Is there an internal relationship between consciousness and intentionality? Can mental content be described in such a way so as to avoid dualism? What is the influence of social context upon consciousness, conceptions of self and mental content? This book considers questions such as these and argues for a conception of consciousness, mental content and intentionality that is anti-Cartesian in its major tenets. Focusing upon the rule governed nature of concepts and the grounding of the rules for concept use in the practical world, intentional consciousness emerges as a phenomena that depends upon social context. Given that dependence, the authors consider and set aside attempts to reduce human consciousness and intentionality to phenomena explicable at biological or neuroscientific levels. (Series A)

This book contains eleven original papers about intentionality. Some explore current problems such as the status of intentional content, the intentionality of perception and emotion, the connections between intentionality and normativity, the relationship between intentionality and consciousness, the characteristics of the intentional idiom. Others discuss the work of historical figures like Locke, Brentano, Husserl and Frege.

Introductory volume, presenting the major philosophical doctrines of phenomenology.

Since the late 1970's, the main research program for understanding intentionality -- the mind's ability to direct itself onto the world -- has been based on the attempt naturalize intentionality, in the sense of making it intelligible how intentionality can occur in a perfectly natural, indeed entirely physical, world. Some philosophers, however, have remained skeptical of this entire approach. In particular, some have argued that phenomenal consciousness - - the subjective feel of conscious experience -- has an essential role to play in the theory of intentionality, a role missing in the naturalization program. Thus a number of authors have recently brought to the fore the notion of phenomenal intentionality, as well as a cluster of nearby notions. There is a vague sense that their work is interrelated, complementary, and mutually reinforcing, in a way that suggests a germinal research program. With twelve new essays by philosophers at the forefront of the field, this volume is designed to launch this research program in a more self-conscious way, by exploring some of the fundamental claims and themes of relevance to this program.

Mendelovici proposes a novel theory of intentionality in terms of phenomenal consciousness, arguing that the view avoids the problems of its competitors and can accommodate a wide range of cases, including those of thought and nonconscious states.

Publisher Description

The papers collected here had their origin in a conference held in Montreal, 1-3 June 1995. The conference drew together researchers of all persuasions, from Europe and North America, to discuss the philosophy of mind. The volume is divided into four sections, each section being prefaced by a specific introduction. The first section deals mainly with the problem of consciousness in relation to intentionality. The second section's main topic is the problem of `qualia', a notion closely related to phenomenal consciousness, approached in the context of perception. The last two sections raise several problems related to what has been called `folk psychology'. Readership: Philosophers interested in philosophy of mind, psychologists, cognitive scientists.

This book presents key issues in the philosophy of mind, examined by leading figures in the field.

Explaining consciousness is one of the last great unanswered scientific and philosophical problems. Immediately known, familiar and obvious, consciousness is also baffling, opaque and strange. This introduction to the problems posed by consciousness discusses the most important work of cognitive science, neurophysiology and philosophy of mind of the past thirty years and presents an up to date assessment of the issues and debates. The reader is first introduced to the way that consciousness has been thought about in the history of philosophy and psychology. The author then presents an informal and largely non-technical account of the properties of consciousness that are thought to be the most paradigmatic and problematic. Recent scientific work on consciousness, from neurophysiological studies of the brain and evolutionary studies of the development of consciousness to computational theories of the mind are then examined and the philosophical problems that these accounts raise are systematically introduced. The final chapters of the book consider more practical matters by addressing self-deception, neuroses, the unconscious and notions of the self, before concluding with an assessment of the future for psychology and the philosophy of mind.

Aspects of Psychologism is a penetrating look into fundamental philosophical questions of consciousness, perception, and the experience we have of our mental lives. Psychologism, in Tim Crane's formulation, presents the mind as a single subject-matter to be investigated not only empirically and conceptually but also phenomenologically: through the systematic examination of consciousness and thought from the subject's point of view. How should we think about the mind? Analytical philosophy tends to address this question by examining the language we use to talk about our minds, and thus translates our knowledge of consciousness into knowledge of the concepts which this language embodies. Psychologism rejects this approach. The philosophy of mind, Crane contends, has become too narrow in its purely conceptual focus on the logical and linguistic formulas that structure thought. We cannot assume that the categories needed to understand the mind correspond absolutely with such semantic categories. Crane's claim is that intentionality--the "aboutness" or "directedness" of the mind--is essential to all mental phenomena. He criticizes materialist doctrines about consciousness and defends the position that perception can represent the world in a non-conceptual, non-propositional way, opening up philosophy to a more realistic account of the mind's nature.