for one, am strongly sympathetic to this idea.
For an overview of PIT see Bourget, Mendelovici (2019).
Following a usage that has become standard in the philosophy of mind (see, e.g., Crane (2001)), I shall use ‘mental state’ to refer both to occurrent and non-occurrent mental phenomena. Consequently, I shall draw no terminological distinction in the following between mental states, acts, events, and episodes.
The characterization of phenomenal character in terms of ‘what-it-is-like’ traces back notoriously to Nagel (1974).
Representatives of this position are e.g. C. Lewis, Ryle, Sellars.
Advocates of this position include Dretske, Lycan, Tye.
Within the PIT camp, various accounts are provided of what the intentional spark consists in. For an overview see Kriegel (2011, pp. 156–158).
Its varieties differ with regard to several parameters. One of these concerns the way in which the relationship between intentionality and phenomenality is conceived: in terms of identity, of grounding, of constitution or of realization. A second parameter concerns the strength of the thesis endorsed: the strong versions claim that phenomenal intentionality is the only kind of intentionality [representatives of this position are Pitt (2004), Strawson (2008), Farkas (2008), Mendelovici (2018)]; moderate versions claim that phenomenal intentionality is the only basic kind of intentionality from which any non-phenomenal kind is derived [moderate PITers include, e.g., Searle (1992), Horgan and Tienson (2002), Loar (2003), Kriegel (2011)]. These differences notwithstanding, it is possible to group all the several varieties under a single research program. What unifies them is not so much the (negative) fact that they all reject the externalist-tracking account of intentionality, but rather the (positive) fact that they all endorse (partly or wholly) a given set of tenets that are characteristic of PIT. In the introduction to his 2013, Kriegel provides a list of these tenets. Fundamental among them is the claim that intentionality is determined by the phenomenal character of conscious mental states, and that it is inherently subjective (i.e. what is represented is always represented to someone).
For a parallel criticism of the claim that so-called phenomenal intentionality is intentionality see Voltolini (2019).
As it will come out in the following, the ‘ofness’ in question is not the ‘ofness’ of intentionality.
Brentano (1874, I, pp. 124–125 [88]).
It is worth stressing that intentionality so conceived (as reference intentionality) does not coincide with reference: a mental state can be about something (and therefore have reference intentionality) without actually referring to anything. This is so for example for mental states whose verbal expression involves empty names. If S entertains a thought that she would express for example by uttering the sentence ‘Vulcan is a planet’, S’s thought, while possessing reference intentionality (in so far as it has aboutness) does not refer to anything, because Vulcan does not exist. This clarification is important because according to PITers phenomenal intentionality, while being correctly characterizable as aboutness, does not coincide with reference. Loar (2003), for example, is very clear on this point.
In the following I shall skip the ‘reference’ qualification. If not otherwise specified, whenever the term ‘intentionality’ occurs, it is to be taken as shorthand for ‘reference intentionality’.
An advocate of PIT could actually reject the thesis that reference intentionality is the most basic form of intentionality (i.e. the one that any other form presupposes) and claim that all that is required for a mental state to count as intentional is to possesses some content that makes it assessable for accuracy. For how this move would impact on the argument of the paper see section 5.
For the idea of the indispensability of such features see Crane (2001).
These two features are sometimes presented, along with Chisholm’s linguistic account of intentionality, as the feature underlying the failure of truth-preserving existential generalization as well as the feature underlying the failure of truth-preserving substitution of co-referential terms respectively.
A subject can entertain a thought apparently about a mythological entity (Pegasus, Zeus), a fictional entity (Madame Bovary, Sherlock Holmes), a possible entity (the Third War World), or even an impossible entity such as a round square, even though in all such cases there is no actual, concrete object that the thought picks up.
In saying this, I don’t want to commit myself to the claim that the intentionality that Le Verrier’s thought instantiates in thinking about Vulcan is a relation with a non-existent entity. The description provided is meant to be neutral on this ontological issue. As a matter of fact, Le Verrier’s though does not refer to anything, because Vulcan does not exist. And yet it instantiates reference intentionality and therefore it is correct to describe it in the way provided.
This is the ‘ostensive definition’ that Mendelovici uses in her book to fix reference on intentionality.
Searle, for one, has repeatedly stressed the point that the ‘of’ of ‘conscious of’ is not always the ‘of’ of intentionality. See e.g. Searle (1992).
In what follows I shall use this expression to refer to the experiential, introspectable property that PITers call phenomenal/experiential/subjective intentionality.
It is important to stress that what PITers commit themselves to is not the thesis that the intentionality of conscious mental states involves an experiential awareness or “presentation” of something, but rather the stronger thesis that intentionality is identical with such an experiential awareness. This identity claim is endorsed by all the advocates of PIT. Such a claim shouldn’t be confused with another one that concerns the relationship between phenomenal intentionality and phenomenal character and that is accounted for by PITers in different ways: in terms of identity, of grounding, of constitution or of realization.
Cfr. Mendelovici (2018, Chap. 9).
As far as reference intentionality is concerned, the relationalist can say that in such cases what the subject is related to, while not being a concrete physical entity, is nonetheless something that exists. The something in question can be taken to be a non-actual entity, an actual abstract entity (or some other kind of abstract entity), or even an actual concrete mental entity (something like a sense-datum for example). In discussing this issue, Kriegel (2011) ascribes the first position to Parsons (1980) and Priest (2005), the second to Salmon (1988) and the latter to Jackson (1977).
It is worth stressing that the import of the present point is merely phenomenological: if an experience of mine I took to be veridical turned out to be a hallucination, nothing would change as regards the way things present themselves to me from my first-person perspective.
Let me stress that I do not take them as requirements on any possible account of intentionality, or on any account that aims at being phenomenologically adequate. Rather, I take them as requirements that any proposal within PIT ought to conform to, because such a compliance is in my view required by the thesis that intentionality is an experiential property having a phenomenal nature. Let me thank an anonymous reviewer whose comments made me realize that this point was not sufficiently clear in the initial version of the paper.
Let me point out that what the conformity requirement actually demands is not that the intentional object be mind-independent or, if that is the case, external and concrete, but that it be a kind of entity that can present itself as such to the subject. This clarification is important in order to assess properly the several variants of PIT I consider in the following.
It is worth stressing that only one of the positions I am going to consider, namely abstractivism, is actually clearly endorsed within the relational PIT camp. The considerations I am going to make are therefore to be taken as hypothetical in the following sense: assuming that a PITer wished to endorse such and such a position as regards the nature of the relatum of PO, would her proposal satisfy both (a) and (b)?
Compliance with the uniformity requirement is what bars PITers to adopt a disjunctivist account of perceptual experiences. Some of PIT advocates are very critical towards disjunctivism. Kriegel (2011, p. 250), for one, qualifies it as a “cure worse than the disease” and strongly defends the claim that subjectively indistinguishable experiences must be taken as type-identical. In the present paper I do not want to take side on this issue, but merely stress that disjunctivism is not an option for a PITer who aspires to preserve the phenomenological adequacy of her proposal.
According to Bourget (2020) abstractivism is the most plausible form of the relational view because it carries no commitment towards the naïve realist view, according to which the relata of our experiences are ordinary concrete objects.
Any sort of abstracta will do, provided it does not involve concrete particulars. Examples are the following: property complexes, general states of affairs composed of properties and quantifiers, Fregean descriptive non-object involving senses.
The severity of the ontological objections raised against abstractivism very much depends on what kind of metaphysics of abstract entities is endorsed. As regards properties for example, there are three main positions: the Aristotelian (properties are universals in re, that is: entities whose existence depends on the existence of their instances), the Platonic (properties are universals ante rem, that is: entities which exist independently of their instances) and the nominalistic (either in its eliminativist or in its reductivist construal) which conceives abstracta as sets of concrete actual or possible objects or as bundles of tropes. Ontological objections to abstractivism within the PIT camp have been raised by, e.g., Loar (2003), Mendelovici (2018), Kriegel (2011). For an overview on how abstractivism could address those objections, see Bourget (2020).
For this objection see Kriegel (2007, 2011). Similarly, Papineau observes: “My conscious sensory feelings are concrete, here-and-now, replete with causes and effects. How can their metaphysical nature essentially involve relations to entities that lie outside space and time?” (Papineau 2014, p. 7). One could of course contest that the principle of the explanatory closure of the realm of concreta should pertain (at all) to conscious or intentional phenomena and on this ground reject this kind of criticism.
See note 34 for the several variants of abstractivism.
The epistemic model that abstractivism implies, according to Kriegel, closely resembles the one implied by sense-datum theories. Just as the latter draws a ‘veil of appearances’ over the external world, so the former draws something analogous, a ‘veil of abstracta’. Even though the nature of the veil differs in the two cases, the epistemological consequences of the two pictures are roughly the same: any justification of perceptual beliefs by perceptual experiences would always be mediated by some kind of inference.
For such an extension of the range of applicability of the objection, see Kriegel (2011, p. 163).
I say that such an account seems to (rather than does) contravene the conformity requirement, because what such a requirement demands is not so much that the relatum be a concrete entity as that it be a kind of entity that can present itself as such, that is, as if it were concrete.
Intentional objects so conceived can be taken as entities whose existence cannot be divorced from that of the subjects entertaining them. A defence of the characterization of intentional objects as ‘objects only for subjects’ has been recently provided by Woodling (2016, p. 507) in the attempt to devise a solution to the problem of thinking of non-existents within a relational framework that aims at competing with non-relationalism with regard to keeping the ontological commitments to the minimum.
The idea that what we are presented with when entertaining conscious intentional mental states are phenomenal items, i.e. items that appear to us, is not a foreign one within PIT. Several PITers actually do make use of the notion of appearance and its cognates, with both Horgan, Tienson and Kriegel as cases in point. Discussing sensory-phenomenal states, Horgan and Tienson say “These states present an apparent world full of apparent objects that apparently instantiate a wide range of properties and relations” (Horgan and Tienson 2002, p. 524). Similarly, Kriegel uses the qualification ‘appearance’ and applies it to both properties and particulars (Kriegel 2011, p. 177).
This point has been defended for example by Smith. See, e.g., (2002, p. 235).
I am considering here the way aspectuality is generally accounted for within what can be considered the standard approach according to which it is the mental state, rather than what the state is about, that is aspectual. The kind of criticism I am presenting here does not apply to the latter kind of approach to aspectuality. As a paradigmatic example of the non-standard approach see, e.g., Meinong (1915). I shall come back to this point in note 45.
In my view this is precisely the lesson that can be drawn from Kriegel’s Tassandra case. The following quote supports my claim. Says Kriegel: “Strictly speaking […] contrary to initial appearances, conscious experiences do not exhibit intentional indifference [aspectuality]: when their exp-intentional contents [phenomenal ways of presentation] are different, the entities they are intentionally directed at are different as well” (Kriegel 2011, p. 136, square brackets mine).
Of course, one who adopted a Meinongian account of aspectuality according to which the relata of the intentional relation are sorts of ‘qua-objects’ (Fine 1982) would disagree on this point, claiming that aspectuality is precisely accounted for by the ‘perspectival nature’ of the intentional objects. I am not sympathetic towards this approach, in particular because of its commitment to entities with an awkward ontological status. In any case, even if a relationalist, phenomenalist PITer endorsed it and succeeded in this way in ascribing aspectuality to PO, the fact would remain that she could not accommodate within her picture the possible non-existence feature of intentionality. Thereby, in so far as both features are needed in order to qualify a property as the intentionality property, the moral I have drawn here does not change.
Mendelovici (2018, pp. 232–233) distinguishes four main varieties of the aspect view according to whether aspects are identified with properties (either first or second-order) or with their instantiations, namely states (either first or second-order). She ascribes the position that identifies aspects with first-order intentional properties to Pitt (2009), and takes Kriegel to endorse the position that treats aspects as properties of intentional properties. In her book she shows a preference for the position that treats aspects as instantiations of properties.
Mendelovici characterizes this notion thus: “Psychological involvement is a matter of playing a role in mental life, such as that of being introspectively accessible, affecting further cognition or behavior, or merely partly constituting our representational perspective on the world; in short, psychological involvement is a matter of contents behaving as if they’re there” (Mendelovici 2018, p. 205).
This point plays a pivotal role in Mendelovici’s argument against relationalism based on what she labels the ‘Real problem’. No relational account of intentionality, not even one that endorses PIT, is in her view ultimately able to account for the psychological involvement of mental contents. For, she claims, “it is hard to see how any relation to distinctly existing items can make them entertained or otherwise intentionally represented” (Mendelovici 2018, p. 204). By contrast, she claims, the aspect view does not encounter this problem because it treats contents as aspects of our mental states, that is as features that do not exist distinctly and separately from the mind.
The rationale for my choice is that I take adverbialism to be paradigmatic of the aspect view. It is worth stressing however that the considerations I am going to make are meant to apply, mutatis mutandis, to the other varieties of the aspect view as well.
Kriegel endorses a version of adverbialism that qualifies as phenomenological because it characterizes the adverbial modification in phenomenological terms: to think lemon-wise/lemonly is for the mental state to instantiate a lemon-ward-esque phenomenal character. An alternative way of characterizing the adverbial modification is in terms of inferential role: to think lemon-wise/lemonly is a matter of the mental state’s inferential role.
For a criticism of the idea that we have introspective evidence for phenomenal intentionality see Bordini (2017).
The proposal according to which the content of our experiences, while being general and not singular, incorporates an attribution of particularity has been explicitly put forward by Farkas (2008).
This is precisely what Mendelovici (2018) claims.
Adverbialism, and the aspect view more generally, have met with several objections in the more or less recent philosophical literature (Jackson 1977; Woodling 2016; Bourget 2020). As far as I know, the kind of objection I am about to make has not been raised before, even if it seems to me to be somewhat connected to one advanced by Woodling (2016) to the effect that adverbialism would fail to satisfy a desideratum that any revisionistic theory must satisfy in order to count as an independent theoretical option, namely that it does not presuppose or depend for its very intelligibility on the common-sense view it aims at replacing.
Of course, any such objector ought also to argue for the claim that the instantiation of content intentionality by a state does not necessarily presuppose the instantiation of reference intentionality.
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Acknowledgement
Versions of this work have been presented in several conferences and workshops both in Italy and abroad (at the Institut Jean Nicod in Paris, at the CEU in Budapest, at the Faculty of Arts in Auckland). I would like to thank all the participants who contributed with comments and observation. I also want to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. Finally, I should like to express my particular thanks to Alberto Voltolini for the several discussions that have helped me to improve the present work.
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Sacchi, E. Is so-called Phenomenal Intentionality Real Intentionality?. Axiomathes 32, 687–710 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-021-09549-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-021-09549-4