New York, USA: Oxford University Press (2018)
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Abstract |
Some mental states seem to be "of" or "about" things, or to "say" something. For example, a thought might represent that grass is green, and a visual experience might represent a blue cup. This is intentionality. The aim of this book is to explain this phenomenon.
Once we understand intentionality as a phenomenon to be explained, rather than a posit in a theory explaining something else, we can see that there are glaring empirical and in principle difficulties with currently popular tracking and functional role theories of intentionality, which aim to account for intentionality in terms of tracking relations and functional roles.
This book develops an alternative theory, the phenomenal intentionality theory (PIT), on which the source of intentionality is none other than phenomenal consciousness, the subjective, felt, or qualitative aspect of mental life. While PIT avoids the problems that plague tracking and functional role theories, it faces its own challenges in accounting for the rich and complex contents of thoughts and the contents of nonconscious states. In responding to these challenges, this book proposes a novel version of PIT, on which all intentionality is phenomenal intentionality, though we in some sense represent many non-phenomenal contents by ascribing them to ourselves. This book further argues that phenomenal consciousness is an intrinsic feature of mental life, resulting in a view that is radically internalistic in spirit: Our phenomenally represented contents are literally in our heads, and any non-phenomenal contents we in some sense represent are expressly targeted by us.
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Keywords | phenomenal intentionality intentionality phenomenal consciousness mental representation nonconscious perception content information tracking experience |
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Reprint years | 2018 |
Buy this book | $59.78 used (27% off) $76.09 new (7% off) Amazon page |
ISBN(s) | 9780190863807 0190863803 |
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References found in this work BETA
Introspecting Phenomenal States.Brie Gertler - 2001 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (2):305-28.
Citations of this work BETA
Inferentialism, Australian Style.David J. Chalmers - forthcoming - Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association.
Consciousness Meets Lewisian Interpretation Theory: A Multistage Account of Intentionality.Adam Pautz - 2021 - In Uriah Kriegel (ed.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind, Vol. 1.
Consciousness and Intentionality.Angela Mendelovici & David Bourget - 2020 - In Uriah Kriegel (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness. New York, USA: Oxford University Press. pp. 560-585.
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