Abstract

Putnam has argued for two pictures of intentionality crystallizing in the tradition basically: The bottom-up view which seeks to base aboutness in intentional content alone and that which sees functioning or the normative as constitutive. Putnam himself seems to think that only the first picture is incoherent, but I believe the argument he takes over from Berkeley, when generalized, undercuts the second picture as well. Both assume intentionality is reality-referring, yet none of them is able to tell how this can be in the first place and so how it is that we can begin to sort veridical from seeming content in a real way. The relation *between* normativity, content and thing is not explained or made clear at all. This makes intentionality an ill-begotten concept, I argue; or a dark one at least