{"id":12789,"date":"2009-02-27T18:18:42","date_gmt":"2009-02-27T18:18:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/02\/27\/four-uses-of-of-and-nonintentional-conscious-states\/"},"modified":"2009-02-27T18:18:42","modified_gmt":"2009-02-27T18:18:42","slug":"four-uses-of-of-and-nonintentional-conscious-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/02\/27\/four-uses-of-of-and-nonintentional-conscious-states\/","title":{"rendered":"Four Uses of ‘Of’ and Non-Intentional Conscious States"},"content":{"rendered":"

The thesis of intentionality can be stated roughly as follows: Every consciousness is a consciousness of something.<\/em>  I claim that this Brentano thesis is false because of the existence of non-intentional states of consciousness. Peter Lupu understands and agrees but no one else hereabouts does.  So I need to take a few steps back and issue some clarifications.  I begin by distinguishing among four uses of 'of.'  I'll call them the subjective, the objective, the dual, and the appositive.  Once these are on the table one or two impediments to the understanding of my point — which of course is not original with me —  will have been removed.<\/font><\/p>\n

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PART I<\/font><\/p>\n

As useful as it is to the poet, the punster, and the demagogue, the ambiguity of ordinary language is intolerable to the philosopher.  Disambiguate we must.  One type of ambiguity is well illustrated by the Old Testament verse, Timor domini initium sapientiae<\/em>, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Clearly, in 'fear of the Lord' the Lord is the object, not the subject of fear, whereas in 'beginning of wisdom,' wisdom is the subject of beginning, that which begins, and is not the object of beginning — whatever that would mean. Thus we could write, "The fear of the Lord is wisdom's beginning," but not, "The Lord's fear is wisdom's beginning." That was an example of subject\/object ambiguity.  Here is an example of objective\/appositive ambiguity: 'As a young man, I was enamored of the city of Boston.'  The thought here is that the city, Boston, was an object of my love.  Clearly, 'of' is being used in two totally different ways in the sample sentence.<\/font><\/p>\n

A. Subjective Uses of 'Of.'<\/em>  'The presidency of Bill Clinton was rocked by scandal.'  'The redness of her face betrayed her embarassment.' <\/font><\/p>\n

B. Objective Uses of 'Of.'<\/em>  'When I first met Mary, thoughts of her occupied my mind from morning until night.' Obviously, her<\/em> thoughts could not occupy my<\/em> mind; 'thoughts of her' can only mean thoughts about<\/em> her. Note that 'Mary's thoughts' could be construed in three ways: Mary's thoughts; thoughts about Mary; Mary's thoughts about herself.<\/font><\/p>\n

C. Dual Uses of 'Of.'<\/em>  'Thoughts of Mary filled Mary's mind.' In this example, Mary is both the subject and the object of her thoughts.  So in 'thoughts of Mary,' 'of' functions both subjectively and objectively.<\/font><\/p>\n

D. Appositive Uses of 'Of.'<\/em>  'The train they call The City of New Orleans<\/a><\/em> will go five hundred miles before the day is done.' 'Former NYC mayor Ed Koch referred to the city of Boston as Podunk.' Clearly, 'city of Boston' is not a genitive construction. We could just as well write, 'the city, Boston.' So I call the 'of' in 'city of Boston' the 'of' of apposition. If the grammarians don't call it that, then they ought to.<\/font><\/p>\n

PART II<\/font><\/p>\n

Now how is 'of' to be construed in Every consciousness is a consciousness of something?<\/em>  The standard intended meaning is the objective meaning.  The idea is that consciousness by its very nature refers beyond itself to something distinct from itself.  The idea is not that every conscious state is the state of a self or subject, although many philosophers maintain that as well. In Edmund Husserl, for example, intentionality has the triadic structure: ego-cogito-cogitatum qua cogitatum.  <\/em>But in Jean-Paul Sartre, consciousness is subjectless:  the ego is not the subjective source of consciousness but a transcendent object among objects. (See The Transcendence of the Ego<\/em> for Sartre's critique of Husserl.)<\/font><\/p>\n

Now consider a feeling of anxiety.  Such experiences are arguably non-intentional: they do not refer beyond themselves to an object distinct from themselves in the way in which remembering, wishing, willing, expecting, desiring, imagining and perceiving do.  (Compare Heidegger's distinction in Sein und Zeit<\/em> between Angst <\/em>and Furcht<\/em>.) The fact that 'feeling of anxiety' superficially resembles 'memory of Nixon' is not to the point.  And this for the simple reason that 'of' is being used in two different ways in the two phrases.  In the first phrase, we have the 'of' of apposition.  Instead of writing 'Jean-Paul is beset by a feeling of anxiety' we could write salva significatione<\/em> 'Jean-Paul is beset by the feeling, anxiety.'  But we cannot replace 'memory of Nixon' salva significatione<\/em> with 'memory, Nixon.' The following is nonsense: 'I have a distinct memory, Nixon.'<\/font><\/p>\n

(Exercise for the reader:  Explain why 'I am anxious about my daughter's safety,' 'Tom was pleased to hear that his son got the job,' and 'It pains me that George Sheehan is pretty much forgotten' cannot be used to show that anxiety, pleasure, and pain are intentional conscious states.)<\/font><\/p>\n

Further examples: 'feeling of pain,' sensation of red,' 'pleasure of orgasm,' 'sense of foreboding,' sense of elation,' 'pain of a stubbed toe,' 'after-image of yellowish-orange.'  In none of these examples does the 'of' function objectively.  Thus a feeling of pain is just a painful feeling; a sensation of red is just a reddish sensation; the pleasure of orgasm is just orgasmic pleasure.  In each case the conscious state has qualitative CONTENT but this is not to be confused with an intentional OBJECT.  That should be perfectly clear in the case of the yellowish-orange after image: the experience does not present something distinct from the experience.  The same goes for the stubbed-toe pain.  The pain-state does not present anything to consciousness in the way that a memory state presents something to consciousness.  Whatever the cause of a memory of my mother, the memory does not present this cause or causes; it presents my (dead) mother. The cause or causes of my act of remembering exist; my dead mother does not.  <\/font><\/p>\n

In sum, the 'of' of intentionality is the objective 'of': 'consciousness of something' is a genitivus objectivus.<\/em>  Failure to appreciate this may be part of the reason why some are unable to discern the phenomenological<\/em> distinction between intentional and non-intentional conscious states.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The thesis of intentionality can be stated roughly as follows: Every consciousness is a consciousness of something.  I claim that this Brentano thesis is false because of the existence of non-intentional states of consciousness. Peter Lupu understands and agrees but no one else hereabouts does.  So I need to take a few steps back and issue some … Continue reading “Four Uses of ‘Of’ and Non-Intentional Conscious States”<\/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":[100,6,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intentionality","category-language-matters","category-mind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12789","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=12789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}