Phenomenal Intentionality in Austrian Philosophy

There is an important agreement in contemporary philosophy of mind about the fact that the directionality of one`s mental acts and states (their intentionality) and the phenomenal character of one`s experience (what it is like to see blue, for example) represent two central features of one`s mental life. However, there is almost no agreement on the relationship between these two features. Is the intentionality of mental acts and states a feature of mentality, which is independent of the phenomenal character of experience? Is intentionality grounded on the phenomenal character of our experience? Are the two features interdependent? In other words: is there something like phenomenal intentionality, which is distinct from the intentionality of propositional attitudes and representational states? If so, what is phenomenal intentionality then? The current debates surrounding these questions share striking similarities with earlier debates on the nature of intentionality and consciousness in 19thcentury Austrian philosophy, particularly with those addressed in the works of Franz Brentano (1838- 1917) and his school. The main objective of the present project is to investigate these similarities in detail. It aims at showing the continuities and ruptures between the two debates in reassessing the fundamental insights of the school of Brentano concerning intentionality and consciousness in connection with the contemporary debates on these questions in contemporary philosophy of mind. To achieve this, the present project is based on two axes: the historical strain of the research seeks to cast a new perspective on the rediscovery of intentionality in the school of Brentano, insisting on the importance of inner perception for all discussions on intentionality, and at the same time offering a differentiated interpretation of the way they understood the directional aspect of intentionality. The second axis of the present project aims at offering a historically oriented perspective on the contemporary debates on phenomenal intentionality. Concepts like the correctness or accuracy of phenomenal intentionality, narrow intentionality or sensory intentionality in general, which are central for proponents of phenomenal intentionality, have at least partial roots, as we believe, in theories developed in the school of Brentano, for instance on the nature of judgment, on the status of external objects and on the features of sensations. More generally, the project aims at revising certain ideas on the nature of the contribution of Austrian philosophy to the debates over intentionality but also at showing the actuality of the theories developed in the school of Brentano for contemporary philosophy of mind.

Intentionality, the property of the mind of being directed toward objects, is often taken for granted, at least for some of the ways through which we are directed toward objects. If I want a glass of water, the object of my desire is the glass of water, and the intentionality involved is the act of desiring. For the Austrian philosopher Franz Brentano (1838-1917), who reintroduced the concept of intentionality into modern philosophy, intentionality was the mark of the mental, involved in every aspect of our mental lives. In 20th-century philosophy of mind, Brentanos rediscovery of intentionality, and the different contributions to this discovery by the members of his school, have been applied almost exclusively to the analysis of propositional attitudes (mental acts whose contents are expressible through a proposition), thereby leading to the widely accepted view that a correct analysis of the mind would have to start with the analysis of the intentional and propositional (often also called representational) content of our mental states. Such an application of intentionality to the analysis of the mind soon led to the view that other features of the mind, such as the consciousness we have of our perceptions, should be understood on the same representational basis. The main objective of this research project was first to show how this application of intentionality diverged from the insights on the intentionality of the mental developed by Brentano and his school, but also to investigate whether the recent developments in contemporary philosophy of mind, especially those in connection with so-called phenomenal intentionality the specific intentionality of our conscious experiences should be considered as further developments of Brentanos insights. The project included investigations on the nature of sensory intentionality according to Brentano and in contrast with contemporary philosophy of mind; on the different accounts of self-consciousness proposed by Brentano and his heirs; on the application of the intentionality thesis to the theory of objects and the Gestalt theory, and on the nature of Brentanos descriptive-psychological method of investigation in relation with phenomenology.