Abstract
During the twentieth century, both phenomenology and analytic philosophy of mind devoted themselves to the study of what they called “Intentionalität” or “intentionality”. In §84 of Ideen I, Husserl describes intentionality asSimilarly, John Searle begins the first chapter of his book on intentionality as follows:Searle describes intentionality in terms of “directedness” or “aboutness”: thoughts are about something, either an object (e.g., a fear of something) or a state of affairs (e.g., a belief that such and such is the case). If language also has this aspect of intentionality or aboutness—that is, if words relate to things—it has it, according to Searle, only in a “derived” way: intentionality is an “intrinsic” property of mental acts and states, and it is the mind that “imposes” it on entities that are not intentional in themselves (“noises made through the mouth,” “marks on paper,” etc.). This property of being about, which is primarily attributed to the mind, has often been understood as a relation. This can already be seen in Brentano, who is generally credited with bringing the concept of intentionality into contemporary philosophy in both the phenomenological and analytic traditions. In Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, Brentano describes intentionality as a “relation to a content” (Beziehung auf einen Inhalt), and as a “relation to something as an object” (Beziehung auf etwas als Object), or more simply as a “relation to an object” (Beziehung auf ein Object). In his lectures on descriptive psychology in 1890–1891, he speaks of an “intentional relation” (intentionale Relation), which he also calls a “psychic relation” (psychische Relation). In fact, in this same series of lectures Brentano distinguishes between two modes of intentionality, namely, “only seeing” (bloß sehen), and “noticing” (bemerken) or “being clear about what is seen” (sich klar sein über das Gesehene). The latter mode seems to refer to an active dimension of intentionality tied to the notion of attention. Thus, in addition to intentionality understood in static terms, which treats it as a mere aboutness, there is an intentionality understood in dynamic terms, combining aboutness with attention, which is, as Victor Caston puts it, “our ability to focus, at will, on various objects in our environment or in our thoughts.”
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Notes
- 1.
Husserl, Ideen I, §84 (Husserliana 3.1: 188.19–31): “[…] die Eigenheit von Erlebnissen, ‘Bewußtsein von etwas zu sein’. […] ein Wahrnehmen ist Wahrnehmen von etwas, etwa einem Dinge; ein Urteilen ist Urteilen von einem Sachverhalt; ein Werten von einem Wertverhalt; ein Wünschen von einem Wunschverhalt usw. […] In jedem aktuellen cogito richtet sich ein von dem reinen Ich ausstrahlender ‘Blick’ auf den ‘Gegenstand’ des jeweiligen Bewußtseinskorrelats, auf das Ding, den Sachverhalt usw. und vollzieht das sehr verschiedenartige Bewußtsein von ihm.” Trans. Kersten, in Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book, 200 (slightly modified).
- 2.
Searle, Intentionality, 1. On Searle’s supposed ignorance of phenomenology, see Intentionality, ix–x, and Baumgartner and Klawitter, Intentionality of Perception. Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty are cited by Searle at (respectively) Intentionality, 44, 154, and 65.
- 3.
Searle, Intentionality, 27.
- 4.
Brentano, Psychologie I, ed. Kraus, 124, 137, vi (respectively); ed. Binder and Chrudzimski, 106, 115, 9. Trans. Rancurello et al., in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, 88, 97, vii (modified).
- 5.
Brentano, Deskriptive Psychologie, 22. Trans. Müller, in Descriptive Psychology , 24.
- 6.
Brentano, Deskriptive Psychologie, 23–24. Trans. Müller, in Descriptive Psychology, 26. On attention , see also Brentano, Deskriptive Psychologie, 31–65, and Grundzüge der Ästhetik, 38–40.
- 7.
Caston, Connecting Traditions, 39. This is how Caston describes “selective attention.”
- 8.
See Jacquette, Intentionality as a Conceptually Primitive Relation.
- 9.
Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie, Husserliana 9: 31.24–32.17: “Man konnte sich nicht der Erkenntnis entziehen, daß Intentionalität eine Grundeigenschaft des psychischen Lebens sei, die vor allen Theorien ganz unmittelbar und evident gegeben sei. Wenn ich ein Haus wahrnehme, so ist, werde ich mir vielleicht sagen, was hier vorliegt, das Haus draußen, und in mir ein psychisches Erlebnis des Wahrnehmens, etwa ein Wahrnehmungsbild, als entfernte Wirkung des Hauses selbst auf meine psychophysische Subjektivität. Aber wie immer es mit dieser kausalen Beziehung stehen mag und ob gegen sie etwas zu sagen [ist], ist es doch evident zu machen, daß im Wahrnehmungserlebnis selbst eine Bewußtseinsbeziehung liegt, und zwar auf das in ihm selbst wahrgenommene Haus. Es kann sein, daß ich späterhin rechtmäßig zur Überzeugung komme, daß ich einer Illusion zum Opfer gefallen bin. Aber vorher hatte ich doch rein das Bewußtsein ‘dort-seiendes-Haus’, deskriptiv ist gar nichts unterschieden von einem sonstigen Wahrnehmen. Von einer äußerlich-innerlichen Kausalität ist natürlich keine Rede, wenn das Haus eine bloße Halluzination ist. Aber es ist klar, das momentane Erleben an sich selbst ist nicht überhaupt ein subjektives Erleben, sondern eben Wahrnehmen von diesem Haus. Also deskriptiv gehört zum Erleben die Objekt-Beziehung, ob nun das Objekt wirklich existiert oder nicht. Ebenso ist, wenn ich mir einen Zentauren fingiere, das Erleben der Fiktion selbst Phantasie von dem und dem Zentauren; in dem Erleben, das wir Erinnerung nennen, liegt ebenso selbst die Beziehung auf Vergangenes, im Lieben selbst die Beziehung auf das Geliebte, im Hassen auf das Gehaßte, im Wollen auf das Gewollte usw.” Trans. Scanlon, in Phenomenological Psychology, 22–23. For discussion of this passage, see McIntyre and Smith, Husserl and Intentionality, 91–92. On the difference between the intentional relation and the causal relation in Husserl, see also Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen 5, §15a (Husserliana 19.2: 405.11–32; 1913 ed., 391); McIntyre and Smith, Theory of Intentionality, 149–152; Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology , 14–15 and 23–24.
- 10.
The action of the object is of course only part of the genetic explanation of mental acts . In order to have a complete picture of the way psychic activities (in all their diversity) are produced, one should consider, in addition to the effect of the object not just the influence of physiological elements, but also of other psychic activities, especially with respect to the production of beliefs and desires.
- 11.
See the texts collected in Brentano, Deskriptive Psychologie. Note that Brentano also makes room for merely psychological genetic explanations, for example, as regards association of ideas. On the division of psychology into genetic and descriptive, see Hedwig, Deskription; Mazzù, Psychologie empirique et psychologie métaphysique chez Franz Brentano; Fisette, Descriptive Psychology and Natural Sciences.
- 12.
See Mulligan and Smith, Franz Brentano on the Ontology of Mind.
- 13.
By “cognitive acts ,” I mean a subspecies of mental acts that excludes both affective and conative acts, and thus consists mainly of sensation , memory, conceptual thought, and judgement. In this book I will primarily discuss cognitive acts.
- 14.
On this difference between “being intentionally directed towards something” and “referring to something,” see Horgan and Tienson, The Intentionality of Phenomenology and the Phenomenology of Intentionality, 529; note however that the vocabulary in the literature fluctuates: one finds veridical uses of “intentionality” (often described as our “directedness towards the world”) and non-veridical uses of “reference” (for example, in translations of the [Austro-]German sich beziehen auf). It must be emphasized that reference here is not a property of linguistic expressions, but of psychic activities, either conceptual or non-conceptual. The term should therefore not be understood in the sense it has as a translation of Frege’s Bedeutung (which would be better translated as “signification”). For the use of “reference” to designate a feature of mental acts , see also Chisholm, Presence in Absence. One could choose to talk of “mental reference”, as Kriegel does, in contrast to linguistic reference; see his Brentano’s Mature Theory of Intentionality. Speaker reference (someone refers to a with the word “a”), as a linguistic phenomenon, is also to be distinguished from mental reference—although the latter surely in part explains the former. On the philosophical problems created by not distinguishing between intentionality and reference when speaking of psychic activities—in particular, on the “dilemma” mentioned in the preface to this book—see Taieb, Intentionality and Reference.
- 15.
Kriegel, The Sources of Intentionality, 154.
- 16.
Brentano, Ps 34, Von den Relationen, 1908, nn. 51045–51046: “Sollte es sich nicht um etwas Imaginäres in Jupiter handeln, sondern um etwas Reelles und wirklich Existierendes, so würde zwar von diesem gelten, daß es mit dem Denkenden in einer Relation sei, die als eine Art Übereinstimmung bezeichnet werden könnte, allein diese wäre nicht die s.g. psychische Beziehung des Denkenden zum Gedachten, sondern eine Übereinstimmung des Denkenden mit dem Dinge aufgrund der Eigentümlichkeit des Denkenden einerseits und des Dinges andrerseits. Es wäre eine Relation, welche als eine Abart denen der Gleichheit und Ähnlichkeit im gewöhnlichen Sinne zuzuordnen wäre.” My translation.
- 17.
Brentano, M 76, Zur ‘Metaphysik’, 1915, n. 30876 (Kategorienlehre, 167): “[…] ein Urteilender aufhört, sich mit seinem Objekt in jener Übereinstimmung zu finden, in welcher der richtig Urteilende zu ihm steht, wenn er unverändert bei seinem Urteil verharrt, aber das Objekt sich ändert.” Trans. Chisholm and Guterman, in The Theory of Categories, 126.
- 18.
See especially Chisholm, Intentional Inexistence.
- 19.
Ducasse, Moore’s Refutation of Idealism, 232–233. It should be noted that adverbialism does not in itself imply the reduction of secondary qualities to “species of experience” (even though Ducasse’s article was meant as a defence of the validity of the esse est percipi thesis for secondary qualities).
- 20.
Orlando, Review of Kriegel, The Sources of Intentionality.
- 21.
On the “divalence ” of intentional verbs , see Ebbesen, A Porretanean and a Nominalis on Relations.
- 22.
Kriegel, Intentional Inexistence and Phenomenal Intentionality, 313.
- 23.
This notion of a “grammar” of intentionality comes from Chrudzimski, Intentionalitätstheorie beim frühen Brentano, 240.
- 24.
Kriegel, The Sources of Intentionality, 158. Kriegel develops a thesis taken from Frey, Phenomenal Presence. On the relational character of the phenomenology of intentionality, see also Kriegel, Brentano’s Mature Theory of Intentionality.
- 25.
Orlando, review of Kriegel, The Sources of Intentionality.
- 26.
I will return in Sect. 3.2.3 below to Brentano’s theory of the intentional object .
- 27.
- 28.
See Höfler, Logik: Unter Mitwirkung von Dr. Alexius Meinong, 105; Twardowski, Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen, 27–29; Findlay, Values and Intentions, 35, quoted in Haldane, Intentionality and One-Sided Relations , 97. On the “abnormal relation ,” see Grossmann, Non-Existent Objects , 31–32, as well as Phenomenology and Existentialism, 50–51 and The Existence of the World, 94–95. For the “non-extensional relation ” (or nicht-extensionale Relation), see Chrudzimski and Smith, Brentano’s Ontology, 216; Chrudzimski, Intentionalitätstheorie beim frühen Brentano, 239. More generally on the introduction of relations without a term , see also Kenny, Action, Emotion and Will, 117.
- 29.
A defence against the objection that the solution is ad hoc is found in Grossmann, Non-Existent Objects , 31–32, but the example of the temporal relation comes from Kenny, Action, Emotion and Will, 117.
- 30.
Brentano, Wahrheit und Evidenz, 117 and Ps 34, Von den Relationen, 1908, nn. 51040–51048.
- 31.
Aristotle, De int. 1, 16a3–9. Note that here I follow Pépin, as well as the “modern commentators” that he cites, and I take the affections of soul to belong to both the sensitive part of the soul and the intellective part; see Pépin, ΣΥΜΒΟΛΑ, ΣΗΜΕΙΑ, ὉΜΟΙΩΜΑΤΑ, 31–32.
- 32.
See Aristotle, De anima 2.4, 416b33–34 and 3.4, 429a13–15; see also, more generally, De anima 2.5.
- 33.
Brentano, Wahrheit und Evidenz, 117: “[Aristoteles] teilte die Relationen in drei Klassen, von denen die eine die komparativen, die andere die kausalen, die dritte die intentionalen Relationen enthielt.” Trans. Chisholm et al., in The True and the Evident, 70.
- 34.
Aristotle, De int. 11, 21a32–33: “τὸ δὲ μὴ ὄν, ὅτι δοξαστόν, οὐκ ἀληθὲς εἰπεῖν ὄν τι· δόξα γὰρ αὐτοῦ οὐκ ἔστιν ὅτι ἔστιν, ἀλλ᾽ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν.” Trans. Ackrill, in The Complete Works of Aristotle (slightly modified).
- 35.
Aristotle, Top. 4.1, 121b2–4: “Ἔτι εἰ ἐπὶ πλέον λέγεται τοῦ γένους τὸ ἐν τῷ γένει τεθέν, οἷον τὸ δοξαστὸν τοῦ ὄντος· καὶ γὰρ τὸ ὂν καὶ τὸ μὴ ὂν δοξαστόν, ὥστ᾽οὐκ ἂν εἴη τὸ δοξαστὸν εἶδος τοῦ ὄντος· ἐπὶ πλέον γὰρ ἀεὶ τὸ γένος τοῦ εἴδους λέγεται.” Trans. Pickard-Cambridge, in The Complete Works of Aristotle (slightly modified). I thank Olivier Boulnois for this reference.
- 36.
The verb “to aim at” translates the German Abzielen, which one finds as a synonym of Meinen in Husserl; see Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen 5, §11 (Husserliana 19.2: 386.1–2; 1913 ed., 372); trans. Findlay, in Logical Investigations, 98. As shown by Mulligan, Meaning Something and Meanings, Husserl’s Meinen is a concept that it is difficult to describe, and often seems to be closely connected with the concept of signification (Bedeutung). In this study I shall use the verb “aiming at ” in a broad, perhaps non-Husserlian sense, bringing it closer to aboutness : an act that aims at x is an act that is about x.
- 37.
See Alexander of Aphrodisias, In Met., CAG 1: 406.35–38 and 407.20–25, and De anima, CAG Suppl. 2.1: 78.10–21.
- 38.
See Simplicius, In Phys., CAG 9: 401.31–33. It should be pointed out that the discussion of Neoplatonist authors in the present work will focus mainly on those referred to as the “commentators” on Aristotle, who were favourable to Aristotle’s doctrines and took care to articulate them in such a way that they would harmonize with Plato’s. However, the relationship of the Neoplatonists with Aristotle was not always friendly, as can be seen, at the very beginning of the Neoplatonist tradition, in Plotinus’s critique of the Categories; see Plotinus, Enneads 6.1–3. On the role of Aristotle in Neoplatonist philosophy and education, see Ilsetraut Hadot, Commentaire. On psychology, see Blumenthal, Aristotle and Neoplatonism in Late Antiquity, 121–125. For a more detailed comparison of Aristotelian psychology with the psychology of Plotinus, see Emilsson, Plotinus on Sense-Perception and Schniewind, Le statut des objets intelligibles chez Alexandre d’Aphrodise et Plotin.
- 39.
Alexander of Aphrodisias, De anima, CAG Suppl. 2.1: 84.4–6: “καὶ γὰρ εἰ διά τινων παθῶν σωματικῶν τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι γίνεται, ἀλλ’αὐτό γε τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι οὐ πάσχειν ἐστίν, ἀλλὰ κρίνειν.” My translation, following Bergeron and Dufour’s French translation.
- 40.
See Aristotle, Cat. 7, 6a36–8b24 and Met. Δ.15, 1020b26–21b11; Cat. 8, 8b29–32, 9b33–10a10 and De int. 1, 16a3–9; De anima 2.5, 417b2–18a6; Met. Θ.6, 1048b18–36 and Θ.8, 1050a23–b2.
- 41.
See Thomas Aquinas, In Met. 5.1.17 (ed. Marietti, §1027). The distinction is derived from Aristotle, Met. Θ.6, 1048b18–36 and Θ.8, 1050a23–b2.
- 42.
See Thomas Aquinas, In Met. 5.1.17 (ed. Marietti, §1003).
- 43.
John Duns Scotus, Ord. I, d. 3, pars 3, q. 2, n. 479 (Vat. 3: 286.21–22): “[…] nec sola relatio mensurati est tertii modi, sed omnis similis, scilicet non mutua, qualis est terminati—modo praedicto—ad terminans.” My translation, following Sondag’s French translation.
- 44.
For a critique of histories of intentionality that focus excessively on lexicography, see Caston, Connecting Traditions. I thank Laurent Cesalli for drawing my attention to the importance of making a strict distinction between lexicography, that is, an inquiry about words, and the history of philosophy, that is, an inquiry about concepts and propositions.
- 45.
On the existence of a psychology belonging to the Aristotelian tradition taken broadly (that is, as this tradition is understood here), see most recently the work of the research group “Representation and Reality: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Aristotelian Tradition,” at the University of Gothenburg.
- 46.
This is the case from 1889 onwards; see Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis, ed. Kraus, 54n19; ed. Binder and Chrudzimski, 62n19.
- 47.
On these distinctions, see Panaccio, Philosophie analytique et histoire de la philosophie. Panaccio borrows the distinction between rational reconstruction and historical reconstruction from Richard Rorty, The Historiography of Philosophy.
- 48.
On the importance of the recontextualization of past philosophical statements if they are to be understood properly, see de Libera, L’art des généralités, 609–636.
- 49.
Longworth, Grice and Marty on Expression.
- 50.
For studies on intentionality in ancient and medieval philosophy, see especially Perler (ed.), Ancient and Medieval Theories of Intentionality; Couloubaritsis and Mazzù (eds.), Questions sur l’intentionnalité; Lagerlund (ed.), Representation and Objects of Thought in Medieval Philosophy; Knuuttila and Kärkkäinen (eds.), Theories of Perception in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy; Amerini (ed.), Later Medieval Perspectives on Intentionality; Klima (ed.), Intentionality, Cognition and Mental Representation in Medieval Philosophy. On the Aristotelian–scholastic origins of Brentano’s thought, see Stumpf, Spinozastudien, 9–18; Spiegelberg, Der Begriff der Intentionalität in der Scholastik, bei Brentano und Husserl, and ‘Intention’ and ‘Intentionality’ in the Scholastics, Brentano and Husserl; Étienne Gilson, Franz Brentano’s Interpretation of Medieval Philosophy; Marras, The Scholastic Roots of Brentano’s Conception of Intentionality; Hedwig, Der scholastische Kontext des Intentionalen bei Brentano, Intention: Outlines for the History of a Phenomenological Concept, and Über die moderne Rezeption der Intentionalität Thomas-Ockham-Brentano; Volpi, War Franz Brentano ein Aristoteliker?; McDonnell, Brentano’s Revaluation of the Scholastic Concept of Intentionality into a Root-Concept of Descriptive Psychology , and Brentano’s Modification of the Medieval-Scholastic Concept of ‘Intentional Inexistence’; Courtine, La cause de la phénoménologie, 37–74; de Libera, Archéologie du sujet, vol. 1: Naissance du sujet, 133–154; Tănăsescu, Franz Brentano’s Dissertation and the Problem of Intentionality.
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Taieb, H. (2018). Introduction: Is Intentionality a Relation?. In: Relational Intentionality: Brentano and the Aristotelian Tradition. Primary Sources in Phenomenology(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98887-0_1
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