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Intentionality
Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) suggested that phenomenology is simply a theory of
intentionality. “Intentionality”, writes Husserl in Ideas (1913), “expresses the
fundamental property of consciousness, and all phenomenological problems are classified
according to it”. What is this fundamental property of consciousness?
Husserl defines the intentionality of consciousness as: “the peculiarity of experience
(German: Erlebnissen) to be conscious of something”.
Derived from the Latin verb “intender” meaning to “point to”, intentionality is being
conscious in the sense of pointing to or being directed to something. Hence:
Intentional experiences have the peculiarity of relating in various ways to
presented objects – such that the object presented is meant (German: gemeint), or
aimed at (German: abgezielt) in the experiences.
What are intentional phenomena? In brief, they are “mental predicates” such as desiring,
perceiving, hoping, judging, knowing, etc., all of which are directed, point to, something
in a relevant sense.
Franz Brentano (1838-1917) and Husserl’s teacher, maintained that all mental
phenomena are intentional in that refer to a content, or directed towards an object. In
presentation something is presented, in judging something is affirmed or denied, in loving
something is loved, in desiring something is desired, etc. Brentano took intentionality to
be definitive of the “mental” (as we will see Husserl never did do so and he left open the
possibility that the mental was a larger domain than that of the intentional).
Acts of consciousness
I left open the possibility that there are mental phenomena that are not intentional (e.g.,
pain or dizziness). Husserl refers to those phenomena that are intentional as “acts of
consciousness” (or just “acts”). “Act” is then short-hand for intentionality or intentional
experience (German: Erlebnis). So that instead of speaking of “mental phenomena”, I
will instead speak of “intentional experiences” or simply of “acts” which are always
related to what is an “object” (some-thing).
What are excluded in “acts” are “extra-phenomenological” or extra-experiential elements
(e.g., chemical reactions in the retina when seeing). An act is then that component of an
intentional event that the person can discern in reflecting on her/his experience, excluding
empirical facts about the object and the object’s de facto relation to the person. Thus, acts
are for Husserl “purified” of any presumption concerning how it “interlaces with
nature”; this point becomes particularly important when we consider the case of
perception as a paradigm case of intentionality.
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Thus, when we ordinarily speak of perception (e.g., an act of seeing) it includes not
merely the visual experience of something but also something about the physical
properties of the object which are causally related to the person such that s/he can see it.
In this sense to perceive includes both the experience of seeing but also the appropriate
stimulus object that is seen. In fact, ordinarily we focus not on the act or experience of
seeing but on the object seen. Or, we can say that ordinarily when we use the word
‘perceive’ “objectively” (focusing on the object seen) and we do not use it
“phenomenologically”. However, in accord with Husserl, I want to suspend the
“objective” use intentional acts focusing instead on the experience of perceiving.
There is another sense in which perceptual verbs are sometimes used to emphasize the
experiential and suppress the objective side of perception. For example, even if we know
that it is a cat out there, John seeing it as a hat, may well allow us to say that “John sees
the hat” (John may be hallucinating or is brain dysfunctional). What we mean here is that
notwithstanding that there is a cat out there John had the visual experience of a hat. Here
we use perception in an experiential sense rather than in terms of the object seen. In this
case, there are those who would prefer to say that John “seemingly sees” (the hat) or
“seems to see” (the hat) rather that simple “seeing”. But this will not do and I will not do
so. Instead I will always speak of seeing and is regard whether such seeing is indeed
appropriate to the object. In other words, even in case of perception, I want to stay close
to the experiential (phenomenological) use of the mental act verb.
There are different species of acts (i.e., acts with different “thetic” or knowing
characters: for example, perceiving, judging, hoping, wishing. Husserl uses the verbs
“vermeining” and “meinen” and occasionally “intendieren” as the generic term for all
these different acts. We can translate all these three verbs with the verb “intend”.
Therefore, an act consists in an ego (person) intending (meaning) or being directed
towards/at (gerichtet), or being related to (bezogen or “attuned” to) an object, which is to
say that an “act” is a person intending an object. The object intended in an act of
consciousness is the object of consciousness and, hence, we can say that “an act consists
in an ego’s (person) intending (substituting ay thetic character) an object”.
Objects of acts
The objects towards which acts are directed are for Husserl ordinary objects; however,
there are as many kinds of objects as there are kinds of entities that can be objects of acts
–and his ontology of what there is by way of objects in the world is notoriously rich.
Objects may be abstract or concrete, particular or universal, simple or complex,
immanent in the stream of consciousness (constituted in acts) or transcendent entities
existing independently of their being intended. However, Husserl’s paradigm is that of
perception.
Husserl also distinguishes between direct object acts (John remembers his high school
French teacher) and propositional acts (John remembers that Mont Blanc is the highest
peak in the Swiss Alps) where the proposition is a state-of-affairs. Obviously, the
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distinction depends on the grammar of the sentence used to express the act. Ordinarily,
propositional acts follow a “that” clause whereas in direct object acts the verb is followed
by a substantive nominal functioning as a direct object. But my concern is not first of all
with the grammar but with the phenomenological difference between these kinds of acts.
In fact, one could argue that the grammatical distinction follows the phenomenological
one. The direct object construction is often a merely elliptical way of describing a
propositional act (e.g., John wants ice cream may mean that John want to eat ice cream).
I am not suggesting that direct object acts can always be so expanded but when they
cannot be we may assume that the grammatical distinction expresses something about the
“deep structure” of intending.
Propositional acts are of special interest because (like dispositional states of belief) they
coincide with what has been called “propositional attitudes” – and these I will take up
when we discuss the intensionality of sentences with propositional attitudes.
Main characteristics of intentional relations
The claim that the intentionality of acts of consciousness resides in their being directed to
objects implies that “consciousness of something” is a relation, specifically, an
intentional relation between a person (act) and various kinds of objects. Husserl writes
that
All experiences (German: Erlebnisse) insofar as they are conscious of something,
are said to be intentionally related to this something.
In seeing this tree, I am intentionally related to a physical object; in judging that this tree
is an elm, I am intentionally related to a concrete state of affairs, or a concrete individual
about which I judge that it is an elm.
Of course, there are many relations between persons and objects that do not involve
consciousness in any essential way, for example, someone dropping a book, sitting on a
chair, being taller than her brother, having a 46 inch girth, etc. So the claim that
intentionality involves being related to an object seems relatively uninformative. What
makes intentionality special is that intentional relations are unique (extraordinary)
relations, different from non-intentional relations.
Theories of intentionality sometimes locate this special nature of intentional relations in
the objects of consciousness. I will refer to these as object theories of intentionality.
Object theories of intentionality maintain that what makes intentional relation unique is
that they are related to special kinds of objects, namely “intentional objects” (see
Brentano’s object theory of intentionality below).
However, as I indicated above, intentional relations appear to relate people to ordinary
objects or states of affairs. On this assumption, what makes intentional relations different
from ordinary non-intentional relations is not that they are directed to ontologically
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unique objects (i.e., “intentional objects”); rather, it is that intentional relations are
themselves metaphysically anomalous (unique). In particular, intentional relations, unlike
ordinary relations, appear to be
1. independent of the existence of the objects they relate, and
2. always dependent on the particular conception of the intended object.
Let’s examine these two characteristics more carefully.
Existence independence of the intentional relations
John can stand in an ordinary, non-intentional, relation to his grandfather’s clock only if
his grandfather’s clock actually exists. Thus, if John is a foot taller that his grandfather’s
clock this implies that his grandfather’s clock exists and the relation “being a foot taller”
is a non-intentional relation which follows the principle of existence-dependence with
respect to the entities it relates (John and grandfather’s clock). If John and the
grandfather’s clock exist then one non-intentional relation between them is that John is a
foot taller than his grandfather’s clock.
In contrast intentional relations between persons and objects are independent of the
existence of the objects intended. The intentionality of acts – their being directed towards
something – does not require that the objects towards which acts are directed actual exists
as physical objects. Husserl writes:
Intentional experiences have the peculiarity of relating various ways to presented
objects but they do so in an intentional sense. But the object need not exists at all,
it is merely intended (German: vermeint) and is nothing in reality (German:
Wahrheit). By virtue of the intentionality of the experience the relation to the
object is attained.
John cannot ride an ink elephant or be taller than Godot and the reason is that there are no
such objects as pink elephants or Godot. Yet John can see a pink elephant and be waiting
for Godot for, after all, to see a pink elephant and to be waiting for Godot is not to see
nothing or to be waiting for nothing. John’s seeing the pink elephant or John waiting for
Godot is not dependent on the physical existence of a pink elephant or Godot. I can
remember Bismarck who is long dead as readily as I can see the Pacific Ocean when I am
standing in front of the latter.
Similarly, in case of propositional acts, as for example, John’s hope that he will win the
LOTO sweepstake is not directed towards an actual state of affairs. Vain hopes and false
beliefs are just as intentional and realized hopes and true beliefs. Propositional acts may
be intentional when the state-of-affairs intended in these acts fail to be actual and when
the individuals secondarily intended in them fail to exist. Both primary and secondary
relations in propositional acts are existence independent.
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The example I gave of existence independence of intentional relations is one drawn from
Husserl. Diogenes sitting in his bathtub expresses an non-intentional relation (of sitting)
between Diogenes and the bathtub, where both Diogenes and the bathtub must exists is
the relation of sitting in the bathtub is to hold good. But Diogenes search for an honest
man is an intentional relation wherein the honest man who is the object of Diogenes’
search does not exist – Diogenes searches in vain. Yet clearly Diogenes is not searching
for nothing.
Conception dependence of intentional relations
Ordinary, non-intentional relations follow a second principle which may be called the
principle of conception independence with respect to the entities they relate. That is,
whether or not non-intentional relations hold good between two entities is independent of
how someone conceives of the entities. Napoleon can be conceived of as the “victor at
Jena” or as the “vanquished at Waterloo” but whatever way he is conceived of is
irrelevant to the non-intentional relations into which he enters. If John happens to be
smaller than Napoleon then the relation “smaller than” holds good independently of
whether Napoleon is conceived of as the “victor at Jena” or the “vanquished at
Waterloo”.
In contrast intentional relations are dependent on the conception of the object they intend.
An intentional relation holds between a person and an object only relative to a particular
conception (German: Auffassung) that the person has of the object. The example I
presented in class is as follows.
If John stands in a non-intentional relation to the author of “Philosophical Investigations”
(who is Ludwig Wittgenstein), then John also stands in relation to the man he saw at the
tobacconist, if Ludwig Wittgenstein and the man at the tobacconist happen to be the same
man. But if John stands in an intentional relation to that individual (say, John is looking
forward to his first meeting with the famous Oxford philosopher who wrote
“Philosophical Investigations”), John does not for that reason look forward to his first
meeting with the man at the tobacconist (assuming John does not know that the man is
the author of “Philosophical Investigations”). That is, an intentional relation may hold
between John and the man who is the famous author who write “Philosophical
Investigations”, but may fail to hold good under any other conception of this same man
(conceived as the man at the tobacconist). Again both direct object and propositional acts
are concept dependent in this manner.
Intentional relations are therefore not simply relations between a person and an object but
a relation between a persons and an object under a particular conception of the object.
Husserl writes:
…that the phenomenological content of an act…. determines not only that the act
(ego of the act) apprehends an object but also as what is apprehends it as….
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In the light of the concept dependence of intentional relations, the idea that intentionality
is consciousness of something is greatly embellished, namely, intentionality is
consciousness of something as conceived in a particular way.
This conception dependence of intentional relations may be conceived of explicitly
(intellectually/cognitively) but it is more generally dependent on the person’s intuitional
acquaintance with the object. Such acquaintance may be a feeling, emotion, or an activity
in relation to the object, or it may simple be the name of the object (e.g., looking forward
to meeting Wittgenstein even though one knows nothing about Wittgenstein other than
that he is famous. – it is a “famous” name). However when conception dependence is
explicit (cognitive or conceptual) then it may consists of many background beliefs about
the object which need themselves not be explicit. In any case, conception dependence
relies not on the nature of the object (since it need not exist) but on its meaning (Husserl
calls “noema”) through which the object is intended.
Because intention is relative to a conception of the object intended, intentional relations
are more complex than non-intentional relations, and the individuation of intentional
relations is correspondingly more complex. Consider that non-intentional relations are
fully specified by indicting the entities related and the relation that holds between these
entities. In contrast, in specifying an intentional relation, one must specify the particular
way in which the object of the intentional relation is conceived by the person who stands
in some intentional relation to the object. Thus acts which consist of the same intention,
of the same object intended, and by the same person, may yet be distinct. John expecting
the author of “Philosophical Investigations” is not the same as John expecting the man he
saw at the tobacconist, although both involve the same kind of intention (expecting), and
same entities (John and the man Ludwig Wittgenstein). They are different acts because
the intended object (man) in the first act is conceived of as the author of “Philosophical
Investigations” while the intended object conceived of in the second act is the man at the
tobacconist. Hence, in case of intentional relations it is not enough to specify the entities
and the relation but one must also specific the conception which the person has of the
object to which he/she is related.
The indeterminacy of intentions of transcendent objects
The specification of intentional relations must include a description of the conception of
the object or state of affairs. But there is more to the object than the prescribed
conception under which the object is intended in any one act. Those objects which
Husserl calls “transcendent” objects are such that any conception under which they are
intended necessarily captures only a small part of all that is actually true of them. By
transcendent objects Husserl has in mind objects of “natural experience”, for these
objects have many aspects (German: Seiten) not all of which can be given in any
particular intention of them. Hence, it follows that direct perceptual evidence of the
existence of such objects must remain incomplete since the perceptual evidence is always
perspectival in time. More generally, the perspective under which an object is intended
always remains incomplete –characterizing the object in one way but not in other ways.
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The properties such transcendent objects possess always exceed those intended in one
particular act, and so a transcendent object intended in a given act is always
“indeterminate” – that is, indeterminately characterized by the conception under which
the object is intended
.
We can therefore distinguish between the object “as” it is intended (under some
conception) and the object “that” is intended. For example, the presentation of the
“German Emperor” presents the object as an “Emperor” and as “German” and as
“German Emperor”. However, this man is also the son of Emperor Frederick III, the
grandson of Queen Victoria and, in addition, may possess numerous other properties
which are not named or presented in the particular intention of “German Emperor” (e.g.,
he was Lutheran, short, pudgy, married, tall, and latently gay, etc. etc.). Now on
Husserl’s view the incompleteness of our conceptions of transcendent objects does not
mean that such entities cannot be intended or that we intend incomplete objects in their
stead. Rather, it is the “intending” of the object, and not the object intended, that is
incomplete or perspectival. Furthermore, Husserl suggests that we intend objects “as”
being transcendent (e.g., reification) although we cannot intend any transcendent object
in a fully determinate manner. Or at least we cannot do so in any one act of
consciousness.
To say that we intend an object as transcendent is merely to say that we implicitly
recognize that objects have more properties (details) that are not determined but are
determinable in conceptions of other acts under which the object may be intended. The
notion that objects are never fully determined in the conception of any one act, leads us to
say that any particular act has a horizon of acts whose conceptions may be directed
towards the same object, and so serve to constitute the object more fully (determined). It
is this notion of the horizon of an act which is the key to the concept of “objectivity”.
Definite and indefinite intentions
There is also a more radical sense in which transcendent objects lack determination,
namely, the conception involved in any particular act may fail to prescribe even one
particular entity as the object intended in the act. When an intention fails to identify an
object, I will call it an “indefinite intention” or “indefinitely directed intention” which
then contrast with “definitely directed intentions”.
As an example of an indefinitely directed intention, I suggested that a shopkeeper’s act of
expecting his 1000th customer of the day is an indefinitely directed intention insofar as it
is directed to whoever enters his shop at the appropriate time and so becomes the 1000th
customer. What is characteristic of indefinite intentions is that the conception under
which the object is intended fails to determine just which object it is. In fact, the
conception involved in an indefinitely intention is itself indefinite concerning the identity
of the intended object and hence there is not precise entity towards which such an act can
be said to be directed.
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In contrast, definite intentions such as John expecting his mother today, is directed to a
particular person who has come to know and love John as only a mother could. We can
call such definite intentions “individuatively definite” (or definite by virtue of
individuation) and contrast them to individuatively indefinite intentions. That is, the
conception under which an object in intended in an individuatively definite intention is
the conception of identity of the intended object.
Now we must take care not to oversimplify individuated definiteness.
(1) The conception included in individuatively definite intentions will always include
more than what one has in mind at the moment of intending. That is, a conception of
identity involves a whole network of beliefs/feeling, etc., about the intended object and
therefore what is required of individuatively definite intentions is always more than what
is explicit in a particular conception, and this “more” is “presupposed” in a particular
conception of an individuatively definite intention.
(2) Individuative definiteness is always a matter of degree. One simply cannot know
everything about an object nor can one ever have a complete conception of its identity.
Indeed, the identity of a transcendent object is itself transcendent and, therefore, at best,
we can only ever have an inadequate grasp of a natural object’s identity. This implies that
just which properties of an object and how many of them we must know in order that our
conception of its identity counts as knowing who or which it is, will be a relative and
pragmatic matter – depending on context.
(3) There are many ways in which definiteness of direction may be achieved even in
those cases in which there is virtually no individuation of the object (almost no
conception of its identity). For example, an act may be definitely directed by virtue of our
perceptual acquaintance with the object (e.g., I have handled it a lot or seen it many
times over the years). Or if we include acts of remembering or imagining as well as
perception, we can speak of intuitionally definite (definite by virtue of intuition). Note
that intuitional definiteness and individuative definiteness are not identical. Thus acts may
be intuitionally definite but not individuatively definite. Fore example, John recognizes
the man with the bent pipe (John has seen may men smoking pipes) but John has no
further conception of the man’s identity. Acts may be intuitionally definite and
individuatively definite such that the man John sees with the pipe he also recognizes as
his long lost uncle from Vegreville. Of course, acts that are not intuitional but say
intellectual or cognitive will not be intuitionally definite, whether they are individuatively
definite or indefinite.
Husserl ignores indefinite intentions in his theory of intentionality (presumably because
his paradigm case if perception where there is always some particular object). He seems
to take it s a general truth about intention that an act’s conceptual content not only
prescribes properties the object has but also which object it is. But as soon as we move
away from perception to other acts, we quickly realize that –especially say in the case of
feelings, that many acts are indefinite. Moreover, definiteness does not yet entail the
richer individuative intention.