INTENTIONALITY Past and Future VIBS

INTENTIONALITY Past and Future VIBS Volume 173 Robert Ginsberg Founding Editor Peter A. Redpath Executive Editor Associate Editors G. John M. Abbarno Matti Häyry Mary-Rose Barral Steven V. Hicks Gerhold K. Becker Richard T. Hull Raymond Angelo Belliotti Mark Letteri Kenneth A. Bryson Vincent L. Luizzi C. Stephen Byrum Alan Milchman H. G. Callaway George David Miller Robert A. Delﬁno Alan Rosenberg Rem B. Edwards Arleen L. F. Salles Andrew Fitz-Gibbon John R. Shook Francesc Forn i Argimon Eddy Souffrant William Gay Tuija Takala Dane R. Gordon Anne Waters J. Everet Green John R. Welch Heta Aleksandra Gylling Thomas F. Woods a volume in Cognitive Science CS Francesc Forn i Argimon, Editor INTENTIONALITY Past and Future Edited by Gábor Forrai and George Kampis Amsterdam - New York, NY 2005 Cover Design: Studio Pollmann The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 90-420-1817-8 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2005 Printed in the Netherlands CONTENTS Preface vii List of Abbreviations ix ONE The Necessity and Nature of Mental Content 1 LAIRD ADDIS TWO Reading Brentano on the Intentionality of the Mental 15 PHILIP J. BARTOK THREE Emotions, Moods, and Intentionality 25 WILLIAM FISH FOUR Lockean Ideas as Intentional Contents 37 GÁBOR FORRAI FIVE Normativity and Mental Content 51 JUSSI HAUKIOJA SIX The Ontological and Intentional Status of Fregean Senses: An Early Account of External Content 63 GREG JESSON SEVEN Sense-Data, Intentionality, and Common Sense 79 HOWARD ROBINSON EIGHT The Content of Perceptual Experience 91 JÁNOS TŐZSÉR vi Contents NINE The Intentionality of Reference in Husserl and the Analytic Tradition 111 SHANNON VALLOR TEN How to Get Intentionality by Language 127 ALBERTO VOLTOLINI ELEVEN The Intentionality of Consciousness and Consciousness of Intentionality 143 KENNETH WILLIFORD Works Cited 157 About the Contributors 169 Index 171 PREFACE The present volume has grown out of a conference organized jointly by the History of Philosophy Department of the University of Miskolc and the His- tory and Philosophy of Science Department of Eötvös Loránd University (Bu- dapest), which took place in June 2002. The aim of the conference was to ex- plore the various angles from which intentionality can be studied, how it is related to other philosophical issues, and how it figures in the works of major philosophers in the past. It also aimed at facilitating the interaction between the analytic and phenomenological traditions, which both regard intentionality as one of the most important problems for philosophy. Indeed intentionality has sometimes provided inspiration for works bridging the gap between the two traditions, like Roderick Chisholm’s in the sixties and Dagfin Føllesdall’s and his students’ in the early eighties. These objectives were also instrumental in the selection of the papers for this volume. Instead of very specialized papers on narrow issues, we gave preference to papers with a broader focus, which (1) juxtapose different approaches and traditions or (2) link the issues of intentionality with other philosophical concerns. The organization of the conference and the publication of the present volume were supported by grants from two Hungarian foundations, the National Foundation for Scientific Research (OTKA) and the National Research and Development Program (NKFP). The editors also wish to thank the contributors for their kind cooperation. Gábor Forrai George Kampis This page intentionally left blank LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Chapter Two PES: Brentano, Franz Clemens. (1955) Psychologie vom Empirischen Standpunkt. Edited by Oskar Kraus. Also (1995a) Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. Translated by Antos C. Rancurello, D. B. Ter- rell, and Linda L. McAlister. London: Routledge. DP: Brentano, Franz Clemens. (1982) Deskriptive Psychologie. Edited by Roderick Milton Chisholm and Wilhelm Baumgartner. Hamburg: Felix Meiner. Also (1995b) Descriptive Psychology. Translated by Benito Müller. London: Routledge. Chapter Four References to John Locke (1975) An Essay Concerning Human Understand- ing. Edited by Peter Harold Nidditch. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975, will be expressed in terms of book, chapter, and section, e.g., (Locke, 1975, 1.1.8). Chapter Five KW: Refers to the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein as interpreted by Saul Kripke. Chapter Eight DT: Disjunctive Theory of Perception IT: Internalist Thesis PP: Phenomenal Principle TT: Transparency Thesis This page intentionally left blank One THE NECESSITY AND NATURE OF MENTAL CONTENT Laird Addis 1. Introduction The philosopher of our time who would attempt to understand the nature of mind is, if he or she is a thinker of reasonable sensitivity, inevitably moved by two overarching and, so some may think, contrary constraints, one very old and the other more recent, at least in details. The older one is that consciousness is something unique, something quite different from everything else in the known universe, that a universe with consciousness and one without it are radically different kinds of worlds. Even if the only consciousness in existence were the perceptions of simple insects, there would still be a phenomenon in the world that seems to be quite unlike any in a world altogether without consciousness. The apparent implication of this constraint or, seen positively, this imperative is that any adequate philosophy of mind must reflect, at the basic ontological analysis of consciousness, the uniqueness of mind. The other constraint, or imperative, is that consciousness is of a piece with nature generally and seems to exist only in intimate conjunction with or, some would say, in identity with highly organized pieces of matter. More generally, any adequate philosophy of mind must be fully consistent with the pre- suppositions, methods, and findings of empirical science and especially with those of evolutionary biology and the processes of natural selection. I would add, more contentiously, especially in these times of so-called intelligent- design theory, that the best theory of mind must be consistent with a concep- tion of the mind as a product of purely natural processes, that is, of evolution as an unintended, lawfully explainable sequence of events that has taken, and is taking, place on our planet and, possibly, elsewhere. The apparent implication of this constraint is to deny or to disregard the uniqueness of mind and to seek an ontology of mind whose basic categories are no more than those of a world without mind. Although it is not my main topic here, I state without hesitation or doubt my belief that the best philosophy of mind must reflect the uniqueness of consciousness at the basic ontological level but in a way that is fully consistent with a purely naturalistic worldview backed by the theory and fact of evolution. This sort of strategy guides the remarks that follow. If the phenomenon of 2 LAIRD ADDIS consciousness is essential to what it is to have a mind, then the essence of consciousness is, in turn, characterized by its intentionality. Let us see. 2. Intentionality Let us all imagine that the planet Mars has just exploded. If you have heard and understood what I just said, an event took place “in” you in some sense of “in” that is the event of your imagining that Mars has just exploded. You knew, and still know, that this event took place; and you know, too, that it was only an imagining and not, say, a perceiving of Mars exploding. You knew, and still know, that it was Mars and not, say, Jupiter you were imagining to have exploded. What is the nature of this event that took place in each of us of imagining that Mars has just exploded; and what significance should we give to the imme- diate knowledge or, if you prefer, the semblance—genuine or not—of the imme- diate knowledge that each of us had of the occurrence of that event “in” us? My focus in this paper is on that aspect of the kind of event that took place in each of us that, still pre-analytically speaking, that is its content, that part somehow al- luded to by the words “that the planet Mars has just exploded” in the slightly longer expression “imagining that the planet Mars has just exploded.” The dis- tinction in a mental state of this kind, between its content on the one hand, and its mode—in this case its being an imagining—on the other, is a familiar one and indeed one of common sense. Yet only a few philosophers, especially among those of the analytic tradition, have attended explicitly to the ontological analysis of both of these features of events like imagining that Mars has just exploded, that is, of intentional states and events. Let us ignore for the time being those accounts of mentality that treat intentional states as mere states of the brain either directly as in simple identity theory, or more circumspectly as in functionalism or any other forms of causal theories of the mind, or merely as ascribed states to others in order to explain their behavior. I will proceed by stating and defending an ontological account of intentional states and, more narrowly, of mental content, and then later ex- amine some direct competitors to, and some direct criticisms of, theories of mental content like mine. I begin with a specification of just what mental states and events are intentional states and events. Because when I do philosophy of mind, I speak ontologically and not lin- guistically, I exclude dispositional mental states as being genuinely intentional states. Persons who are asleep or even unconscious have dispositional mental states, such as the belief that whales are mammals. I treat such mental states as dispositions both to some kinds of behaviors and to some kinds of occurrent mental states.

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