Abstract

In contemporary analytic philosophy, the problem of intentionality is to provide an explanation of how some things can be of or about or directed-at other things . Against some recent interpreters, I will endeavor to show that Aristotle does not have the problem of intentionality or the basis for a theory of intentionality. The problem of intentionality is a problem under a certain set of assumptions and some of these assumptions are incompatible with certain principles of Aristotle's psychology and metaphysics. I focus on the contemporary assumption that there is an explanatory gap between the mental and the physical and its incompatibility with Aristotle's epistemological and metaphysical principles of essentialism and natural understandability . I also endeavor to explain why some contemporary scholars have interpreted Aristotle in ways that would deny my thesis and commit him to there being a problem of intentionality