Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Intentionality

  • Object-Directedness and Object-Dependence

    Intentionality cannot be identified with object-dependence. Here is why. Suppose that  I begin thinking about some faraway thing such as the Washington Monument (WM) and  that I think of it without interruption through some short interval of time.  Half-way through the interval, unbeknownst to me, the monument is destroyed and ceases to exist.  Question: does…

  • Demarcation and Directedness: Notes on Brentano

    Here again is the famous passage from Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874): 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…

  • Relations and Nonexistents

     Consider the following two sentences:  a) Lions are smaller than dragons.b) Mice are smaller than elephants. From this datanic base a puzzle emerges.  1) The data sentences are both true.2) 'Smaller than' has the same sense in both (a) and (b).3) In both (a) and (b), 'smaller than' has the same reference: it refers to…

  • Analysis of a Passage from Husserl’s Logical Investigations

    Ed sends this: Just found this very odd quote from Logical Investigations: If I have an idea of the god Jupiter, this god is my presented object, he is ‘immanently present’ in my act, he has ‘mental inexistence’ in the latter, or whatever expression we may use to disguise our true meaning. I have an idea…

  • Buckner on Intentionality

    I decided to insert a brief critique of London Ed into one of the intentionality chapters of my book in progress. Here it is: One mistake to avoid is the conflation of object-directedness with object-dependence. D. E. Buckner speaks of an “. . . illusion that has captured the imagination of philosophers for at least…

  • Lukáš Novák on Reference to What is Not

    What follows is a re-do of an entry that first saw the light of the blogosphere on the 4th of July, 2014. The draft Lukáš Novák (on my left in the photo) sent me back then for my comments has since appeared in print in Maimonides on God and Duns Scotus on Logic and Metaphysics …

  • F. H. Bradley on the Non-Intentionality of Pleasure and Pain

    This is a re-do of a post from 13 April 2009. The addenda are new. …………………………………… I have argued at length for the non-intentionality of some conscious states.  Here is an entry that features an uncommonly good comment thread. None of the opposing comments made on the various posts inclined me to modify my view.  …

  • Is the World Inconceivable Apart from Consciousness?

    That depends. It depends on what 'world' means. Steven Nemes quotes Dermot Moran on the former's Facebook page: [1] In contrast to the outlook of naturalism, Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. [2] Consciousness should not…

  • Intentionality in Thomas and Husserl

    My Serbian correspondent Milosz sent me a reference to an article in which we read: What attracted these Catholics to Husserl was his theory of intentionality—the notion that human consciousness is always consciousness “of” something. This appealed to Catholics because it appeared to open a way beyond the idealism of modern philosophy since Kant, which…

  • Intrinsic Intentionality and Merely Possible Thoughts

    I claimed earlier that there are no intrinsically intentional items that lack consciousness.  The claim was made in the context of an attempted refutation of the notion that abstract entities, Fregean senses being one subspecies thereof, could be intrinsically intentional or object-directed. One argument I gave was that (i) No abstract entity is conscious; (ii)…

  • Intentionality for Third-World Entities?

    Commenter John and I are having a very productive discussion about intentionality.  I thank him for helping me clarify my thoughts about this fascinating topic.  I begin with some points on which (I think) John and I agree. a) There is a 'third world' or third realm and it is the realm of abstracta.   (I…

  • ‘Platonic’ Propositions: A Consideration Contra. The Argument from Intrinsic Intentionality

    Commenter John put the following question to me: Which Platonist theories of propositions did you have in mind in your original post, and what are the problems involved in accepting such views? I had in mind a roughly Fregean theory.  One problem with such a view is that it seems to require that propositions possess…

  • Do Fire Alarms Make Assertions?

    The Opponent writes, The alarm means 'there is a fire in the building'. An assertion has taken place, that there is a fire. But it is triggered by a sensor in the building. So asserting is not just something people do. This is a loose way of talking quite in order in ordinary life, but…

  • The Primacy of the Intentional Over the Linguistic

    This entry, at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical, probably best exposes the deepest root of my disagreement with Dr. Buckner.

  • The Problem of Consciousness and Galen Strawson’s Non-Solution

    The problem can be set forth in a nice neat way as an aporetic triad: 1) Consciousness is real; it is not an illusion. 2) Consciousness is wholly natural, a material process in the brain. 3) It is impossible that conscious states, whether object-directed or merely qualitative, be material in nature. It is easy to…