Intentionality

This is a difficult concept for the uninitiated, but an important concept for Philosophy since Franz Brentano resurrected it from the Scholastics in the latter half of the 19^th century.  Having said this, I hope to initiate the reader into this difficult topic in this post.  The reader should be cautious to notice the difference between intention and its homophone intension used by logicians and those interested in semantics.    An intension is equivalent in a loose sense to a meaning (concept), and indicates a connotation in contrast to a denotation or extension. Intensionality by this is a concept in the theory of meaning and semantic analysis.

Intentionality on the other hand is about Epistemology and Ontology or theory of knowledge and theory of being respectively.  Brentano claims that intentionality is the mark of the mental in contrast to the physical.  By this consciousness is a relation between the knower and that which is known.  The subject (knower) is contrasted with the object (thing known).  But the word ‘thing’ is here ambiguous, since it could indicate something non-physical, fictional or even impossible.  Consciousness by this becomes an aiming-at relation.  Consciousness is, by this, of something or about something.  In contrast the object simply is, while consciousness is of.  It is this of-ness which marks the subject over the object.

Ontologically the mental is here not a thing or object but uniquely has no thing characteristics, i.e. is a no-thing or nothing (Sartre: L'Être et le Néant).  The content of a mental phenomenon according to Brentano is characterized by its intentional in-existence.  Here problems in ontology arising from the notion that if it can be spoken of, it must be, in some sense of ‘be’.  Impossible objects and fictional objects must have some sort of existence (must be), in order for them to be objects of thought or spoken of.  Pegasus is a winged horse would be non-sense, if there was not an intentional in-existence to Pegasus.  The word ‘Pegasus’ has an intension even though it has no extension, by virtue of the fact that there is an intentionality to the consciousness which contemplates Pegasus.  The proposition ‘Pegasus is a winged horse’ is meaningful to both the speaker and the hearer, when a sentence expressing this proposition is uttered, because the consciousnesses, which are the speaker and hearer, have an intention towards the object Pegasus.  By this both the hearer and speaker intend some object namely Pegasus, even though Pegasus is mythological and no real thing of the real (consciousness independent) world (no real existent).  A qualified form of realism is hereby saved from the throes of a box view of the mental - Phenomenalism.

The reader should be cautioned that the ‘in’ of ‘in-existence’ is not a negative.  It should be read as locative, that is, located in psychological content as opposed to an external consciousness independent location.  This according to Brentano and others, marks all mental events including desires, wishes, hopes, dreams, and even love.  The mental is marked by the in-existence of its contents. Thus the concept, idea or any other mental content such as emotion, feeling, desire is a relation where the relata may be between a consciousness independent and consciousness dependent objects.  We haven’t got beyond the subject object logic implied in this, but it perhaps is the only way to see the mental phenomena.  Brentano’s influence is still felt, both in Philosophy and Psychology, Brentano being the teacher of both Husserl and Freud.  His influence has also effected the British analytical philosophers with Ryle and Ayer, but more pronounced in Anscombe and Chisholm, Findlay and Searle.   Though the roots of the idea of intentionality lie in Scholasticism and Neo-scholasticism its influence can be felt in Continental and Analytic Philosophers alike.