I happened upon this site today, and it looks good based on the one article I read, Shariah and Democracy. You decide.
Month: January 2011
Thilo Sarrazin and Muslim Integration
A friend gave me a copy of Thilo Sarrazin, Deutschland Schafft Sich Ab (Germany Does Away With Itself), but I haven't had time to read it. So I found this summary of some of Sarrazin's points useful. I cannot vouch for its accuracy.
A Memorable Weekend 40 Years Ago This Weekend
We have it on good authority that the unexamined life is not worth living. The same goes for the unrecorded and the unremembered life. So I pause to remember my best pal (at the time) and my best gal (at the time) and the trip we took in my 1963 Karmann Ghia convertible up the California coast to my favorite city (at the time). Van Morrison, Brown-Eyed Girl. Thelonious Monk, 'Round Midnight. Scott MacKenzie, San Francisco. While I was with the girl, Tom, fellow Kerouac aficionado and memory babe, stumbled upon a Monk gig, dug him and met his wife. Tom tells me that his remembrances of things past play like movies in his head. Me, I have to keep a journal.
My Intentionality Aporia ‘Ockhamized’
Edward of London proposes the following triad
O1. The proposition ‘Bill is looking for a nonexistent thing’ can be true even when there are no nonexistent things.
O2. The proposition ‘Bill is looking for a nonexistent thing’ expresses a relation between two things.
O3. Every relation is such that if it obtains, all of its relata exist.
as a nominalistic equivalent to my
W1. We sometimes think about the nonexistent.
W2. Intentionality is a relation between thinker and object of thought.
W3. Every relation R is such that, if R obtains,then all its relata exist.
Edward imposes the following contraint on aporetic polyads: "The essence of an aporetic polyad is that any proper subset of statements (including the singleton set) should be consistent on its own, and only the whole set being inconsistent." I accept this constraint. It implies that nothing can count as an aporetic polyad if one of its limbs is self-contradictory.
My definition runs as follows. An aporetic polyad is a set S of n self-consistent propositions (n>1) such that (i) any n-1 members of S, taken in conjunction, entail the negation of the remaining member; (ii) each member of S has a strong claim on our acceptance. Edward's constraint follows from this definition. For if any member is self-inconsistent, then it cannot have a strong claim, or any claim, on our acceptance.
If I understand Edward, he is urging two points. His first point is that my formulation of the triad is inept because (W1), unlike (O1), is self-contradictory. If this charge sticks, then my formulation does not count as an aporetic polyad by my own definition. His second point is that his version of the triad has a straightforward and obvious solution: reject (O2).
Reply to the First Point. There is nothing self-contradictory about 'We sometimes think of the nonexistent.' As I made clear earlier, this is a datanic, not a theoretical, claim. On this score it contrasts with the other two limbs. It is meant to record an obvious fact that everyone ought to grant instantly. Because the fact is obvious it is obviously self-consistent. So if Edward denies (W1), then it is not profitable to to continue a discussion with him.
All I can do at this point is speculate as to why Edward fails to get the point. I suppose what he is doing is reading a theory into (W1), a theory he considers self-contradictory. But (W1) simply records a pre-theoretical fact and is neutral with respect to such theories as Meinong's Theory of Objects. Suppose I am imagining a winged horse. If so, then it would be false to say that I am imagining nothing. One cannot simply imagine, or just imagine. It follows that I am imagining something. We are still at the level of data. I have said nothing controversial. One moves beyond data to theory if one interprets my imagining something that does not exist as my standing in a relation to a Meinongian nonexistent object. That is a highly controversial but possible theory, and it is not self-contradictory contrary to what Edward implies. But whether or not it is self-contradictory, the main point for now is that
1. BV is imagining a winged horse
Is neutral as between the following theory-laden interpretations
2. BV (or a mental act of his) stands in a dyadic relation to a Meinongian nonexistent object.
and
3. BV is imagining winged-horse-ly.
The crucial datum is that one cannot just imagine, or simply imagine. We express this by saying that to imagine is to imagine something. But 'imagine something' needn't be read relationally; it could be read adverbially. Accordingly, to imagine Peter (who exists) is to imagine Peter-ly, and to imagine Polonious (who does not exist) is to imagine Polonious-ly. I am not forced by the crucial datum to say that imagining involves a relation between subject and object; I can say that the 'object' reduces to an adverbial modification of my imagining.
So even if the relational reading of (1) were self-contradictory — which it isn't – one is not bound to interpret (1) relationally. Now (1) is just an example of (W1). So the same goes for (W1). (W1) is obviously true. He who denies it is either perverse or confused.
Reply to the Second Point. One can of course solve Edward's triad by denying (O2). But the real question is whether one can easily deny the distinct proposition (W2). I say no. For one thing, the alternatives to saying that intentionality is a relation are not at all appetizing. All three of the limbs of my triad lay claim to our acceptance, and none can be easily rejected – but they cannot all be true. That is why there is a problem.
Intentionality in Locks and Keys?
The mind-body problem divides into several interconnected subproblems. One concerns the relation of consciousness to its material substratum in the brain and central nervous system. A second concerns the aboutness or intentionality of (some) conscious states. A third problem is how a physical organism can be subject to the norms of rationality: How does an abstract argument-pattern such as Modus Tollens 'find purchase in' and 'govern' the transitions from one brain state to another? A fourth subproblem has to do with mental causation. Obviously, mental states are causally efficacious in bringing about physical states and other mental states. My desire for another cup of java is part of the causal chain that eventuates in the physical process of ingesting caffeine. Note also that knowledge of the physical world would presumably not be possible unless physical states could enter into the etiology of mental states. (I say 'presumably' because my formulation begs the question against idealism. And don't let anyone tell you that idealism is not a live option! The fact that it is not much discussed these days doesn't mean anything. Academic philosophers can be as fashion-conscious as teenage girls, and as worried about how they appear; idealism is currently not discussed in the more fashionable salons.)
Divide and conquer is one approach to any complex problem: separate out the subproblems and try to solve them separately. For example, separate the 'qualia' problem — which is part of the first subproblem mentioned — from the intentionality problem.
It might be that there is nothing specifically mental about intentionality at all. Perhaps intentionality is to be found in nature and in artifacts below the level of mind. If so, it may be possible to understand intentionality at the level of mind by working up to it 'from below.' It may be possible to build a 'gradualist bridge' from mindless intentionality to minded intentionality. One might then come to understand how intentionality in us has 'evolved.'
Now one very serious question is whether intentionality can be prised apart from consciousness and treated separately. This is a question Colin McGinn raises with great skill. It deserves a separate post. In this post, however, I will examine a passage from Daniel Dennett in which our man, having separated the qualia and intentionality problems, tries to get from mindless intentionality to the minded variety. The passage is from Kinds of Mind, p. 35:
Intentionality in the philosophical sense is just aboutness. [. . .] A lock and key exhibit the crudest form of intentionality; so do the opioid receptors in brain cells — receptors that are designed to accept the endorphin molecules that nature has been providing in brains for millions of years. [. . .] This lock-and-key variety of crude aboutness is the basic design element out of which nature has fashioned the fancier sorts of subsystems that may more deservedly be called representation systems, so we will have to to analyze the aboutness of these representations in terms of the (quasi?) aboutness of locks-and-keys in any case.
If I am thinking about Jude Acers, my thought is about him: he is not about my thinking. Generalizing, we can say that intentionality is an asymmetrical relation: if X stands in the intentional relation to Y, then Y does not stand in the intentional relation to X. (Brentano rightly pointed out long ago that intentionality is not a relation, strictly speaking, but ein Relativliches, something relation-like; but this nuance does not harm my point.)
Now in Dennett's example, is the lock about the key or the key about the lock? Well, there is a sense in which each is about the other. By studying the key, I can infer something about the lock, and by studying the lock I can infer something about the key. Each provides information about the other, and to a locksmith, a great deal of information.
There are many cases like this. Animal droppings on the trail provide information about what manner of critter has been by recently. Bear scat 'means' bears have been around. One sort of footprint 'indicates' that a coyote has passed by, another sort a mountain lion. The paw of a coyote provides information about the type of print it would leave if it were to leave a print, and a footprint provides information about the design of the paw. (Here 'design' just means pattern.)
So in the coyote case as in the lock and key case we have symmetrical aboutness: lock is about key, and key about lock; paw is about footprint, print is about paw. Or consider a compass needle. It is about magnetic North in the sense that one can infer where magnetic North is from the direction in which the the needle is pointing. But equally, one can infer from the location of magnetic North where a properly functioning compass needle will point.
The symmetry of this sort of aboutness — call it aboutness1 — gives us excellent reason to distinguish it from intentionality, or aboutness2, which is asymmetrical.
From this one can see that Dennett is completely mistaken in his claim that lock-and-key aboutness is a "form of intentionality." It is not a form of intentionality, and to think that it is is to confuse the the two senses of 'aboutness' lately distinguished. Dennett himself seems to be aware of this since at the end of the passage quoted he shifts his ground and speaks of "quasi-aboutness." This fudge is very telling. No doubt there is some likeness as between lock-and-key aboutness and intentional aboutness, but that proves nothing since everything is like everything else in some respect.
The point is that one gains no insight at all into how intentionality emerges — if it does emerge — by having it compared with locks and keys. Note also that to infer something about the lock from the key presupposes genuine intentionality on the part of the locksmith.
To sum up. To build his gradualist bridge, Dennett looks for a form of primitive intentionality below the level of mind or consciousness. He thinks he has found it in his lock and key example. But what I have just shown is that the symmetrical aboutness in the lock and key case is not, and cannot be, a form or type or species of intentionality — which is asymmetrical. The former merely resembles the genuine article. But if A resembles B, it does not follow that A is a form of B. A decoy duck resembles a duck but is not type of duck.
Ockhamite Advice for Leftists
Do not multiply enemies beyond necessity! By libeling those who disagree with you, for example. Making enemies for no good reason is generally foolish. It can come back to bite you.
Nick Gillespie on Cartoonist Steve Benson
There are several reasons why I don't subscribe to the Arizona Republic, and Steve Benson is one of them. Here. Editorial cartooning is indeed the lowest of art forms.
They Have Our Soul Who Have Our Bonds
Just one of the thoughts in this outstanding piece by Mark Steyn.
Posits or Inventions? Geach and Butchvarov on Intentionality
One philosopher's necessary explanatory posit is another's mere invention.
In his rich and fascinating article "Direct Realism Without Materialism" (Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 1994), Panayot Butchvarov rejects epistemic intermediaries as "philosophical inventions." Thus he rejects sense data, sensations, ways of being appeared to, sense experiences, mental representations, ideas, images, looks, seemings, appearances, and the like. (1) Curiously enough, however, Butch goes on to posit nonexistent or unreal objects very much in the manner of Meinong! Actually, 'posit' is not a word he would use since Butch claims that we are directly acquainted with unreal objects. (13) Either way, unreal objects such as the proverbial hallucinated pink rat are not, on Butchvarov's view, philosophical inventions.
But now consider the following 1961 passage from Anscombe and Geach's Three Philosophers, a passage that is as if directed against the Butchvarovian view:
But saying this has obvious difficulties. [Saying that all there is to a sensation or thought of X is its being of X.] It seems to make the whole being of a sensation or thought consist in a relation to something else: it is as if someone said he had a picture of a cat that was not painted on any background or in any medium, there being nothing to it except that it was a picture of a cat. This is hard enough: to make matters worse, the terminus of the supposed relation may not exist — a drunkard's 'seeing' snakes is not related to any real snake, nor my thought of a phoenix to any real phoenix. Philosophers have sought a way out of this difficulty by inventing chimerical entities like 'snakish sense-data' or 'real but nonexistent phoenixes' as termini of the cognitive relation. (95, emphasis added)
Butchvarov would not call a nonexistent phoenix or nonexistent pink rat real, but that it just a matter of terminology. What is striking here is that the items Geach considers chimerical inventions Butchvarov considers not only reasonably posited, but phenomenologically evident!
Ain't philosophy grand? One philosopher's chimerical invention is another's phenomenological given.
What is also striking about the above passage is that the position that Geach rejects via the 'picture of a cat' analogy is almost exactly the position that Butch maintains. Let's think about this a bit.
Surely Anscombe and Geach are right when it comes to pictures and other physical representations. There is a clear sense in which a picture (whether painting, photograph, etc.) of a cat is of a cat. The intentionality here cannot however be original; it must be derivative, derivative from the original intentionality of one who takes the picture to be of a cat. Surely no physical representation represents anything on its own, by its own power. And it is also quite clear that a picture of X is not exhausted by its being of X. There is more to a picture than its depicting something; the depicting function needs realization in some medium.
The question, however, is whether original intentionality also needs realization in some medium. It is not obvious that it does need such realization, whether in brain-stuff or in mind-stuff. Why can't consciousness of a cat be nothing more than consciousness of a cat? Why can't consciousness be exhausted in its being by its revelation of objects?
Bewusstsein als bewusst-sein. Get it?
But this is not the place to examine Butchvarov's direct realist conception of consciousness, a conception he finds in Moore, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Sartre, and contrasts with a mental- contents conception.
Aquinas on Intentionality: Towards a Critique
Yesterday I quoted Peter Geach in exposition of Aquinas' theory of intentionality. I will now quote Anthony Kenny in exposition of the same doctrine:
The form is individuated when existing with esse naturale in an actual example of a species; it is also individuated, in quite a different way, when it exists with esse intentionale in the mind of a thinker. Suppose that I think of a crocodile. There seem to be two things that make this thought the thought that it is: first, that it is a thought of a crocodile and not, say, of an elephant; second, that it is my thought and not yours or President Bush's. Other things may be true of thoughts — e.g. that they are interesting, obsessive, vague — but these seem to be the two things essential to any thoughts: that they should be someone's thoughts, and that they should be thoughts of something. The theory of intentionality is meant to set out both these features. The form of crocodile when existing in nature is individuated by the matter it informs; when existing intentionally, it is individuated by the person in whose mind it exists. (Aquinas on Being, Oxford 2002, p. 169)
The idea, then, is that one and the same form is both in the thing outside the mind (the crocodile in Kenny's example) and in the mind of the person who is thinking about the crocodile. It is this self-same form that makes the thought a thought of a crocodile as opposed to a thought of something else. But the form exists in mind and in thing in two different ways. It exists in the mind with esse intentionale (intentional be-ing), but exists in the thing with esse naturale (natural be-ing). (My use of 'be-ing' to translate esse is not for the sake of being cute but to underscore the crucial distinction between the infinitive esse (to be) and the present participle ens, both of which can be translated with 'being.')
The distinction between the two modes of be-ing is needed in order to avoid the consequence that a mind thinking about a crocodile either has a crocodile in it or is itself a crocodile. A thought of a red sunset is not a red thought, and a thought of a crocodile does not have the properties characteristic of a crocodile.
I now pass over to critique. Let's first note a distinction that I fudged yesterday for the sake of brevity, brevity being the soul of blog. Reverting to yesterday's example, it is the distinction between thinking of a cat (some cat or other) and thinking of a particular cat such as Max Black. It is one thing to explain how my thought of a cat is a thought of a cat (as opposed to a dog or a kangaroo), and quite another to explain how my thought of Max the cat is a thought of Max. The Thomist theory may well be up to the first task. But I'm not sure it is up to the second.
Matter is the principium individuationis. What makes a cat an individual cat numerically distinct from other cats is its signate or designated matter (materia signata). In extramental reality, then, Max's individuality is bound up with his signate matter. But when Max's form exists in my mind with esse intentionale, it is exists in an immaterial way. What then individuates Max's form as it exists in my mind with esse intentionale? And if nothing individuates it, then what makes my thought of Max the cat a thought of Max (as opposed to a thought of some cat or other)?
I hope to expatiate further on this tomorrow.
The Progressive “Climate of Hate”
Esse Intentionale and Esse Naturale: Notes on Geach on Aquinas on Intentionality
A theory of intentionality ought to explain how the objective reference or object-directedness of our thoughts is possible. Suppose I am thinking about a cat, a particular cat of my acquaintance whom I have named 'Max Black.' How are we to understand the relation between the mental act of my thinking, which is a transient datable event in my mental life, and its object, namely the cat I am thinking of? What makes my thinking of Max a thinking of Max?
Here is what Peter Geach has to say, glossing Aquinas:
What makes a sensation or thought of an X to be of an X is that it is an individual occurrence of that very form or nature which occurs in X — it is thus that our mind 'reaches right up to the reality'; what makes it to be a sensation or thought of an X rather than an actual X or an actual X-ness is that X-ness here occurs in the special way called esse intentionale and not in the 'ordinary' way called esse naturale. This solution resolves the difficulty. It shows how being of an X is not a relation in which the thought or sensation stands, but is simply what the thought or sensation is . . . .(Three Philosophers, Cornell UP, 1961, p. 95)
But what the devil does that mean? Allow me to explain. The main point here is that ofness or aboutness is not a relation between a mental act and its object. Thus intentionality is not a relation that relates my thinking of Max and Max. My thinking of Max just is the mental occurrence of the very same form or nature — felinity — which occurs physically in Max. Max is a hylomorphic compound, a compound of form and (signate) matter. Old Max himself, fleas and all, is of course not in my mind. It is his form that is in my mind. But if felinity informs my mind, why isn't my mind a cat? Here is where the distinction between esse intentionale and esse naturale comes in. One and the same form — felinity — exists in two different modes. Its mode of being in my mind is esse intentionale while its mode of being in Max is esse naturale.
Because my thought of Max just is the intentional occurrence of the same form or nature that occurs naturally in Max, there is no problem about how my thought reaches Max. One could call this an identity theory of intentionality.
What if Max were, unbeknownst to me, to cease to exist while I was thinking about him? My thinking would be unaffected: it would still be about Max in exactly the way it was about him before. The Thomist theory would account for this by saying that while the form occurs with esse intentionale in my mind, it does not occur outside my mind with esse reale.
That in a nutshell is the Thomist theory of intentionality. There is more to it of course, and it is open to some very serious objections. These will be discussed tomorrow perhaps.
A Reply to “Ockham’s Nominalism”
The following is a response to "Ockham's Nominalism" by our London sparring partner, Edward Ockham. His words are in black, mine are in blue. Comments are enabled.
At this stage, I should discuss Peter Lupu’s objections (mostly in the extended comment on Vallicella’s blog here) to the nominalist program.
I should first explain what I think the nominalist program is. I am taking my lead from a principle that William of Ockham neatly formulates in his Summa Logicae book I, chapter 51, where he accuses 'the moderns' of two errors, and says that the root of the second error is “to multiply entities according to the multiplicity of terms and to suppose that every term has something real (quid rei) corresponding to it”. He says grumpily that this is erroneous and leads far away from the truth. ('Radix est multiplicare entia secundum multitudinem terminorum, et quod quilibet terminus habet quid rei; quod tamen abusivum est et a veritate maxime abducens'). See also an early definition of nominalism here.
What does he mean? Well he says that it is an error. He implies it is a common one, by attributing to the moderns and by the fact he mentions it all. Thus he implies that there exist terms which do not have something real corresponding to them.
A net that snags every fish in the sea brings in too large a catch. The trouble with the above explanation of nominalism is that it will be accepted by almost all philosophers, including plenty who would not identify themselves as nominalists. For few if any philosophers hold that for each word in a sentence there is a corresponding referent. Consider
1. Nobody came to the party.
No one will take 'nobody' in (1) as a name. ("Well, I'm glad to hear that at least one person showed up. How is Nobody doing these days?") (1) is easily analyzed so as to remove the apparent reference of 'nobody.' And the same goes for a long list of other synsemantic or syncategorematical expressions. Would any philosopher say that in
2. I'm a day late and a dollar short
every word has a referent? Edward needs to give examples of philosophers who hold that 'nobody' in (1) and 'and' in (2) have referents. Let us hope he does not weasel out of this challenge. Since no one assumes that every term has something real corresponding to it, the above definition of 'nominalism' is too broad to be of any use.
If Ockham is correct, the relevant distinction to draw is between queer and straight terms. Straight terms have something real corresponding to them, queer terms don’t. Furthermore, there must at least be some temptation to imagine that queer terms refer to or denote something, otherwise there would be little point in making it.
There is no need for this bizarre terminological innovation. We already have 'autosemantic' and 'synsemantic' and equivalents. Do not multiply terminology beyond necessity!
And let us note that synsemantic terms have useful semantic roles to play despite their not referring to anything. There is a rather striking difference between 'I will come' and 'I will not come,' a difference that rides on the synsemantic particle 'not' which, as synsemantic, does not refer to anything.
Which brings me to the main point raised by Peter Lupu, who asks “What are ‘queer-entities’ and how do we determine whether a given entity is “queer” or “straight”? There are two parts to his question. In answer to the first, there are no such things as queer entities, if Ockham is right. There are only ‘queer terms’. These, by definition, are terms that don’t refer to or denote anything, and so by implication there are no ‘queer entities’.
In other words, synsemantic terms do not refer. True by definition.
This is what makes any debate with realists difficult. Realists, namely those who think that queer terms refer, will persist in using the queer terms as if they did refer, and so will ask what kinds of thing are referred to, what is their ‘ontological status’ and so on. Ockhamists will naturally refuse to use these terms as if they referred, and refer the names of the terms instead, typically by using real or scare quotes.
No, realists are not those who think that queer terms refer since no one thinks that queer, i.e., nonreferring terms, refer. Edward needs to explain the criteria for deciding whether a given term is queer or straight. Is 'Edward' a queer term? If not, why not?
[. . .]
That deals with Peter's first question. What are queer entities? We can't say, because there are no such things, just as we can't say what kind of things ghosts are. But we can say what 'queer terms' are. These are terms that are categorical, but which (a) have no reference or denotation and (b) appear, or are believed by many, typically on grounds of reason alone, to have a reference or denotation.
This doesn't advance the discussion at all. First of all, we are not told what 'categorical' means. More importantly, we have not been supplied with criteria for distinguishing queer from straight terms, to acquiesce for the nonce in this idiotic terminology.
Peter’s second point, on how we determine whether given entity is “queer” or “straight”, I will leave for the next post, although clearly the first point applies here also. If the nominalist is right, we cannot ask this question of anything, just as we cannot ask whether a UFO came from Alpha centauri or Betelgeuse. We can only ask whether a given term is queer or straight. More to follow.
This doesn't get us anywhere. We can ask, of a given term, whether or not it has a referent. But then we need to be supplied with some method for answering this question. Consider
3. Wisdom is a virtue.
Presumably, Edward will put 'wisdom' down as queer. But on what grounds? Is it because he just knows (again by what method?) that everything that exists is a particular, and that if 'wisdom' has a referent then it must be a universal? Or is there something about the word itself that tips him off that it is nonreferring?
Is he appealing to some paraphrastic method? Is he suggesting that what (3) expresses can be expressed salva significatione by a sentence containing no term making an apparent reference to a universal? And in particular, would he accept the following paraphrase:
3*. If anyone is wise, then he is virtuous?
So far, then, Londonistas 0, Phoenicians 1.
The Consolation of Philosophy
Dear Sir:
I read, or attempt to read, your blog almost every day. Some of your
"technical" analysis and commentaries go right over my head, but I try
to persevere.
Sometimes things click into place - from my point of view. And I found
your recent examination of the question Is Death Evil? very helpful.
Curious though it might seem, my fear of death was reduced (a bit) by
your considerations.
Alex A.
Lincoln
England.
Two Puzzles Anent Brentano’s 1874 Locus Classicus on Intentionality
All contemporary discussion of intentionality traces back to an oft-quoted passage from Franz Brentano's Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint. First published in 1874 in German, this influential book had to wait 99 years until it saw the light of day in the Anglosphere. And in the Anglosphere to go untranslated is to go unread. Here is the passage:
Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object and what we might call, though not wholly unambiguously, reference to a content, direction toward an object (which is not to be understood here as meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity. Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself, although they do not all do so in the same way. In presentation something is presented, in judgment something is affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired and so on. (Humanities Press, 1973, ed. McAlister, p. 88)
This passage is not only puzzling in itself, but also puzzling in that it is not clear what it has to do with the discussions of intentionality that it spawned. I think most philosophers nowadays would agree that something like the following is the thesis of intentionality:
Thesis of Intentionality. It is characteristic of certain mental states (the intentional states) to refer beyond themselves to items (i) that are not part of the state and (ii) may or may not exist.
Example. If I am in a state of desire, then a complete description of this mental state must include a specification of what it is that I desire. One cannot simply desire, or just desire. At a bare minimum we need to distinguish between the desiring and that which is desired. As Brentano says above, in desire something is desired.
Unfortunately, the word 'something' will cause some people to stumble including some esteemed members of the Commenter Corps. They will get it into their heads that a concrete episode of desire cannot exist unless there also exists, independently of the desire, something that is desired. But this cannot be what is meant. For if Poindexter desires a perpetuum mobile, he is just as much in a state of desire as his pal Percy who desires Poindexter's sloop, despite the fact that there is and can be no perpetuum mobile, while there is Poindexter's sloop. And as for wanting a sloop, it could be that Percy wants a sloop without wanting any sloop that (presently) exists: he wants a sloop that satisfies a description that no sloop in existence satisfies. Or a woman wants a baby. She doesn't want to adopt or kidnap an existing baby; she wants to 'bring a baby into the world.' Obviously, her longing is for something that does not presently exist, and indeed for something that does not exist at all if what does not yet exist does not exist.
In cases like these , the states of desire refer beyond themselves to items that are (i) not part of the states and that (ii) do not exist. After all, someone who wants a sloop does not want a mental state, or any part of a mental state, or anything immanent to a mental state, or anything whose existence depends on the existence of a mental state. Wanting a sloop, by its very intentional structure, intends something which, if it exists, exists independently of any mental state. And note that from the fact that there is nothing that satisfies the sloop-desire it does not follow that the desire is directed to an immanent object.
It is also important to realize that the reference beyond itself of mental acts is an intrinsic (nonrelational) feature of these acts: what makes my thought of Las Vegas precisely a thought of Las Vegas is not the obtaining of a relation between me (or my mental state) and the city of Las Vegas. For suppose I am thinking of Las Vegas, and while I am thinking of it God does to it what he is said to have done to Sodom and Gomorrah. Would my thinking of Las Vegas be in any way affected as to its own inner nature? No. The act of thinking and its content are what they are whether or not the external object exists.
Part of the thesis of intentionality , then, is that certain mental states are intrinsically such as to point beyond themselves to items that may or may not exist. Intrinsically, because the object-directedness is not parasitic upon the actual existence of the external object. But can one find the thesis of intentionality as I have spelled it out in the above passage?
No, and that is our first puzzle. It is puzzling that the 1874 'charter' has little to do with what subsequently flew under the flag 'intentionality.' Two points:
a. Although Brentano speaks of "reference to an object," he makes it clear that this object is an immanent object, one contained in the mental phenomenon or act. As such, the object is indistinguishable from a mental content. And then there is the talk of "the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object." 'Inexistence' does not mean nonexistence but existence-in (inesse). The idea is that the object exists in the act and not independently of the act. But then the object is a mere content, and the notion of a reference beyond the mental state to something transcendent of it is lost.
b. It is also striking that in the 1874 passage there is no mention of the crucial feature of intentionality that is always mentioned in later discussions of it, namely, that the items to which intentional states refer may or may not exist, or may or may not obtain (in the case of states of affairs). For example, if Loughner believes that the earth is flat, then his mental state is directed toward a state of affairs which, if it obtains, is a state of affairs involving the earth and nothing mental. But neither the obtaining nor the nonobtaining of this state of affairs follows from Loughner's being in the belief-state.
It seems as if for the Brentano of 1874 intentionality is something wholly internal to the mental phenomenon, a relation that connects the act with its content, but does not point beyond the content to the external world. "If every mental phenomenon includes as object something within itself," then every intentional object exists in the mode: existence-in. I am therefore inclined to agree with Tim Crane: "Brentano’s original 1874 doctrine of intentional inexistence has nothing to do with the problem of how we can think about things that do not exist."
Of course, in the later Brentano intentionality is tied to the latter problem. On Crane's analysis, Brentano simply changed his mind after 1874. I see it slightly differently: the later view is implicit in the 1874 passage but cannot emerge clearly because of Brentano's adherence to Scholastic conceptuality. But this is a contested exegetical point.
The second puzzle concerns an apparent misunderstanding by Brentano of the Scholastic doctrine of esse intentionale. This is puzzling because Brentano was steeped in Aristotle and the Scholastics due to his priestly formation, not to mention his doctoral work under Trendelenburg.
In the passage quoted Brentano identifies intentional inexistence with mental inexistence, which implies that below the level of mind there is no esse intentionale. But this is not Scholastic doctrine. For an explanation of this, see Gyula Klima. We will come back to this.