The Phenomenal Basis of Intentionality

Abstract

Some mental states seem to be "of" or "about" things or to "say" something. For example, a thought might represent that grass is green, and a visual experience might represent a blue cup. This is intentionality. The aim of this book is to explain this phenomenon. Once we understand intentionality as a phenomenon to be explained, rather than a posit in a theory explaining something else, we can see that there are glaring empirical and in-principle difficulties with currently popular tracking and functional role theories of intentionality, which aim to account for intentionality in terms of tracking relations and functional roles. This book develops an alternative theory, the phenomenal intentionality theory (PIT), on which the source of intentionality is none other than phenomenal consciousness, the subjective, felt, or qualitative aspect of mental life. While PIT avoids the problems that plague tracking and functional role theories, it faces its own challenges in accounting for the rich and complex contents of thoughts and the contents of nonconscious states. In responding to these challenges, this book proposes a novel version of PIT, one on which all intentionality is phenomenal intentionality, though we in some sense represent many non-phenomenal contents by ascribing them to ourselves. This book further argues that phenomenal consciousness is an intrinsic feature of mental life, resulting in a view that is radically internalistic in spirit: Our phenomenally represented contents are literally in our heads, and any non-phenomenal contents we in some sense represent are expressly targeted by us.

Propositionalism without Propositions, Objectualism without Objects

“…Suppose that it turned out that intentionality was not a relation to distinctly existing entities that play the roles of contents, but rather an adverbial modification of intentional subjects or intentional states, as some have argued (Kriegel 2007, 2011, Pitt 2009, Mendelovici 2018). On these non-relational views of intentionality, contents are psychological types, ways of representing, or aspects of intentional states, rather than entities existing distinctly of our intentional states that we grasp, entertain, or otherwise represent.…”

The Phenomenal-Intentional Nature of Happiness: A contemporary Approach to Epictetus and Stoicism

“…If we compare the modern ideas of representationalism with the Stoicism, we may notice that the role assigned to the phenomenal character of experience by the stoicism is unclear. My own view of this is that the perceptual process ("appearance") is not enough 9 For a reference about the phenomenal intentionality program can be consult: Kriegel (2013), Mendelovici (2018), Gonzalez (2018) 10 Contemporarily, Uriah Kriegel develops a framework to explain the phenomenal properties, and he suggests that "Corresponding to every perceptible property, then, is an appearance property, or phenomenal property. The appearance of an object is determined by the set of all its phenomenal properties."…”

Immediate and Reflective Senses

“…12 See Loar 2003, Strawson 1994, Siewert 1998, Horgan and Tienson 2002, Horgan and Graham 2009, Pitt 2004, Farkas 2008, Kriegel 2011, Bourget 2010a, 2010b, Mendelovici 2010, 2018, Bourget and Mendelovici 2016, and Mendelovici and Bourget 2014 13 Phenomenal intentionalists have proposed various derivation mechanisms. For example, Horgan and Tienson (2002) suggest that wide intentional states are derived from phenomenal intentional states together with "grounding presuppositions" and facts about the world, Bourget (2010a) takes non-phenomenal intentional states to derive from phenomenal intentional states via descriptive reference and other derivation mechanisms, and Kriegel (2011) maintains that non-conscious intentional states are derived from the phenomenal intentional states of an ideal rational agent.…”

“…Nonconscious occurrent states pose a challenge for PIT in general, not just for the PIT approach to immediate and reflective senses. Accordingly, the positions the PIT approach might take towards them correspond to the positions available to PIT, which are the following: (1) They phenomenally represent their contents (e.g., Pitt MS , Bourget 2010a, Mendelovici 2018: ch.~8); (2) they derivatively but not phenomenally represent their contents (e.g., Bourget 2010a, Kriegel 2011); and (3) they do not phenomenally or derivatively represent their contents, though they might "represent" them in some other sense (e.g., Searle 1990, Mendelovici 2018: ch.~8).…”