{"id":10975,"date":"2011-01-28T06:22:24","date_gmt":"2011-01-28T06:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/01\/28\/the-intentional-object-an-aporetic-triad\/"},"modified":"2011-01-28T06:22:24","modified_gmt":"2011-01-28T06:22:24","slug":"the-intentional-object-an-aporetic-triad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/01\/28\/the-intentional-object-an-aporetic-triad\/","title":{"rendered":"The Aporetics of the Intentional Object, Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is a puzzle that may be thought to motivate a distinction between intentional and real objects, a distinction that turns out to be problematic indeed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Puzzle<\/strong>.  One cannot think without thinking of something, but if one is thinking of something, it does not follow that  something is such that one is thinking of it<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Example<\/strong>.  Tom is thinking of the fountain of youth.  So he is thinking of something. But there is no fountain of youth.  So from the fact that Tom  is thinking of the fountain of youth, it does not follow that something is such that Tom is thinking of it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The puzzle expressed as an aporetic dyad<\/strong>:<\/span><\/p>\n

1. One cannot think without thinking of something.<\/span>
2. If one is thinking of something, it does not follow that something is such that one is thinking of it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Both limbs make a strong claim on our acceptance.  The first is utterly datanic.  The second, though exceedingly plausible, and indeed true as far as I can see, is not datanic.  It is reasonably denied by Meinong and the Meinongians.  For if some items have no being at all, and if the fountain of youth counts as a beingless item (as it does for Meinong & Co.), and if Tom is thinking of the fountain of youth, then it does<\/em> follow that something is such that Tom is thinking of it.  This shows that our puzzle rests on a presupposition  which ought to be added to our dyad so as to sire the following aporetic triad or antilogism<\/strong>:<\/span><\/p>\n

1. One cannot think without thinking of something.<\/span>
2. If one is thinking of something, it does not follow that something is such that one is thinking of it.<\/span>
3. There are no beingless items.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though the limbs are individually plausible, they appear<\/em> collectively inconsistent.  If they really are <\/em>inconsistent, then we face a genuine aporia, an intellectual impasse: we have three propositions each of which we have excellent reason to think is true, but which cannot all be true on pain of logical contradiction.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is at least the appearance<\/em> of contradiction.  For if Tom is thinking of a mermaid, and there are no mermaids, then Tom is both thinking of something and not thinking of something.  Tom's thought has an object and it does not have an object.  It has an object because no one can think without thinking of something.  It does not have an object because there are no mermaids.  So we have at least an apparent contradiction.<\/span><\/p>\n

To dispel the appearance of contradiction, one could make a distinction.  So let us distinguish the intentional<\/em> object from the real<\/em> object and see what happens.  Every intentional state is a directedness to an object, and the intentional object is simply that to which the intentional state is directed precisely as it is intended in the mental act with all and only the properties it is intended as having. So when Tom thinks of a mermaid, a mermaid is his intentional object.  For it is that to which his thought is directed. But there is no 'corresponding' real object because there are no mermaids in reality.  Accordingly, 'Tom's thought has an object and it does not have an object' is only apparently a contradiction since what it boils down to is 'Tom's thought has an intentional<\/em> object but it does not have a real<\/em> object' — which is not a contradiction.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, this solution brings with it its own difficulties.  In this post I will mention just one.<\/span><\/p>\n

The putative solution says that if I am thinking about Pegasus or Atlantis or the fountain of youth, my thinking has an intentional object, but that there is no corresponding real object.  But what if I am thinking of Peter, who exists?  In this case the theory will have to maintain that there is a real object corresponding to the intentional object.  It will have to maintain this because every<\/em> intentional state has an intentional object.  The theory, then, says that when we intend the nonexistent, there is only an intentional object.  But when we intend the existent, there is both an intentional object and a corresponding real object.  There is a decisive objection to this theory.<\/span><\/p>\n

Clearly, if I am thinking about Peter, I am thinking about him<\/em> and not about some surrogate intentional object, immanent to the mental act,  which somehow mediates between the act and Peter himself.  The mental act terminates at Peter and not at an intentional object.  Intentionality, after all, is that feature of mental states whereby they refer beyond themselves to items that are neither parts of the mental act nor existentially dependent on the mental act.  Clearly, it is intrinsic<\/em> to the intentionality of my thinking of Peter that my thinking intends something that exists whether or not I am thinking of it.  <\/span><\/p>\n

This objection puts paid to the notion that intentionality relates a mind (or a state of a mind) to a merely intentional object which functions as an epistemic intermediary or epistemic surrogate. This scheme fails to accommodate the fact that intentionality by its very nature involves a transcending of the mind and its contents towards the transcendent.  Suppose I am thinking about a mountain.  Whether it exists or not, what I intend is (i) something whose nature is physical and not mental; and (ii) something that exists whether or not I am thinking about it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The point I just made is that when I think of Peter, it is Peter himself that my thought reaches: my thought does not terminate at a merely intentional object, immanent to the act, which merely stands for or goes proxy for or represents Peter.  This  point is well-nigh datanic.  If you don't understand it, you don't understand intentionality.  One will be tempted to accommodate this point by saying that when one thinks of what exists, the IO = the RO.  But this can't be right either.  For the intentional object is always an incomplete object, a fact that reflects the finitude of the human mind.  But Peter in reality is a complete object.  Now identity is governed by the Indiscernibility of Identicals which states, roughly, that if x = y, then x and y share all properties.  But the IO and the RO do not share all properties:  The IO is indeterminate with respect to some properties while the RO is wholly determinate.  Therefore, the IO is never identical to the RO.<\/span><\/p>\n

So the point I made cannot be accommodated by saying that the IO = the RO in the case when one thinks of the existent.<\/span><\/p>\n

Where does this leave us?   I argued that our initial puzzle codified first as a dyad and then as a triad motivates a distinction between intentional and real objects.  The distinction was introduced in alleviation of inconsistency.  But then we noted a serious difficulty with the distinction.  But if the distinction cannot be upheld, how do we solve the aporetic triad?  It looks as if the distinction is one we need to make, but cannot make.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is a puzzle that may be thought to motivate a distinction between intentional and real objects, a distinction that turns out to be problematic indeed. Puzzle.  One cannot think without thinking of something, but if one is thinking of something, it does not follow that  something is such that one is thinking of it. … Continue reading “The Aporetics of the Intentional Object, Part I”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,100,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aporetics","category-intentionality","category-mind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}