Goals and Methodology

This chapter introduces the goals that will structure much subsequent discussion, as well as two theory-independent ways of knowing about intentionality. The overall goal of the book is to provide a theory of intentionality, which is a theory that describes the deep nature of intentionality—i.e., what it really is, metaphysically speaking. However, much of the discussion in later chapters is structured around the more modest goal of providing a theory that specifies what gives rise to actual instances of original intentionality. In order to meet this goal, it is helpful to have a theory-independent way of testing the predictions of competing theories of intentionality. This chapter proposes two such ways: (1) introspection and (2) consideration of psychological role. Importantly, these methods tell us which contents we represent, not what they consists of. In other words, they tell us about the superficial character of intentional states and contents, not their deep natures.

The Phenomenal Intentionality Theory

This chapter introduces the phenomenal intentionality theory (PIT), on which all original intentionality arises from phenomenal consciousness. It argues that PIT succeeds precisely where its main competitors, the tracking and functional role theories discussed in previous chapters, fail. The version of PIT that this chapter and the remainder of the book defends is strong identity PIT, on which all intentionality arises from phenomenal consciousness (strong PIT), and (roughly) phenomenal states give rise to intentional states simply by being identical to them (identity PIT). In short, according to strong identity PIT, every intentional state is identical to a phenomenal state. This chapter closes by previewing how later chapters handle certain challenging cases for PIT, including those of thoughts, states with broad or object-involving contents, standing states, and nonconscious occurrent states. The recommended treatment rejects derived intentionality and so qualifies as a version of strong PIT.

Functional Role Theories and Tracking Theories Again

This chapter considers functional role theories of intentionality, on which original intentionality is a matter of a representation's functional roles. According to short-arm functional role theories, these functional roles only include functional relations between representations, while according to long-arm versions of the theory, the relevant functional roles can include relations to items in the external environment. This chapter argues that short-arm theories face in-principle difficulties: they cannot attribute content determinately, and it is not clear why functional roles should give rise to intentionality in the first place. This motivates long-arm versions of the theory. However, these versions inherit the tracking theory's mismatch problem. The chapter closes by arguing that the fundamental problem with both tracking and functional role theories is that neither tracking relations nor functional roles are sufficient for giving rise to intentionality.

The Mismatch Problem for Tracking Theories

One prominent theory of intentionality is the tracking theory, on which original intentionality arises from tracking, where tracking is detecting, carrying information about or having the function of carrying information about, or otherwise appropriately corresponding to items in the environment. This chapter argues that tracking theories cannot accommodate certain paradigm cases of intentionality; in these mismatch cases, the contents ascribed by the tracking theory fail to match the contents that we have theory-independent reason to ascribe. This chapter focuses on one of the most obvious mismatch cases, that of perceptual representations of color: Tracking theories predict that perceptual color representations represent surface reflectance profiles or the like, while theory-independent considerations suggest that they represent primitive colors, which, it happens, are probably uninstantiated.

Thinking about Thought

Thoughts are about items in (or aspects of) the world, and mental representations refer to them: how can this representational power be explained? In this chapter, the author introduces the philosophical problem of intentionality, clarifies how key terms will be used in this book, explains (and to some extent motivates) the author’s starting assumptions, and sets out her main aims. Among other things, she here discusses the naturalization project, relations between intentionality and consciousness, the distinction between original and derived intentionality, and the (natural-factive) notion of informational content as distinct from the notion of representational content involved in semantic evaluations. The aim in this book is to give a “modest” theory of original intentionality, a theory of referential-intentional content with its scope initially limited to sensory-perceptual (nonconceptual) representations. The focus will be on the origination question (what is the basis of original intentionality?), not on the derivation question (how do more sophisticated forms of intentionality derive from less sophisticated?).