Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

How Many are the Ways of Denying that Intentionality is a Two-Term Relation?

How shall I deny thee? Let me count the ways.

I need an exhaustive classification of all the ways of denying that intentionality is a two-term relation. (Since one cannot think without thinking of something, one might suppose that intentionality is a dyadic relation connecting a thinker or one of his mental contents to an object.)  Here is what I have come up with so far.  If you know this subject and think that there is a way I have overlooked, the ComBox is open for you to tell me what it is.

1. There is no intentionality at all.  If there is no intentionality, then intentionality is not a relation between a subjective item and an objective item.  This eliminativist option is of course a complete nonstarter. 

2. Intentionality is sui generis.  On this view there are relations, but intentionality is wholly unique and so not a member of the category of relations.  At most, intentionality is relation-like.  One can find something like this view in Brentano and Findlay.

3. Intentionality is not a relation because there are no relations.  For Bradley, there are, in ultimate reality, no relations.  So a Bradleyan might argue that whatever intentionality is, it cannot be a relation.

4. Intentionality is not a dyadic relation; it is a monadic property of objects. (Sartre, Butchvarov, et al.) 

5.  Intentionality is not a relation because it is either an adverbial modification of subjects, or a property of subjects (Bergmann, Addis).

6.  Intentionality is not a two-term relation (though it is a two-place relation); it involves an identity between subject and object. (Thomism)  To see how this might work, see here and here.

7.  Intentionality is a not a two-term relation because it is a multiple-term relation along the lines of Russell's multiple-relation theory of judgment.  The idea here is that there is no one thing on the side of the object, no proposition or fact.  Accordingly, Othello's believing that Desdemona loves Cassio is not a two-term relation between Othello and the proposition that Desdemona loves Cassio; it is a four-place relation that can be depicted by 'Believes(Othello, Desdemona, loves, Cassio).'

Did I cover all the bases?  Is my classification exhaustive?

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Bill Vallicella

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12 responses to “How Many are the Ways of Denying that Intentionality is a Two-Term Relation?”

  1. Edward Ockham Avatar
    Edward Ockham

    I’m not sure any of these quite capture the account that I think is correct, and which we have discussed before. The details are here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2011/03/logically-intransitive-verbs.html
    In summary, certain verbs are logically transitive – if ‘S V O’ is true, there must be an object corresponding to the accusative noun phrase ‘O’. Other verbs are not. These are ‘logically intransitive’. They are grammatically transitive in that they take a verbal accusative. But there is no object corresponding to that accusative.
    This does not agree with (1). There is such a thing is intentionality or rather ‘logical intransitivity. Nor with (2), which I find unintelligible. Nor with (3) which is false. Clearly there are relations, so long as the verb that expresses the relation is logically transitive. It seems close to (4), but I don’t know enough about (4) to judge. It is not (5) merely an adverbial modification of a subject, because it involves relation to a trans-subjective singular concept (more than one person can grasp the singular concept corresponding to ‘Socrates’, ‘Caesar’ or even ‘Frodo’. I don’t understand (6) well enough, although I read the post you linked to. And (7) it is not a multiple relation.
    You may not like the theory (I suspect you don’t, because you have dismissed it out of hand before), but it is a valid candidate.

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  2. Edward Ockham Avatar
    Edward Ockham

    A refinement to the theory summarised above is explained in the linked-to post. According to the theory, the correct way of parsing “Tom has a thought about a house in the desert” is as follows
    Tom / has / a thought about a house in the desert
    This makes it clear that the real relation in question is expressed by the logically transitive ‘has’. Tom exists, the thought exists, and the thought belongs to him. But we misparse it as
    Tom / has a thought about / a house in the desert
    as though there were a relation, expressed by the verb phrase ‘has a thought about’ between Tom and some mysterious intentional object. ‘Intentionality’ is simply an illusion, caused by a misunderstanding of grammar and meaning. ‘We should not multiply entities in accordance with the multiplicity of names’.

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  3. Bill Vallicella Avatar
    Bill Vallicella

    You didn’t answer my question. So I really should delete those comments. Why are you behaving like a cyberpunk?
    I almost wrote in the main post, “Don’t go off on any tangents, just answer the question.” But I thought that would be unnecessary. I was wrong.

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  4. Edward Ockham Avatar
    Edward Ockham

    Please delete my comments then. But I did answer your question. You have not covered all the bases.

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  5. Bill Vallicella Avatar
    Bill Vallicella

    I retract the ‘cyberpunk’ remark which was rude. But you missed the point, which was not to give a theory of intentionality but to catalog all possible ways of rejecting the claim that intentionality is a relation.
    A useful comment would take the form: Intentionality is not a relation because (fill in the blank).
    The closest you come to filling in the blank is “intentionality is an illusion.” But that is just option (1).

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  6. Leo Carton Mollica Avatar
    Leo Carton Mollica

    Another variant on (6): intentionality is the real (as opposed to Thomistic-style formal) identity between subject and object. (Spinoza)
    The difference between a Spinozistic and a Thomist account of identity seems strong enough to warrant distinct categories for the two.

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  7. Bill Vallicella Avatar
    Bill Vallicella

    Thanks, Leo. Could you sketch a Spinozistic theory of intentionality for me? How would it go?

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  8. Leo Carton Mollica Avatar
    Leo Carton Mollica

    According to Spinoza, God is a single substance which can be conceived of in at least two ways: as a thinking thing and as an extended thing. However, this distinction is merely one of reason, like that (according to the scholastics) between being and unity. God, moreover, has an infinite number of affects, or modifications, each of which must be conceived of through God, and thus which may be conceived of either as a thinking thing’s modification (in which case they are ideas) or as an extended thing’s modification (in which case they are bodies); however, like God Himself, ideas and bodies are distinct only in the mind. In reality each idea is identical with a body, even though it be conceived of differently. And what qualifies a body as the intentional object of an idea is its being really identical thereto.
    It’s a rough sketch, and there is much more that can be said, but does what I’ve written make sense?

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  9. Bill Vallicella Avatar
    Bill Vallicella

    Very good, Leo. That is basically Spinoza as I understand him. What makes the idea of x of x is the idea’s identity with x. This makes some sense when it comes to thoughts about parts of one’s body, but how does Spinoza account for thoughts about things and events external to one’s body?
    Suppose I am thinking about today’s awful weather. There is a corresponding cerebral event, and S. seems committed to saying that my thought about the weather is the idea of that cerebral event. And that can’t be right. See chapter 7 of Jonathan Bennett’s *A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics.*
    But you have shown me that I ought to distinguish between two sorts of identity theory of intentionality. There are the Arist-Thom theories acc. to which the identity is formal, and there are Spinozistic theories acc. to which the identity is non-formal.
    Prop XVI of Part II of the Ethics suggests that thought about an external body is somehow to be analyzed in terms of the external body’s affecting of the thinker’s body, with an idea in the latter being of a state of the thinker’s body.

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  10. AR Avatar
    AR

    Another way of denying that intentionality is a two-term relation is to argue that there are varieties of intentionality as opposed to it being a unified/absolute concept. I think that such arguments can be developed “similarly” to varieties of reference ones of Gareth Evans. I would not claim it with a high degree of certainty, but it seems to me that some people — indirectly — do just that when they distinguish between qualia and other issues about aboutness.
    And — now I admit hand waving even more wildly than before — I’d say that given that the fundamental concept of identity has been denied its absolute status (e.g. by Geach), intentionality is a much easier target in that respect.

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  11. Leo Carton Mollica Avatar
    Leo Carton Mollica

    Dr. Vallicella,
    Suppose I am thinking about today’s awful weather. There is a corresponding cerebral event, and S. seems committed to saying that my thought about the weather is the idea of that cerebral event. And that can’t be right. See chapter 7 of Jonathan Bennett’s *A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics.*
    I don’t think Spinoza would use exactly the same language, nor do I think he would restrict himself to cerebral events (he is a mind-body identity theorist, not a mind-brain identity theorist), but that seems to be the gist of his theory of intentionality. Any putative idea of A, where A is an external body, is really an idea of some affectation or impression of or upon my body by A. Prop. XVI, Cor. II, and Prop. XVII, Schol., of Part II of the Ethics provide especially compelling evidence for this interpretation.
    This, by the way, is one of the biggest differences between a Thomist and a Spinozist account of intentionality, see Summa Theo., I:85:2.
    I’ll check out Chapter 7 of Bennett’s book when I get the chance. Incidentally, would you recommend the whole thing? I’ve heard mixed reviews of it.

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  12. Bill Vallicella Avatar
    Bill Vallicella

    You are an amazing guy, Leo. You have summed up Spinoza’s view very accurately in one sentence.
    Jonathan Bennett is one I would call a philosopher’s philosopher. His work is at the very highest technical level. And so anything he writes is worth studying. If your approach to philosophy is more historical than systematic, however, you may object to Bennett and find someone like Edwin Curley more sympatico. The ‘opposite’ of Bennett is Harry Wolfson. See his *The Philosophy of Spinoza.* Set that side-by-side with Bennett and you will know what I mean by ‘opposite.’
    Let me know if you stumble across an article on Spinoza’s doctrine of intentionality.

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