Abstract
In this chapter we begin to explore systematic ways of explaining how and why intentional phenomena come to exhibit the characteristics they do. To give such a systematic and explanatory account is the purpose of a theory of intentionality.
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Notes
In Analytical Philosophy, 2nd series, ed. by R. J. Butler (Blackwell, Oxford, 1965), pp. 160–62.
Brentano does not use the term ‘Realia’ primarily to contrast what is “real”, or existent, with what is “unreal”, or non-existent. Rather, Realia are concrete particulars, or “things” — including physical individuals, such as trees and houses, and non-material individual souls. What contrasts with Realia are abstract entities, such as universals and propositions. On this point see Linda L. McAlister, ‘Chisholm and Brentano on Intentionality’, Review of Metaphysics 28 (1974), 331; and Chisholm, ‘Brentano on Descriptive Psychology and the Intentional’ (Note 21, Ch. I above), pp. 13–15. Our discussion of Brentano’s theory draws considerably on Chisholm’s very helpful article (which, we might note, seems free of the defects that McAlister finds in some of Chisholm’s earlier expositions of Brentano’s thesis of intentionality).
Brentano, The True and the Evident, trans, by Roderick M. Chisholm, Ilse Politzer, and Kurt R. Fischer, ed. by Roderick M. Chisholm (Humanities Press, New York, 1966), p. 27. This work is a translation of Brentano’s Wahrheit und Evidenz, ed. by Oskar Kraus (Felix Meiner, Leipzig, 1930). The passage cited is from a short fragment written not later than 1902.
Brentano, Psychology (Note 1, Ch. I above), p. xx. The comment is from Brentano’s Foreword to the 1911 edition, The Classification of Mental Phenomena.
See J. N. Findlay, Meinong’s Theory of Objects and Values, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1963 ), pp. 1–41. Our interpretation of Meinong relies heavily on Findlay’s excellent exposition, esp. his Chs. I, II, and V I.
Alexius Meinong, The Theory of Objects’, trans, by Isaac Levi, D. B. Terrell, and Roderick M. Chisholm, in Realism and the Background of Phenomenology, ed. by Roderick M. Chisholm (The Free Press, New York, 1960), pp. 76–117, esp. pp. 76–86. [This essay is a translation of ‘Über Gegenstandstheorie first published in 1904]. Cf. Findlay (Note 16 above), pp. 42–58.
We have indulged a large simplification here. Meinong recognizes that we do not ordinarily take the objects of our intentions to be incomplete objects; rather, we intend them as being complete, even though we do not know what properties complete them. The objects of our ordinary intentions ought, therefore, to have (in S9me sense) the property of being complete, even though they are (in the sense we have been discussing) incomplete objects. Meinong calls such objects “completed” incomplete objects. The details of this view are rather complex and obscure and, as Findley says, it faces “formidable difficulties”. The crucial point, though, is that even with the admission of these “completed” objects our intentions still fail to reach complete objects: Meinong holds that the very best we can do is to intend completed (but nonetheless incomplete) objects that “do duty” for them. See Findlay (Note 16 above), pp. 170–80. Cf. David Woodruff Smith, ‘Meinongian Objects’, Grazer Philosophische Studien 1 (1975), 43–71, esp. 53–55.
For recent interesting and sympathetic reconstructions of a generally Meinongian ontology see Terence Parsons, ‘A Prolegomenon to Meinongian Semantics’, Journal of Philosophy 71 (1974), 561–80; Parsons, Nonexistent Objects (Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn., 1980); and Hector-Neri Castañeda, ‘Thinking and the Structure of the World’, Philosophia 4 (1974), 3–40.
Dictated in 1914 and included in Kategorienlehre, ed. by Alfred Kastil (Felix Meiner, Leipzig, 1933), p. 8; cited by Chisholm in ‘Brentano on Descriptive Psychology and the Intentional’ (Note 21, Ch. I above ), p. 15.
The fundamentals of this theory are expounded by Frege in ‘On Sense and Refer-ence’, in Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, trans, by Peter Geach and Max Black (Blackwell, Oxford, 1966), pp. 56–78, esp. pp. 56–67. The essay was first published, as ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’, in Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Philosophische Kritik 100 (1892), 25–50; a more recent German edition may be found in Gottlob Frege, Funktion, Begriff, Bedeutung: Fünf logische Studien, ed. by Günther Patzig (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1962), pp. 40–65. For fuller accounts of Frege’s philosophy of language see Montgomery Furth’s introduction to Frege’s The Basic Laws of Arithmetic, ed. and trans, by Montgomery Furth (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1967), pp. v-liii; and Michael Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Language (Harper & Row, New York, 1973), esp. pp. 81–109,152–203.
Cf. Carnap, Meaning and Necessity (Note 16, Ch. I above), esp. Chapters I and III. Other semantic systems in the generally Fregean tradition include those of Alonzo Church and C. I. Lewis: see Church. Carnap, Meaning and Necessity (Note 16, Ch. I above), esp. Chapters I and III. Other semantic systems in the generally Fregean tradition include those of Alonzo Church and C. I. Lewis: see Church, ‘A Formulation of the Logic of Sense and Denotation’, in Structure, Method and Meaning: Essays in Honor of Henry M. Seheffer, ed. by Paul Henle, H. M. Kallen, and S. K. Langer (Liberal Arts Press, New York, 1951), pp. 3–24; Church, ‘The Need for Abstract Entities in Semantic Analysis’, Proceedings of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences 80 (1951), 100–112, reprinted in Contemporary Readings in Logical Theory, ed. by Irving M. Co pi and James A. Gould (Macmillan, New York, 1967); and Lewis, ‘The Modes of Meaning’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 4 (1944), 236–49, reprinted in Semantics and the Philosophy of Language, ed. by Leonard Linsky ( The University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1952 ).
Frege, ‘The Thought’ A Logical Inquiry’, trans, by A. M. and Marcelle Quinton, Mind 65 (1956), 307, reprinted in Philosophical Logic, ed. by P. F. Strawson (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1967), also reprinted in Essays on Frege, ed. by E. D. Klemke ( University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1968 ).
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Smith, D.W., McIntyre, R. (1984). Some Classical Approaches to the Problems of Intentionality and Intensionality. In: Husserl and Intentionality. Synthese Library, vol 154. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9383-5_2
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