It is well known that Franz Brentano was the first to suggest intentionality, property of being about something, as a criterion for demarcating domain mental. He suggested intentionality necessary and sufficient condition something qualify mental event. important, purposes this paper, pay attention fact Brentano’s theory came from within broader philosophical outlook thoroughly dualistic. sough...

Franz Brentano is well known for highlighting the importance of intentionality, but he said curiously little about nature intentionality. According to Mark Textor, there a deep reason this: took intentionality be conceptual primitive which revealed only in direct grasp. Although certainly textual support this interpretation, it appears tension with Brentano's repeated attempts analyze terms ‘no...

Intentionality: A Study of Mind, Meaning, and Language (Dordrecht and Boston: D. Reidel, 1982), where our interpretation is developed in greater detail. Ronald McIntyre and David Woodruff Smith, “Theory of Intentionality,” in J. N. Mohanty and William R. McKenna, eds., Husserl’s Phenomenology: A Textbook (Washington, D. C.: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology and University Press of A...

People judge that harmful side effects are intentional, e.g., a CEO who introduces a new program to increase profits that results in harm to the environment is judged to have intentionally harmed the environment. They judge helpful side effects are unintentional, e.g., a CEO who introduces a new program to increase profits that results in helping the environment is not judged to have intentiona...

To explain how stimuli cause consciousness, we have to explain causality. We can’t trace linear causal chains from receptors after the first cortical synapse, so we use circular causality to explain neural pattern formation by self-organizing dynamics. But an aspect of intentional action is causality, which we extrapolate to material objects in the world. Thus causality is a property of mind, n...