Maverick Philosopher

Consider this argument:

1. Tom believes that the man at the podium is the Pope

2. The Pope is an Argentinian

Therefore

3. Tom believes that the man at the podium is Argentinian.

The argument is plainly invalid.  For Tom may not believe that the Pope is an Argentinian.  Now consider this argument:

4. Tom sees the Pope

2. The Pope is an Argentinian

Therefore

5. Tom sees an Argentinian.

Valid or invalid?  That depends.  'Sees' is often taken to be a so-called verb of success:  if S sees x, then it follows that x exists.  On this understanding of  'sees' one cannot see what doesn't  exist. Call this the existentially loaded sense of 'sees' and contrast it with the existentially neutral sense according to which 'S sees x' does not entail 'X exists.'

If 'sees' is  understood in the existentially loaded way, then the second argument is valid, whether or not Tom knows that the Pope is Argentinian.    For if Tom sees the Pope, then the object seen exists.  But nothing can exist without properties, properties most of which  are had independently of our mental states.  If the object has the property F-ness, then the perceiver sees an F-thing, even if he doesn't see it as an F-thing.  So Tom sees an Argentinian despite not seeing him as an Argentinian.

Now seeing in the existentially loaded sense might seem to be a perfectly good example of an intentional or object-directed state since one cannot see without  seeing something. One cannot just see.  Seeing takes an object. 

But whether existentially loaded seeing is an intentional state depends on what all enters into the definition of an intentional state.  Now one mark of intentionality is aspectuality.  What I am calling aspectuality is what John Searle calls "aspectual shape":

I have been using the term of art, "aspectual shape," to mark a universal feature of intentionality.  It can be explained as follows: Whenever we perceive anything or think about anything, we always do so under some aspects and not others.  These aspectual features are essential to the intentional state; they are part of what makes it the mental state that it is. (The Rediscovery of the Mind, MIT Press, 1992, pp. 156-157)

The phrase I bolded implies that no intentional state is such that every aspect of  the object is before the mind of the person in the state.  Suppose you see my car.  You won't help being able to see it is as bright yellowish-green sport-utility vehicle.  But you could easily see it without seeing it as a 2013 Jeep Wrangler.  I take this to imply that the set of perceived aspects of any object of perception not only can be but must be incomplete. This should  be obvious from the fact that, as Husserl liked to point out, outer perception is essentially perspectival.  For example, all sides of the car are perceivable, but one cannot see the car from the front and from the rear simultaneously. 

This aspectuality holds for  intentional states generally.  To coin an example, one can believe that a certain celestial body is the Evening Star without believing that it is the Morning Star.  One can want to drink a Manhattan without wanting to drink a mixture of bourbon, sweet vermouth, and Angostura bitters. As Searle says, "Every belief and every desire, and indeed every intentional phenomenon, has an aspectual shape." (157)

Intentional states are therefore not only necessarily of something; they are necessarily of something as something.  And given the finitude of the human mind, I want to underscore the fact that  even if every F is a G, one  can be aware of x as F without being aware of  x as G.   Indeed, this is so even if necessarily (whether metaphysically or nomologically) every F is a G. Thus I can be aware of a moving object as a cat, without being aware of it as spatially extended, as an animal, as a mammal, as an animal that cools itself by panting as opposed to sweating, as my cat, as the same cat I saw an hour ago, etc.

But now it seems we have a problem.  If that which is (phenomenlogically, not spatially) before my mind is necessarily property-incomplete, then either seeing is not existentially loaded, or existentially loaded seeing is not an intentional state.  To put the problem as an aporetic tetrad:

1. If S sees x, then x exists

2. Seeing is an intentional state

3. Every intentional state has an aspectual shape: its object is incomplete

4. Nothing that exists is incomplete.

The limbs of the tetrad are collectively logically inconsistent.  Any three of them, taken together, entails the negation of the remaining one.  For example, the conjunction of the first three limbs entails the negation of the fourth.

But while the limbs are collectively inconsistent, they are individually very plausible. So we have a nice puzzle on our hands.  At least one of the limbs is false, but which one?   I don't think that (3) or (4) are good candidates for rejection.  That leaves (1) or (2).

I incline toward the rejection of (1).  Seeing is an intentional state but it is not  existence-entailing.  My seeng of x does not entail the existence of x.  What one sees (logically) may or may not exist.  There is nothing in or about the visual object that certifies that it exists apart from my seeing it. Existence is not an observable feature.  The greenness of the tree is empirically accessible; its existence is not.

It is of course built into the intentionality of outer perception that what is intended is intended as existing whether or not the act or intentio exists.  To put it paradoxically (and I owe this formulation to Wolfgang Cramer), the object intended is intended as non-object.  That is, objects of outer perception are intended as existing independently of the mental acts that 'target' them, and thus not as merely intentional objects.  But there is nothing like an 'ontological argument' in the vicinity.  I cannot validly infer that the tree I see exists because it is intended as existing apart from my seeing.  This is is an invalid 'ontological' inference:

A. X is intended as existing independently of any  and all mental acts

ergo

B. X exists.

If the above is right, then seeing is an intentional state that shares the aspectuality common to all such states.  A consequence of this is a rejection of  'externalism' about outer perception: the content of the mental state I am in when I see a tree does not depend on the existence of any tree.  The object-directedness of the mental state is intrinsic to it and not dependent on any extrinsic relation to a mind-independent item.  To turn Putnam on his head: the meaning is precisely 'in the head.' 

Are there problems with this?  We shall see.  Externalism is a fascinating option.  But I am highly annoyed that that typical analytic philosopher, Ted Honderich, who defends a version of externalism in his book On Consciousness, makes no mention of the externalist theories of Heidegger, Sartre or Butchvarov.  How typical of the analytic ignoramus, not that all 'analysts' are ignorant of the history of philosophy.

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