Languages of Intentionality

A Dialogue Between Two Traditions on Consciousness

Paul S. MacDonald

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781441188489
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Mind & Body in Philosophy

Intentionality - the relationship between conscious states and their objects - is one of the most discussed topics in contemporary debates in philosophy of mind, cognitive neuroscience and the study of consciousness. Long a foundational concept in Phenomenology, it has also received considerable coverage in the writings of analytic philosophers. This book is the first study to offer an impartial, well-informed assessment of the two traditions' approaches through an in-depth investigation of the principal thinkers' ideas, so that their positions emerge side-by-side, converging and diverging on certain shared themes.
Beginning with a historical discussion of thedevelopment of the term in the work of Continental thinkers in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the book considers the work of Brentano and Husserl and subsequent existentialist critiques. From there, it explores how empirical-analytic philosophers took up the topic, drawn as they were to materialist and computer models of the mind. Finally MacDonald presents a new 'hybrid' account of intentionality that will be a crucial work for scholars working on consciousness and the mind.

Chapter 1

Current Issues and Debates on Intentionality

Let’s begin by considering what it means for me to be conscious, what “passes before my mind,” what sorts of “things” I am aware of. Let’s focus on what, as a matter of fact, I have been aware of, say, in 1 hour today. I think about the content of a dream I just had; I try to follow a flimsy thread back into the dream. Then I look at the clock and think I’ve only got an hour till I have to leave; even with the fan on I feel too warm; I smell the coffee I’ve just made; I am reading about Gandalf’s fall into the abyss in Lord of the Rings, then I recall my memory of the same event in the film version, comparing one with the other. But I’ve drifted off; now I remember that there is something I have to do when I get back from class; then I remember that there is something I was supposed to do yesterday and forgot. In addition, I anticipate giving a guest lecture tomorrow at Notre Dame; and that reminds me of how, when I first went there, I had anticipated going to Notre Dame; and so forth. What a wide complex range of “things” count as mental content, things that I can be aware of. If I were to try to figure out what they all had in common, what made them candidates for my being conscious of them, I would not get very far in taking them to be real things, or as referring to real things. Although the words on the page are as concrete as the hot coffee in the mug on my desk, the character Gandalf that I’ve pictured through my reading the words does not share the same space and time as the hot coffee. When I anticipate going to Notre Dame tomorrow my thought is directed at something absent. But it is not absent in the same way as my memory of when I first went to Notre Dame, although it’s about something absent that was present at an earlier time. It seems that when I reflect on the entire possible content of my conscious experiences, when I become conscious of the ways in which I am conscious of things, I am no longer taking part in the original conscious activities. But at the very least, all of my conscious experiences are about some thing; every thought, every perception, every memory, and so forth is related to its “object” in a distinctive manner—this mental relatedness is called “intentionality.” So this intentional relatedness seems to be pervasive in my waking (and dreaming) life, perhaps it’s even essential to my being a conscious entity. But an accurate, thorough description of this characteristic seems to be very hard to achieve, and an explanation of its place and origin in my life as a conscious being seems to be mysterious—a suitable subject for philosophical investigation.

Intentionality is one of the foremost topics in current research and discussion in the Philosophy of Mind, Cognitive Science, and Consciousness Studies. Intentionality is the name given to the distinctive mental relation characteristic of conscious states or events that they can be directed at some thing or about some thing. For many theorists in the Analytic-Empirical tradition, intentional relatedness is an intrinsic feature of consciousness and is completely resistant to every effort to build it into a materialist picture of the mind. To others who share the same tradition, intentionality is indeed an intrinsic feature of consciousness but one which can be “naturalized,” that is, adequately accounted for by (some version of) a physical model, for example, one extrapolated from computers. On the other hand, for many theorists in the continental tradition, intentionality as one of the central concepts of the phenomenological approach to consciousness, it is crucial to its account of perception, meaning and the social world. Intentionality has a long history in this tradition: from Brentano and Husserl to the present where it is also the focus of much heated discussion. In the vast super-discipline of consciousness studies, which draws on work by philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists, many of the spurious or artificial divisions between the two traditions have broken down; some recent work on intentionality moves comfortably back and forth between the two approaches. But despite the fact that there have been a few good books which offer an overview of each tradition’s contribution to the topic of intentionality, there is no book-length study which offers an impartial, well-informed assessment of both the Analytic-Empirical approach and the phenomenological approach.

Some of the current debates in philosophy of mind and cognitive science attempt to resolve the issue of the “natural” status of consciousness in terms of intentionality, which is alleged to be the distinctive mark or trait of the mind. An overview of some of these debates highlights major contributions by Analytic-Empirical¹ theorists in their attempt to develop a model of the basic “nature” and structure of consciousness. The Neuroscientific schema has superseded the strictly linguistic approach, partly in response to the challenge posed by computer models of the brain to provide an explanation for cognitive processes. But this approach pays little attention to the phenomenological concept of intentionality because of its alleged reliance on a transcendental idealist position in metaphysics and a methodological procedure (called the reduction or epoché) which is considered dubious. However, such a position is not necessary for an adequate account of intentionality which developed to provide a conceptual model for knowledge of mathematical “objects” and the formation of linguistic meaning. My principal suggestion is that fundamental incommensurabilities between the Analytic-Empirical and the Phenomenological accounts of conscious relatedness can be reconciled by reconceptualizing “object,” content, and relation—and the best approach to this is through some version of a unified field ontology (explored in Chapter 8).

It has become fashionable in the last decade or so to make large public statements about a rapprochement between so-called Analytic-Empirical Philosophy and Continental (or European) Philosophy. Any number of articles in well-respected, long-established philosophy journals and high-profile conferences attempt to find a common ground to effect some sort of reconciliation, or at least polite mutual recognition, between philosophical camps which have long been separated by an artificial divide. On one hand, the case has been vigorously argued that at the turn of the last century, two of the principal pioneers in Language Philosophy and Phenomenology, Gottlob Frege and Edmund Husserl, held similar or even compatible positions on a large number of central philosophical concerns. On the other hand, the reception of Husserl in the Anglo-American world was seriously obstructed for perhaps half a century by a constellation of eccentric factors, some of which will remain a mystery forever. Nevertheless, as early as the late 1950s and 1960s, a wide range of scholars published scores of articles in mainstream journals which favorably compared, among others: Husserl and Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Wittgenstein, Husserl and Frege, and Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology in general. But this impending rapprochement never came about—developments in cognitive neuroscience overtook the preferred hypothesis regarding the physical basis for mental phenomena, including an explanation rooted in language and other symbolic activities. And it is this neuroscientific model of psychological phenomena which dominates current Analytic-Empirical exposition on the topic of intentionality.

Interest in intentionality on the part of Analytic-Empirical philosophers seems to begin in the early 1950s; it may be quite likely that this interest was sparked off by the publication of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (1953). Both Elizabeth Anscombe and Wilfrid Sellars make repeated references to Wittgenstein’s discussion of intention-in-action and both adopt his method and orientation to the issue, that is, their efforts are directed towards: (a) an analysis of sentences which report or make a claim about mental states, and (b) a demystification of the notion of a private, inner experience. At this time, Chisholm is unusual in beginning his long, protracted attempts to introduce intentionality into the arena of philosophical debate by appealing to Brentano’s “thesis” about the intentional “inexistence” of mental “objects” or contents. (Scare quotes indicate the novel, even peculiar character of Brentano’s orientation.) Until about 1970, the debate continued in a variety of important colloquia and conferences, and through articles and replies in several journals (see Marras 1972, pp. 505–23). Many of the central areas of disagreement were already marked out in the Chisholm-Sellars Correspondence of 1956 (ibid., pp. 214–48)—the corners of the contested square were occupied and those that joined the debate declared their allegiance in this fashion.

From 1970 onwards, the scope of discussion began to change and new corners were occupied, partly due to the publication of early works by Searle, Dennett, Fodor, and others, but also due to the emergence of significant research in Artificial Intelligence, Neuroscience and Cognitive Computation. One strange feature of these debates about intentionality, an eccentricity which continues through the 1990s, is the almost complete absence of Husserl’s position. Despite Boyce Gibson’s translation of Husserl’s Ideas: A General Introduction (1931) and J. N. Findlay’s translation of the two-volume Logical Investigations (1970), Husserl’s voice remained for the most part unheard. J. N. Mohanty published The Concept of Intentionality (St Louis, 1972) in the Modern Concepts in Philosophy Series, under the editorship of Marvin Farber, where he discussed Brentano’s thesis, Chisholm’s interpretation, and Husserl criticisms of Brentano; but Mohanty’s book had little impact and is largely neglected. Thus the most comprehensive and sophisticated account of this central theme in philosophy of mind went largely unexamined in the now wide-ranging Anglo-American discussion in the 1960s–70s Serious difficulties in an alternative interpretation of the “nature” of intentionality were, right from the start, in great measure due to confusions or ambiguities in assigning argumentative positions.

There is very little “cross-border” communication, despite the fact that there have been some indications in that direction, for example, Roderick Chisholm’s key papers in the late 1950s, Richard Aquila who had written on Brentano, Husserl, Frege, and Russell in the 1970s, J. N. Mohanty’s 1970 book made a valiant effort to compare and contrast Brentano, Husserl, and Chisholm. The first part of William Lyons’ recent book, Approaches to Intentionality (Oxford, 1995) is explicitly designed to provide an overview of the most important positions staked out in contemporary discussions of intentionality, but aside from a few brief mentions (and a curt dismissal) of Brentano there is a complete absence of the Continental tradition in his survey. Husserl’s name is only ever mentioned when conjoined with Brentano’s, as though they had jointly authored a research study on intentionality, like Smith and McIntyre did in 1982. Much the same is true of John Searle’s view: the book Intentionality (1983) and one chapter in his The Rediscovery of Mind (1992) are devoted to the “Intentional Structures of Consciousness,” but there are only brief, passing mentions of Husserl. In fact, Brentano and Husserl are only ever mentioned as a duo, like the Two Ronnies, as though Brentano and Husserl held indistinguishable positions on intentionality. Each of the principal features discussed by Searle has, at one time or another, been the subject of a detailed, lengthy exposition by Husserl in his many published works and numerous lecture series. In most cases, the sub-sections in Searle’s Rediscovery look like attempts to reinvent the wheel (or perhaps spokes in the wheel); many of his ingenious points have already been clarified and some of the more difficult problems hammered out. It would surely be a valuable service to amplify and extend the Analytic and Neuro-scientific accounts—both of which we will characterize, along with Wilfrid Sellars, as Empiricism—with insights from Phenomenological research and vice versa.

Burt Hopkins’s Intentionality in Husserl and Heidegger (Springer, 1999) reassesses the well-known “controversy” between Husserl and Heidegger over the proper status of the phenomenon of intentionality. Hopkins seeks to determine whether Heidegger’s hermeneutical critique of intentionality is sensitive to Husserl’s reflective account of “the things themselves.” Hopkins argues that Heidegger’s critique is directed toward the cognitive modality of intentionality, and thus passes over its “non-actional” or “horizonal” dimension in Husserlian phenomenology. As a result of this, he concludes that Heidegger misinterprets Husserl’s account of the intentional immanence exhibited by phenomenological reflection. On the basis of these findings, he suggests that the phenomenological methodology, operative in the so-called hermeneutic critique of transcendental consciousness, itself involves transcendental presuppositions that are most appropriately characterized in terms of intentional, and reflective, phenomena. In Damian Byers’ Intentionality and Transcendence: Closure and Openness in Husserl’s Phenomenology (Wisconsin, 2003) the author describes the form Husserl gives to the problem of knowledge, the way this form influences the development of the phenomenological method, and the results of its application. In an exemplary manner, Byers presents Husserl’s understanding of the roles of intentionality, idealism, temporalization, and kinesthesia in the constitution of knowledge. Drawing upon all of Husserl’s major texts, he corrects many misapprehensions about Husserl’s doctrines of intentionality and idealism. Byers argues that Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology is both a philosophy of closure and control and a philosophy of openness and vulnerability.

Ryan Hickerson’s The History of Intentionality (Continuum, 2007) provides an insightful overview and analysis of the main stages in the development of the concept of intentionality in the phenomenological tradition. Hickerson begins with a detailed study of Brentano who, he argues, is almost unique as a forefather of both Analytic and Continental philosophy. His claim to fame is the reintroduction of intentionality to the modern philosophy of mind: in the Analytic tradition this is treated as (or as closely akin to) representation; in the Continental tradition intentionality is the leitmotiv of phenomenology. Brentano attracted a wide variety of students during his lifetime, a group of influential philosophers, psychologists, and others. Hickerson offers new interpretations of a central philosophical concept employed in the Brentano School and argues against the now-standard misreading of Brentano (in both the Analytic and Continental traditions) as an immanentist, that is someone who believed that mental contents exist solely within the mind. Hickerson does this by tracing Brentano’s notion of phenomena back to its origins in the French positivism of August Comte—one of the most distinctive features of this book. He then shows how Brentano’s students attempted to correct the “problems” each found in Brentano’s treatment of mental content, including: (1) Twardowski’s division of subjective contents from worldly objects, his part in a dramatic transformation in representational theories at the dawn of the twentieth century; (2) Meinong’s ontology of nonexistent objects, the reaction to Brentano made infamous by Russell; and (3) Husserl’s “breakthrough to phenomenology,” his advancement of mental contents as ideal entities and their intricate structures.

As already mentioned, William Lyons’ Approaches to Intentionality gives a critical account, in Part One, of the five most comprehensive and prominent current approaches to intentionality. These approaches are: the instrumentalist approach, derived from Carnap and Quine and culminating in the work of Daniel Dennett; the linguistic approach, derived from the work of Chomsky and then Jerry Fodor; the biological approach, developed by Ruth Millikan, Colin McGinn, and others; the information-processing approach in definitive form in the work of Fred Dretske; and the functional role approach of Brian Loar. In Part Two Lyons sets out a multi-level, developmental approach to intentionality; drawing upon work in neurophysiology and psychology. The author argues that intentionality is to be found, in different forms, at the levels of brain functioning, prelinguistic consciousness, language, and at the holistic level of “whole person performance” which is demarcated by our ordinary everyday talk about beliefs, desires, hopes, intentions, and the other “propositional attitudes.” It does include some brief discussion of Brentano, but Husserl is barely even mentioned.

Steven Horst’s Symbols, Computation, and Intentionality (Harvard, 1996) puts forth a multi-faceted critique of the computational theory of mind, that is the belief that the mind can be likened to a computer and that cognitive states possess the generative and compositional properties of natural languages. This approach has turned out to be very influential in recent philosophical studies of cognition and has been employed by some theorists to account for intentionality—Horst pronounces the computational theory deficient. He refutes its claims and assumptions, particularly the assertion that symbolic representations need not have conventional meaning. He goes on to sketch a new methodology for looking at the philosophy of psychology, one that provides a more fruitful way of comparing computational psychology with rival views emerging from connectionism and neuroscience. Horst brought his views up to date in an extensive article for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy in 2006.

R. C. Stalnaker develops a philosophical picture of the nature of speech and thought and the relations between them in Context and Content: Essays on Intentionality in Speech and Thought (Oxford, 1999). Two important wide-ranging themes run through these collected essays: the role that the context in which speech takes place plays in accounting for the way language is used to express thought, and the role of the external environment in determining the contents of our thoughts. Stalnaker argues against the widespread assumption of the priority of linguistic over mental representation, which he suggests has had a distorting influence on our understanding. The first part of the book develops a framework for representing contexts and the way they interact with the interpretation of what is said in them. This framework is used to help to explain a range of linguistic phenomena concerning presupposition and assertion, conditional statements, the attribution of beliefs, and the use of names, descriptions, and pronouns to refer. Stalnaker defends externalism about thought, that is the assumption that our thoughts have the contents they have in virtue of the way we are situated in the world, and explores the role of linguistic action and linguistic structure in determining the contents of our thoughts.

Uriah Kriegel’s very recent book The Sources of Intentionality (Oxford, 2011)—which has appeared too late to be discussed in this book—inquires into the source of this power of directedness that some items exhibit while others do not. An approach to this issue prevalent in the philosophy of the past half-century seeks to explain the power of directedness in terms of certain items’ ability to reliably track things in their environment. Here Kriegel seeks to explain the power of directedness rather in terms of an intrinsic ability of conscious experience to direct itself. His conception of intentionality is grounded in introspective encounter with mental states that have their intentional content in virtue of their experiential character. The only instances of intentionality we have observational encounter with are experiential-intentional states. One promising view is that states have their experiential-intentional content in virtue of being suitably higher-order tracked to track something. Tracking accounts of experiential intentionality face an insurmountable problem: it is not what experiences track that determines their experiential intentional content, only what they are suitably higher-order represented to track. Experiential intentionality may nonetheless be tracking-based, namely, if higher-order representation is also accounted for in terms of tracking. This would allow a “higher-order tracking theory” of experiential intentionality: a state has its experiential-intentional content in virtue of being suitably higher-order tracked to track something. An interesting and surprisingly plausible view (adverbialism) is that states have their experiential-intentional content not in virtue of bearing any relation of intentional dir...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Chapter 1.   Current Issues and Debates on Intentionality
• Chapter 2.   Beginnings of the Phenomenological Theory
• Chapter 3.   Existentialist Critiques of Husserl’s Theory
• Chapter 4.   Language-Analytic Accounts and the New Empiricism
• Chapter 5.   Computer Models and Functionalist Explanations
• Chapter 6.   Criticisms of the Analytic-Empirical Approach
• Chapter 7.   Extensions of the Phenomenological Theory
• Chapter 8.   A Hybrid Project—the Best of Both Approaches
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index