tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4639421058590597640.post8926360316049330282..comments2023-04-13T02:45:50.515-07:00Comments on The Ends of Thought: Are Mental States Intrinsically Intentional?Roman Altshulerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06570099479055051251noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4639421058590597640.post-23060573307888834342007-06-29T07:58:00.000-07:002007-06-29T07:58:00.000-07:00Hey Joachim!This has come up before, so I guess I'...Hey Joachim!<BR/><BR/>This has come up before, so I guess I'll try to write a specific post addressing the matter. Husserl does restrict his thesis on the intrinsic intentionality of mental states to those states which takes objects. In other words, consciousness and intentionality are not co-extensive for Husserl, pace Brentano. This is why Husserl prefers always to speak of intentionality pertaining to mental ACTS rather than STATES. <BR/><BR/>And here is McDowell's response to Putnam's Elm/Beech example: The lesson Putnam and others draw from the Elm/Beech Gedankenexperiment is that there is some common, fundamental psychological element common to the nonexpert's mental state and his Döppelganger. The semantic content of that state then differs according to which enviornment the subject happens to be embedded. This reading is premised on the assumption--so McDowell argues--that the mental state itself can be individuated concisely without respect to its enviornment, and that it's semantic content is thus a feature that supervenes upon this psychological according to the found enviornment. McDowell claims that that there is no good reason to see things this way (to separate the narrow psychological content from the wide semantic content). We can just as well understand that the psychological state itself is 'wide,' and that the 'common' element supervenes on this wide content. Why would we want to think this? One reason would be phenomenological: when I am visualizing the Linden trees that were below my apartment in Berlin, it would be quite weird to argue that those trees themselves are incidental or extraneous to the images I have in my mind before me. I repeat some of this in my following post; maybe it will be better clarified there.Michael Sigristhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02375043699229086339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4639421058590597640.post-87239143461042733702007-06-28T07:52:00.000-07:002007-06-28T07:52:00.000-07:00Hi Michael,beliefs, desires and perceptions are, o...Hi Michael,<BR/><BR/>beliefs, desires and perceptions are, of course, the "good" examples for someone who wants to argue for the intrinsic intentionality of mental states. The "bad" examples are those mental states which do not even seem to be <I>intentional</I> states at all - like tickles and itches. But maybe someone like Husserl would be happy to restrict his thesis to those mental states that are uncontroversially intentional and only claim of these states that they have their intentionality intrinsically!<BR/>Another interesting question would be if McDowell's reply also works against Burge's social externalism and against Putnam's elm/beech example (where Putnam claims that he can have thoughts about elms and beeches although he really cannot tell them apart, that is, although the intentional content of his elm/beech-concepts - insofar as it is cognitively accessible to him - seriously underdetermines the extension of these concepts).Joachim Horvathhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08377048142101247179noreply@blogger.com