The dominant view of twentieth century analytic philosophy has been that all thinking is always in a language; that languages are vehicles of thought. In recent decades, however, the opposite view, that languages merely serve to express language-­‐independent thought-­‐contents or propositions, has been more widely accepted. The debate has a direct equivalent in the philosophy of history: when historians report the beliefs of historical figures, do they report the sentences or propositions that these historical figures believed to be true or (...) false? In this paper I argue in favor of the latter, intentionalist, view. My arguments mostly center on the problems with translations that are likely to arise when a historian reports the beliefs of historical figures who expressed them in languages other than the one in which the historian is writing. In discussing these problems the paper presents an application of John Searle’s theory of intentionality on the philosophy of history. The debate between the view that all thinking is verbal and always in a language and the view that human beings think independently of any language has had an extensive history in the philosophy of language for the past hundred years. It also has numerous implications for the philosophy of history, where the problem can be stated in general terms as the question of whether a historian, when reporting the beliefs of historical figures, reports the thought-­‐contents or the sentences that these people believed to be true or false. Among English-­‐speaking historians of philosophy, the latter view was promoted by Arthur Danto, the former by Quentin Skinner and Mark Bevir. Both positions are reflected in specific problems of history-­‐writing, such as, for instance, the question whether and how a historian can report the beliefs of historical figures who articulated them in languages different from the language in which the historian is writing. Both positions also fundamentally rely on the assumption that it is possible and legitimate to provide translations of sentences from one language to another when reporting the beliefs of historical figures; but, as we shall see, they are not on equal footing when it comes to explaining what counts as a legitimate translation. This paper explores the implications that these two views on the role of language in human thinking have for the philosophy of history. It will show that the view that all human thinking is verbal is not compatible with some fundamental and standard practices of history-­‐writing. Thus, the paper can be seen as a contribution to the debate about intentionalism in history-­‐writing. It argues in favor of the intentionalist approach by introducing new arguments derived from the philosophy of language, while at the same time proposing a formulation of the intentionalist position that relies on John Searle’s philosophical elaboration on the concept of intentionality. (shrink)

This paper discusses Husserl’s theory of intentionality and compares it to contemporary debates about intentionalism. I first show to what extent such a comparison could be meaningful. I then outline the structure of intentionality as found in Ideas I. My main claims are that – in contrast with intentionalism – intentionality for Husserl covers just a region of conscious contents; that it is essentially a relation between act-processes and presented content; and that the side of (...) act-processes contains non-representational contents. In the third part, I show that Husserl also offers resources against intentionalism’s exclusive concern with propositional content. (shrink)

This paper defends hedonic intentionalism, the view that all pleasures, including bodily pleasures, are directed towards objects distinct from themselves. Brentano is the leading proponent of this view. My goal here is to disentangle his significant proposals from the more disputable ones so as to arrive at a hopefully promising version of hedonic intentionalism. I mainly focus on bodily pleasures, which constitute the main troublemakers for hedonic intentionalism. Section 1 introduces the problem raised by bodily pleasures for (...) hedonic intentionalism and some of the main reactions to it. Sections 2 and 3 rebut two main approaches equating bodily pleasures with non- intentional episodes. More precisely, section 2 argues that bodily pleasures cannot be purely non-intentional self-conscious feelings, by relying on Brentano’s objection to Hamilton’s theory of pleasure. Section 3 argues that bodily pleasures cannot be non-intentional sensory qualities by relying on Brentano’s objections to Stumpf’s theory of pleasure. Section 4 develops a brentanian view of the intentionality of bodily pleasures by claiming bodily pleasures are directed at a sui generis class of sensory qualities. Section 5 presents an objection to Brentano’s later theory of pleasure according to which all sensory pleasures are directed at sensing acts. (shrink)

According to intentionalism, phenomenal properties are identical to, supervenient on, or determined by representational properties. Intentionalism faces a special challenge when it comes to accounting for the phenomenal character of moods. First, it seems that no intentionalist treatment of moods can capture their apparently undirected phenomenology. Second, it seems that even if we can come up with a viable intentionalist account of moods, we would not be able to motivate it in some of the same kinds of ways (...) that intentionalism about other kinds of states can be motivated. In this article, I respond to both challenges: First, I propose a novel intentionalist treatment of moods on which they represent unbound affective properties. Then, I argue that this view is indirectly supported by the same kinds of considerations that directly support intentionalism about other mental states. (shrink)

The central and defining characteristic of thoughts is that they have objects. The object of a thought is what the thought concerns, or what it is about. Since there cannot be thoughts which are not about anything, or which do not concern anything, there cannot be thoughts without objects. Mental states or events or processes which have objects in this sense are traditionally called ‘intentional,’ and ‘intentionality’ is for this reason the general term for this defining characteristic of thought. (...) Under the heading of ‘thought’ we can include many different kinds of mental apprehension of an object—including relatively temporary episodes of contemplating or scrutinising, as well as persisting states like beliefs and hopes which are not similarly episodic in character. These are all ways of thinking about an object. But even construing ‘thought’ in this broad way, it is clear that not all mental states and events are thoughts: sensations, emotions and perceptual experiences are not thoughts, but they are also paradigmatically mental. Do these mental states and events have objects too? Or are there mental states and events which have no objects? (shrink)

The dispute between the empiricist and interpretivist conceptions of the social sciences is properly conceived not as a matter of reduction or covering laws. Features specific to the social sciences include the following. Explanations of human behavior make reference to intentional causation; social phenomena are permeated with mental components and are self-referential; social science explanations have not been as successful as those in natural science because of their concern with intentional causation, because their explanations must be identical with the propositional (...) content of the mind of the actor, and because a social phenomenon exists only if people believe it exists. Elements of an apparatus necessary to analyze this problematic social ontology are given and include selfreferentiality, constitutive rules, collective intentionality, linguistic permeation of the facts, systematic interrelationships among social facts, and primacy of acts over objects. (shrink)

How should we seek to account for the qualitative aspect of emotion? Strong intentionalism presents one promising avenue for such an account. According to strong intentionalism, the phenomenology of a mental state is entirely determined by that state's intentional content. Given that many views of the emotions have it that the intentionality and phenomenology of the emotions are very closely related, this makes strong intentionalism an especially promising route. However, strong intentionalism has rarely been defended (...) for emotions and, we argue, where it has, it has failed to be explanatory. This paper proposes a new explanatory form of strong intentionalism about emotion. We call it personal intentionalism. According to this view, the qualitative features of emotion are fully determined by the emotion's intentional content. This content varies inter- and intraindividually, according to one's cares and concerns, as well as one's other mental states. We assess its compatibility with theories of consciousness. (shrink)

Provides a clear and cogent defense of the intentionalist approach to the interpretation of texts.

One of Brian Loar’s most central contributions to contemporary philosophy of mind is the notion of phenomenal intentionality: a kind of intentional directedness fully grounded in phenomenal character. Proponents of phenomenal intentionality typically also endorse the idea of cognitive phenomenology: a sui generis phenomenal character of cognitive states such as thoughts and judgments that grounds these states’ intentional directedness. This combination creates a challenge, though: namely, how to account for the manifest phenomenological difference between perception and cognition. In (...) this paper, I argue that there is in fact no obvious account of this difference. I consider three main approaches: in terms of high-level vs. low-level contents, of conceptual vs. nonconceptual content, and of propositional vs. objectual content. After arguing against each, I conclude by considering the phenomenal-intentionalist’s options moving forward. (shrink)

This paper discusses the traditional antagonism between the Intentionalist and the Physicalist paradigms of the nature of mind and human behaviour. After tracing the development of the concept of intentionality in contemporary analytic philosophy and delineating some of the problems it presented for the so-called Thesis of Physicalism in several of its formulations, the paper proceeds to show how a liberalized methodology of theory construction and an understanding of functional systems and artificial intelligence models may enable us to reconstruct (...) the intentional states of persons in a way compatible with the demands of physicalism. In particular, it is suggested that the intentional states which, on the intentionalist paradigm, mediate human behaviour might be understood as (theoretically postulated) functional states of a physical organism modelled on the functional states of a (probabilistic) automaton. (shrink)

According to “intentionalist” interpretations of Kant’s transcendental idealism, Kant’s empirical objects are to be understood as mere intentional objects. This interpretation requires a corresponding account of intentionality and intentional objects. This paper defends an account of how the intentionalist should understand the intentional structures at work in the sensory consciousness of physical bodies. First a relational conception of intentionality (articulated in terms of an object’s presence to consciousness) is distinguished from a non-relational conception (articulated in terms of representational (...) content). I argue that the intentionalist’s claim that Kant’s empirical objects are mere intentional objects is primarily a claim about non-relational intentionality. I then ask whether the intentionalist should also recognize a role for relational intentionality as well. After rejecting two possible answers (that there is no relational intentionality, or that there are intentional relations to things in themselves), I argue that sensory consciousness involves having spatially arrayed collections of sensations presented to consciousness in intuition, and then conceptualizing these sensation-arrays as physical objects. The obvious worry about such a phenomenalist interpretation has to do with the consistency of this interpretation with Kant’s empirical realism; these concerns are addressed in detail in the final section. (shrink)

Intentionality and phenomenal consciousness are the main candidates to provide a ‘ mark of the mental’. Rorty, who thinks the category ‘mental’ lacks any underlying unity, suggests a challenge to these positions: to explain how intentionality or phenomenal consciousness alone could generate a mental-physical contrast. I argue that a failure to meet Rorty’s challenge would present a serious indictment of the concept of mind, even though Rorty’s own position is untenable. I then argue that both intentionalism and (...) proposals such as Searle’s ‘Connection Principle’ fail to satisfy this explanatory burden. I conclude with the suggestion that only introspectibility may be able to unite intentional and phenomenal states whilst meeting Rorty’s challenge. (shrink)

Proponents of physical intentionality argue that the classic hallmarks of intentionality highlighted by Brentano are also found in purely physical powers. Critics worry that this idea is metaphysically obscure at best, and at worst leads to panpsychism or animism. I examine the debate in detail, finding both confusion and illumination in the physical intentionalist thesis. Analysing a number of the canonical features of intentionality, I show that they all point to one overarching phenomenon of which both the (...) mental and the physical are kinds, namely finality. This is the finality of ‘final causes’, the long-discarded idea of universal action for an end to which recent proponents of physical intentionality are in fact pointing whether or not they realise it. I explain finality in terms of the concept of specific indifference, arguing that in the case of the mental, specific indifference is realised by the process of abstraction, which has no correlate in the case of physical powers. This analysis, I conclude, reveals both the strength and weakness of rational creatures such as us, as well as demystifying the way in which powers work. (shrink)

Some philosophers have argued recently that introspective evidence provides direct support for an intentionalist theory of visual experience. An intentionalist theory of visual experience treats experience as an intentional state, a state with an intentional content. (I shall use the word ’state’ in a general way, for any kind of mental phenomenon, and here I shall not distinguish states proper from events, though the distinction is important.) Intentionalist theories characteristically say that the phenomenal character of an experience, what it is (...) like to have the experience, is exhausted by its intentional content. Visual experience, and on some views sense-experience generally, does not involve the awareness of ’qualia’, intrinsic, non-intentional features of the experience. According to Gilbert Harman and Michael Tye, support for this view comes from introspecting on experience. Tye describes his ’argument from introspection’ as follows: Standing on the beach in Santa Barbara a couple of summers ago on a bright sunny day, I found myself transfixed by the intense blue of the Pacific Ocean. Was I not here delighting in the phenomenal aspects of my visual experience? And if I was, doesn’t this show that there are visual qualia? I am not convinced. It seems to me that what I found so pleasing in the above instance, what I was focusing on, as it were, were a certain shade and intensity of the colour blue. I experienced blue as a property of the ocean not as a property of my experience. My experience itself certainly wasn’t blue. Rather, it was an experience which represented the ocean as blue. What I was really delighting in, then, were specific aspects of the content of the experience. Tye goes on to suggest that this might have been the sort of thing Moore meant when he said that the sensation of blue is ’diaphanous’, and glosses this as follows: When one tries to focus on it in introspection one cannot help but see right through it so that what one actually ends up attending to is the real colour blue. 1An early version of this paper was presented at the conference, Mental Phenomena III in Dubrovnik, Croatia.. (shrink)

Intentionalism debates seek to uncover the relationship between the qualitative aspects of experience—phenomenal character—and the intentionality of the mind. They have been at or near center stage in the philosophy of mind for more than two decades, and in my view need to be reexamined. There are two core distinct intentionalism debates that are rarely distinguished (Sect. 1). Additionally, the characterization of spectrum inversion as involving inverted qualities and constant intentional content is mistaken (Sect. 3). These confusions (...) can be witnessed from an often-ignored and lonely perspective, that of the sense-datum theorist, and in particular of the projectivist (Sect. 2). In my view we have been so wary of sense-datum theory in recent years that we have failed to see that, even if false, it may permit perspectives on intentionalism issues difficult to occupy from other views. (shrink)

Representationalists argue that phenomenal states are intentional states of a special kind. This paper offers an account of the kind of intentional state phenomenal states are: I argue that they are underived intentional states. This account of phenomenal states is equivalent to two theses: first, all possible phenomenal states are underived intentional states; second, all possible underived intentional states are phenomenal states. I clarify these claims and argue for each of them. I also address objections which touch on a range (...) of topics, including meaning holism and concept empiricism. I conclude with a brief discussion of the consequences of the proposed view for the project of naturalizing consciousness. (shrink)

Recent philosophy of mind has seen an increase of interest in theories of intentionality in offering a functional account of mental states. The standard intentionalist view holds that mental states can be exhaustively accounted for in terms of their representational contents. An alternative view proposed by Tim Crane, called impure intentionalism, specifies mental states in terms of intentional content, mode, and object. This view is also suggested to hold for states of sensory awareness. This paper primarily develops an (...) alternative to the impure intentionalist account of states of sensory awareness. On the basis of Husserl’s phenomenological work, I argue that a focus on intentionality at the level of sensory awareness is phenomenologically implausible. The final part offers an alternative functional account of sensory awareness based on what Husserl called ‘immanent association’. (shrink)

This article argues that such large-scale cases of crowd behavior as the Mexican Wave ( La Ola) constitute forms of shared intentionality which cannot be explained solely with the use of the standard intentionalistic ontology. It claims that such unique forms of collective intentionality require a hybrid explanatory lens in which an account of shared goals, intentions, and other propositional attitudes is combined with an account of the motor psychology of collective agents. The paper describes in detail the (...) intentionalistic ontology of La Ola and discusses the conditions of cooperation it meets. The discussion allows the author to defend the view that large-scale collective intentionality can be based on automaticity to a significant degree: to properly understand such phenomena like La Ola, the idea of probabilistically interpreted decisions and propensities to act should give way to the automatic aspects of behavior. This paves the way for future studies in the philosophy of action to fully recognize the role of automatic performances at the level of collective actions just as they do for individual actions. (shrink)

The contemporary discussion on the subjective character of conscious experience is characterized by a stark contrast between higher-order intentionalism, according to which any state of awareness depends on the instantiation of intentional properties by mental states, and anti-intentionalism, according to which the inner awareness constitutive of subjective experience is fundamentally different from ordinary instances of external or introspective awareness, in that one’s experience is not given to the subject as an ordinary intentional object. The purpose of this paper (...) is to outline the most fundamental dimensions of variation among the different kinds of higher-order theories and to show, by providing a comprehensive analysis of the logical space available, that these seemingly incompatible views can be reconciled within an intentionalist framework. (shrink)

Emotions are Janus-faced: their focus may switch from how a person is feeling deep inside her, to the busy world of actions, words, or gestures whose perception currently affects her. The intimate relation between the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’ seems to call for a redrawing of the traditional distinction of mental states between those that can look out to the world, and those that are, supposedly, irredeemably blind.

Recent philosophy of mind has seen an increase of interest in theories of intentionality in offering a functional account of mental states. The standard intentionalist view holds that mental states can be exhaustively accounted for in terms of their representational contents. An alternative view proposed by Tim Crane, called impure intentionalism, specifies mental states in terms of intentional content, mode, and object. This view is also suggested to hold for states of sensory awareness. This paper primarily develops an (...) alternative to the impure intentionalist account of states of sensory awareness. On the basis of Husserl’s phenomenological work, I argue that a focus on intentionality at the level of sensory awareness is phenomenologically implausible. The final part offers an alternative functional account of sensory awareness based on what Husserl called ‘immanent association’. (shrink)

This essay is a critical examination of how Edmund Husserl, in his appropriation of Franz Brentano’s concept of intentionality into his phenomenology, deals with the very issues that shaped Brentano’s theory of intentionality. These issues concern the proper criterion for distinguishing mental from physical phenomena and the right explanation for the independence of the intentionality of mental phenomena from the existence or non-existence of their objects. Husserl disagrees with Brentano’s views that intentionality is the distinguishing feature (...) of all mental phenomena and that the mental status of intentional objects is what explains the said independence. The crucial concept in Husserl’s theory of intentionality is the noema of consciousness, which functions in the same way as Gottlob Frege’s sense in his theory of semantics. This essay argues that Husserl’s alternative solutions to the problems of Brentano run in conflict either with the desired rigor of his phenomenology or with the actual workings of language. (shrink)

Can one hold both that universals exist in the strongest sense (i.e., neither in language nor in thought, nor in their instances) and that they exist contingently—and still make sense? Edmund Husserl thought so. In this paper I present a version of his view regimented in terms of modal logic cum possible-world semantics. Crucial to the picture is the distinction between two accessibility relations with different structural properties. These relations are cashed out in terms of two Husserlian notions of imagination: (...) world-bound and free. After briefly presenting the Husserlian framework—his intentionalism, idealism and how universals figure in them—I set up my modal machinery, model the target view, and show that, depending on the chosen accessibility relation, the necessary or the contingent existence of universals can be derived. Importantly, since for Husserl both relations are bona fide, both derivations are legitimate. In Husserl’s philosophy, then, there is room for both necessary and contingent universals. (shrink)

Brentano’s empiricism displays striking similarities with Mach’s phenomenalism. Both authors hold physical reality to be a “fiction” and reject the traditional view of truth and existence. In this paper, the author seeks to clarify some aspects of the Mach-Brentano debate, with a special focus on the theory of intentionality. First, he links this debate to an earlier one, namely to the debate about the mind-body relation. Secondly, he discusses some of Brentano’s objections and construes his intentionalism as an (...) alternative to the psychophysical identity thesis. (shrink)

Phenomenal intentionality is a singular form of intentionality. Science shows it is internally-determined. So standard externalist models for reducing intentionality don't apply to it.

: This essay has two goals. The goal of the first section is to raise a few clarificatory questions about the exact contour of Crane’s account of intentionality, its relation to phenomenology, and his motivation for it. The second section aims to describe a general worry about programs that combine a broadly anti-externalist outlook on intentionality with the idea that there is an intimate connection between phenomenology and intentionality. I argue that programs like this either suffer from (...) a problem that I call intentional luck or, in the attempt to avoid this problem, have to weaken the connection between intentionality and phenomenology. Since Crane’s general outlook falls under this program, it is subject to this worry. Keywords : Intentionality; Phenomenal Intentionalism; Externalism; Phenomenal Experience; Veridical Experience Riconsiderare l’intenzionalità fenomenica Riassunto : Questo articolo persegue due obiettivi. Quello della prima sezione è sollevare alcuni problemi di classificazione circa i confini specifici della descrizione di Crane dell’intenzionalità, il suo rapporto con la fenomenologia e le ragioni che la supportano. La seconda sezione mira a descrivere una obiezione generale ai programmi che combinano una prospettiva sull’intenzionalità di carattere ampiamente anti-esternalista con l’idea secondo cui ci sarebbe un legame stretto tra fenomenologia e intenzionalità. Intendo sostenere che programmi di questo genere offrono il fianco a un problema che chiamerò fortuna intenzionalista oppure, per evitare questo problema, devono indebolire il nesso tra intenzionalità e fenomenologia. Dal momento che la prospettiva generale di Crane ricade in questo programma, è soggetta a questa obiezione. Parole chiave : Intentionalità; Intenzionalismo fenomenico; Esternismo; Esperienza fenomenica; Veridicità dell’esperienza. (shrink)

This paper argues for the conjunctive thesis of naïve realism and phenomenal intentionalism about perceptual experiences. Naïve realism holds that the phenomenology of veridical perceptual experience is constituted by environmental objects that the subject perceives. Phenomenal intentionalism about perceptual experience states that perceptual experience has intentionality in virtue of its phenomenology. I first argue that naïve realism is not incompatible with phenomenal intentionalism. I then argue that phenomenal intentionalists can handle two objections to it by adopting (...) naïve realism: the first objection is that phenomenal intentionalism cannot explain how a veridical perceptual experience is directed at a particular object rather than any other object of the same kind. The second objection is that phenomenal intentionalism cannot explain how a perceptual experience is directed at a type of external object rather than other types of objects without appealing to a resemblance relation between a perceptual experience and an external object, which is considered to be problematic. (shrink)

BRENTANO'S APPROPRIATION OF THE Scholastic notion of intentionality, and of what Brentano called "the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object," was early on exploited in a reading of Kant's theory of objects and appearances. Apparently the first systematic attempt was undertaken by Hans Vaihinger. However, Vaihinger's is radically different from more recent intentionalist readings of Kant. Albeit not in every respect, I propose that a return to this aspect of Vaihinger's approach supports a rewarding advance on such readings. (...) After a general introduction, I survey three instances of the latter—Prauss, Pereboom, and Sellars—in section 2 (and comment on some others in notes throughout). In sections 3 and 4, I then turn to Vaihinger's approach. (shrink)

The paper concentrates on issues of intentionality subdivided into four particular sub-issues. First, is there an intentional object of depression and of states like depression? Second, according to the strong intentionalist view defended by T. Crane, what it is like to be in a mental state is fixed by the mental state’s mode and its content; but mode is not sufficiently well-defined in his analysis. Third, how can the intentionalist explain phenomenological richness of conscious mental states? Crane appeals to (...) non-conceptual content. But in order to have such and such a content, e.g. such and such a pain, one has to recognize it on some later occasion, i.e. to be able to discriminate pains. But, discrimination brings us to concepts. It turns out that non-conceptual content is in fact just a non-linguistic or not yet lexicalized concept. Namely, in order to be re-identifiable, a pain must have a determinate and recognizable sharpness, continuity, and intensity. These are traditionally properties of a pain quale. A quale is also recognizable, it explains richness of experience, and it does not require language capability. The question is what is it that quale and non-conceptual content do not share? What sets one apart from the other? Fourth, what is the relation between the intentional object and content? (shrink)

This paper highlights the fundamental difference in the criteria adopted to explain original intentionality, which is the basic stratum of intentional phenomena, between the mentalist mainstream and the minority inspired by the rejection of the Myth of the Given. Among the attempts on the latter, inferentialism has become a view of particular interest. According to inferentialism, full intentionality is a feature of cognitive subjects who participate in normative discursive practice. Therefore, the criteria to which the basic intentionality (...) of the mind can be attributed are fundamentally linguistic and not mentalist; for example, perception alone is not sufficient to ground full intentional states. This situation is an interesting challenge to mainstream intentionalism. Furthermore, it can be argued that this view can be a good basis to develop a different conception of collective intentionality in social ontology. In fact, inferentialism makes use of the basic normative notion of discursive commitment to track and evaluate the inferential moves of speakers. This notion can be easily extended hypothetically in the direction of the idea of a ‘joint commitment’ developed by Margaret Gilbert. In what follows, a number of questions and remarks are raised as a first explorative attempt. The role that language plays in social ontology through this approach is of particular interest because of its strict connection with collective intentionality: it is an ‘active’ institution (maybe a meta-institution), the medium and the practice to create and establish other institutions. (shrink)

Edited in hypertext by Andrew Chrucky. Reprinted with the permission of Professor David Rosenthal. Editor's Note: Due to the limitation of current hypertext, the following conventions have been used. In general, if an expression has some mark over it, that mark is placed as a prefix to the expression. All Greek characters are rendered by their names. Subscripts are placed in parentheses as concatenated suffixes: thus, e.g., HO is the chemical formula for water. Sellars' dot quotes are expressed by bold (...) periods. (shrink)

The paper concentrates on issues of intentionality subdivided into four particular sub-issues. First, is there an intentional object of depression and of states like depression? Second, according to the strong intentionalist view defended by T. Crane, what it is like to be in a mental state is fixed by the mental state’s mode and its content; but mode is not sufficiently well-defined in his analysis. Third, how can the intentionalist explain phenomenological richness of conscious mental states? Crane appeals to (...) non-conceptual content. But in order to have such and such a content, e.g. such and such a pain, one has to recognize it on some later occasion, i.e. to be able to discriminate pains. But, discrimination brings us to concepts. It turns out that non-conceptual content is in fact just a non-linguistic or not yet lexicalized concept. Namely, in order to be re-identifiable, a pain must have a determinate and recognizable sharpness, continuity, and intensity. These are traditionally properties of a pain quale. A quale is also recognizable, it explains richness of experience, and it does not require language capability. The question is what is it that quale and non-conceptual content do not share? What sets one apart from the other? Fourth, what is the relation between the intentional object and content? (shrink)

The discourse regarding intentionality and interpretation in analytic philosophy of art, although ample and lively, has concerned itself almost exclusively with the literary medium. Starting from a paper published by Hans Maes, I discuss the complications that may arise in straightforwardly applying current intentionalist strategies to the realm of the contemporary visual arts. I first present a detailed account of the difference between hypothetical intentionalism and moderate actual intentionalism which will help to better understand the nature of (...) Maes’s arguments in his paper. I then argue that the characteristics which shape the approach of moderate actual intentionalism cannot be accommodated by certain contemporary visual artworks. I will demonstrate how in certain contemporary artworks, should a viewer be interested in accepting actual intentions within her interpretation, she will have to do so with an extreme intentionalist posture rather than a moderate actual one. (shrink)

Despite its internal divisions and the uncertainty surrounding many of its foundations, there is a growing consensus that the on‐going search for an alternative model of the mind finds a minimal theoretical identity in the pursuit of an anti‐Cartesian conception of mental phenomena. Nevertheless, this anti‐Cartesianism remains more or less explicitly committed to the neo‐Brentanian idea that intentionality is an essential feature of the mental—an idea that has prevailed since the advent of modern cognitive science in the 1950s. An (...) issue of compatibility is thereby raised, as neo‐Brentanism arguably sides with cognitive Cartesianism. The main goal of the paper is to put into full light one specific aspect of this largely unperceived problem of compatibility by arguing that the neo‐Brentanian property of intentionality is an essentially representational one that runs counter to the salient anti‐representationalism of anti‐Cartesianism. And, that this representational essence confronts the search for alternative models of the mind of an anti‐Cartesian kind with the following theoretical issue: To what extent is it possible to devise a non‐Brentanian property of intentionality, particularly one that is fully dissociated from the property of representation? This issue is shown to be much deeper and more difficult than it looks once the nature of representation is properly apprehended; it seems to be still waiting for an answer in the current search for an alternative model of the mind, if only because it has not yet be set in fully adequate terms. (shrink)

I reply to Stainton and Viger by pointing out that my “folieist” claim—that standard linguistic entities (“SLEs”) such as words and phonemes are illusions—would not have the calamitous consequences for linguistics that they fear. Talk of “a language” need only be understood as talk of an I‐language precisely as Chomskyans have proposed; and I reply to Adger by pointing out that, since SLEs are not generally describable as real, local physical phenomena, perception of them cannot be explained as any sort (...) of “transduction.” An intentionalist understanding of “representation of” is needed where mere transduction fails. (shrink)

There are two main ideas that inform the current reflection in the philosophy of mind, namely that the content of mental states is constitutively dependent on worldly, environmental facts and that phenomenology depends only on the intrinsic features of a subject. The question I shall address is whether it is possible to preserve both ideas within a strong intentionalist account. In other words, as the title goes: Can phenomenology be narrow if content is wide and phenomenology is claimed to depend (...) on intentionality? The paper has the following structure: I shall start by presenting a triad which seems to rule out the possibility of preserving both content externalism and phenomenological internalism. Then, after having claimed that the only way in which a strong intentionalist could stick to those two ideas is to make the phenomenal character of a mental state independent for its individuation on the mental state’s content, I shall present what I take to be the only possible variety of which is compatible with such a move. (shrink)

We aim to develop a take on the meaning of works of art that builds on Dennett’s view on the nature of intentionality, namely, that the intentionality exhibited by mental phenomena is not original, but derived. Regarding the meaning of works of art, theories that hold that the meaning is determined by the intentions of the author when creating the work are considered intentionalist. Adopting the view of derived intentionality implies that it is no longer possible to (...) maintain that the semantic content of a work of art is closely linked to the creative act that gave rise to it; accordingly, intentionalist theories should be, broadly speaking, abandoned. However, we claim that one aspect of intentionalist theories is accurate and, moreover, compatible with the perspective on intentionality we adopt: The fact that part of the meaning of a work of art is given by the interpretations that arise when it is assumed that the work was produced by an agent with the purpose of transmitting something. We call this interpretative strategy the work-of-art stance and argue that it should be understood as a subtype of the intentional stance. According to our proposal, this interpretive strategy is part of a view that tries to explain the meaning of works of art as partially indeterminate, relative to a history (and not to a foundational origin) and dependent on interpretive attribution. En este artículo elaboramos una propuesta sobre el significado de las obras de arte que se apoya en la perspectiva de Dennett acerca de la naturaleza de la intencionalidad de los fenómenos mentales. De acuerdo a ella, la intencionalidad que estos exhiben no es original, sino derivada. Adoptar la perspectiva de la intencionalidad derivada implica que ya no será posible sostener que el significado de una obra de arte esté vinculado al acto creativo que le dio origen o que esté determinado por las intenciones que tuvo su autor al crearlas, como han sostenido las teorías intencionalistas. Ahora bien, creemos que hay un aspecto de estas que no es incompatible con la perspectiva de intencionalidad derivada. Se trata del hecho de que parte del significado de la obra de arte está dado por las interpretaciones que surgen sólo cuando se asume que la misma fue producida por un agente con el propósito de transmitir algo. Llamaremos a esta estrategia interpretativa actitud de la obra de arte y defenderemos que debe ser entendida como un subtipo de la actitud intencional. Esta estrategia interpretativa forma parte de una propuesta que intenta explicar el significado de las obras de arte como siendo parcialmente indeterminado, relativo a una historia y dependiente de la atribución interpretativa. (shrink)

This paper replies to objections from perceptual distortion against the representationalist thesis that the phenomenal characters of experiences supervene on their intentional contents. It has been argued that some pairs of distorted and undistorted experiences share contents without sharing phenomenal characters, which is incompatible with the supervenience thesis. In reply, I suggest that such cases are not counterexamples to the representationalist thesis because the contents of distorted experiences are always impoverished in some way compared to those of normal experiences. This (...) can be shown by considering limit cases of perceptual distortion, for example, maximally blurry experiences, which manifestly lack details present in clear experiences. I argue that since there is no reasonable way to draw the line between distorted experiences that have degraded content and distorted experiences that do not, we should allow that an increase in distortion is always accompanied by a change in content. This applies to perceptual distortions due to blur, double vision, perspective, and illumination conditions. (shrink)

Abstract In slogan form, the thesis of this paper is that beliefs are self-verifying fictions: We make them up, but in so doing, they come to exist, and so the fiction of belief is in fact true. This picture of belief emerges from a combination of three independently motivated views: (1) a phenomenal intentionalist picture of intentionality, on which phenomenal consciousness is the basis of intentionality; (2) what I will call a “self-ascriptivist” picture of derived representation, on which (...) non-fundamental representational features are a matter of our ascribing contents to ourselves or our mental states or contents; and (3) a representationalist picture of the attitudes, on which the attitude components of mental states (e.g., the “belief” bit of a belief that P) are represented contents. This paper outlines and motivates the view of beliefs as self-verifying fictions, compares the view to alternative views of belief, and contrasts beliefs on the resulting picture to other belief-like mental states. (shrink)

Written in a highly readable, irreverent style, The Elm and the Expert provides a lively discussion of semantic issues about mental representation, with special attention to issues raised by Frege's problem, Twin cases, and the putative indeterminacy of reference. Bound to be widely read and much discussed, The Elm and the Expert, written in Jerry Fodor's usual highly readable, irreverent style, provides a lively discussion of semantic issues about mental representation, with special attention to issues raised by Frege's problem, Twin (...) cases, and the putative indeterminacy of reference. The book extends and revises a view of the relation between mind and meaning that the author has been developing since his 1975 book, The Language of Thought. There is a general consensus among philosophers that a referential semantics for mental representation cannot support a robust account of intentional explanation. Fodor has himself espoused this view in previous publications, and it is widespread (if tacit) throughout the cognitive science community. This book is largely a reconsideration of the arguments that are supposed to ground this consensus. Fodor concludes that these considerations are far less decisive than has been supposed. He offers a theory sketch in which psychological explanation is intentional, psychological processes are computational, and the semantic properties of mental representations are referential. Connections with the problem of "naturalizing" intentionality are also explored. The four lectures in The Elm and the Expert were originally delivered in Paris in the spring of 1993 to inaugurate the Jean Nicod Lecture series. The Jean Nicod Lectures are delivered annually by a leading philosopher of mind or philosophically oriented cognitive scientist. The 1993 lectures marked the centenary of the birth of the French philosopher and logician Jean Nicod (1893-1931). The lectures are sponsored by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) as part of its effort to develop the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science in France. Jean Nicod series. (shrink)

David Papineau’s _The Metaphysics of Sensory Experience_ is deep, insightful, refreshingly brisk, and very readable. In it, Papineau argues that sensory experiences are intrinsic and non-relational states of subjects; that they do not essentially involve relations to worldly facts, properties, or other items (though they do happen to correlate with worldly items); and that they do not have truth conditions simply in virtue of their conscious (i.e., phenomenal) features. I am in enthusiastic agreement with the picture as described so far. (...) But Papineau also argues that sensory experiences are in no interesting sense essentially representational and that what is responsible for their truth conditions is their correlations with the environment. Here, I disagree. Indeed, I think Papineau does not follow his arguments to their proper conclusions. For if sensory experiences are intrinsic, non-relational, and only contingently correlated with worldly conditions (as Papineau and I agree they are), then the phenomenal features of sensory states are representational in an important sense: they constitute what we think, perceptually experience, or otherwise entertain, making up how things seem to us from a first-person perspective. Because of this, the truth conditions of perceptual experiences cannot be entirely independent of their phenomenal features. They cannot merely be a matter of environmental correlations. If we follow Papineau’s arguments to their proper conclusions, we end up with a view much closer to a version of representationalism that Papineau dismisses, a view he calls “pure phenomenal intentionalism”. (shrink)

One central fact about hallucinations is that they may be subjectively indistinguishable from perceptions. Indeed, it has been argued that the hallucinatory experiences concerned cannot— and need not—be characterized in any more positive general terms. This epistemic conception of hallucinations has been advocated as the best choice for proponents of experiential (or “naive realist”) disjunctivism—the view that perceptions and hallucinations differ essentially in their introspectible subjective characters. In this chapter, I aim to formulate and defend an intentional alternative to experiential (...) disjunctivism called experiential intentionalism. This view not only enjoys some advantages over its rival but is also compatible with the epistemic conception of hallucinations, as well as with the disjunctivist view that perceptions and hallucinations differ essentially in their third-personal structures (e.g., their causal, informational, or reason-providing links to reality). It also maintains that there are actually two aspects to the subjective indistinguishability of mental episodes: (i) we cannot distinguish their first-personal characters in introspective awareness; and (ii) we cannot distinguish their third-personal structures in experiential awareness—that is, in how they are given to consciousness. While experiential disjunctivism makes the mistake of ignoring (ii) and reducing subjective indiscriminability to (i), experiential intentionalism correctly identifies (ii) as the primary source of the subjective indistinguishability of perception-like hallucinations. Accordingly, the intentional error involved in such hallucinations is due to the fact that we consciously experience them as possessing a relational structure. (shrink)