This book is a critical and analytical survey of the major attempts, in modern philosophy, to deal with the phenomenon of intentionality—those of Descartes, Brentano, Meinong, Husserl, Frege, Russell, Bergmann, Chisholm, and Sellars. By coordinating the semantical approaches to the phenomenon, Dr. Aquila undertakes to provide a basis for dialogue among philosophers of different persuasions. "Intentionality" has become, since Franz Brentano revived its original medieval use, the standard term describing the mind's apparently paradoxical capacity to relate itself to objects existing (...) in the world. One approach to the phenomenon emphasizes the mental act. The author argues that the most adequate account involves elements of both approaches. Contemporary treatments tend to formulate problems of intentionality primarily in terms of logic and semantics rather than those of metaphysics and phenomenology. Dr. Aquila's effort to coordinate these approaches will make his book useful to students both of analytical philosophy of mind and also of phenomenology. (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)

Husserl's theory of meaning is often regarded as a somewhat obscure attempt at a view which frege stated more clearly. I argue that while this may be true with respect to the "ideas," it is false with respect to the "logical investigations." the theory presented in the latter work is superior to frege's theory. It provides an objective foundation for the semantical distinctions which concerned frege while remaining within the confines of an ontology that is more economical than frege's.

BRENTANO'S CLAIMS ABOUT INTENTIONALITY DO NOT BEAR SOLELY\nON A CONCERN WITH THE POSITIVE NATURE OF MENTAL STATES.\nTHEY ALSO HAVE NO BEARING ON THE PROBLEM OF MENTAL/MATERIAL\nIDENTITY. PART OF THEIR POINT IS JUST TO OPPOSE A CERTAIN\nVIEW ABOUT THE PROPER OBJECTS OF AWARENESS, NAMELY THAT\nINSOFAR AS WE ARE AWARE OF OBJECTS THEY HAVE AN EXISTENCE\n"IN THE MIND." BOTH HUME AND DESCARTES HELD SUCH A VIEW. AN\nEXAMINATION OF THE NOTIONS OF "IDEA" AND "OBJECTIVE\nREALITY" SHOWS THE INACCURACY OF REGARDING DESCARTES AS A\n"REPRESENTATIVE REALIST." (...) WHAT REPRESENTS EXTERNAL NATURES\nIN THE MIND IS JUST THOSE NATURES THEMSELVES INSOFAR AS\nTHEY EXIST IN THE MIND. (shrink)

I want to state as clearly as I can the sense in which Kant is, and the sense in which he is not, a phenomenalist. And I also want to state the argument which Kant presents, in the Transcendental Deduction, for his particular version of phenomenalism. Since that doctrine has been stated by Kant himself as the view that we have knowledge of “appearances” only, and not of things in themselves, or that material objects are nothing but a species of (...) our “representations,” it will of course be part of my task in this paper to deal with these fundamental notions. Some recent works on Kant have completely misinterpreted these notions, and because of this they have failed to capture the peculiar character of Kant’s phenomenalism. Jonathan Bennett, for example, interprets Kant’s claim that “objects are nothing but representations” as the claim that “statements about objects must be translatable into statements about intuitions.” I shall call such a view a reductive phenomenalism and argue in this paper that Kant is not a reductive phenomenalist. But Kant is, all the same, a phenomenalist. I shall call him an existential phenomenalist. The difference is this: Kant does not maintain, as Bennett claims, that all propositions which assert or presuppose the existence of objects must be translatable into statements which refer to intuitions alone, but he does hold that all such propositions are translatable into statements about the existence of intuitions alone. When Kant tells us, therefore, that objects are mere “appearances,” he is not offering a theory about what empirical objects are or about what we are really referring to when we refer to such objects, but he is offering a theory about the sense in which any empirical objects can meaningfully be said to exist. The significance of the distinction between reductive and existential phenomenalism is great. For it both allows Kant to do justice to those considerations which appear to lead to idealism or phenomenalism, while it does not at the same time require him to deny that the level at which we speak of material bodies and states is, and must be, a basic level of our conceptual framework. It cannot be one which is itself built upon, or constructed out of, some more basic level, e.g., out of talk about sense-data or sensory states. The uniqueness of Kant’s phenomenalism lies precisely at this point. (shrink)

In my commentary, I write, firstly, of the dualistic (ambivalent) use of the concept ‘appearance’ by Kant and, secondly, of the need for a semantic (referential) interpretation of the Kantian concept ‘‘appearance’ as opposed to intentional interpretation of R.Aquilla. In his reply to my objections, R. Aquila precisies his initial position and gives additional arguments in it’s favor.

I argue for a basically Sartrean approach to the idea that one's self-concept, and any form of knowledge of oneself as an individual subject, presupposes concepts and knowledge about other things. The necessity stems from a pre-conceptual structure which assures that original self-consciousness is identical with one's consciousness of objects themselves. It is not a distinct accomplishment merely dependent on the latter. The analysis extends the matter/form distinction to concepts. It also requires a distinction between two notions of consciousness: one (...) relates to the employment of already formed concepts, the other to the structures of imaginative apprehension that help to constitute (empirical) concepts from the start. We need to see that (1) so far as objects are only conceptualized appearances, the material through which we apprehend them must be reflected in that apprehension itself; (2) the corresponding material consists of a manifold of pre-conceptually active anticipations and retentions concerning the course of one's own experience. The resultant structure imposes an orientation on the world of appearances that does not derive from a concept of oneself as an individual in it, but that nevertheless provides the only possible basis for such a concept. One's self-concept, at least as empirical subject, is simply that ofwhatever subject is indicated, in an appropriate way, by that orientation. (shrink)

It is difficult to know what sense to make of Kant’s apparent assignment, in the Critique of Pure Reason, of imagination to a kind of middle position between intuition and understanding. Kant himself appears unsure about it. Sometimes he sees imagination as responsible for one or more varieties of a sub-intellectual “synthesis” of intuitions.

The aim is to develop some new alternatives for a phenomenalistic reading of Kant. Although the concern is ultimately with empirically real objects, I begin with a reading of the Aesthetic and the notion of appearances as at least possibly of empirically real objects. Employing Husserlian terminology, I take these to be the “noematic correlate” of a fundamental mode of directedness borne by an (at least initially) purely aesthetic “noesis.” From here, and with a new reading of Kant’s discussion of (...) the “transcendental object = X,” new possibilities open for a sense in which even a phenomenalistic Kant might – without regarding them as also existing in themselves – regard empirically real objects as more than mere “logical constructs” out of the Aesthetic’s “appearances.”. (shrink)

The aim is to develop some new alternatives for a phenomenalistic reading of Kant. Although the concern is ultimately with empirically real objects, I begin with a reading of the Aesthetic and the notion of appearances as at least possibly of empirically real objects. Employing Husserlian terminology, I take these to be the “noematic correlate” of a fundamental mode of directedness borne by an (at least initially) purely aesthetic “noesis”. From here, and with a new reading of Kant's discussion of (...) the “transcendental object = X ”, new possibilities open for a sense in which even a phenomenalistic Kant might - without regarding them as also existing in themselves - regard empirically real objects as more than mere “logical constructs” out of the Aesthetic's “appearances”. (shrink)

The aim is to develop some new alternatives for a phenomenalistic reading of Kant. Although the concern is ultimately with empirically real objects, I begin with a reading of the Aesthetic and the notion of appearances as at least possibly of empirically real objects. Employing Husserlian terminology, I take these to be the “noematic correlate” of a fundamental mode of directedness borne by an (at least initially) purely aesthetic “noesis.” From here, and with a new reading of Kant’s discussion of (...) the “transcendental object = X,” new possibilities open for a sense in which even a phenomenalistic Kant might – without regarding them as also existing in themselves – regard empirically real objects as more than mere “logical constructs” out of the Aesthetic’s “appearances.”. (shrink)

I argue, First, That the bundle theory is compatible with certain views of mental states as alterations in an underlying substance. Then I distinguish between momentary and enduring experiencers and argue that the bundle theory does not imply the possibility of experiences apart from experiencers, But at most apart from enduring experiencers. Finally, I reject strawson's claim that the bundle theory implies that some particular person's experience might instead have belonged to some other person. Regarding experiences as events rather than (...) peculiar sorts of particulars facilitates each of these points. (shrink)

I want to defend the “bundle theory” of mind from two criticisms which are sometimes levelled against it. The criticisms rest on the claim that particular experiences are “individuated” by the experiencer who has those experiences. One of these criticisms is that while it is logically impossible that there be an experience which is not had by some sentient or cognizant being, acceptance of the bundle theory would entail admission of the possibility of experiences without experiencers. The other criticism is (...) one which has been raised at least with respect to the most plausible form of the bundle theory. It is directed at that view which analyzes the conditions for an experience's membership in a given person's mind in terms of some external relationship between an experience and that particular person's body. The objection is, once again, that the view in question is committed to regarding as logically possible something which is in fact logically impossible. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Columbia History of Western Philosophy ed. by Richard H. PopkinRichard E. AquilaRichard H. Popkin, editor. The Columbia History of Western Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Pp. xxvi + 836. Cloth, $59.95.This volume aims to “… revise the general prevailing understanding of the history of philosophy among present-day academics.” It aims to do so by emphasizing the “full intellectual and social contexts” of the ideas in (...) question, with particular emphasis on developments in religion and science. Unsurprisingly, the theme of scepticism not only looms large in the sections devoted to the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophers, but also, in the light of its more explicit and detailed connection to the context of religious controversy, its presentation is fuller than what might be expected under the “prevailing understanding.” (Both that theme, and also the influence of the Kaballah, are touched on twice in the general introduction. I take the occasion to note that the index, though extensive, is sometimes less useful than it might be, leaving to the reader’s own eventual discovery, for example, the often neglected connection of the latter with Spinoza.)Popkin also takes pain to lament the common attitude “that the history of philosophy is nothing but footnotes to Plato and Aristotle” (xviii). As if to underscore his point, the first chapter—going from the Pre-Socratics through early Christian philosophy—is not even presented as a chapter on “Ancient Philosophy”: what is in question is simply the “Origins of Western Philosophic Thinking.” In any case, although introduced by him, the chapter is apparently not edited by Popkin himself, who lays such claim only to the chapters on medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. (Popkin’s introduction effectively emphasizes the three-fold background of “Asian,” Biblical, and Egyptian influence, with the last of its four pages devoted to Bernal’s Black Athena. I confess to not having read Bernai previously. But Popkin’s reflections were effective; I immediately contacted Amazon.com.) Each of the other chapters is said to have an overall “editor or editors,” but their identity is not revealed. However, presuming that, except for the first, the editor is the author of the corresponding introduction, we might guess: Stephen Brown for medieval Christian, Brian Copenhaver for the Renaissance, Rudolf Makkreel for the nineteenth century, Avrum Stroll for twentieth-century analytic. There is no general introduction to the twentieth-century continental chapter.Each section of a chapter is followed by a bibliography, though with no overarching format: some are restricted to secondary sources, others not, and there is no clear pattern regarding inclusion of non-English materials. The Medieval Christian and Renaissance chapters conclude with general bibliographies by their (apparent) editors. In any case, the bibliographies should serve eminently well for the editor’s view of the volume as a [End Page 669] “launching pad” to further study. It is in fact a most effective launching pad. However, there are some possible eyebrow-raisers. For example, apart from anthologies, the only books listed on Spinoza are Popkin’s own on the history of scepticism, Strauss’s Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, andWolfson’s The Philosophy of Spinoza; the secondary references for the Kabbala denudata are about the same in number as those for Descartes and Spinoza together; those for Thomasius and Wolff outnumber those for Kant, and there is no reference, for example, to Heidegger among the latter (and for that matter virtually none in the indexes of the books cited for Kant).In addition to the main sections of each chapter, there are occasional mini-sections, sometimes less than a page, by Popkin and others. Besides facilitating continuity, they provide additional references. On at least one occasion (cf. his brief comment following Plato), they give Popkin the opportunity to suggest that there are also other ways to look at the philosopher in question. In fact Popkin takes pains to note that no effort has been made to “force the different authors into a common expository style or into a common point of view,” and that they often in fact differ with each other (xviii). This seems to me not always felicitous, e.g... (shrink)

Transcendental consciousness is described by Kant as 'the one single thing' in which 'as in the transcendental subject, our perceptions must be encountered.' The unity of that subject depends on intellectual functions. I argue that its singularity is just the same as that of Kant's pre-intellectual 'form' of spatiotemporal 'intuition.' This may seem excluded by Kant's claim that it is through intellect that 'space or time are first given as intuitions.' But while preintellectual form is insufficient for space and time (...) as distinct 'things,' it is sufficient for the constitution of a 'single thing' indifferently construable as both. Contrary to what are typically seen as the main differences between Kant and Hume on identity of 'self,' there is thus already a difference in play below the level of either's concern with the sorts of connections available for the combining, or illusion of combining, of manifolds of 'impressions' or 'ideas.'. (shrink)