Table Of ContentCONSCIOUSNESS AND INTENTIONALITY
ADVANCES IN CONSCIOUSNESS RESEARCH
ADVANCES IN CONSCIOUSNESS RESEARCH provides a forum for scholars
from different scientific disciplines and fields of knowledge who study conscious-
ness in its multifaceted aspects. Thus the Series will include (but not be limited to)
the various areas of cognitive science, including cognitive psychology, linguistics,
brain science and philosophy. The orientation of the Series is toward developing
new interdisciplinary and integrative approaches for the investigation, description
and theory of consciousness, as well as the practical consequences of this research
for the individual and society.
Series A: Theory and Method. Contributions on the development of theory and
method in the study of consciousness.
EDITOR
Maxim I. Stamenov
(Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)
EDITORIAL BOARD
David Chalmers (University of Arizona)
Gordon G. Globus (University of California at Irvine)
Ray Jackendoff (Brandeis University)
Christof Koch (California Institute of Technology)
Stephen Kosslyn (Harvard University)
Earl Mac Cormac (Duke University)
George Mandler (University of California at San Diego)
John R. Searle (University of California at Berkeley)
Petra Stoerig (Universität Düsseldorf)
Francisco Varela (C.R.E.A., Ecole Polytechnique, Paris)
Volume 27
Grant R. Gillett and John McMillan
Consciousness and Intentionality
CONSCIOUSNESS AND
INTENTIONALITY
GRANT R. GILLETT
Dunedin School of Clinical Medicine
JOHN MCMILLAN
University College Oxford
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gillet, Grant, 1950-
Consciousness and intentionality / Grant R. Gillet, John McMillan.
p. cm. -- (Advances in consciousness research, ISSN 1381-589X ; v. 27)
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.
1. Consciousness. 2. Intentionality (Philosophy). I. McMillan, John. II. Title. III. Series.
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Contents
Introduction vii
Chapter 1
Consciousness and intentionality – foundations 1
Chapter 2
Language and consciousness 25
Chapter 3
The objects of consciousness 67
Chapter 4
Consciousness and action 101
Chapter 5
Consciousness and society 127
Chapter 6
Consciousness and the brain 167
Chapter 7
Animal consciousness 193
Chapter 8
Anomalies of consciousness 217
Consciousness and intentionality: some conclusions 247
Glossary 253
References 255
Index 261
Introduction
Many recent philosophical discussions of the mind and semantics have at-
tempted to naturalise intentionality. Philosophers such as Millikan and
Dretske attempt to show that intentionality involves representational systems
and that they have proper functions understandable in biological terms. This
implies that we can get some naturalistic purchase upon the problem of
misrepresentation and how we might give naturalistic accounts of conscious-
ness. In addition to recent attempts to naturalise intentionality many philoso-
phers have treated the problem of oblique contexts and the failure to carry over
truth assignments into oblique contexts as the full extent of the philosophical
significance of intentionality.
Consciousness and Intentionality is not an attempt to give a naturalized
account of intentionality, at least not in an evolutionary sense, nor is it an
investigation of the importance of intentionality for philosophical logic. We
take Franz Brentano’s suggestion that “intentionality is the mark of the
mental” seriously and investigate the implications of intentionality for a
phenomenological understanding of the structures of consciousness and its
contents. Our ambition throughout this essay is to show that without con-
sciousness we cannot understand our ability to have contentful thoughts and
without objects with which we can intentionally engage to form contents for
thoughts consciousness is idle or vacuous. This emphasis upon phenomenol-
ogy and intentionality means that our project has many of the same concerns
as the continental tradition.
For many philosophers the topics of consciousness and qualia are closely
related to one another but this makes the whole thing very difficult to get a grip
on. Qualia are the raw feels that accompany conscious experience. As such
they are part of what it is like to be a creature of a given conscious sort. We
have approached the contents of consciousness through their intentionality
because it is not clear that there is anything more distinctly mental to qualia
than there is to the experience of having a brick land on your foot. It is clear
that when one is conscious and has some bodily event happen to one then one
viii CONSCIOUSNESS AND INTENTIONALITY
goes through something in a way that one would not if a similar event
happened to somebody else. However it is not clear that this is because of a
private inner feel to the experience rather than the fact that it is this body upon
which the events impinged. To be conscious is to be subject to (or the
subjectivity affected by) what happens to a given body in a way that goes
beyond the reactions of the body as a purely physical system but this may
reflect no more than the intentional content of events experienced in the first
person rather than the third. The fact that one cannot capture and convey the
actual event as experienced does not necessarily depend on a feature of the
event that is mental any more than the fact that having a brick drop on one’s
foot is not something that happens to another as a result of a description of that
event. This is because one’s subjectivity is embodied in a particular body and
no other body and is as closely related to the events befalling that body as
one’s visual perspectives on objects are to one’s geometrical relations to
objects in the world. We have irreducible perspectives and irreducible feels
from the first person perspective but these are perhaps the most easily appreci-
ated aspects of the experiential trajectory of another. One can almost taste the
chocolate that another indulgently devours; what one cannot so easily do is see
significant and complex experiences as they are seen by another unless one
has appreciated the relevant tract of their narrative. Of course, one’s narrative
goes beyond simple experiences just as one’s trajectory through space goes
beyond a static or momentary position with respect to some orienting point in
the environment. Qualia are what happens when things really happen to you
rather than your just thinking about them and arguably that is just like being
bruised by the brick hitting your foot rather than watching it hit your friend’s
foot.
We will begin in Chapter 1 by outlining the problems that are created for
an explanation of meaning if the view that consciousness involves the aware-
ness of essentially private states is adopted. These problems prompt us to
postulate a publicity requirement for meaning. The publicity requirement must
not only provide a means by which mental content can be accessible but must
also be consistent with the sophistication typically associated with adult
thought and language.
In Chapter 2 we provide an explanation of how fully developed thought
and language can be accommodated within an externalised account of mean-
ing. Sophistication of thought and language is accompanied by sophistication
of activity. We will draw upon the Wittgenstein’s later work, in particular his
INTRODUCTION ix
famous dictum that “meaning is use”.
The relationship between consciousness and objects in the world is a
fundamental question for epistemology and metaphysics. In Chapter 3 we
defend the view that being conscious of objects in the world involves concep-
tually mediated relationships between a thinker and objects. This position is
one that contrasts with both the traditional empiricist view that consciousness
involves relationships between a thinker, a representational object, and a state
of affairs and the naive realist view that consciousness involves a direct
relationship between a thinker and a state of affairs.
In Chapter 4 we apply our earlier claims about the nature of conscious-
ness and mental content to an analysis of action. We defend two central theses:
actions have intentional content and actions are purposive. Both of these
theses have implications for how those parts of psychology concerned with
human action should be understood. Because of the relations holding between
action, intentionality and consciousness there is a relationship between the
concepts at a person’s disposal and what operations they can perform in the
world. This means that there is also a relationship between action and a
person’s social environment. The nature of this relationship is the topic of
Chapter 5, where we argue for a number of related theses. Restrictions and
constraints that apply to thought and consciousness arise from the relations
between human beings in the shared environment and their relation to nature.
The environment that we live in is a holistic context for social being. Actions
are given sense by the social institutions in which they take place. Important
features of self are formed by locating oneself in a discourse where dimen-
sions of self are perceived, responded to, and used as the basis for defining
one’s position among others and shaping one’s conduct in the world.
Those who want to defend the view that social environment is an impor-
tant determinant of the mind ought to be able to respond to the fact that the
mind is the brain and that the brain has evolved in accordance with environ-
mental demands. Any account of consciousness and intentionality that is
inconsistent with such a commonly accepted fact will be prima facie implausi-
ble. In Chapter 6 we defend the view that the brain is a semantic organ.
Because of the relationship between concepts, consciousness and society
which we have established in earlier chapters proper brain function requires
the active engagement of a mind in a social environment and the understand-
ing of brain function involves an appreciation of that relationship.
In Chapter 7 we will consider what an investigation of intentionality
