Phenomenal intentionality past and present: introductory
نویسنده
چکیده
A growing amount of research on intentionality within Anglo-American philosophy of mind has been focusing on the notion of phenomenal intentionality. How to characterize phenomenal intentionality is not a straightforward matter, but one relatively neutral option is in terms of counterfactual dependence: an intentional state has phenomenal intentionality just in case if it were not phenomenal it would not be intentional. Research focusing on phenomenal intentionality has tended to be guided by two insights. The first is that phenomenal intentionality is distinctive: it has certain special features lacking in other kinds of intentionality. The second is that phenomenal intentionality is basic: it enjoys some sort of priority, whether metaphysical or epistemological, over other kinds of intentionality. Commitment to these two claims has been the mark of an emerging research program for understanding intentionality. Different treatments of intentionality within the research program differ in terms of how acutely distinctive and how importantly basic they take phenomenal intentionality to be. There is a limit case of this genre of theory that treats phenomenal intentionality as the only kind of intentionality. Galen Strawson sometimes seems committed to this particularly strong position (Strawson 2008). It is very plausible, however, that this position was commonplace among philosophers of mind in the so-called Brentano School. Certainly it is plausibly attributed to Brentano (1874), who did not use the Phenom Cogn Sci (2013) 12:437–444 DOI 10.1007/s11097-013-9308-0
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