This book contains eleven original papers about intentionality. Some explore current problems such as the status of intentional content, the intentionality of perception and emotion, the connections between intentionality and normativity, the relationship between intentionality and consciousness, the characteristics of the intentional idiom. Others discuss the work of historical figures like Locke, Brentano, Husserl and Frege.
Mendelovici proposes a novel theory of intentionality in terms of phenomenal consciousness, arguing that the view avoids the problems of its competitors and can accommodate a wide range of cases, including those of thought and nonconscious states.
Since the late 1970's, the main research program for understanding intentionality -- the mind's ability to direct itself onto the world -- has been based on the attempt naturalize intentionality, in the sense of making it intelligible how intentionality can occur in a perfectly natural, indeed entirely physical, world. Some philosophers, however, have remained skeptical of this entire approach. In particular, some have argued that phenomenal consciousness - - the subjective feel of conscious experience -- has an essential role to play in the theory of intentionality, a role missing in the naturalization program. Thus a number of authors have recently brought to the fore the notion of phenomenal intentionality, as well as a cluster of nearby notions. There is a vague sense that their work is interrelated, complementary, and mutually reinforcing, in a way that suggests a germinal research program. With twelve new essays by philosophers at the forefront of the field, this volume is designed to launch this research program in a more self-conscious way, by exploring some of the fundamental claims and themes of relevance to this program.
Is there an internal relationship between consciousness and intentionality? Can mental content be described in such a way so as to avoid dualism? What is the influence of social context upon consciousness, conceptions of self and mental content? This book considers questions such as these and argues for a conception of consciousness, mental content and intentionality that is anti-Cartesian in its major tenets. Focusing upon the rule governed nature of concepts and the grounding of the rules for concept use in the practical world, intentional consciousness emerges as a phenomena that depends upon social context. Given that dependence, the authors consider and set aside attempts to reduce human consciousness and intentionality to phenomena explicable at biological or neuroscientific levels. (Series A)
This book has roots in our respective doctoral dissertations, both completed in 1970 at Stanford under the tutelage of Professors Dagfmn F øllesdal, John D. Goheen, and Jaakko Hintikka. In the fall of 1970 we wrote a joint article that proved to be a prolegomenon to the present work, our 'Intentionality via Intensions', The Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971). Professor Hintikka then suggested we write a joint book, and in the spring of 1971 we began writing the present work. The project was to last ten years as our conception of the project continued to grow at each stage. Our iritellectual debts follow the history of our project. During our dis sertation days at Stanford, we joined with fellow doctoral candidates John Lad and Michael Sukale and Professors Føllesdal, Goheen, and Hintikka in an informal seminar on phenomenology that met weekly from June of 1969 through March of 1970. During the summers of 1973 and 1974 we regrouped in another informal seminar on phenomenology, meeting weekly at Stanford and sometimes Berkeley, the regular participants being ourselves, Hubert Dreyfus, Dagfmn Føllesdal, Jane Lipsky McIntyre, Izchak Miller, and, in 1974, John Haugeland.
Intentionality is one of the central problems of modern philosophy. How can a thought, action or belief be about something? Sachs draws on the work of Wilfrid Sellars, C I Lewis and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to build a new theory of intentionality that solves many of the problems faced by traditional conceptions.
This book sheds new light on the history of the philosophically crucial notion of intentionality, which accounts for one of the most distinctive aspects of our mental life: the fact that our thoughts are about objects. Intentionality is often described as a certain kind of relation. Focusing on Franz Brentano, who introduced the notion into contemporary philosophy, and on the Aristotelian tradition, which was Brentano’s main source of inspiration, the book reveals a rich history of debate on precisely the relational nature of intentionality. It shows that Brentano and the Aristotelian authors from which he drew not only addressed the question whether intentionality is a relation, but also devoted extensive discussions to what kind of relation it is, if any. The book aims to show that Brentano distinguishes the intentional relation from two other relations with which it might be confused, namely, causality and reference, which also hold between thoughts and their objects. Intentionality accounts for the aboutness of a thought; causality, by contrast, explains how the thought is generated, and reference, understood as a sort of similarity, occurs when the object towards which the thought is directed exists. Brentano claims to find some anticipation of his views in Aristotle. This book argues that, whether or not Brentano’s interpretation of Aristotle is correct, his claim is true of the Aristotelian tradition as a whole, since followers of Aristotle more or less explicitly made some or all of Brentano’s distinctions. This is demonstrated through examination of some major figures of the Aristotelian tradition (broadly understood), including Alexander of Aphrodisias, the Neoplatonic commentators, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Francisco Suárez. This book combines a longue durée approach – focusing on the long-term evolution of philosophical concepts rather than restricting itself to a specific author or period – with systematic analysis in the history of philosophy. By studying Brentano and the Aristotelian authors with theoretical sensitivity, it also aims to contribute to our understanding of intentionality and cognate features of the mind.
