This paper discusses Husserl’s theory of intentionality and compares it to contemporary debates about intentionalism. I first show to what extent such a comparison could be meaningful. I then outline the structure of intentionality as found in Ideas I. My main claims are that – in contrast with intentionalism – intentionality for Husserl covers just a region of conscious contents; that it is essentially a relation between act-processes and presented content; and that the side of act-processes contains non-representational contents. In (...) the third part, I show that Husserl also offers resources against intentionalism’s exclusive concern with propositional content. (shrink)

Recent philosophy of mind has seen an increase of interest in theories of intentionality in offering a functional account of mental states. The standard intentionalist view holds that mental states can be exhaustively accounted for in terms of their representational contents. An alternative view proposed by Tim Crane, called impure intentionalism, specifies mental states in terms of intentional content, mode, and object. This view is also suggested to hold for states of sensory awareness. This paper primarily develops an alternative to (...) the impure intentionalist account of states of sensory awareness. On the basis of Husserl’s phenomenological work, I argue that a focus on intentionality at the level of sensory awareness is phenomenologically implausible. The final part offers an alternative functional account of sensory awareness based on what Husserl called ‘immanent association’. (shrink)

Call the idea that states of perceptual awareness have intentional content, and in virtue of that aim at or represent ways the world might be, the ‘Content View.’ I argue that though Kant is widely interpreted as endorsing the Content View there are significant problems for any such interpretation. I further argue that given the problems associated with attributing the Content View to Kant, interpreters should instead consider him as endorsing a form of acquaintance theory. Though perceptual acquaintance is controversial (...) in itself and in attribution to Kant, it promises to make sense of central claims within his critical philosophy. (shrink)

Building upon Brentano’s Psychology from an empirical standpoint. Routledge, London, [1874] Brentano 1995) reintroduction of the concept of intentionality to the contemporary philosophy, Tim Crane has famously presented the intentionality as the mark of the mental. Accordingly, the problem of “intentional existence” has resurfaced in Crane’s revival of the Brentanoian theme. Here, I revise Crane’s construal of Brentano’s notion of intentional inexistence and reinterpret it in terms of a moderate version of relationalism. My relationalist theory of intentionality is inspired by (...) what goes by the name of Noneliminativist Structural Realism in the contemporary philosophy of science. NSR allows for a robust realist interpretation of the role of scientific models. The underlying insight of the paper is that it is best to be realist about the structure of the intentionality, which is the common element of the diverse theories of intentional objects. The Outcome is Structural Realist theory of Intentionality. I argue that SRI is not liable to the notorious objection of the impossibility of relata-less relations. I conclude that SRI fulfils the goal of robust psychological realism more economically and straightforwardly than Crane’s application of the notion of models. (shrink)

This article explores the concept of non-personal immortality. Non-personal theories of immortality claim that even though there is no personal or individual survival of death, it is still possible to continue to exist in a non-personal state. The most important challenge for non-personal conceptions of immortality is solving the apparent contradiction between on the one hand accepting that individual existence ends with death and on the other hand maintaining that death nevertheless is not equal to total annihilation. I present two (...) theories of non-personal immortality found in Schopenhauer and William James and derive a set of systematic core theses from them. Finally, I discuss whether the notion of non-personal immortality is consistent, and whether a non-personal afterlife could be desirable. (shrink)