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2. One way of explaining what is meant by ‘intentionality’ in
the (more obscure) philosophical sense is this: it is that aspect of mental states or events that consists in their being
of or about things (as pertains to the questions, ‘What are you thinking of?’ and ‘What
are you thinking about?’). Intentionality is the aboutness or directedness of mind (or states of mind)
to things, objects, states of affairs, events. So if you are thinking about San Francisco, or about the increased cost of
living there, or about your meeting someone there at Union Square — your mind, your thinking, is directed toward San
Francisco, or the increased cost of living, or the meeting in Union Square. To think at all is to think of or about something
in this sense. This ‘directedness’ conception of intentionality plays a prominent role in the influential philosophical
writings of Franz Brentano and those whose views developed in response to his (to be discussed further in Section 3).
But what kind of ‘aboutness’ or ‘of-ness’ or ‘directedness’
is this, and to what sorts of things does it apply? How do the relevant ‘intentionality-marking’ senses of these
words (‘about,’ ‘of,’ ‘directed’) differ from: the sense in which the cat is wandering
‘about’ the room; the sense in which someone is a person ‘of’ high integrity; the sense in which the
river's course is ‘directed’ towards the fields?...
On John Searle's (1983) conception, intentional states are those
having conditions of satisfaction. What are conditions of satisfaction? In the case of belief, these are the conditions
under which the belief is true; in the case of perception, they are the conditions under which sense-experience is veridical;
in the case of intention, the conditions under which an intention is fulfilled or carried out.
3. In Brentano's treatment what seems crucial to intentionality is
the mind's capacity to ‘refer’ or be ‘directed’ to objects existing solely in the
mind... his conception of intentionality is dominated by the first strand in thought about intentionality mentioned
above — intentionality as ‘directedness towards an object’ — and whatever difficulties
that brings in train...
Both Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty... their belief that an essential part of
intentionality consists in a distinctively practical involvement with the world that cannot be broken by any mere abstention
from judgment.
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