In Real Hallucinations, Matthew Ratcliffe offers a philosophical examination of the structure of human experience, its vulnerability to disruption, and how it is shaped by relations with other people. He focuses on the seemingly simple question of how we manage to distinguish among our experiences of perceiving, remembering, imagining, and thinking. To answer this question, he first develops a detailed analysis of auditory verbal hallucinations (usually defined as hearing a voice in the absence of a speaker) and thought insertion (somehow (...) experiencing one's own thoughts as someone else's). He shows how thought insertion and many of those experiences labeled as "hallucinations" consist of disturbances in a person's senseof being in one type of intentional state rather than another. Ratcliffe goes on to argue that such experiences occur against a backdrop of less pronounced but wider-ranging alterations in the structure of intentionality. In so doing, he considers forms of experience associated with trauma, schizophrenia, and profound grief. The overall position arrived at is that experience has an essentially temporal structure, involving patterns of anticipation and fulfillment that are specific to types of intentional states and serve to distinguish them phenomenologically. Disturbances of this structure can lead to various kinds of anomalous experience. Importantly, anticipation-fulfillment patterns are sustained, regulated, and disrupted by interpersonal experience and interaction. It follows that the integrity of human experience, including the most basic sense of self, is inseparable from how we relate to other people and to the social world as a whole. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Alston's arguments for doxastic involuntarism. Alston fails to distinguish (i) between volitional and executional lack of control, and (ii) between compatibilist and libertarian control. As a result, he fails to notice that, if one endorses a compatibilist notion of voluntary control, the outcome is a straightforward and compelling case for doxastic voluntarism. Advocates of involuntarism have recently argued that the compatibilist case for doxastic voluntarism can be blocked by pointing out that belief is never intentional. (...) In response to this strategy, I distinguish between two types of intentionality and argue that belief is no less intentional than action is. (shrink)

This paper discusses Raimo Tuomela's we-mode account in his recent book "Social Ontology: Collective Intentionality and Group Agents" and develops the idea that mode should be thought of as representational. I argue that in any posture – intentional state or speech act – we do not merely represent a state of affairs as what we believe, or intend etc. – as the received view of 'propositional attitudes' has it –, but our position relative to that state of affairs and thus (...) ourselves. That is, we represent the subject through what I call "subject mode" and its position through what I call "position mode". I argue that the key to understanding collective intentionality is to understand how we represent others as co-subjects of positions rather than as their objects. This is shown on various levels of collective intentionality. On the non-conceptual level of joint attention we experience others as co-subjects who we attend with rather than to and who we are at least also disposed to act jointly with. On the conceptual level of the we-mode we represent others as co-subjects of positions of knowledge, intention, belief and shared values. Organizations and thus group agents in Tuomela's sense I propose to understand in terms of what I call "role mode", that is, in terms of the positions individuals and groups take as occupants of certain roles, for example, as committee members, or as chancellor of Germany. I try to show how this account, while very much in the spirit of Tuomela's, can avoid his fictionalism about group agents and some other problems of his account, while steering between the Scylla of excessive individualism and the Charybdis of extreme collectivism. (shrink)

Robert Stalnaker argues that his causal-pragmatic account of the problem of intentionality commits him to a coarse-grained conception of the contents of mental states, where propositions are represented as sets of possible worlds. Stalnaker also accepts the "direct reference" theory of names, according to which co-referring names have the same content. Stalnaker's view of content is thus threatened by Frege's Puzzle. Stalnaker's classic paper "Assertion" is intended to provide a response to this threat. In this paper, I evaluate Stalnaker's claim (...) that the causal-pragmatic account of intentionality commits one to a coarse-grained conception of the contents of mental states, and argue that the apparatus laid out in "Assertion" is not sufficiently comprehensive to account for all versions of Frege's Puzzle. (shrink)

This book examines the human ability to participate in moments of joint feeling. It presents an answer to the question concerning the nature of our faculty to share in what might be called episodes of collective affective intentionality. The proposal develops the claim that our capacity to participate in such episodes is grounded in an ability central to our human condition: our capacity to care with one another about certain things. The author provides a phenomenologically adequate account of collective affective (...) intentionality that takes seriously the idea that feelings are at the core of our emotional relation to the world. He details a form of group emotional orientation that relies on the fact that the participating individuals have come to share a number of concerns. Readers will learn that at the heart of a collective affective intentional episode, one does not merely find a set of shared concerns, but also a particular mode of caring. In the end, the argument presented in this monograph makes plausible the idea that the emotions through which humans participate in moments of affective intentional community express our nature. In addition, it shows that the debate on collective affective intentionality also permits us to better understand the relationship between two conflicting philosophical pictures of ourselves: the idea that we are essentially social beings and the claim that we are creatures for whom our personal existence is an issue. Thus, aiming at an elucidation of the nature of our ability to feel together, the book offers a detailed account of what it is to situationally express our human nature by caring about something in a properly joint manner. (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)

1. Professor Brandom’s paper is addressed to a methodological question: When we set out to account for the intentionality of thought and language, what resources may we exploit? Which notions may we use? Brandom is a famously ambitious theorist. Unlike his colleague, John McDowell, Brandom has long maintained that we should at least aspire to explain intentionality in non-intentional terms. This leaves it open, however, which non-intentional resources are legitimate.

Here I show that Sellars’ radicalization of the Kantian distinction between concepts and intuitions is vulnerable to a challenge grounded in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of embodiment. Sellars argues that Kant’s concept of ‘intuition’ is ambiguous between singular demonstrative phrases and sense-impressions. In light of the critique of the Myth of the Given, Sellars argues, in the ‘Myth of Jones’, that sense-impression are theoretical posits. I argue that Merleau-Ponty offers a way of understanding perceptual activity which successfully avoids both the Myth of (...) the Given and the Myth of Jones. I also argue that Merleau-Ponty’s approach provides an alternative to McDowell’s critique of Sellars. Merleau-Ponty shows, first, that perceptual activity can be characterized as having a unity and structure of its own which is importantly different from that of concepts; secondly, that the unity and structure of perception can be revealed phenomenologically rather than as a theoretical posit. (shrink)

William James's theory of emotion is often criticized for placing too much emphasis on bodily feelings and neglecting the cognitive aspects of emotion. This paper suggests that such criticisms are misplaced. Interpreting James's account of emotion in the light of his later philosophical writings, I argue that James does not emphasize bodily feelings at the expense of cognition. Rather, his view is that bodily feelings are part of the structure of intentionality. In reconceptualizing the relationship between cognition and affect, James (...) rejects a number of commonplace assumptions concerning the nature of our cognitive relationship with the world, assumptions that many of his critics take for granted. (shrink)

This entry surveys a range of proposed solutions to the problem of intentionality, that is, the problem of explaining how human thoughts can be about, or be directed toward, objects. The family of solutions described here takes the content of a mental representation—what that concept represents or is about—to be a function of causal relations between mental representations and their typically external objects. This emphasis on causal relations should be understood broadly, however, so as to cover theories couched in terms (...) of law-like natural relations or the law-governed way in which one natural event carries information about another. (shrink)

This paper introduces the concept of collective intentionality and shows its relevance when we seek to understand public management. Social ontology – particularly its leading concept, collective intentionality – provides critical insights into public organisations. The paper sets out the some of the epistemological limitations of cultural theories and takes as its example of these the group-grid theory of Douglas and Hood. It then draws upon Brentano, Husserl and Searle to show the ontological character of public management. Modern public institutions (...) – such as advisory organisations and service delivery agencies, including schools and universities – are expressions of human collective intentionality. The central concept within these institutions, as a phenomenology reveals, is cooperation. Public institutions are natural structures that emerge from our evolutionary ancestry as cooperative animals and enduringly display all the features of that ancestry. (shrink)

Davidson has been instrumental in dampening the prospect of reductively explaining the mind. The core of his arguments turn upon his insistence that contentful mental states, the bread and butter of folk psychology, have a “normative element.” In spite of its pivotal role, as well as its intrinsic interest, the concept is very poorly developed and understood. This paper attempts to discern four different strands of the normativity of intentionality and to spark a long overdue systematic examination of a fascinating (...) and significant thesis. (shrink)

The influence of Brentano on the emergence of Husserl's notion of intentionality has been usually perceived as the key of understanding the history of intentionality, since Brentano was credited with the discovery of intentionality, and Husserl was his discipline. This much debated question is to be revisited in the present essay by incorporating recent advances in Brentano scholarship and by focusing on Husserl's very first work, his habilitation essay (Über den Begriff der Zahl), which followed immediately after his study years (...) at Brentano, and also on manuscript notes from the same period. It is to be shown that (i) although Brentano failed to enact a direct influence on Husserl's notion of intentionality (much in line with K. Schuhmann's claim), (ii) yet the core of Brentano's notion remained operative in Husserl's theory of relations, which is seemingly influenced by John Stuart Mill and Hermann Lotze. This investigation is intended as a contribution towards the proper understanding of the complexities of Husserl's early philosophy. (shrink)

This article seeks to grasp the meaning of Michel Henry's use of the term "transcendental" to understand its specific nature as pure experience that owes nothing to the constituted or the a posteriori. It then considers the methodological consequences and difficulties resulting from such a conception of the transcendental. According to my hypothesis, in order to maintain the "major division" between the empirical and the transcendental, material phenomenology is caught in a form of double bind. One cannot say much about (...) the transcendental without risking contamination by the empirical. As far as the constituted is concerned, it is certainly possible to refer to it, but actually there is nothing to say. This paper tests this interpretative hypothesis against a specific example, namely, the phenomenological description of feeling offered by Henry. The analysis concludes by considering whether material phenomenology does not lapse into what Rudolf Bernet calls a form of "hyper-transcendentalism" in the sense that the totality of empirical reality ends by being "transcendentalized". No basis can be provided for intentionality, as Henry sometimes claims: it becomes a superfluous concept. (shrink)

Since the "Book of Changes" began, the ancient philosopher has been pursuing the mastery of mind and the world changes, trying to grasp the mind and the world of the intersection of the germinal "few." Therefore, the pursuit of traditional Chinese metaphysics of mind and matter can be regarded as homologous to the heart through heterogeneous material theory. Revealed through the things on the mind from the "copulative" metaphysical implication began to study the real mind and matter blend of process (...) and ideas with the world as a blend of man and the world of geo-environmental health point of integration. Thrust through the heart of the matter is one on the transport world, of which the world of transportation and not for the world of technology being transported. People's ideas are always materialized in the face of difficulties, it must be "real meaning" to make your mind strong, but not from his own from the material. Operation of the heart through the world of matter theory, have to reveal the nature of the territorial boundaries of intent, which is associated with mood as a blend of environmental significance. Ever since the Book of Changes , ancient Chinese philosophers have tried to pursue the prevalence of intentionality throughout the many changes of the world, hoping to grasp the complex relation between one s original intention and the world itself. In this regard, Chinese metaphysics may be seen as pursuing "the concretization of intentionality", that is, exploring the connection between mind and the things or events which are causally connected. Hence, the Confucian theory of concretizing intentionality was meant to stress the metaphysical significance of the Great Zhouyi commentaries. The theory researches the way in which human intentionality relates to the world. It takes the original mind-world relation as the origin of mind-world continuity. One main purpose of this theory is to stimulate change in the world, to single out our own intention as a primary mover, rather than allow ourselves to be slaves to our own devices. In short, this Confucian theory of concretizing intentionality highlights the significance of the mind-world relation. (shrink)

최근 현상학과 인지과학의 학제적 융합을 시도하는 연구들이 늘어나고 있다. 이 연구들 중 대부분은 메를로 퐁티나 하이데거의 현상학을 인지과학의 철학적 토대로 인용하고 있다. 상대적으로 현상학의 창시자인 에드문트 후설의 현상학을 생물학이나 신경과학 등과 연결하여 인지현상학(cognitive phenomenology)의 학문적 가능성을 연구하는 것에는 다소 인색한 편이다. 이러한 경향은 후설의 현상학을 1인칭의 자서전적인 현상학으로 규정하는데서 비롯된 것이다. 후설의 현상학을 의식으로 환원해 들어가는 일종의 내재주의 혹은 내성철학으로 성급하게 재단하는 데 익숙하기 때문이다.BR 후설의 현상학에 대한 이러한 평가를 논거로 하여, 바렐라(F. Varela)와 데넷(D. Dennett)은 후설의 현상학을 인지과학과 - 방법론적으로든 (...) 내용적으로든 - 연결할 수 있는 고리를 확인하기 힘들다고 주장한다. 그들은 후설의 현상학을 1인칭의 자기(auto)현상학 혹은 유아론으로 규정한다. 이들은 후설의 현상학을 ‘안’의 현상학으로 규정하여, 타 학문, 특히 인지과학과의 연결을 원천적으로 봉쇄하는 자의적인 전략에 익숙해져 있다.BR 본 연구는 후설의 현상학을 1인칭의 ‘안’의 현상학으로 규정하지 않는다. 초기의 이러한 입장이 후기의 발생적 현상학으로 가면서 현상학 자체가 자연화된다. 이 자연화의 과정을 통해 심리학이나 생물학과 연결할 수 있는 고리를 형성한다. 이 고리는 체화된 마음으로서의 몸이다. 몸은 메를로 퐁티에 의해 더욱 구체화되기 이전 후설의 후기 사상의 핵심적인 주제로 등장한다. 고전적 인지과학이 극복할 수 없었던 의식과 인지의 간극을 메울 수 있는 접점이 후설 현상학의 주제들 속에서 발견된다. 본 연구는 ‘수동적 지향성’(passive intentionality)을 통로로 후설의 현상학과 인지과학이 상호 협력 혹은 상호제약할 수 있는 가능성을 검토한다.BR 본 연구는 후설의 현상학이 안의 현상학으로부터 바깥의 현상학으로 전개되어 가는 과정을 검토함으로써 인지현상학의 가능성을 검토한다. 이러한 연구의 배경은 후설의 현상학과 인지과학의 간극을 메우려는 긍정적인 연구들이다. 특히 갤러거(S. Gallagher)와 자하비(D. Zahavi) 그리고 톰슨(E. Thompson)의 연구가 대표적이다. 톰슨은 바렐라와 로쉬와 공동저술한 책(THE EMBODIED MIND: COGNITIVE SCIENCE AND HUMAN EXPERIENCE, 1991)에서는 후설의 현상학을 유아론으로 규정했다. 하지만 바렐라와 공동으로 저술하던 중 바렐라가 갑자기 세상을 떠나는 바람에, 결국 16년 후 톰슨 개인의 저술로 발표한 책(MIND IN LIFE, Biology, phenomenology, and the Science of Mind)에서는 후설을 유아론으로 비판하고, 그 대안으로 불교와 인지과학의 학제적 연대의 가능성을 연구했던 이전의 책에서와는 전혀 다른 입장을 취한다. 톰슨은 후설 현상학, 특히 후기 발생적 현상학의 주제들인 몸, 습관, 상호주관성이론, 생활세계 등에 대한 분석을 통해 신경현상학의 길을 열어 놓고 있다. 본 연구는 이러한 최근의 학문적 동향을 고려하면서, 후설의 발생적 현상학에 방점을 두어 인지과학과의 학제적 연대를 긍정적으로 검토할 것이다. (shrink)

The scalar notion of collective intentionality has been used to characterize the evolution of largely uncollaborative apes to highly collaborative ones. This proposal covers human evolution up until and including the formation of hunter-gather groups. But can collective intentionality also explain the emergence of complex societies? I argue that it cannot. Instead of collective intentionality, collaboration in complex societies hinges on a set of non-strategic attitudes and standardized human interactions so that role divisions, institutions, norms and conventions can emerge as (...) group-level phenomena. This set, summarized as ‘conventionality’, is a product of group-level selection rather than of collectively intending minds. (shrink)

Husserlian phenomenology develops around Husserl’s theory of the complex structure of intentionality, featuring key notions of noesis, noema, horizon, and the constitution of objects of consciousness. By virtue of the structures of noema and horizon found in our experience, things in the world around us are said to be “constituted” in consciousness (along with self and other). The present essay explores intentionality and constitution as modeled in lines of interpretation that extend classical Husserlian phenomenology. The resulting “semantic” approach to intentionality (...) draws on the ontology of consciousness, meaning, and horizon, unfolding a “constitutive” realism whereby our consciousness takes its place in the world beyond our consciousness, yet we experience things in the world around us by virtue of noema and horizon. The “logical” and the “transcendental” aspects of phenomenal intentionality appear in due course, within a formal model of intentionality, a model taking shape within a meta-phenomenological and meta-metaphysical framework. (shrink)

John Stewart commits himself to the defence of a demanding version of enaction. Among its many original features, John’s version of enaction includes a questionable form of anti-representationalism, and leaves room for the Varelian idea that intentionality is a biological property. This stance anticipates contemporary endorsements in 4E cognition of intentionality as a non-representational and non-contentful property. Once it is deprived of its representational tinsels, intentionality appears to us again as a property of object-directedness. Nevertheless, is the autopoietic model of (...) intentionality as object-directedness coherent and convincing? And do we need intentionality when we describe the meaningful relations between organisms and their environments? The article seeks to answer to these questions. (shrink)

John Searle's Speech Acts (1969) and Expression and Meaning (1979) developed a highly original and influential approach to the study of language. But behind both works lay the assumption that the philosophy of language is in the end a branch of the philosophy of the mind: speech acts are forms of human action and represent just one example of the mind's capacity to relate the human organism to the world. The present book is concerned with these biologically fundamental capacities, and, (...) though third in the sequence, in effect it provides the philosophical foundations for the other two. Intentionality is taken to be the crucial mental phenomenon, and its analysis involves wide-ranging discussions of perception, action, causation, meaning, and reference. In all these areas John Searle has original and stimulating views. He ends with a resolution of the 'mind-body' problem. (shrink)

John Searle's Speech Acts (1969) and Expression and Meaning (1979) developed a highly original and influential approach to the study of language. But behind both works lay the assumption that the philosophy of language is in the end a branch of the philosophy of the mind: speech acts are forms of human action and represent just one example of the mind's capacity to relate the human organism to the world. The present book is concerned with these biologically fundamental capacities, and, (...) though third in the sequence, in effect it provides the philosophical foundations for the other two. Intentionality is taken to be the crucial mental phenomenon, and its analysis involves wide-ranging discussions of perception, action, causation, meaning, and reference. In all these areas John Searle has original and stimulating views. He ends with a resolution of the 'mind-body' problem. (shrink)

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. In doing so, he sheds new light on Sellars’s influential arguments concerning the ‘Myth of the Given’ and shows how we can build a productive discourse between American pragmatism, analytical (...) philosophy and European phenomenology. (shrink)

Phenomenal intentionality is supposed to be a kind of directedness of the mind onto the world that is grounded in the conscious feel of mental life. This book of new essays explores a number of issues raised by the notion of phenomenal intentionality.

Phenomenal intentionality is a kind of intentionality, or aboutness, that is grounded in phenomenal consciousness, the subjective, experiential feature of certain mental states. The phenomenal intentionality theory (PIT), is a theory of intentionality according to which there is phenomenal intentionality, and all other kinds of intentionality at least partly derive from it. In recent years, PIT has increasingly been seen as one of the main approaches to intentionality.

This paper has three aims. First, I aim to stress the importance of the issue of the dispositional/categorical distinction in the light of the evident failure of the traditional formulation, which is in terms of conditional entailment. Second, I consider one radical new alternative on offer from Ullin Place: intentionality as the mark of the dispositional. I explain the appeal of physical intentionality, but show it ultimately to be unacceptable. Finally, I suggest what would be a better theory. If we (...) take disposition ascriptions to be functional characterizations of properties, then we can explain all that was appealing about the new alternative without the unacceptable consequences. (shrink)

Intentionality is the power of minds to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties and states of affairs. The puzzles of intentionality lie at the interface between the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language. The word itself, which is of medieval Scholastic origin, was rehabilitated by the philosopher Franz Brentano towards the end of the nineteenth century. ‘Intentionality’ is a philosopher's word. It derives from the Latin word intentio, which in turn derives from the verb (...) intendere, which means being directed towards some goal or thing. The entry falls into eleven sections. (shrink)

‘It is of the very nature of consciousness to be intentional’ said Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘and a consciousness that ceases to be a consciousness of something would ipso facto cease to exist’.1 Sartre here endorses the central doctrine of Husserl’s phenomenology, itself inspired by a famous idea of Brentano’s: that intentionality, the mind’s ‘direction upon its objects’, is what is distinctive of mental phenomena. Brentano’s originality does not lie in pointing out the existence of intentionality, or in inventing the terminology, which (...) derives from scholastic discussions of concepts or intentiones.2 Rather, his originality consists in his claim that the concept of intentionality marks out the subject matter of psychology: the mental. His view was that intentionality ‘is characteristic exclusively of mental phenomena. No physical phenomenon manifests anything like it’.3 This is Brentano’s thesis that intentionality is the mark of the mental. Despite the centrality of the concept of intentionality in contemporary philosophy of mind, and despite the customary homage paid to Brentano as the one who revived the terminology and placed the concept at the centre of philosophy, Brentano’s thesis is widely rejected by contemporary philosophers of mind. What is more, its rejection is not something which is thought to require substantial philosophical argument. Rather, the falsity of the thesis is taken as a starting-point in many contemporary discussions of intentionality, something so obvious that it only needs to be stated to be recognised as true. Consider, for instance, these remarks from the opening pages of Searle’s Intentionality: Some, not all, mental states and events have Intentionality. Beliefs, fears, hopes and desires are Intentional; but there are forms of nervousness, elation and undirected anxiety that are not Intentional.... My beliefs and desires must always be about something. But my nervousness and undirected anxiety need not in that way be about anything.4 Searle takes this as obvious, so obvious that it is not in need of further argument or elucidation. (shrink)

This dialogue explores the question of whether intentionality—the “ofness”, “aboutness”, or “directedness” of mental states—is a relation. We explore three views: the Naive View, on which intentionality is a relation to ordinary, everyday objects, facts, and other such items; the Abstract Contents View, on which intentionality is a relation to mind-independent abstract entities that are our contents; and the Aspect View, on which intentionality is a matter of having intentional states with particular (non-relational) aspects that are our contents. We consider (...) the challenges facing these views, which include empirical challenges in accounting for all the contents our intentional states can represent, metaphysical challenges in making sense of how contents can be entertained or otherwise represented by us and how they can play a psychological role in the mental economy, and challenges in making sense of how intentionality connects us to the world—if at all. Along the way, we consider the question of how consciousness is related to intentionality and how this affects one’s choice of views. (shrink)

The Physical Intentionality Thesis claims that dispositions share the marks of psychological intentionality; therefore, intentionality is not exclusively a mental phenomenon. Beyond the standard five marks, Alexander Bird introduces two additional marks of intentionality that he argues dispositions do not satisfy: first, thoughts are extrinsic; second, the direction of causation is that objects cause thoughts, not vice versa. In response, this paper identifies two relevant conceptions of extrinsicness, arguing that dispositions show deep parallels to thoughts on both conceptions. Then, it (...) shows that Bird’s discussion of direction of causation overlooks complexities of dispositionality and intentionality that problematize apparent differences between thoughts and dispositions. The paper ends with a discussion of why we find these parallels between thoughts and dispositions. (shrink)

In recent years, several philosophers have defended the idea of phenomenal intentionality : the intrinsic directedness of certain conscious mental events which is inseparable from these events’ phenomenal character. On this conception, phenomenology is usually conceived as narrow, that is, as supervening on the internal states of subjects, and hence phenomenal intentionality is a form of narrow intentionality. However, defenders of this idea usually maintain that there is another kind of, externalistic intentionality, which depends on factors external to the subject. (...) We may ask whether this concession to content externalism is obligatory. In this paper, I shall argue that it isn’t. I shall suggest that if one is convinced that narrow phenomenal intentionality is legitimate, there is nothing stopping one from claiming that all intentionality is narrow. (shrink)

Intentional states appear to relate thinkers to objects and situations even when these latter do not exist. Given the concern to allow that thought is a mode of engagement between subject and world, many writers have presented relational theories of intentionality and introduced odd relata to account for thought of the non‐existent. However there are familiar epistemological and ontological objections to such accounts which give reason to look for other ways of accommodating the appearance of relationality. A little explored possibility (...) is to countenance not odd relata but odd relations, ones not requiring existent terms other than those which ground the relation on the side of the subject. Proposals to this effect by Findlay and Grossmann are underdescribed and not obviously different from more familiar odd relata theories. Here a more developed view is explored, which derives from scholastic accounts of intentionality, in particular that presented by John of St Thomas, as this has been elaborated and defended in recent writings by John Deely. While judging it to fail, I suggest that it leads us towards an older tradition according to which the intentionality of thought is constituted by the occurrence of the forms of things in the mind. ‘Formally and principally the whole difference between a mind‐independent relation and a mind‐dependent one comes down to this, that a physical relation has a mind‐independent fundament with a coexistent terminus while a mental relation lacks such a foundation.’(Joannes a Sancto Thoma, Cursus Philosophicus: Ars Logica; Tractatus de Signis)1. (shrink)

How can philosophy or science claim to discover objective truth when their arguments originate from subjective beings? In _Intentionality and Semiotics_, John Deely offers a controversial solution to the problem of subjectivity in inquiry. He creates an interface between semiotics and the concept of intentionality, as it appears in Aquinas’s work, to demonstrate that every sign is irrevocably linked to the reality of relations. In the process, Deely builds a bridge between classical thinkers such as Aristotle and modernists such as (...) Heidegger and Peirce in this innovative volume. (shrink)

This paper compares tracking and phenomenal intentionality theories of intentionality with respect to the issue of naturalism. Tracking theories explicitly aim to naturalize intentionality, while phenomenal intentionality theories generally do not. It might seem that considerations of naturalism count in favor of tracking theories. We survey key considerations relevant to this claim, including some motivations for and objections to the two kinds of theories. We conclude by suggesting that naturalistic considerations may in fact support phenomenal intentionality theories over tracking theories.

Efficient prospective motor control, evident in human activity from birth, reveals an adaptive intentionality of a primary, pre-reflective, and pre-conceptual nature that we identify here as sensorimotor intentionality. We identify a structural continuity between the emergence of this earliest form of prospective movement and the structure of mental states as intentional or content-directed in more advanced forms. We base our proposal on motor control studies, from foetal observations through infancy. These studies reveal movements are guided by anticipations of future effects, (...) even from before birth. This implies that these movements, even if they are simple and discrete, are the actions of an intentional agent. We develop this notion to present a theory of the developing organisation of a core feature of cognition as embodied agent action, from early single actions with proximal prospectivity to the complex serial ordering of actions into projects to reach distal goals. We claim the prospective structural continuity from early and simple actions to later complex projects of serially-ordered actions confirms the existence of an ontogenetically primary form of content–directedness that is a driver for learning and development. Its implications for understanding autism are discussed. (shrink)

A proper understanding of intentionality is crucial to the study of a number of topics in cognitive science, including perception, imagery, and consciousness. The term itself, intentionality, can be misleading, in suggesting intentional action, doing something intentionally, with a certain aim or purpose. In cognitive science, the term is used in a different, more technical sense. Intentionality involves reference or aboutness or some similar relation to something having what the scholastics of the Middle Ages called intentional inexistence.

This paper explores the relationship between phenomenal properties and intentional properties. In recent years a number of philosophers have argued that intentional properties are sometimes necessitated by phenomenal properties, but have not explained why or how. Exceptions can be found in the work of Katalin Farkas and Farid Masrour, who develop versions of reductionism regarding phenomenally-necessitated intentionality (or "phenomenal intentionality"). I raise two objections to reductive theories of the sort they develop. Then I propose a version of primitivism regarding phenomenal (...) intentionality. I argue that primitivism avoids the pitfalls of reductionism while promising broad explanatory payoffs. (shrink)

In this article I show the relevance of early phenomenology for the understanding of sociality by focusing on one element of pivotal importance: the phenomenological idea that affective phenomena are intentionally directed towards the world and others, and reveal what matters to us and what motivates us to action. This phenomenological idea of intentional feelings is amalgamated in the newly-coined concept of ‘affective intentionality’. The article focuses on three aspects of this concept: (i) the fact that our emotional intentional directedness (...) towards the world and the others is socially embedded, (ii) that it is socially shaped, and (iii) that it can assume shared forms. The thread that runs through this article is the idea that the analysis of affectivity is decisive for offering new perspectives on the interconnection between the individual and the social. I develop this idea by focusing on the phenomena of feelings and sentiments analysed respectively by Scheler and Pfänder. The result of this analysis lends further support to the idea of a relational concept of intentionality in early phenomenology, and gives key insight into the early phenomenological contribution to the social sciences. The analysis shows that a phenomenological sociology cannot be developed independently of a value-ethics. (shrink)