THE INTENTIONALITY OF PHENOMENOLOGY
AND THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF INTENTIONALITY
Terence
Horgan and John Tienson[1]
What
is the relationship between phenomenology and intentionality? A common picture
in recent philosophy of mind has been that the phenomenal aspects and the
intentional aspects of mentality are independent of one another. According to
this view, the phenomenal character of certain mental states or
processes—states for which there is “something it is like” to undergo them—is not
intentional. Examples that are typically given of states with inherent
phenomenal character are sensations, such as pains, itches, and color
sensations. This view also asserts, on the other hand, that the intentionality
of certain mental states and processes—their being about something—is not
phenomenal. Beliefs and desires are the paradigm cases of intentional mental
states. Although they are intentionally directed—i.e., they have
aboutness—these mental states are not inherently phenomenal. There is nothing
that it is like to be in such a state by virtue of which it is directed toward
what it is about.
We will
call this picture separatism, because
it treats phenomenal aspects of mentality and intentional aspects of mentality
as mutually independent, and thus separable. Although there may be complex
states that are both phenomenal and intentional, their phenomenal aspects and
their intentional aspects are separable. Many philosophers who hold this
picture have thought that these two aspects of mentality lead to quite
different sorts of problems with respect to the project of “naturalizing the
mental.” Proponents of separatism often hold that while the problem of
naturalizing phenomenology poses great difficulties, the problem of
naturalizing intentionality is much more tractable.[2]
Separatism
has been very popular in philosophy of mind in recent decades, and is still
widely held. Those who oppose it regard it as a view against which they need to
characterize their own positions—a common picture that they must explicitly
reject. In this paper we argue that separatism is profoundly wrong. We depart
from it quite thoroughly, in ways importantly different from other recent
departures. We affirm the following theses, both of which are repudiated by
separatism:
The Intentionality of Phenomenology: Mental
states of the sort commonly cited as paradigmatically phenomenal (e.g.,
sensory-experiential states such as color-experiences, itches, and smells) have
intentional content that is inseparable from their phenomenal character.
The Phenomenology of Intentionality: Mental
states of the sort commonly cited as paradigmatically intentional (e.g.,
cognitive states such as beliefs, and conative states such as desires), when
conscious, have phenomenal character that is inseparable from their intentional
content.
In addition to these two theses
(henceforth, IP and PI), we advocate another important claim about the
interpenetration of phenomenology and intentionality:
Phenomenal Intentionality: There is
a kind of intentionality, pervasive in human mental life, that is
constitutively determined by phenomenology alone.
We use the expression
‘constitutively determined’ to mean that this kind of intentionality is not
merely nomically determined; rather, intentional mental states have such
intentional content by virtue of their phenomenology.
So-called
“representationalist” theories of phenomenal properties are a currently
influential departure from separatism.[3]
Although extant versions of representationalism embrace thesis IP, typically
they do not embrace thesis PI. Nor do they embrace the thesis of Phenomenal
Intentionality, since they hold that intentionality is prior to phenomenology.
So our position differs significantly from standard representationalism.[4]
We
argue for the three theses set out above (sections 1-3), in part by way of
introspective description of actual human experience. If you pay attention to
your own experience, we think you will come to appreciate their truth.[5]
Our position has important consequences, when combined with the plausible
thesis (argued for in section 4) that phenomenology is “narrow,” i.e., it does
not depend—except perhaps causally—upon what goes on “outside the head” of the
experiencer. One consequence is that there is a kind of narrow intentionality that is pervasive in human mental life—a form
of intentional directedness that is built into phenomenology itself, and that
is not constitutively dependent on any extrinsic relations between phenomenal
character and the experiencer’s actual external environment. A further
consequence is that theories that ground all intentionality in connections to
the external world, such as causal and teleological theories of intentionality,
are deeply mistaken.
1. The
Intentionality of Phenomenology
The mental
states typically cited as paradigmatically phenomenal have intentional content
that is inseparable from their phenomenal character. Let us consider some
examples: first, experiences of red as we actually have them. You might see,
say, a red pen on a nearby table, and a chair with red arms and back a bit
behind the table. There is certainly something that the red that you see is
like to you.[6]
But the red that you see is seen, first, as a property of objects. These
objects are seen as located in space relative to your center of visual
awareness. And they are experienced as part of a complete three-dimensional
scene—not just a pen with table and chair, but a pen, table, and chair in a
room with floor, walls, ceiling, and windows. This spatial character is built
into the phenomenology of the experience.
Consider
too the experience of seeing an apple on the table, picking up the apple, and
taking a bite out of it. There is the look and smell of the apple. Then (as you
grasp it) there is the feel of the apple, its smoothness, roundishness, and
firmness. Then there is its weight (as you pick it up). Finally there is the
feel of the apple in your mouth, followed by the crunching sound, taste, and
feel of juiciness as you take a bite. We will not attempt to write the small
book one could write describing this simple experience. But we need to note
some highlights. First, the look, feel, smell, sound, and taste of the apple
are experienced as a unity in space, as all belonging to a single object. The
taste is in your mouth; the smoothness and roundishness that you feel—with
parts of your mouth as well as your hand—are there, too. Second, it is
important to notice that what is experienced tactilely are various spatial
properties of the object, not
sensations. One has, of course, tactile sensations as well, though one does not
normally attend to them. (The tactile sensations are, when noticed, experienced
as the sort of things that can only belong to a sentient being.) The properties
of smoothness, firmness, etc. are experienced as the sorts of things that can
only belong to an “external” object in space.[7]
Third, the apple is encountered as moving.
The experience is of a temporal object,
an object that endures. The same is true when you see another person take a
bite of an apple. Experience is not of instants; experience is temporally
thick. This is obvious in the case of hearing tunes or sentences, where the
temporal pattern is a palpable
feature of the experience. The temporal pattern is also a palpable feature of
the seen moving apple, though less frequently noted as such.[8]
But it is no less true that stationary objects are seen as enduring and as unchanging.[9]
For
any experience involving a specific shade of red, one can abstract away from
the total experience and focus on the distinctive what-its-like of that shade
of red per se—a phenomenal aspect of
this total experience that it has in common with innumerable other total
experiences that differ in the perceived location of the experienced red or in
the shape of the red surface, etc. But even considered in isolation from any
total visual-experiential state, the what-it’s-like of experiencing red is
already intentional, because it involves red as the intentional object of one’s experience. Again, redness is
not experienced as an introspectible property of one’s own experiential state,
but rather as a property of visually presented objects. [10]
Of course,
in typical cases of experiencing red, the overall
phenomenal character of one’s visual experience is a structurally rich what-it’s-like
of experiencing a visually presented
scene, a scene that contains a whole array of apparent enduring objects
with various properties and relations—including the property redness
instantiated on the surfaces of some of these objects. The total visual
experience with this overall phenomenal character is richly intentional, since
it presents a temporally extended scene comprising various objects that
instantiate various properties and relations at various spatial locations
relative to one’s center of visual awareness. This total visual experience is
also richly phenomenal, because there
is an overall what-it’s-like of experiencing the whole scene. (Any visually
noticeable alteration in the visually presented scene would be a phenomenal difference in one’s total
visual experience.)
Another
commonly cited example of phenomenal consciousness is the distinctive
phenomenal character of pain. Experiences of pain are thoroughly intentional:
pain is experienced as a particular feeling at
a certain place in one’s own body. (This is why there can be such a thing
as phantom-limb phenomena, in which pain is experienced as located in a limb
that has been amputated.)
More
generally, the overall phenomenal character of one’s experience includes a
structurally rich what-it’s-like of tactilely
and kinesthetically experiencing one’s presented body, an apparent body
containing a whole array of tactilely and kinesthetically distinguishable
apparent parts, many of which are experienced as parts that one can voluntarily
move. The total tactile/kinesthetic experience with this overall phenomenal
character is richly intentional, by virtue of the complexity of the body as
presented. This total experience is also richly phenomenal, since it has the what-it’s-like-ness of tactilely and
kinesthetically experiencing one’s whole body. (Any tactilely or
kinesthetically distinguishable alteration would be a phenomenal difference in one’s total tactile/kinesthetic
experience.)
The
full-fledged phenomenal character of sensory experience is an extraordinarily
rich synthetic unity that involves complex, richly intentional, total
phenomenal characters of visual-mode phenomenology, tactile-mode phenomenology,
kinesthetic body-control phenomenology, auditory and olfactory phenomenology,
and so forth—each of which can be abstracted (more or less) from the total
experience to be the focus of attention. This overall phenomenal character is
thoroughly and essentially intentional. It is the what-it’s-like of being an
embodied agent in an ambient environment—in short, the what-it’s-like of being
in a world.
2. The
Phenomenology of Intentionality
We have
been describing the intentionality of sensory-perceptual phenomenal
consciousness.[11]
Let us now focus on the thesis of the phenomenology of intentionality (PI):
consciously occurring intentional states have phenomenal character that is
inseparable from their intentional content.
Intentional
states have a phenomenal character, and this phenomenal character is precisely
the what-it-is-like of experiencing a specific propositional-attitude type
vis-a-vis a specific intentional content. Change either the attitude-type
(believing, desiring, wondering, hoping, etc.) or the particular intentional
content, and the phenomenal character thereby changes too.[12]
Eliminate the intentional state, and the phenomenal character is thereby
eliminated too. This particular phenomenal character could not be present in
experience in the absence of that intentional state itself.
Consider, for example, an occurrent thought
about something that is not perceptually presented, e.g., a thought that
rabbits have tails. Quine notwithstanding, it seems plainly false—and false for
phenomenological reasons—that there is indeterminacy as to whether one is
having a thought that rabbits have tails or whether one is instead having a
thought that (say) collections of undetached rabbit parts have tail-subsets. It
is false because there is something that it is like to have the occurrent
thought that rabbits have tails, and what it is like is different from what it
would be like to have the occurrent thought that collections of undetached
rabbit parts have tail-subsets.[13]
The overall
phenomenology of these kinds of intentional states involves abstractable
aspects which themselves are distinctively phenomenological. For example, if
one contrasts wondering whether rabbits have tails with thinking that rabbits
have tails, one realizes that there is something common phenomenologically—something that remains the same in
consciousness when one passes from, say, believing that rabbits have tails to
wondering whether rabbits have tails, or vice versa. It is the distinctive
phenomenal character of holding before one’s mind the content rabbits have tails, apart from the
particular attitude type—be it, say, wondering, hoping, or believing. This
aspect of the overall phenomenology of intentionality is the phenomenology of intentional content.[14]
In
addition, there is also a specific what-its-likeness that goes with the
attitude type as such. There is a phenomenological difference between wondering whether rabbits have tails on one hand
and thinking that rabbits have tails on the other. This aspect is the phenomenology of attitude type.
Attentive introspection reveals that both the phenomenology of intentional
content and the phenomenology of attitude type are phenomenal aspects of
experience, aspects that you cannot miss if you simply pay attention.
One might reply that although there is indeed a phenomenological difference between thinking that rabbits have tails and thinking that collections of undetached rabbit parts have tail-subsets, this difference merely involves the fact that we often think in language. Thus, the phenomenological difference between the two thinking experiences involves not the different contents, but rather the fact that the auditory imagery that goes with thinking that rabbits have tails is different from the imagery that goes with thinking that collections of undetached rabbit parts have tail-subsets.
However,
nonperceptual intentionality in normal humans does not always involve language
and/or auditory imagery. For instance, conscious, unverbalized beliefs about
the locations of nearby unperceived objects are just as ubiquitous in human
life as is the explicit or imagistic verbalization of one’s focal train of
thought. Think for example, of cooking, cleaning house, or working in a garage
or woodshop. In any such activity, you might spontaneously move to retrieve a
needed tool that is out of sight. There is something that it is like to think
that a certain tool is just there—in that cabinet, say—
but such beliefs are typically not
verbalized either vocally or subvocally or by way of verbal imagery. (Your
verbal energies might all the while be directed toward ongoing philosophical
discussion with a companion, uninterrupted by your selection of an appropriate
tool.) You also, of course, frequently have unverbalized thoughts about the
locations of objects in distant familiar locations.
In any
event, the what-it’s-likeness of intentionality that we are talking about—even
when it is specifically tied to certain words in English or some other natural
language—does not attach to those words simply as sequences or patterns of
sounds, or even as syntactic structures. It attaches to awareness of those
words qua contentful; it is the what-it’s-like of hearing or saying those words
when they mean just that: that rabbits have tails. So the basic point holds:
even if thinking did always involve auditory imagery, the auditory imagery
would be intentionally loaded in the experience, not intentionally empty.
This point
is illustrated and defended by Galen Strawson (1994). Strawson discusses what
he calls “understanding experience”. He contends that understanding and other
related kinds of occurrent intentional mental states and processes are very
commonly, if not always, laden with distinctive what-it’s-likeness. He points
out, for example, the phenomenological difference between hearing speech in a
language that one does not understand and hearing speech in a language that one
does understand. Imagine two people side by side hearing the same spoken
sequence of sounds, with one of them understanding the language and the other
one not. At a certain relatively raw sensory level, their auditory experience
is phenomenologically the same; the sounds are the same, and in some cases may
be experienced in much the same way qua
sounds. Yet it is obvious
introspectively that there is something phenomenologically very different about
what it is like for each of them: one person is having understanding experience
with the distinctive phenomenology of understanding the sentence to mean just
what it does, and the other is not.
Consider,
as a similar example for a single speaker, first hearing “Dogs dogs dog dog
dogs,” without realizing that it is an English sentence, and then hearing it as
the sentence of English that it is. The phenomenal difference between the
experiences is palpable. (If you do not grasp the sentencehood of the “dogs”
sentence, recall that ‘dog’ is a verb in English, and compare, “Cats dogs chase
catch mice.”)
Consider
also hearing an ambiguous sentence. One typically hears it as meaning some one
thing in particular, often without realizing that it is ambiguous. There is a
phenomenological difference, for example, between hearing “Visiting relatives
can be boring,” as a remark about the people who are visiting, vs. hearing it
as a remark about visiting certain people oneself. Again, imagine hearing or
saying “Time flies” as a cliché about the passage of time, vs. saying or
hearing it as a command at the insect races. The actual sound or auditory
imagery may be the same, but the total experiences are phenomenally quite
different. The sound may have some role that would make it appropriate to call
it a vehicle of intentionality, but
its meaning what it does, having the intentional content that it does, is an
entirely different aspect of the overall phenomenal character of the
experience.
In sum:
Cognitive intentional states such as consciously occurrent thoughts, and
conative intentional states such as consciously occurrent wishes, are
phenomenal qua intentional. The overall phenomenal character of such a state
comprises both the phenomenology of its specific intentional content and the
phenomenology of its specific attitude-type. These are abstractable phenomenal
aspects of the state’s unified phenomenal character: the what-it’s-like of
undergoing this specific propositional attitude vis-a-vis that specific
intentional content.
3. Phenomenal
Intentionality
The
intuitive considerations in the last two sections can be developed into an
argument for the thesis of phenomenal intentionality: there is a pervasive kind
of intentionality that is constitutively determined by phenomenology alone. One
way to articulate and sharpen this claim is the following. Let two creatures be
phenomenal duplicates just in case
each creature’s total experience, throughout its existence, is phenomenally
exactly similar to the other’s. We can then state the Phenomenal Intentionality
thesis this way:
There is a kind of intentional content, pervasive in human mental life, such that any two possible phenomenal duplicates have exactly similar intentional states vis-a-vis such content.
We will call this type of content phenomenal intentional content. The full
range of a creature’s phenomenal intentional content is determined and
constituted wholly by phenomenology
Consider any creature who is a complete phenomenal
duplicate of yourself—its mental life is phenomenally exactly like yours.
Assume nothing else about this
creature. The thought experiment thus builds in an epistemic “veil of
ignorance” about this creature, in order to filter out any factors other than
phenomenology itself. So for all you know about this arbitrary phenomenal
duplicate of yourself, its sensory-perceptual experiences—including its
tactile-kinesthetic experiences and its embodied-agency experiences—might be
very largely illusory and hallucinatory concerning the real nature of itself
and its surroundings. (It may be helpful to imagine the phenomenal duplicate as
a brain in a vat or a disembodied Cartesian mind.) We will argue that you and
your phenomenal duplicate share a pervasive kind of intentional
content—phenomenal intentional content.[15]
As argued in section 1, sensory-phenomenal states and
processes have intentional content that is inseparable from their phenomenal
character. These states present an apparent world full of apparent objects that
apparently instantiate a wide range of properties and relations, and they
present oneself as an apparently embodied agent within that apparent world.
Since this kind of intentionality is inseparable from phenomenal character,
your phenomenal duplicate will have an apparent world presented to it in
exactly the same way.
To make the general point with a representative
example, suppose that you have the experience of seeing a picture hanging
crooked. Each of your phenomenal duplicates has a phenomenally identical
experience. Some of these experiences will be accurate and some will be
inaccurate. Whether or not a given duplicate’s picture-hanging-crooked
experience is accurate—that is, whether or not things are as the experience
presents things as being—will depend upon the duplicate’s actual environment.
Thus, the sensory-phenomenal experience, by itself, determines conditions of
accuracy: i.e., a class of ways the environment must be in order for the
experience to be accurate.[16] In order for such an experience to be
accurate, there must be a picture before oneself, and it must be crooked.
That these phenomenally identical experiences all have
the same truth conditions is reflected in the fact that each of the experiences
is subject in the same way to investigation as to whether it is accurate.[17]
For example, you and your phenomenal duplicate each might have the experience
of seeming to oneself to be testing one’s perceptual experience for accuracy by
making measurements or using a level. You and your phenomenal duplicate each
might have the subsequent experience of seeming to oneself to discover that the
picture merely appears to be crooked because of irregularities of the wall, or
tricks of light. Or, you and your phenomenal duplicate might, in the course of
seeming to oneself to be attempting to perform these tests, have the experience
of seeming to discover that there actually is no picture—say, by seeming to
oneself to discover that one has been looking at a clever holographic image
cooked up to make it appear that there is a picture hanging on the wall.[18]
There is also, of course, a sense in which these crooked-picture
perceptions of you and your duplicate have different truth conditions. You and
your duplicate are looking at different pictures. So the accuracy of your own
perception depends on the specific picture you yourself are seeing, whereas the
accuracy of your duplicate’s perception depends on the specific, and different,
picture that it is seeing. There are thus two ways of thinking of truth
conditions: as determined wholly by phenomenology, and as determined in part by
items in the experiencer’s environment that satisfy the experiencer’s
phenomenology. We return to this distinction in section 5.2.
Your phenomenal duplicate accepts the presentations
delivered by perceptual experience—accepts, for example, that there is a
picture and a wall—just as you do. These “belief-wise” acceptance states have
exactly the same phenomenology, the what-it-is-like of occurrently believing
that thus-and-so (where one’s occurrent sensory experience presents things as
being thus-and-so). The states also are phenomenologically integrated with
those ongoing, richly intentional, sensory-perceptual experiences in exactly
the same way as yours. Thus, they are experienced as having the same
belief-specific role: the same apparent input conditions, involving apparent
deliverances of the apparent body’s apparent senses, and the same apparent
effects, involving experiences of apparently
acting appropriately with regard to the apparent world as presented. It
seems intuitively clear that a belief-wise acceptance state with these phenomenological
features is a genuine belief. The phenomenal character of these states, which
includes the phenomenology of role, constitutively determines that they are
genuine beliefs.[19]
And as we argued above, the sensory-presentational content of these states is
the same for you and your phenomenal duplicate.
So far we
have been discussing perceptual experience and perceptual belief. But since the
phenomenal consciousness of your phenomenal duplicate would provide very rich
perceptual presentations of a world of numerous apparent objects instantiating
numerous apparent properties and relations, such presented items would thereby
figure in a wide range of propositional-attitude states whose content goes well
beyond the presentations of perceptual experience itself. Here the
phenomenology of intentionality—the what-it’s-like of occurrent propositional
attitudes as such—enters in full force, quite apart from the presentational
content of one’s current sensory-perceptual experience. For your phenomenal
duplicate, no less than for you yourself, there would be something that it’s
like to wonder whether to cook meatloaf for dinner, something that it’s like to
have the thought that there’s beer in the fridge, something that it’s like to
hope that one’s spouse isn’t angry that one is coming home late from the
Philosophy Department party. These occurrent states in the phenomenal duplicate
have all the same “propositional attitude-ish” phenomenology as they do in you.
They are experienced as having exactly the same causal role vis-a-vis the
phenomenal duplicate’s apparent embodied behavior in its apparent world as you
experience them as having. It seems intuitively clear that states with all
these features qualify as full-fledged propositional
attitudes in your phenomenal duplicate, just as they do in you.
In addition, for each such propositional-attitude state in yourself and in your phenomenal duplicate, the two states have the same phenomenal intentional content, i.e., the same phenomenologically determined truth conditions. Consider, for example, two phenomenologically identical belief-states that you and your phenomenal duplicate would both express by the string of words “The picture behind me is crooked.” In order for such a belief to be true, there must indeed be an object in a certain relation to oneself—behind, no intervening walls, etc.—that satisfies the phenomenologically determined criteria for being a picture, and that picture must be hanging crooked. Considered in this way, your belief and that of your phenomenological duplicate have exactly the same truth conditions.[20] These occurrent states in the phenomenal duplicate, by virtue of having the same phenomenologically determined truth conditions as yours, are thereby subject to the same methods of accuracy assessment: for instance, you and your phenomenological duplicate might each experience turning around to see if the picture is still crooked. If it still appears crooked, you might then experience going through the tests mentioned above. The possibility of such tests is in some sense understood, if not explicitly phenomenologically given, in having the conscious belief that there is a picture hanging crooked behind oneself.
Since your
phenomenal duplicate shares with you all the phenomenal intentionality so far
described, it thereby possesses significant conceptual resources to speculate
and theorize—for instance, about what is very distant spatio-temporally, about
what is very small, about the underlying causes of experience and of the
apparent ambient environment. It can reason causally, form abstract theoretical
concepts, formulate scientific hypotheses and theories, and experience itself
as an apparent embodied agent actively engaged (in apparent cooperation with
other apparent embodied agents) in the apparent empirical corroboration or
disconfirmation of such hypotheses and theories. It can have experiences as of
apparently reading about such matters or apparently hearing lectures about
them, and thereby can acquire a body of well warranted scientific beliefs about
itself and its world. In these respects too, your phenomenal duplicate is like
yourself, even though the experiential basis upon which it bootstraps its way
up to well warranted, semantically evaluable, scientific beliefs might be
highly (or even completely) non-veridical. Thus, for each of your
propositional-attitude states about such theoretical entities, your phenomenal
duplicate has a propositional-attitude state of the same kind. And for each
pair of corresponding states in you and your duplicate respectively, the two
states have the same phenomenal intentional content—i.e., the same phenomenally
determined truth conditions, linked via the same phenomenally determined “web
of belief” to the same kinds of experiential methods of accuracy-assessment.[21]
Virtually
everything we have been saying is really just attentive phenomenological
description, just saying what the what-it’s-like of experience is like. It is just a matter of
introspectively attending to the phenomenal character of one’s own experience.
You and your phenomenal duplicate share a pervasive kind of mental
intentionality—viz., phenomenal intentionality.
We take it
that this thought-experimental argument supports the idea that each specific occurrent intentional state
with phenomenal intentional content is constitutively determined by its own
distinctive phenomenal character—viz., the what-it’s-like of undergoing that
particular attitude-type vis-a-vis that particular phenomenal intentional
content. That is, specific phenomenal character determines specific intentional
states, provided that the experiencing creature has a sufficiently rich network
of actual and possible phenomenal/intentional states. Suppose, for example,
that you are now undergoing a psychological state with the distinctive
phenomenal what-it’s-like of believing that a picture is hanging crooked on a
wall directly behind you. Then you thereby believe
that there is a picture hanging crooked on a wall directly behind you;
undergoing this phenomenology constitutively determines that you are
instantiating that belief-state. Any experiencing creature undergoing this
phenomenology would thereby instantiate the belief-state, even if its overall
phenomenology is otherwise quite different from your own.
Although
each occurrent intentional state with phenomenal intentional content is
constitutively determined by its own phenomenal character, at least in the
context of a full-fledged cognitive system, it is important to appreciate that
this does not mean that phenomenal intentionality somehow guarantees infallible
knowledge about what one’s first-order intentional states are. Beliefs about
one’s own intentional states are second-order
intentional states, and the Phenomenal Intentionality thesis is compatible with
the possibility that such beliefs are sometimes mistaken. Indeed, the thesis is
compatible with the possibility that some creatures who have phenomenal
intentionality—say, certain kinds of nonlinguistic animals—entirely lack any
capacity to undergo second-order intentional states at all. What-it’s-likeness
is one thing; discursive judgments about
it are another. Such judgments are fallible (as are judgments about most
anything), even though humans do possess especially reliable capacities to form
accurate introspective discursive/classificatory judgments about their own
phenomenology.[22]
4. The
Narrowness of Phenomenology and of Phenomenal Intentionality
Phenomenology
does not depend constitutively on factors outside the brain. Now, it is obvious
enough that in normal humans, phenomenology does depend causally on some such factors; but one need only consider how this
causal dependence works in order to appreciate the lack of constitutive
dependence. First, phenomenology depends causally on factors in the ambient
environment that figure as distal
causes of one’s ongoing sensory experience. But second, these distal
environmental causes generate experiential effects only by generating more
immediate links in the causal chains between themselves and experience, viz.,
physical stimulations in the body’s sensory receptors—in eyes, ears, tongue,
surface of the body, and so forth. And third, these states and processes
causally generate experiential effects only by generating still more immediate
links in the causal chains between themselves and experience—viz., afferent
neural impulses, resulting from transduction at the sites of the sensory
receptors on the body. Your mental intercourse with the world is mediated by
sensory and motor transducers at the periphery of your central nervous system.
Your conscious experience would be phenomenally just the same even if the
transducer-external causes and effects of your brain’s afferent and efferent
neural activity were radically different from what they actually are—for
instance, even if you were a Brain in a Vat with no body at all, and hence no
bodily sense organs whose physical stimulations get transduced into afferent
neural inputs.[23]
Among your logically possible phenomenal duplicates, then, are beings whose
sensory experience is radically illusory, in the manner of the famous Evil
Deceiver scenario in Descartes’ First Meditation—or its contemporary version,
the Brain in a Vat.
Thus,
phenomenology is narrow, in the sense
that it does not depend constitutively on what’s outside the skin, or indeed on
what’s outside of the brain. We can now make the central argument:
(1)
There is pervasive intentional content that
constitutively depends on phenomenology alone.
(2)
Phenomenology constitutively depends only on narrow
factors.
So, (3) There is pervasive intentional content
that constitutively depends only on narrow factors.
That is,
the theses of phenomenal intentionality and the narrowness of phenomenology
jointly entail that there is kind of narrow
intentional content (the kind we have dubbed phenomenal intentional content), pervasive in human life, such that
any two creatures who are phenomenal duplicates must also have exactly similar
intentional states vis-a-vis this kind of narrow content. Phenomenal
intentional content is pervasive and narrow. Any adequate philosophical and
scientific conception of mind should accommodate this conclusion.[24]
5. Some
Philosophical Morals
We
now draw some morals from the preceding discussion, first about strong
externalist theories of intentionality, second about how phenomenal intentional
content is related to mental reference and to wide content, and third about the
extent of the so-called “hard problem” of phenomenal consciousness.
5.1. Strong Externalist
Theories of Mental Intentionality are Wrong
We
certainly do not deny that there is such a thing as “wide content” in language
and in thought. Important lessons have been learned from Kripke, Putnam, Burge,
and others about the relevance of the external environment in contributing both
to the meaning of certain terms in natural language (e.g., natural-kind terms
like ‘water’) and to certain aspects of the content of thought (e.g., aspects
of thought that one would express verbally by employing the term ‘water’). But
Putnam’s famous slogan that “meaning ain’t in the head” is properly construed
as asserting that not all meaning is
in the head; it doesn’t begin to follow from this, or from the considerations
adduced in support of it, that no
meaning is in the head. We will return to the topic of wide content presently.
However, a
number of current theories of mental intentionality are strongly externalist: they assert that all intentionality is
grounded in causal connections between states of the cognitive system and
states of the external world; there can be no intentionality without some
suitable kind of actual connection between what is going on in the head and the
wider environment. Strong externalist theories of intentionality include (i)
causal theories of content that find the necessary connection in the causal
antecedents of the state, (ii) covariational theories that find the connection
in certain kinds of systematic correlations between occurrences of an internal
state and occurrences of an external state of affairs, (iii) teleosemantic
theories that look to environmentally situated proper functions that certain
internal states possess in virtue of evolutionary design, and (iv)
learning-based theories that invoke internal adaptational changes in the
creature’s own history.[25]
Given our
conclusions in sections 1-4, it follows that strong externalist theories of
intentionality are wrong. They are not just slightly wrong, not just wrong in
detail. Rather, they are fundamentally mistaken, because they claim to
naturalize the entire phenomenon of mental intentionality and yet there is a
rich and pervasive kind of narrow intentionality—phenomenal intentionality—that
is constitutively independent of external factors. Strong externalist theories
therefore cannot successfully naturalize the full phenomenon of mental
intentionality, because they utterly fail to aim at one crucial aspect of it.
Ideas employed by strong externalists might still have a useful role to play,
however, in contributing to philosophical understanding of phenomena like wide
content and mental reference, topics to which we now turn.
5.2. Phenomenal Intentionality,
Mental Reference, and Wide Content
Suppose
Alfred and Bertrand are looking at two different barns, and each of them says,
“That’s an old barn.” Do their statements have the same truth conditions? Yes and
no. In one way, they have different truth conditions. Alfred’s statement is
made true or false by the age of the barn that he is looking at, while
Bertrand’s statement is made true or false by the age of the distinct barn that
he is looking at. Following recent
usage, we will call such truth conditions, which depend on the actual entities
referred to in a statement or thought, wide
truth conditions. But in another
way, Alfred’s and Bertrand’s statements have the same truth conditions. In each
case the truth condition is that there must be an actual barn that he is
looking at (and not, for example a papier-mache mock up of a barn, or only the
facing side of a stage “barn” on a movie set), and that barn must be old. Such
truth conditions are narrow truth conditions.
They are determined skin-in, so to speak, and are completely determined by
phenomenology. In our view, the situation is similar with respect to
phenomenologically identical intentional states shared by phenomenal
duplicates.
In section
3 we discussed belief-wise acceptance of the deliverances of perceptual
experience. Such acceptance is the normal, default attitude. But it can be
cancelled. If you have a lump on a finger, then objects that are smooth and
flat will feel as though they have a lump where that finger touches them. But
you soon learn not to believe that the object is lumpy. There is similar
phenomenology of acceptance concerning propositional attitudes. There is a
relevant phenomenal difference, for instance, between these two states: (i)
believing that Bill Clinton was U.S. President, and (ii) the state you are in
when you say (without believing) that Santa Claus brings presents. The salient
difference turns on the fact that the phenomenal character of the first state
includes the what-it’s-like of accepting the existence of Bill Clinton, whereas
the phenomenal character of the second state includes the what-it’s-like of
believing that Santa Claus does not
exist. Similarly, suppose you hope or fear that an object of a certain
description will be found. There is a clear phenomenal difference between the
case in which you know full well that there is such an object and the case in
which you does not know whether or not there is such an object.
Phenomenal
intentional content presents to consciousness an apparent world that goes far
beyond what one is conscious of at any one time; presuming so is itself an
aspect of the overall phenomenal character of experience. Phenomenal
intentionality thereby determines a complex set of presuppositions concerning
the existence of, the persistence of, and various features of, the sorts of
entities presented in experience: presuppositions about individuals (including
flora, fauna, and other creatures like yourself), kinds, properties, relations,
processes, and events of that world. For reasons that will become clear, we
call these presuppositions grounding
presuppositions. They have the phenomenology of acceptance discussed in the
previous paragraph. In making a grounding presupposition, one takes it that there
really exists an entity of a certain
sort; and normally, one also presupposes that the (putative) entity in question
has certain specific attributes. If there is an actual entity satisfying that
presupposition (or satisfying it near enough), then one’s thoughts that are
intentionally directed toward such a putative entity will refer to the actual entity in question; and so the properties of
the satisfier will determine whether the beliefs about it are true or false,
whether hopes and desires about it are satisfied, and so forth. Thus, wide truth conditions for those beliefs are determined by
phenomenal intentionality plus the actual satisfiers of the relevant
presuppositions. However, what it takes to
be a satisfier of the presuppositions is determined by phenomenal
intentionality alone. So, when these presuppositions are included in truth
conditions, we get narrow truth
conditions that are thereby determined solely by phenomenal intentionality.[26]
Consider,
for example, thoughts about individuals.[27]
You, your Twin Earth doppelganger, and your Cartesian duplicate all have
certain phenomenologically identical thoughts that you each take to be about a
person named “Bill Clinton.”[28]
Hence these thoughts presuppose the
existence of such a person. Your own thoughts are about the actual Bill
Clinton. Your Twin Earth doppelganger’s thoughts are about a different person
on Twin Earth. You and your Twin Earth doppelganger have thoughts about
different individuals, of course, because what a person’s thoughts are about—or
refer to—depends not only on
phenomenal intentional content, but also on certain relations between the
thinker and the thing the thought is about. Your Cartesian duplicate also has
thoughts that purport to be about a person named “Bill Clinton,” but since the
Cartesian duplicate has not been in the right sort of relations to any such
person, the Cartesian duplicate’s thoughts are not about anyone—they lack
reference.[29] Referring to something, mentally or
linguistically, requires appropriate relations to that thing; but having
thoughts that are intentionally directed
toward such a thing—thoughts purporting
to refer to such a thing—does not.
Straightforwardly,
your thoughts about Bill Clinton are made true or false by facts about Bill
Clinton, and your Twin Earth doppelganger’s phenomenologically identical
thoughts are made true or false by facts about the person who satisfies your
duplicate’s corresponding presupposition. There is no person who satisfies your
Cartesian duplicate’s corresponding presupposition, so there is nothing that
can be a truth maker for its thought that would be expressed by, say, “Bill
Clinton is a womanizer.”[30]
The
differing truth conditions just mentioned are wide truth conditions. But again,
there are two ways of thinking about the truth conditions of the
phenomenologically identical thoughts of you and your duplicates. In one way,
the truth conditions depend upon what is actually referred to (if anything) in
those thoughts; this makes them “wide”. But in another and more fundamental way,
the truth conditions are narrow, because what can be referred to in those thoughts is determined by phenomenal
intentionality—in particular, by the phenomenally given grounding
presuppositions. The thought will have wide content only if something in the
thinker’s environment satisfies the phenomenal intentional grounding
presuppositions of that thought. That is, wide content is grounded by
phenomenologically determined presuppositions, which are an aspect of
phenomenal intentionality and hence are narrow.
As a
consequence, the strong externalist theories of intentionality discussed in the
previous subsection are not wrong just because they leave out a kind of
intentionality—viz, phenomenal intentionality. They are wrong because what they
leave out is the fundamental kind of
intentionality: the narrow, phenomenal kind that is a prerequisite for wide
content and wide truth conditions. Because narrow phenomenal content determines
wide content, an adequate account of wide content requires a prior account of narrow
content.
Because
of relevant similarities between singular reference and natural-kind
categories, similar observations can be made concerning the narrow and wide
truth conditions of thoughts about natural kinds.[31]
You, your Twin Earth doppelganger, and your Cartesian duplicate all have
phenomenally identical thoughts with the same narrow truth conditions. For all
three of you, these thoughts are intentionally directed toward certain small,
common furry critters that meow, rub legs, drink milk, etc. For all three of
you, these thoughts have the grounding presupposition that there is a natural
kind of which these critters are members. But because of differences concerning
the satisfiers (if any) of the common grounding presuppositions, these
phenomenally identical thoughts have different wide truth conditions. Your own
thoughts are made true or false by cats; your Twin Earth doppelganger’s
phenomenologically identical thoughts are made true or false by cat-like
critters of the kind that she or he and others in her or his community have
encountered. Suppose that Putnam’s story in which cats are spy robots
controlled from Mars is true concerning Twin Earth: the critters called “cats”
on Twin Earth are robots controlled from Twin Mars. Then your belief that cats
are animals is true; your Twin Earth doppelganger’s corresponding belief is
false. That is, there are wide truth conditions for these thoughts that are
partially determined by features in the environment that may be unknown to the
thinker. But again: these wide truth conditions, differing as they do for your
thoughts and your Twin Earth doppelganger’s phenomenally identical thoughts,
are grounded on shared narrow truth
conditions.
Your Cartesian duplicate has thoughts that are phenomenally identical to your cat-thoughts, and that have the same narrow truth conditions as yours do. Your Cartesian duplicate’s thoughts, like yours, are intentionally directed toward—and thus presuppose—small furry critters of a certain kind. But there are no such critters that the Cartesian duplicate has encountered, directly or indirectly, so there is no kind to which the Cartesian duplicate’s thoughts refer. This being so, those thoughts do not have wide truth conditions. So the Cartesian duplicate’s thoughts that are phenomenologically identical to your own cat-thoughts lack the kind of wide content that your own thoughts possess and your Twin Earth doppelganger’s thoughts also possess.
5.3. The Whole Hard Problem
We
are among those who believe that what David Chalmers (1995, 1996) has called
“the hard problem” of phenomenal consciousness is indeed a very hard problem.
This is the problem of explaining why it should be that such and such mental
state should be like this—that is,
why it should have the specific what-it’s-like aspect it does, rather than
having some other phenomenal character or having none at all. Presumably what
it is like for you to undergo a particular mental state depends nomologically
on what is going on in your brain, inside of the transducers. But why what
depends on this brain process should be like
this, rather than being some other way or being no way at all, seems
inexplicable. Standard materialistic treatments of phenomenal consciousness in
philosophy and in cognitive science do not close this “explanatory gap” (as it
is dubbed by Joseph Levine 1983); rather, they appear to just leave out the
intrinsic what-it’s-like aspect of mentality.[32]
In our
view, the hard problem is a very pressing and very puzzling conundrum. But its
scope is considerably broader than it has often been thought to be. If
separatism were correct—i.e., if phenomenology were indeed non-intentional, and
intentionality were indeed non-phenomenal—then the hard problem would be
limited to the what-it-is-like of non-intentional sensory experience, and would
not infect the intentional aspects of mentality. Indeed, discussions of the
hard problem often presuppose separatism.[33]
But the whole hard problem
incorporates phenomenal intentionality. Phenomenal consciousness is intentional
through and through.
This adds a
dimension to the hard problem that often goes unrecognized. Conscious
intentional states are intrinsically, by
their very nature, directed toward whatever they are directed toward.[34]
Thus, the hard problem includes this: why should a mental state that is
grounded in this physical or physical/functional state be by its intrinsic phenomenal nature directed in this precise manner?
And this is a very hard problem indeed.[35]
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[1] This paper is thoroughly co-authored; order of authorship is alphabetical.
[2] For example, Jaegwon Kim (forthcoming) argues, in a way that firmly presupposes the separatist framework, that we can get more than half way to naturalizing the mental, but not all the way. The leading idea is that the intentional aspects of mentality can be naturalized via “functionalization,” but that the phenomenal aspects resist naturalization.
[3] For instance, Dretske (1995), Tye (1995, 1999), Lycan (1996), and Carruthers (2000).
[4] Another serious difference
is worth mentioning. Representationalists typically regard the problem of
naturalizing intentionality as tractable, and they seek to bring phenomenal
character within the purview of this putatively tractable naturalization
project by construing it as a species of intentionality. We, on the other hand,
regard the problem of naturalizing phenomenal character as presently
intractable, and we maintain that because of the interpenetration of
phenomenology and intentionality, the scope of this intractability includes mental
intentionality. Our reasons for holding this view will emerge as this paper
progresses.
[5] For several recent treatments of the relation between phenomenology and intentionality that are similar in spirit to what we say here, see the discussions of Flanagan (1992), Strawson (1994), Siewert (1998), and Loar (forthcoming).
[6] This formulation is more accurate that the usual, “there is something that it is like to see red” because, we take it, the something-that-it-is-like that is referred to is the something-that-it-is-like of the seen not of the seeing—although, of course, there is something that it is like to see, as opposed, e.g., to hear or imagine.
[7] See Thomas Reid, Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, Chapter 5.
[8] For a recent exception, see Lamb (2001).
[9] See Van Gelder (1999), Varela (1999) for attempts to account for the temporal thickness of experience in cognitive science terms.
[10] We think that the right
view of these matters is at least very close to that expressed by Laird Addis
(1989):
The idea of the mental is exhausted in all
interesting aspects by (1) states of consciousness [primary mental entities];
(2) sensations, emotions, and perception-related entities [secondary mental
entities]; and (3) dispositional mental states [tertiary mental entities—i.e.,
beliefs, etc., that are not presently occurrent]…. [O]nly states of
consciousness are literally intentional entities. On the other hand, what makes
the secondary and tertiary mental entities mental is their relation…to states
of consciousness. Secondary mental entities cannot exist except as objects of
states of consciousness…. (p. 7)
Thus, sensations and sensory qualities exist as, and only as, objects of conscious intentional states. This is essentially Brentano’s view in the famous—but widely unread—chapter of Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint in which he introduces the word ‘intentional’ and distinguishes between mental phenomena and physical phenomena. Brentano’s mental phenomena are Addis’ primary mental entities. Brentano’s physical phenomena are Addis’ secondary mental entities, not physical things.
[11] We do not know exactly when the phrase, “the intentionality of consciousness” first appeared, but one does well to remember that this was the phrase that characterized issues concerning intentionality early in the twentieth century.
[12] We are talking about psychological changes discernible to the experiencer—not changes such as the experiencer’s being unknowingly transported to Twin Earth and gradually coming to have ‘water’-thoughts about XYZ that are internally indistinguishable from earlier ‘water’-thoughts that were about H20.
[13] See Ross (1992) for a nice discussion, congenial to what we are saying here, that focuses not on Quineian indeterminacy but on the “Kripkenstein” thesis (set forth in Kripke 1982) that there is no fact of the matter whether the symbol ‘+’ means plus or quus.
[14] Part of what makes this aspect of phenomenology essentially a what-it’s-like of holding before one’s mind a specific intentional content is that semantic evaluability is involved: specific truth conditions are attached to it. We expand on this important point in section 3.
[15] For an excellent discussion that is complementary to what we will say here and that has considerably more detail about phenomenal intentionality, see Siewert (1998), Chapters 7 and 8. For another admirable and pertinent discussion, also complementary to ours, see Silverberg (1995); although phenomenological considerations are less prominent in Silverberg’s discussion, note his emphasis on how things seem, for each member of a group of beings who in effect are phenomenal duplicates respectively inhabiting a variety of different Twin Earthly environments.
[16] Siewert (1998) emphasizes the idea that a creature’s intentional features are ones for which the creature is assessible for accuracy, and he argues in detail that both perceptual and cognitive experiences are assessable for accuracy by virtue of their phenomenology.
[17] We are not here presupposing verificationism, or “procedural semantics,” or anything of the sort. The point is that differences in sensory-phenomenal content normally are reflected by differences in confirmation/disconfirmation procedures. Thus, sameness of confirmation/disconfirmation procedures provides strong evidence for sameness of content (even though it certainly does not constitute sameness of content).
[18] Of course, even if all these first-person tests for accuracy are successfully passed, this does not guarantee that the sensory-phenomenal experience one is testing really is accurate; experiential warrant does not guarantee truth. Also, the reason we talk of seeming to oneself to be performing tests and observing outcomes is that a given phenomenal duplicate of yourself might be one whose experiences—including its accuracy-assessment experiences—are systematically non-veridical. This would be so, for instance, for a phenomenal duplicate who is a brain in a vat.
[19] There are various further default assumptions involving the intentional objects of perceptual experience that would be psychologically operative in your phenomenal duplicate—normally automatically, as a matter of course—just as they are in you. Examples include default assumptions about experientially presented objects: that these objects have back sides that are not directly presented; that they persist when they are temporarily obscured from view by interposed objects or when one has the experience of looking away from them; that they normally persist when they cease to be presented in experience; and so on.
[20] Of course one can also think of the truth conditions of these states as involving the actual, and different, pictures referred to phenomenologically by you and your duplicate, if there are such pictures. There are two kinds of truth conditions for propositional attitudes, just as there are for perceptual states. Truth conditions of one kind are determined phenomenologically, as we have been discussing in the text. And truth conditions of the other kind incorporate the respective objects or kinds (if any) in your own and your phenomenal duplicate’s respective ambient environments that are the respective satisfiers of the referring concepts in the respective, phenomenologically identical, thoughts. We explore the relationship between these two kinds of truth conditions in section 5.2.
[21] The remarks in the preceding footnote apply to these propositional-attitude states too, and to the various components of the relevant web of belief.
[22] The fact that there is something epistemically special about first-person introspective access to the phenomenal character of experience is, of course, the basis for the kind of reflective inquiry often called “phenomenology.” But being epistemically special does not make such introspective judgments infallible. For insightful discussion of this complex issue, see Chapters 1 and 2 of Siewert (1998).
[23] Moreover, phenomenology
does not depend constitutively on anything
beyond phenomenology itself. (Of course, phenomenal character presumably does
depend nomically on certain states
whose nature is describable in non-phenomenological language—in humans, certain
brain states.) In this sense, phenomenal character is intrinsic. We submit that the intrinsicness of phenomenology (as
thus understood) is self-evident to reflective introspection. What-it’s-like is
what phenomenal consciousness is. And
what-it’s-like is what-it’s-like no matter what is going on outside of
phenomenology itself.
[24] At the scientific level, this means that cognitive science should construe the mind as a “control system” for effectively operating a potential body in a potential world, regardless of whether or not the control system is actually embodied or en-worlded in the kind of body and world for which its functional architecture is appropriate. This is a common view among cognitive scientists themselves. Such a scientific enterprise is important and tractable, even though it presupposes intentionality rather than explaining it, and even though it does not address the so-called “hard problem” of phenomenal consciousness (cf. section 5.3 below).
[25] See Stich and Warfield (1994) for a representative sample of such theories. Although the approach to mental intentionality advocated in Fodor (1987) did acknowledge narrow content, and hence was not a form of strong externalism, it also reflected Fodor’s separatism about the phenomenal and intentional aspects of mentality. Because of this, by our lights his construal of narrow content was insufficiently robust, and was a step down the garden path toward strong externalism. He has since gone further down that path; see Fodor (1990, 1994, 1998).
[26] Our distinction between narrow and wide truth conditions has some kinship to the approach of so-called two-dimensional modal semantics, which also posits two kinds of truth conditions—one kind narrow and the other kind wide. See Davies and Humberstone (1980), Chalmers (1996 section 2.4) especially pp. 63-5, Jackson (1998 chapters 2 and 3) especially pp. 75-77, and Chalmers (this volume).
[27] Here and below we talk about thoughts for ease of exposition, but our remarks will apply to occurrent propositional attitudes in general. If one person doubts what another believes, then their propositional attitudes have the same truth conditions—the truth conditions for what is believed by one and doubted by the other. Similarly for other propositional attitudes.
[28] Your Cartesian duplicate is an exact phenomenal duplicate of you that is in the First Meditation situation, thoroughly deluded. You do not really have an exact phenomenal duplicate on Twin Earth, however, because on Earth people sometimes have the occurrent thought that water is H2O, whereas on Twin Earth they have instead the thought that water is XYZ. But we will use the useful term “Twin Earth doppelganger” for a person who is as much like you as is consistent with this difference.
[29] It is very common in philosophy of mind to gloss the “intentional directedness” constitutive of intentionality by saying that intentional states have aboutness. (We did so ourselves in the opening paragraph of this paper.) But the word ‘about’ also is often used to express the relation of reference—as we do in the paragraph to which this note is appended, and as we will continue to do below. Both uses can be appropriate in context, but it is important not to conflate them.
[30] There is a longstanding dispute over whether in such a case we should say that the thought is false or that it merely lacks a truth value, but this dispute does not affect the issues we are concerned with in this paper.
[31] For a discussion of both similarities and differences between singular reference and natural-kind categories, see Tienson (1986).
[32] We ourselves have pressed this concern recently; see Graham and Horgan (2000), and Horgan and Tienson (in press).
[33] Chalmers himself, however, has not presupposed separatism and has left open the question of which aspects of mentality are by their nature phenomenal—and in particular, whether this is true for intentional states like occurrent beliefs and desires. See, for instance, section 3.3 of Chalmers (1996), especially pp. 19-22.
[34] In “Philosophy as Rigorous Science” Husserl criticizes naturalists for holding that intentional states have natures. Conscious intentional states have essences, he says; they are essentially directed toward what they are directed toward. This is, in effect, the point we are making. When we say that intentional states are directed by their very nature toward what they are directed toward, we do not mean that intentional states have natures in the way in which chemical and physical, and perhaps biological, kinds have natures. Thus, we concur with Husserl’s point, although we do not adopt his terminology.
[35] We thank William Lycan, Michael Lynch, Brian McLaughlin, Steve Tammelleo, Mark Timmons, and audiences at the University of Arizona and the 2000 Society for Philosophy and Psychology for comments and discussion. Special thanks to David Chalmers and George Graham for their extensive and especially valuable help.