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Intentionality and Consciousness R Menary, The University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia ã 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Glossary Consciousness – Can be usefully classified in three ways: (1) phenomenal consciousness, the way things feel to us; (2) access consciousness, a mental state is poised for use in reasoning and direct rational control of thought and action; and (3) reflexive consciousness, the ability to think about one’s own thoughts. Embodied mind – The view that consciousness and intentionality should be understood in terms of our bodily engagements with the world and not by bracketing off the external world. Intentionality – The directedness of mental states, captured by the phrase what are you thinking about? Naturalism – The attempt to give an explanation of intentionality, consciousness, and representation in terms that are consistent with the natural sciences. Representation – States that present, or stand in for an object. Most theories take a representation to have a content that can be specified by a proposition such as ‘‘the Earth is spherical.’’ Introduction: Mind, Consciousness, and Intentionality Conscious minds have both intentional and phe- nomenal properties. If a mental state is intentional then it is directed toward some object (it is about something). If a mental state is phenomenal then it feels a particular way to us. Cognitive states such as beliefs and desires are obviously intentional. My belief that there is a cold beer on the counter in front of me is directed at an object (the cold beer); my desire to drink that beer is also aimed at an object (the very same beer). My visual perception of the beer on the counter is also intentionally directed as is the tactile sensation of grasping the cold bottle in my hand. The tactile sensation also feels a certain way; the bottle feels cold. Hence some conscious experiences are both intentionally directed and feel a particular way. One way to think of the relationship between consciousness and intentionality is that all con- scious states are also intentional. When I am con- sciously aware of a sensation (a sound), then this experience is certainly phenomenal; but the expe- rience is also intentional – because the sensation (the sound) is the object or content of my aware- ness. Many philosophers and cognitive scientists take consciousness to be the defining property of the mental, and they distinguish between con- sciousness as perceptual awareness (awareness of sights, sounds, smells, etc., which we share with some other animals) and consciousness as aware- ness of the contents of my experiences and thoughts, as ‘my’ experiences and thoughts. Cognitive states such as beliefs and desires, and perceptual states such as looking at a blue mug or hearing a high C are intentional; they are directed at something other than themselves. Perceptions are intentional in so far as I am aware of them as having sensory objects (at which they are directed), light, sound, etc. Other phenomenal states such as itches and pains are less obviously intentional, when I am aware of my pain then the object of my awareness is the pain. It is not so obvious what the object or content of the pain itself is, conse- quently some thinkers deny that phenomenal feels (or qualia) such as pains and itches are intentional. Conscious awareness of ‘my’ cognitive states, perceptual states, and phenomenal feels is inten- tional and this has been recognized for a long time. Take, for example, the following section of Des- cartes’ second meditation: Finally it is I who has sensations, that is to say, who is aware of objects as though by the senses, since indeed 417

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Page 1: Encyclopedia of Consciousness || Intentionality and Consciousness

Intentionality and ConsciousnessR Menary, The University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

ã 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

object (the very same beer). My visual perception

Glossary

Consciousness – Can be usefully classified

in three ways: (1) phenomenal

consciousness, the way things feel to us;

(2) access consciousness, a mental state is

poised for use in reasoning and direct rational

control of thought and action; and (3)

reflexive consciousness, the ability to think

about one’s own thoughts.

Embodied mind – The view that

consciousness and intentionality should be

understood in terms of our bodily

engagements with the world and not by

bracketing off the external world.

Intentionality – The directedness of mental

states, captured by the phrase what are you

thinking about?

Naturalism – The attempt to give an

explanation of intentionality, consciousness,

and representation in terms that are

consistent with the natural sciences.

Representation – States that present, or

stand in for an object. Most theories take a

representation to have a content that can be

specified by a proposition such as ‘‘the Earth

is spherical.’’

Introduction: Mind, Consciousness,and Intentionality

Conscious minds have both intentional and phe-nomenal properties. If a mental state is intentionalthen it is directed toward some object (it is aboutsomething). If a mental state is phenomenal then itfeels a particular way to us. Cognitive states suchas beliefs and desires are obviously intentional. Mybelief that there is a cold beer on the counter infront of me is directed at an object (the cold beer);my desire to drink that beer is also aimed at an

of the beer on the counter is also intentionallydirected as is the tactile sensation of grasping thecold bottle in my hand. The tactile sensation alsofeels a certain way; the bottle feels cold. Hencesome conscious experiences are both intentionallydirected and feel a particular way.

One way to think of the relationship betweenconsciousness and intentionality is that all con-scious states are also intentional. When I am con-sciously aware of a sensation (a sound), then thisexperience is certainly phenomenal; but the expe-rience is also intentional – because the sensation(the sound) is the object or content of my aware-ness. Many philosophers and cognitive scientiststake consciousness to be the defining property ofthe mental, and they distinguish between con-sciousness as perceptual awareness (awareness ofsights, sounds, smells, etc., which we share withsome other animals) and consciousness as aware-ness of the contents of my experiences andthoughts, as ‘my’ experiences and thoughts.

Cognitive states such as beliefs and desires, andperceptual states such as looking at a blue mug orhearing a high C are intentional; they are directedat something other than themselves. Perceptionsare intentional in so far as I am aware of them ashaving sensory objects (at which they are directed),light, sound, etc. Other phenomenal states such asitches and pains are less obviously intentional,when I am aware of my pain then the object ofmy awareness is the pain. It is not so obvious whatthe object or content of the pain itself is, conse-quently some thinkers deny that phenomenal feels(or qualia) such as pains and itches are intentional.

Conscious awareness of ‘my’ cognitive states,perceptual states, and phenomenal feels is inten-tional and this has been recognized for a long time.Take, for example, the following section of Des-cartes’ second meditation:

Finally it is I who has sensations, that is to say, who is

aware of objects as though by the senses, since indeed

417

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418 Intentionality and Consciousness

I see light, I hear noise, I feel heat. But all these objects

are unreal, since I am dreaming. Let it be so; certainly it

seems to me that I see, I hear, and I feel heat. That

cannot be false; that is what in me is properly called

sensation; and in this precise sense, sensation is nothing

but thought.

By contrast, Towser the dog may ‘desire’ thebone and may ‘believe’ that the bone is under thebush. But Towser does not think ‘‘I am thinkingthat there is a bone under the bush.’’ Towser mayhave beliefs and desires, or equivalent intentionalstates, but is not conscious of them as beliefs anddesires and certainly not as being his beliefsand desires.

We can, at this point, distinguish betweenintentional states, which are cognitive/conceptualsuch as beliefs and desires and intentional states,which are perceptual/nonconceptual such assights and sounds. There are those such as McDo-well who do not wish to make this distinction,claiming that there is only conceptual intention-ality. Conceptual content can be thought of as thecontent of a thought that can be propositionallydescribed. My thought that the beer in front ofme is ice cold is just such a thought with concep-tual content.

There are strong reasons to favor an explana-tion of mindedness as being both intentional andconscious (especially with the capacity for self-awareness). However, it is not so clear whetherconsciousness should be understood in terms ofintentionality (some conscious states might notbe intentional), nor whether intentionality shouldbe understood in terms of consciousness (Towser’scognitive states are intentional, but not conscious).

What then is the relationship between inten-tionality and consciousness? Is intentionality a pre-requisite for consciousness or is consciousness aprerequisite for intentionality? Opinions, unsur-prisingly, differ on these questions. There are fur-ther questions about the relationship betweenintentionality and consciousness. If Brentano isright and intentionality is the hallmark of the men-tal, then presumably all conscious experiences mustbe intentional. If some conscious experiences arenot intentional, it would appear to follow that theyare also not mental. It would appear to be absurd toendorse the view that some of our conscious experi-ences are not mental phenomena.

However, as noted above, it is not clear that allconscious experiences are describable as havingconceptual content. For example, pains are con-scious experiences, in what sense might they bethought of as having conceptual contents? Somephilosophers, such as Sellars, think that phenome-nal feels are not intentional. If we followed Sellarsin this then we would mark off conscious states thatare intentional, such as beliefs, desires, and percep-tions from those that are nonintentional, such asitches and tickles because they do not have content.

Furthermore, it may turn out that consciousnessoutstrips intentionality and conversely that someintentional states, such as representations, mightnot be accessible to consciousness (although bothof these claims are controversial). Consequently theconcepts of intentionality and consciousness mayoverlap at various points, but are not mutuallydefin-ing: Not all conscious states are intentional; notall intentional states are conscious. These issueswill be explored in sections ‘Intentional inexistence,’‘Representational theories of consciousness,’ and ‘Isphenomenal consciousness intentional?.’

Finally there is the question of whether inten-tionality and consciousness can be talked aboutindependently of, or bracketed off from, the bodyand its relationships with the world. Increasinglyresearch in cognitive science is turning to anembodied and embedded approach to intentional-ity and consciousness, rather than an approachwhich solipsistically considers only states internalto the mind or brain. In the embodied approachboth intentionality and consciousness become con-ceived of in terms of our embodied engagementswith the world.

Therefore, it is still an open and importantquestion to ask what the relationship betweenintentionality and consciousness is. Before consid-ering this question I shall give more precise defini-tions of intentionality and consciousness in thenext two sections entitled ‘Intentionality’ and‘Consciousness.’ Then I shall go on to exploresome of the puzzles that are produced by Brenta-no’s theses about intentionality and then tackle theissue of whether phenomenal consciousness isintentional. Finally I shall look at the phenomeno-logical tradition and the embodied approaches tointentionality that draw upon this tradition, as wellas the externalism of the analytic tradition.

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Intentionality and Consciousness 419

Intentionality

Intentionality is usually defined as the directed-ness of the mind toward something other thanitself. I can be thinking about the ice cold beersitting in front of me, I might want the beer to beice cold, or hope that it is. The mental states ofwanting and hoping, in this case, are about the beersitting before me. Consequently, another definitionof intentionality is the aboutness of mental statessuch as hopes, desires, and beliefs; they are aboutsomething other than themselves. The notion ofintentionality can be neatly captured by the every-day question ‘‘what are you thinking ‘about’?’’ Theterm intentionality should not be confused withthe normal English word intention, I intend to dosomething. This is despite the fact that both usesare derived from the Latin intentio, which literallymeans to apply tension, but also to point at orextend toward. Scholastics of the middle ages,such as Thomas Aquinas, used the term in boththe more familiar sense of intending to do some-thing and in the restricted technical fashion (direc-tion toward an object) that is still current today.

Intentionality becomes interesting when welook at thoughts that are not about objects whichare within our perceptual range. For example,I might be sitting in the office thinking about theice cold beer that I will quaff with gusto at the endof the day. My thoughts are directed at an objectthat is not sitting before me. My thoughts mightalso turn to objects that don’t, nor ever will existsuch as phlogiston, or Santa Claus or Hamlet. It isquite normal for us to think about nonexistentobjects, but what then are my thoughts directedat? This is a puzzle that any account of intention-ality must solve, as well as the, more straightfor-ward, intentional phenomenon of directedness atexisting objects.

The nineteenth century psychologist and philos-opher Franz Brentano gave the formulation of inten-tionality, which underpins contemporary thinkingin philosophy and the cognitive sciences today.Brentano claimed that intentionality was the defin-ing feature of the mental, what he called the mark ofthe mental; all minds are intentional. Furthermore,he claimed that nothing physical exhibited inten-tionality; there are no physical objects which areintentional. He concluded that intentionality was

the feature of mentality, which allows us to differen-tiate between minds and physical phenomena andthat minds were not physical entities. It is one of thecentral tasks of contemporary philosophy, psychol-ogy, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence (whatmight be collectively described as the cognitivesciences) to explain how physical entities can haveminds, or more precisely how physical systems canalso be intentional systems.

Consciousness

Ned Block has distinguished three different sensesof consciousness. The first is phenomenal con-sciousness (P-consciousness), the familiar senseof conscious experience as what it is like. Con-scious experiences have a phenomenal character,or to put it another way, they have sensory quali-ties (otherwise known as qualia). There is some-thing it is like for me to see the deep blue of thePacific Ocean and to feel the warm water lappingover my feet, and to smell the briny breeze. Thesecond is access consciousness (A-consciousness).A conscious state is A-conscious if it is poised foruse in reasoning and direct rational control ofthought and action. P- and A-consciousnessalthough distinct will often interact: my becomingA-conscious of the shirt on the back of my neckchanges my P-conscious state. Finally there isreflexive ormonitoring consciousness. This amountsto awareness of ones own conscious experiencesand thoughts. Classically this was known as intro-spection and was often thought of as a kind of innersense directed at conscious experiences, but morerecently reflexive consciousness has been thought ofas a kind of representation of the contents of con-sciousness, especially by Rosenthal and Dennett.

A major point of disagreement is whether phe-nomenal consciousness is intentional. This leads toa question about explanatory priority: Is phenome-nal experience necessary for intentionality or areall phenomenal experiences simply the way inwhich intentional states (representations) are expe-rienced? Before proceeding to deal with thesequestions in sections entitled ‘Is phenomenal con-sciousness intentional’ and ‘Embodied intentional-ity,’ I will outline some of the standard approachesto intentionality in the analytic tradition. I shall

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420 Intentionality and Consciousness

introduce the phenomenological tradition in thefinal two sections entitled ‘The phenomenologicaltradition’ and ‘Embodied intentionality.’

Intentional Inexistence

Brentano bequeathed us three important claimsconcerning intentionality:

1. The directedness of mental states: All mental statesare directed at something beyond themselves.

2. Intentional inexistence: All mental states aredirected at an object or content that is internalto the mind.

3. Brentano’s thesis: Only mental states exhibit thetwo above properties, this marks off the mentalfrom the physical.

The first two claims are clearly related and jointlyprovide reason to believe in the truth of the third.While the first claim is easy enough to grasp, whatBrentano meant by intentional inexistence is not soclear and the section entitled ‘Analytic approachesto intentionality’ will be devoted to giving anaccount. Section entitled ‘Analytic approaches tointentionality’ will look at how the first two claimshave been dealt with in the analytic tradition,stretching from Frege and Russell to contemporaryphilosophy of language and mind. Sections entitled‘Brentano’s thesis’ and ‘Naturalizing representa-tions and content’ will look at the final claim,often referred to as Brentano’s thesis and recentattempts to show that the thesis is false and thatphysical systems can also be intentional systems.

As noted above we can think about things thatdon’t exist as well as things that do and this makesintentionality a difficult phenomenon to explain.Brentano attempted to explain this by claimingthat mental states intentionally contain an objectin themselves and this is what he called intentionalinexistence. Mental states such as wanting, believ-ing, hoping, and fearing are directed at objects, butthese objects don’t always exist, for example I wantworld peace, but the world is lamentably war torn.To deal with this Brentano claimed that mentalstates are not directed at actual existing objects outthere in the world, but directed at an object orcontent internal to themselves. Mental states canstill be about actual existing objects in the world,but only by being directed at mental contents.

Thus, we find Brentano (in Psycholog y from an

Empirical Standpoint) saying that the intentionalrelation is a quasirelation, because it is not a rela-tion between two existing things – only the thin-ker’s mind need exist. Therefore, Brentano’saccount of intentionality is a form of internalism,the intentional relation is entirely containedwithin the boundaries of the mind (this should becontrasted with externalism, see section entitled‘Naturalizing representations and content’).

It is not entirely clear what Brentano meant by amental state intentionally containing an object initself, an object at which it is directed.More recentlyRoderick Chisholm has attempted to clarify what hecould have meant. When Brentano says that mentalstates intentionally contain an object within them-selves, those states truly have an object even if thatobject does not exist. So Diogenes’ looking foran honest man would still have the same object (anhonest man) even if there are no such things. How-ever, this kind of relation to an object never occurs innonpsychological phenomena; for example, for Dio-genes to sit in his tub there must be a tub for him tosit in. As Chisholm points out although there is arelation between Diogenes and an object in bothexamples above, the psychological relation is of apeculiar sort because it can hold, even though one ofits terms (an honest man) does not exist. Minds canbe intentionally related to things that exist withinthe mind exclusively. This reduces the initial plausi-bility of the definition of intentionality that it is thedirection of the mind toward something external toitself, for it now appears that the mind is directedonly at something internal to itself. An alternativeview is that there are intentional objects at which themind is directed, including nonexistent ones. Thiswas famously argued by one of Brentano’s pupils,Meinong, and has been subject to stringent criticism,especially by Russell andQuine (see section entitled‘Analytic approaches to intentionality’).

There are three puzzles that Brentano’s accountof intentionality give rise to

1. How can two different beliefs be about thesame thing?

2. What are thoughts about nonexistent thingsabout?

3. How can Intentionality be reconciled with aphysicalist ontology?

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Before looking at contemporary attempts toanswer these questions (especially question three)we shall look at the historical antecedents in theanalytic tradition.

Analytic Approaches to Intentionality

Early analytic philosophy has provided an answerto the first two questions from the end of theprevious section entitled ‘Intentional inexistence’and has provided the impetus for contemporaryaccounts of intentionality. Frege and Russell wereprimarily concerned with the logical structure oflanguage, but since most analytic philosopherstake language to be the expression of thought, itis also a method for studying the intentional struc-ture of thought. The intentional structure of thepropositional attitudes – hope that, fear that,believe that, etc. – can be revealed in an analysisof the sentences used to express them. One reveal-ing claim is that sentences express, or have as theircontents, the very same propositional contents ofmental states (such as the propositional attitudes).Therefore my belief that Paris is the capital ofFrance has as its content the very same propositionas my utterance: ‘‘I believe that Paris is the capitalof France.’’ They have the ‘same’ content (this iswhat I earlier called conceptual content).

We should, therefore, think of the contents ofmental states and sentences as independent ofthose states and sentences. If we share the samebelief – that the world is round – then this is notbecause our beliefs are numerically identical (oneand the same); the identity is one of content, webelieve the same proposition (that the world isround). Furthermore, the contents of singularthoughts such as beliefs are propositions, not sen-tences of a language. To play this role, propositionsmust be both abstract and objective. If I were totranslate the belief sentence, (1) ‘‘I believe he ishere,’’ into German, I translate it as ‘‘ich glaube er isthier.’’ If beliefs merely have sentences as theircontents (and not propositions) then I am saying(2) ‘‘I believe the sentence, ‘he is here,’ ’’ whichwould be translated as ‘‘Ich glaube den satz ‘he ishere.’ ’’ But we would not translate in this way, (3)it should be translated as, ‘‘Ich glaube den satz ‘er isthier.’ ’’ The sentence is not what I believe (the

sentence token ‘‘he is here’’), but the meaning ofthe sentence, the proposition.

Frege explains this by introducing the distinc-tion between sense and reference. The reference ofa name is the object to which that name refers, forexample: plant, chair, quark, etc. A classical exam-ple to illustrate the difference between sense andreference is the planet Venus. The Greeks believedthat there were two different stars that rose in themorning and the evening – not a single planet,Venus. The reference of the words Hesperus andPhosphorus is the same object – Venus. However,the senses of Hesperus, the evening star, and Phos-phorus, the morning star, are not the same. Wordsor expressions which have the same meaning, thatis, are synonymous, are called ‘intensionally equiv-alent;’ and words or expressions which have thesame reference or extension are called ‘extension-ally equivalent.’ Take the following two statements:‘creature with a heart’ and ‘creature with a kidney,’both of these statements are extensionally equiva-lent, any creature with a heart is also a creaturewith a kidney. They are not, however, intensionallyequivalent, they do not mean the same thing. Ourexamples show that words or expressions may beextensionally equivalent without being intension-ally equivalent. The first puzzle now comes intoplay. Meno believes that Phosphorous rises in themorning and he believes that Hesperus rises in theevening. These are two different beliefs, they arenot intensionally equivalent, yet they are exten-sionally equivalent – they are both about the planetVenus, how can this be the case?

For Frege the sense of a sentence is the ‘propo-sition’ it expresses, however, the reference of sen-tences is not simply a spatiotemporal object. Thisis because Frege held that the reference of a sen-tence was the truth – value of that sentence. Fregeheld that a thought is what is expressed in a prop-osition, and a proposition is a function with avalue, which is always a truth value. Frege tookhis inspiration for this conclusion from mathemat-ics. The reference of a whole expression, such asX2 + 2, is its value. X2 + 2 has as its value thenumber 6, when we fill in the variable X withthe argument 2. The expressions X2 + 2 = 6 andX is bald, have as their values ‘the true,’ when wefill in their variables with the arguments 2 andSocrates.

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The sense of a sentence or proposition is thethought expressed by it. The reference of theproposition ‘Paris is the capital of France’ is itstruth value, its sense is the thought that ‘Paris isthe capital of France.’ Thoughts refer to truthvalues. Thoughts are not subjective. Thoughtsand their relations to truth are objective andmind independent. They must be publicly accessi-ble and objective, they are also abstract and non-physical, much like numbers, according to Frege.

The meaning of names and propositions is madeup of two elements: their reference and their sense.Returning to the first puzzle (how can two differentbeliefs be about the same thing?) Frege presents asolution becauseMeno’s beliefs have different senses,but the same reference. Or, to put it another way,each belief presents its referent differently (sensesare modes of presentation) to the thinker (Meno).

In considering the second puzzle (what arethoughts about nonexistent things about?) wemust turn to Frege’s contemporary BertrandRussell. Russell made a distinction between twoways of knowing: Knowing by acquaintance andknowing by description. When I know by acquain-tance, I, the knowing subject, stands in a directrelation to some object of awareness. ‘‘I say thatI am ‘acquainted’ with an object when I have adirect cognitive relation to that object, for example,when I am directly aware of the object itself.’’WhenRussell says ‘directly aware,’ we should not think interms of a direct theory of perception. This isbecause, the direct objects of acquaintance arethings such as: Sense – data, memories (which areparticulars); and concepts of redness or roundness(which are universals). Particulars and universalsare, therefore, the only things that we can know byacquaintance. When we know something bydescription we are not directly acquainted withthe object of knowledge, and descriptions are intro-duced by sentences of the form, ‘‘a so-and-so’’ or‘‘the so-and-so.’’ Physical objects and other mindsare not objects of acquaintance, so they must beknown by description. The sentence form, ‘‘a so-and-so,’’ is an ambiguous description; and the sen-tence form, ‘‘the so-and-so,’’ is a definite descrip-tion. As a consequence of Russell’s theory, nounsand proper names are considered to be descrip-tions. This is because the logical form of propernames can only be revealed as a description.

In sentences that contain names and nouns thathave no denotation (i.e., they are fictional), such as‘the present King of France is bald,’ or ‘the Unicornis white,’ the subject expression does not denote, yetthe sentences are meaningful. Here our second puz-zle enters the stage, what does the sentence (orthought) ‘the present King of France is bald’ denote?

Russell had earlier accepted Meinong’s solutionto this problem (Meinong was a pupil of Brenta-no’s). Meinong held a realist theory of ‘objects,’objects both exist and subsist. Those objects thatexist form only a small class of objects, whereas, theclass of the objects of knowledge, which is oftennonexistent, is large and subsists; in the sense thatthey are the objects of thought and talk. This posi-tion requires that all possible negative facts subsist,such as England did not win the SoccerWorld Cupin 2006, and all impossible objects, such as, roundsquares. Consequently Meinong held a view thatfor any thought, it had an intentional object thateither existed or subsisted – thiswasMeinong’s wayof explaining intentional inexistence. Russell cameto believe that this Meinongian realism offendedagainst his sense of reality. Russell devised thetheory of descriptions to avoid Meinong’s ontolog-ical profligacy, yet maintained the denotative the-ory of meaning. Therefore, most proper names andnouns are concealed descriptions.

Only logically proper names denote, so how candescriptions be meaningful if one accepts a deno-tative theory of meaning? Russell’s answer was toapply a logical analysis to sentences that appearedto denote objects that do not in fact exist.

The two most famous examples that Russell gaveof sentences containing definite descriptions were

1. The present King of France is bald.

Russell’s analysis of this phrase will give us:

1a. There is a King of France.1b. There is not more than one King of France,

and1c. Anything which is the King of France is bald.

ð∃xÞðFx & ½ð8� yÞ ðFy ! y ¼ xÞ�&GxÞ1a. is false, therefore 1. is false. 1a. is defined interms of the existential generalization (there is anx); 1b. gives the uniqueness condition as deter-mined by the use of the definite article ‘the’ (i.e.,

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‘the King of France’); 1c. defines the existent x ashaving a particular property, baldness.

Sentence 1 is an example of what Russell meantwhen he claimed that the grammar of language canbe misleading. It appears as if the description has adenotation, however, in the formal paraphrase thereare no denoting singular terms, only variables boundby quantifiers (along with predicates and identity).Furthermore because 1a is false there is no need tosuppose that there is an object to which 1 refers, itonly appears that there is, because we expect thereto be an extension of the subject of predicationuniquely picked out by the definite article. In hisdefinitive paper ‘On Denoting,’ Russell says:

‘the present King of France is bald’ is certainly false;

and ‘the present King of France is not bald’ is false if it

means ‘There is an entity which is now King of France

and is not bald’ but it is true if itmeans ‘It is false that there

is an entity which is now King of France and is bald.’

However, Russell’s analysis of definite descrip-tions has been criticized by Strawson and Donellanand recent theories of direct reference have super-seded the account to some degree. Frege andRussellproduced analyses that were supposed to solve someof the puzzles produced by Brentano’s analysis ofintentionality. They also began a century long inves-tigation of intentionality and reference, which hastaken a naturalistic turn in more recent philosophi-calwork and this, leads us directly to the next puzzle.

Brentano’s Thesis

Brentano’s thesis is that intentionality marks off themental from the physical. The property of inten-tional inexistence is a property to be found only inmental states and never in physical objects or pro-cesses. Chisholm brought this thesis to the atten-tion of the late twentieth century philosophersin arguing that intentional states such as beliefcould not be accounted for simply in terms ofbehavior or behavioral dispositions. This is becausesuch behavioral analyses are circular; they dependupon other intentional states. To be able to explainmy behavior in terms of my desire for somethingI also have to explain it in terms of my beliefs aboutit, therefore if I desire a beer, my behavior is alsoexplained in terms of my beliefs concerning what abeer is and where I can procure one. Chisholmconcluded, in line with Brentano’s thesis, that

behavioral, reductive, or physicalist explanationsof intentionality were doomed to failure.

Contemporary philosophers of mind and psy-chology have not agreed with Brentano andChisholm’s conclusion. They have taken up thechallenge to provide a naturalistic or physicalistexplanation of intentionality. One way to answerBrentano’s challenge is simply to demonstrate thatthere are physical or nonmental entities thatexhibit intentionality. One obvious contender islanguage, sentences of natural language can exhibitintentionality: they can be directed at somethingother than themselves. A reason for rejecting alinguistic explanation of intentionality has beenproposed by John Searle and that is the distinctionbetween original and derived intentionality. Sen-tences of language do not have any intrinsic mean-ing or content, they have meaning and contentconferred upon them by people who use sentencesto express their thoughts and it is these thoughtswhich intrinsically have meaning or content. Con-sequently the mental states expressed by sentenceshave original intentionality, whereas the sentencesthemselves have merely derived intentionality.

Another response has been proposed by DanielDennett who takes it that intentional idioms do notdescribe any actual phenomena, but they do haveinstrumental value for predicting the behavior ofcomplex physical systems such as human beings.Although there are no actual intentional states orobjects on Dennett’s account, the intentional idiomof beliefs and desires and other intentional states isrequired, to be able to predict and explain thebehavior of others, in place of a complex physicalstory about how our brains and bodies work.

An even more ambitious answer to the chal-lenge is to demonstrate that there are physicalsystems which are nevertheless intentional sys-tems. Fred Dretske has given a detailed informa-tion theoretical account, which shows that thereare many natural states which indicate features oftheir local environment. This brings us to therepresentational account of intentionality.

Naturalizing Representations and Content

The Representational Theory of Mind (RTM) isan attempt to explain intentional mental states interms of the concept of representation. As such,

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intentional states such as beliefs, fears, hopes, andperceptions are inner states of people, perhapsbrain states, which have representational content.The hope is that intentionality can be explained bythe more familiar notion of representation, andthat representations are better candidates forbeing physical states.

The RTM posits semantically evaluable repre-sentations that enter into causal connections withother representations and behavior. Beliefs anddesires are semantically evaluable, beliefs can betrue or false, desires can be satisfied or frustrated,etc. It is assumed that what makes beliefs true orfalse is their relation to the external world. So, wegive beliefs and desires semantic evaluations justbecause we evaluate them in terms of their relationto the world. However, beliefs and desires areattitudes to ‘something’ and we can call this ‘some-thing’ the belief ’s content (what was above calledconceptual content). It is the content, or proposi-tion, (hence propositional attitude) that is seman-tically evaluable (here we see the continuity withthe early analytic tradition exemplified by Fregeand Russell). An example: Hamlet believes that hisuncle killed his father. The belief has a semanticvalue, it is a true belief. The content of Hamlet’sbelief is that ‘‘Hamlet’s uncle killed his father’’ (thecontent of the belief is the proposition, ‘‘Hamlet’suncle killed his father’’). Knowing the content of abelief allows you to know what it is about theworld that determines the semantic evaluation ofthe belief. Hence, intentional states are to beunderstood in terms of representation. I now turnto two attempts to give a naturalistic explanation ofrepresentation.

Dretske’s indicator semanticsDretske wants to build his account of representa-tion from the bottom-up. We derive an account ofrepresentation and intentionality, from a natural,nonintentional, account of indicators and theircausal relation to what they indicate.

Dretske begins with an analysis of natural signsor indicators. Tracks in the snow indicate theprevious presence of an animal; the width of treerings indicates the amount of rainfall there was in ayear, etc. The indicator is dependent on the pres-ence of the indicated, in other words, there wouldbe no tracks in the snow (indicator) if the animal

(indicated) had not been present. The dependencyof indicator on indicated is causal, the indicatorcovaries with the indicated. Natural signs derivetheir indicative powers from the way in which theyare objectively related to the conditions that theysignify. The 24 rings of a tree stump indicate thatthe tree is 24 years old and the fact that the 24 ringsindicate that the tree is 24 years old could not bethe case if the tree was not 24 years old. The powerof indication is dependent upon the relationbetween the indicator and what it indicates. Therelation should be lawful or causal in character.Therefore, an indicator C indicates E, iff C indi-cates the presence of E only when E is present inthe environment.

Hence, for Dretske there is no such thing asmisindication. Indicators become representations,which can misrepresent when a representation isbiologically supposed to indicate an environmen-tal stimulus. The indicational content of a repre-sentation is explained in terms of the adaptivefunction of that representation.

A neural state N has the function of represent-ing food when it indicates the presence of foodin the environment, and it is recruited in theservice of the function of the organism’s movingtoward and consuming the food. How might aninternal state I acquire its function of indicating?Dretske is clear on this matter: I is recruited as acause of some behavior B, because of what it indi-cates about a state of the environment E. OnceI becomes a cause of B it acquires the function ofindicating E – it comes to represent E. I becomes arepresentation when its natural meaning acquiresan explanatory relevance. Dretske uses the exam-ple of northern hemisphere marine bacteria toillustrate the idea. These bacteria contain magne-tosomes, which align the bacteria parallel to theEarth’s magnetic field (the indicators). The bacte-ria are propelled downward, to the geomagneticnorth, away from the oxygen-rich surface water,which is toxic for the bacteria (the indicators arerecruited to help perform this function).

We must be clear about the notion of recruit-ment at work here. The recruitment involves aprocess of selection or reinforcement, which estab-lishes a link between I and B, by virtue of theconsequences of producing B in certain circum-stances. In the bacteria example, recruitment of the

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indicator is selected for to produce movementtoward the geomagnetic north. However, for caseswhere there is a genuine belief, learning is therecruitment process. It is during this period ofrecruitment that I comes to represent E, I cannow misrepresent E even though before the periodof recruitment, when it was a mere indicator of E,I could not misrepresent E.

Millikan’s biosemanticsMillikan’s understanding of proper biological func-tions allows us to understand how there could berepresentation in the biological world. Millikanshows that the production and consumption ofrepresentational vehicles, what she calls intentionalicons, are biological functions and the normativityof representations is derived from the normativ-ity of biological functions, which she calls properfunctions. Proper functions are normative, in thesense that a device might have a proper functioneven though it fails to perform it. Here the possi-bility of misrepresentation might be made clear.

What allows for the continuance of a properfunction throughout generations? For a device/organism to have a proper function, it must sharethis function in common with its ancestors. Youand I both have hearts that pump blood, becausewe share a common ancestor whose heart had theproper function of pumping blood. Proper func-tions are copied and reproduced through genera-tions. However, we know (according to the bestneo-Darwinian accounts) that no heart is directlycopied from any other heart, rather, it is the geneswhich are directly copied and it is these genes thathave the proper function of producing hearts. Thenormal explanation of the performance of a properfunction makes reference to the normal conditionsunder which, historically, the proper function hasbeen performed and selected for. This is illustratedby Millikan’s bee dance example.

There are mechanisms in bees that have theproper function of producing a bee dance. Thereare also mechanisms in bees that have the properfunction of consuming bee dances. The proper func-tion of the bee dance producer (more strictly therelational proper function, because the functionis related to something in the organism’s environ-ment) is to produce the consequence that consumerbees fly off in the direction of the orientation of the

bee dance. The relational proper function of the beedance producer is selected for iff in normal condi-tions it has, historically, led bees to find flowers,pollen, nectar, food – that which optimizes survivalvalue. The consumer mechanism gets selectedfor iff, under normal conditions it has, historically,produced behavior leading to flowers, nectar, etc.on the basis of the consumed bee dances.

The producer mechanism has the function ofproducing intentional icons for consumer mechan-isms and consumer mechanisms have the functionof consuming the intentional icons produced byproducer mechanisms for some further end. Thisrequires that the producer and consumer mechan-isms can only function properly if they are bothpresent and coordinating; this is the normal condi-tion for the mechanisms to function properly.

A normal condition of the environment, thelocation of nectar, has the effect of producing beedances. These have the effect of sending consumerbees to the location of the nectar. This in turnproduces two normal conditions in the environ-ment, the nectar being located in the hive andflowers being pollinated at the first location ofthe nectar.

For the mechanisms to function properly thenormal conditions must be in place. It is quite easyto see how contingent factors could interfere withthe normal conditions of proper functioning, butthis is why biological functions are normative; it isthe proper function of mechanisms in normal con-ditions that is selected for. The next issue concernswhy the bee dance is a representation.

Is this really representation? Firstly the distinctionbetween proper functioning and malfunctioninglooks secure. This could, in principle, underwritethe normative notion of content demanded by thepossibility of misrepresentation. Secondly, the rela-tionality of some proper functions gives them anintentional aspect, in Brentano’s sense, they aredirected at something beyond themselves. Theintentional icons have three properties:

1. They are relationally adapted to some featureof the world.

2. The relation can be seen in terms of a ‘mapping.’3. The icons have the proper function of guiding a

consumer mechanism in performing its properfunction.

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If the relational conditions for this bee dance(qua intentional icon) are normal, then it willsuccessfully map the location of flowers, etc., callthis indicative mapping. If this is successful, thenthe icon directs the consumer bee to the locationof the nectar, call this imperative mapping. It is inthe consumption of an icon that the representa-tional function is established. The direct properfunction of an icon is the effect it ought to produce(sending consumer bees in the direction of nectar),not what it statistically does produce.

Millikan provides an account of biologicalnorms and how representation can arise accordingto these norms. This is quite different fromDretske’s indicator function theory. The indicatorrelation is a causal relation that is recruited for someend. On Millikan’s approach intentional icons rep-resent because they are consumed by anothermechanism and this relationship constitutes theproper function (hence the norm). Both these natu-ralistic accounts of representation (hence intention-ality) are externalist in character. The content fixingrelations and norms are based in the external envi-ronment of the organism, hence externalists seekto explain intentionality as a relation between re-presentations and the world and not as a relationbetween representations and inner mental objects.

Unsurprisingly the naturalistic turn to analyz-ing intentionality in terms of representation hasled to representationalist theories of conscious-ness. I turn now to considering the relationshipbetween consciousness and intentionality.

Representational Theoriesof Consciousness

While Block’s tripartite definition of consciousnessprovides a useful classification of different states ofconsciousness there are those who have denied theexistence, or at least importance, of one of thetypes of conscious states. For example, Dennetthas, famously, denied that there is a distinct senseof phenomenal consciousness at all. This isbecause phenomenal consciousness is really just aform of reflexive consciousness. Higher orderthought (HOT) theories of consciousness arebased on just such a thought, a state is consciousif we have a HOTabout that state. Therefore, for a

mental state M to be conscious there must be aHOT M*, which is about M. For a state to beconscious is for us to be aware of that state. To beconsciously aware of pain is to have a thought thatone is in pain. Thoughts are all potentially uncon-scious, but are made conscious by our becomingaware of them, by our having a further thoughtabout them. This view of consciousness is not sovery far away from the view presented by Descartesin the meditations (quoted in section titled ‘Intro-duction: Mind, consciousness, and intentionality’):

certainly it seems to me that I see, I hear, and I feel heat.

That cannot be false; that is what in me is properly called

sensation; and in this precise sense, sensation is nothing

but thought.

If I am reflexively aware of a sensation of pain, ifI have a thought about it, then it is a consciousthought. There is of course the question ofwhether animals and infants have the capabilityto form thoughts involving concepts of their sen-sory states – what they see, hear, smell, and feel. Ifthey do not possess concepts of red, or pain, thenthey cannot form HOTs about those sensations andcannot, therefore, have conscious experiences.

Rosenthal counters this objection by claimingthat the conditions for sensory concept possessionare so minimal that most animals and infants arelikely to possess them. Nevertheless some criticsthink that HOT theories involve an unnecessaryadditional layer of mental complexity to directphenomenal experience, which is unmotivated. IfI am in pain or seeing a red object why do I need toposit a further mental state to make the experiencea conscious one?

A different approach is to accept that consciousexperiences are representational, but not make thefurther move of modeling all of conscious experi-ence on reflexive consciousness. Dretske disagreeswith the HOT theorists on this matter, consciousmental states are not objects that we are consciousof having. Mental states make us conscious ofsomething – my experience of a red balloonmakes me conscious of the external object, theballoon. To be consciously aware of the balloon(to experience it), I do not have to be aware thatI am conscious of the balloon. Dretske’s approachis to apply his account of representation in termsof function of indication to sensory consciousness.

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Dretske claims that all mental facts are representa-tional facts and that experiences do not have phe-nomenal features of their own. The subjectivequality of an experience is just the way the experi-ence represents things to be. Dretske’s representa-tional theory of consciousness is compatible withBrentano’s thesis that intentionality is the mark ofthe mental, but is incompatible with Brentano’sthesis that the mental and the physical are separatecategories, because nothing physical is intentional.However, Dretske’s view is in tension with thoseviews that hold that phenomenology is more fun-damental to consciousness than representation.

Is Phenomenal ConsciousnessIntentional?

Phenomenal consciousness is a matter of the waythings are experienced by us. To understand thisaspect of consciousness philosophers have longposited a category of raw inner feels, or the quali-tative character of experiences, that they refer to asqualia. Qualia are supposed to be the propertiesthat constitute the phenomenal character of con-scious experience, and what it is like for us toexperience them. When you see a red object, orfeel a stinging pain in your finger, or taste thesmokiness of a heavily peatedwhisky, these experi-ences all have a particular phenomenal character,or qualia. Two questions arise at this point: Arephenomenal experiences intentional? Does inten-tionality itself depend upon the phenomenal char-acter of consciousness?

One way of answering both questions is Sellars’sview that sensations and thoughts are distinct. Therealm of raw sensory feels is nonintentional andnot to be confused with the space of reasons whereintentional mental states such as beliefs are gov-erned by norms of rationality. Davidson and Rortyalso endorse this separation of the phenomenalrealm of sensations and the intentional realm ofthought. This position separates the phenomenalfrom the intentional, the answer to both questionsis a resounding no. However, as we have alreadyseen with Dretske’s representational theory ofconsciousness there is an alternative to the separa-tion move, which is to make all phenomenal expe-rience at root intentional, because phenomenal

experiences just are the way that things are repre-sented in consciousness. Horgan and Tienson haverecently argued that phenomenal experience isthoroughly intentional. my experience of a redballoon is intentionally directed at the redness ofthe balloon. The unity of our phenomenal con-sciousness amounts for them to the what-it’s-likeof being in the world. However, they also argue fora thesis of phenomenal intentionality: there is akind of intentionality that is determined solely byphenomenology alone and not by bodily and sen-sory contact with the environment.

If they are right then externalist theories ofcontent, such as Dretske’s and Millikan’s will turnout to be mistaken for these cases of phenomenalintentionality. Therefore, it would show that thestrategy of explaining consciousness by giving anaturalistic account of intentionality was doomedto failure, because some of our phenomenologycould not be explained in terms of representationalcontent.

One might accept that there is a category of phe-nomenal intentionality where phenomenal experi-ences are intentionally directed, while rejecting thestandard view of phenomenal experiences as beinginternal ‘raw feels’ or that the phenomenal characterof experiences is independent of the way the world is(see the section titled ‘Embodied intentionality’).This would be to reject Horgan and Tienson’s posi-tion that phenomenology, and hence phenomenalintentionality, are independent of the world (whatexists beyond the skin of the individual). Horganand Tienson’s position depends upon thoughtexperiments such as brains in vats or deception byan evil demon. Normally our phenomenal experi-ence is dependent upon our sensory modalities andour bodily progress around an environment. How-ever, Horgan and Tienson claim that if you were abrain in a vat, with no sensory or bodily contact withthe world, you could have the same phenomenalexperiences as if you were really embodied. Toargue for the narrowness of phenomenal experienceand intentionality on the grounds that such scenariosare imaginable is empirically weak. Our phenome-nology is due to our bodily contact with the worldand it is in these terms that we will construct empiri-cal theories. We shall not construct such theories byconsidering imaginable scenarios such as brains invats.However thatmay be,Horgan andTienson have

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drawn our attention to the close relationship betweenphenomenal experience and intentionality. Theseissues are taken up further in the final two sectionsentitled ‘The phenomenological tradition’ and‘Embodied intentionality.’

The Phenomenological Tradition

Husserl followed Brentano in attempting to analyzeconscious thought in terms of intentionality. In hisearlier writings (The Logical Investigations) Husserlrejected Brentano’s notion of intentional (or mental)inexistence – the object of thought is always internal(immanent to) the mind. By contrast Husserlthought that the objects of intentional states suchas beliefs and desires, often transcend the mind, inthe sense that they exist externally to it.

However, Husserl also proposed a ‘phenome-nological reduction’ of mental phenomena, amethod for investigating consciousness that‘brackets off ’ judgments about the ontologicalexistence or inexistence of the world. Phenome-nological investigations were, thereby, restrictedto understanding the structure of mental acts.The exact interpretation of the phenomenologi-cal reduction is a matter of dispute, and is con-tested by Heidegger who views intentionality asthe ontological structure of ‘being-in-the-world,’and by Merleau-Ponty, who emphasizes theembodied nature of intentionality. Merleau-Ponty rejects the idea that there is a purely men-tal experiencing subject that can be consideredapart from the body and the rest of the world.Rather, a conscious subject already presupposes abodily and temporal existence situated in an envi-ronment. The conscious subject can only beunderstood in so far as he is a bodily subject ofexperience situated in and related to a preexistingenvironment. Consequently, for Merleau-Ponty,there can be no ‘bracketing off ’ of the world whenperforming phenomenological investigations ofthe intentional structure of consciousness. ForMerleau-Ponty an embodied subject is action-oriented to the world and has an intentional rela-tion to that world, even before it starts to reflecton it. We can, therefore, derive from Merleau-Ponty a kind of prereflective embodied intention-ality, one that does not yet involve conceptualcontent.

Embodied Intentionality

The move away from Brentano’s account of inten-tionality in terms of intentional or mental inexis-tence is completed in the emerging approach tothe mind and cognition, variously labeled: theembodied mind; the extended mind; distributedcognition; and cognitive integration. We saw howan externalist account of intentionality rejectedthe idea that intentional relations were under-standable purely in terms of a pure conscious/mental subject, intentionally related to mental/intentional objects wholly encapsulated by themind. Furthermore, Merleau-Ponty gave us thenotion of a prereflective conscious subject asessentially embodied and situated in an environ-ment. From this starting point the conscious sub-ject and intentionality look very different from theCartesian/Brentanian starting point in whichintentionality is an entirely internal affair.

Combining a Merleau-Pontian position onembodied intentionality and an externalist posi-tion on representation would give us a relationshipbetween intentionalityand consciousness thatwoulddeal with Brentano’s thesis and relieve the tensionbetween the phenomenological and intentionalaspects ofconsciousness.Wewouldbeginby thinkingof our primaryconscious engagementwith theworldasanintentionallydirectedbodilyengagement,whichalso has a phenomenal character inMerleau-Ponty’sprereflective sense. We would then add a layer ofcognitive sophistication involving contentful (henceintentionally directed) mental states such as beliefsanddesires.Thisfusionofembodiedphenomenologyand externalist theories of content is a promisingline of inquiry into the relationship between inten-tionalityandconsciousness.

See also: Brain Basis of Voluntary Control; Conceptsand Definitions of Consciousness; Free Will; Languageand Consciousness; Mental Representation and Con-sciousness; Phenomenology of Consciousness.

Suggested Readings

Block N, Flanagan O, and Guzeldere G (eds.) (1997) TheNature of Consciousness. Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Brentano F (1874) Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint,Rancurello AC, Terrell DB, and McAlister L (trans.).

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London: Routledge, 1973 [2nd edn., intr. by Peter Simons,1995].

Crane T (2001) Elements of Mind: An Introduction to thePhilosophy of Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dennett D (1990) Consciousness Explained. London:Penguin.

Dretske F (1988) Explaining Behavior: Reasons in a World ofCauses. Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Dretske F (1997) Naturalizing the Mind. Massachusetts: MITPress.

Gallagher S (2005) How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford:Oxford University Press.

Gallagher S and Zahavi D (2008) The PhenomenologicalMind: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind andCognitive Science. Oxford: Routledge.

Husserl E (1900/1) Logical Investigations, Findlay JN (trans.).London: Routledge.

Menary R (2007) Cognitive Integration: Mind and CognitionUnbounded. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Merleau-Ponty M (1945) Phenomenology of Perception,Smith C (trans.). New York: Humanities Press, 1962 andLondon: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962 [translationrevised by Forrest Williams, 1981; reprinted, 2002].

Millikan R (1993)White Queen Psychology and Other EssaysFor Alice. Bradford Books/MIT Press.

Moore AW (1993) Meaning and Reference. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press. (Collects papers by Frege and Russellwith later developments in the field).

Rosenthal D (2005) Consciousness and Mind. Oxford:Clarendon press.

Tye M (1997) Ten Problems of Consciousness.Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Biographical Sketch

Richard Menary read for a BA in philosophy at the University of Ulster, an MSc in cognitive science at the University of

Birmingham, and then a PhD in philosophy at King’s College London. He has been a senior lecturer at the Universityof Hertfordshire in the UK and is currently a senior lecturer at the University of Wollongong in Australia. Richard has writtenarticles on cognition and consciousness for journals such as Philosophical Psychology, the Journal of Consciousness Studies, and Language

Sciences. He has also edited two books Radical Enactivism and The Extended Mind, and is the author of Cognitive Integration. He iscurrently writing another book on the philosophy of cognition.