A Historical Introduction to Phenomenology

Seppo Sajama, Matti Kamppinen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134478965
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Phenomenology in Philosophy

This book offers a concise exposition of the content theory of intentionality, which lies at the root of Husserl's phenomenology, for student and scholar. Originally published in 1982.

The first part traces the history of phenomenology from its beginnings in Aristotle and Aquinas through Hume, Reid and the Brentano school to its first clear formulation in Frege and Husserl.

Part two analyses some special problems involved in two important types of mental phenomena – perception and emotion – without abandoning the historical approach. Husserl's theory of perception is extensively discussed and a Husserlian analysis of so-called de re acts is attempted.

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Part One

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History of Content Theory

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1

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Introduction

THE AIM OF THIS BOOK

Our aim in this book is to reconstruct the historical development of an idea. This idea is the Content Theory of intentionally (CT for short).

INTENTIONALITY

By ‘intentionality’ we mean the ability of the human mind to refer to objects outside itself. To put it bluntly, our view is that all mental states that contain in themselves a “picture” of an external object are intentional. (In medieval Latin, the word intentio meant, among other things, picture or idea.) When I see a cat I have a “picture” of the cat in my mind; when I wish it wouldn't rain tomorrow I have in my mind a “picture” of tomorrow's unwelcome rain and so on.

The scare quotes employed round the word ‘picture’ indicate that the word must not be taken too literally. Mental pictures (henceforward we shall use the term without quotes as a technical term) are of course not always as clear and distinct as photographs. If, for example, I see a cat, then the picture I have is clearer and richer in details than the picture that I shall have tomorrow when I remember my having seen the cat, not to mention the picture that is aroused in my mind by a story somebody tells about some cat which I have never seen.

The intentionality of the human mind is, then, its capacity to receive pictures from the external world and also to create new pictures of its own (as is the case when I wish that it would not rain tomorrow).

It is important not to confuse this sense of the words ‘intentionality’ and ‘intentional’ with a more common use of the ‘intentional’ as a synonym for ‘done on purpose’. When we say that a mental state (e.g. my seeing a cat) is intentional, we do not mean that this mental state is brought about on purpose. We mean only that the mental state contains a picture of its object in the sense defined above. Both mental states brought about on purpose (e.g. when we purposefully call up in memory somebody's name) and those occurring fortuitously are intentional in our present sense of this term: they contain a picture of their object.

There is also an alternative way of characterising intentionality. Instead of saying that intentional mental states contain a picture of their object, one could also say that intentional mental states are directed to their objects. For instance, when I see a cat, my act of seeing is directed to the cat; when I remember that I will have to visit the dentist tomorrow, my act of remembering is directed to this visit, and so on.

These two ways of characterising intentionality are equivalent, we shall argue, because a mental state can be directed to its object only if it contains a picture of it. Therefore it can be said that if a mental state contains a picture of an object it is, by the same token, directed to that object.

All mental acts of seeing, hearing, remembering, hoping, fearing, etc., contain a picture of the object seen, heard, remembered, hoped, feared, etc. Thus, it would seem, at least provisionally, that all mental acts are intentional.

MENTAL ACTS

When we use the term ‘mental act’ as a synonym of ‘mental experience’ or ‘mental event’ we do not suggest that the word ‘act’ implies any sort of activity. The opposite of the word ‘act’ used in this sense is not passivity but potentiality. Thus the term ‘mental act’ means a mental state that has been actualised in the mind, that is, a mental state that is present to consciousness. In addition to mental acts there are also non-actualised, merely potential, mental states. Thus for example everybody remembers his own name and address, but these pieces of information are very seldom present to the mind; they are merely in store, ready to be actualised when needed. Thus the term ‘mental state’ is the general term covering both mental acts (occurrent mental states) and non-actualised (dispositional) mental states. As regards intentionality, there is no difference whatever between mental acts and non-actualised mental states: both are intentional precisely in the same sense. We shall therefore refer in what follows to mental acts, or even just to acts, though what we say will hold true also, mutatis mutandis, of non-actualised mental states as well.

THE STRUCTURE AND INDIVIDUATION OF MENTAL ACTS

To individuate something means to show what that thing is or which thing it is. When a thing is distinguished by a subject from all other things, it is already individuated. However, not all acts of distinguishing are acts of individuating. For example, even if one is able to distinguish roses from other flowers, one may still be unable to say to which particular variety of rose an individual rose belongs, let alone which individual rose it is.

Thus ‘individuation’ may mean either pointing out to which special class an individual belongs or pointing out which individual it is. The former sort of individuation is of course less stringent than the latter. We may call these two forms of individuation loose and strict individuation, respectively.

Material objects can be individuated (either strictly or loosely) in two different ways, either qualitatively, by describing the object so precisely that the description applies to only one object, or spatio-temporally, by indicating the unique location of the object in space and time. (In practice, both of these methods are used simultaneously, e.g. when saying ‘That tallman with a black hat over there.‘)

The individuation of mental acts is a rather more difficult task. Here, too, there are two basic methods of individuation. One may either state whose act it is and when it occurs, or one may describe the act so precisely that the description applies to one act only. This latter method of individuation is philosophically more interesting. We may call it the qualitative method of individuation.

It is clear that qualitative individuation in regard to mental acts very rarely meets the standards of strict individuation, for it is very difficult to describe an act by using general terms in such a way that one could be sure that this description applies to a single mental act alone. However, at least in theory there is no reason why such an individuating description could not be given to each act if one were prepared to take the trouble of describing one's act accurately enough.

But what are the properties of mental acts by means of which they are individuated, i.e. distinguished from one another? Before answering this question, it is useful to notice that intentionality is the common characteristic of mental acts and states that distinguishes them from other things: only mental states can include pictures of their objects, only mental states can be directed to their objects in our sense. Thus the stones at the bottom of the sea do not contain any pictures nor are they directed to anything.

It could be objected that there are non-mental things that quite literally are pictures, e.g. photographs, paintings and so on. To this we can only reply that it takes a human being to interpret them as pictures, i.e. as signs of something other than themselves. And a human being is a being with intentional states. He imposes an intentional interpretation on the ‘dead matter’ of photographs and paintings.

There are, however, many different ways of being directed to one and the same object: one may see a cat, or remember it, or love it, or hate it, and so on; or one may fear or hope or just consider the possibility that it will rain tomorrow, and so on. Or one's mind may be directed to different objects in one and the same way, e.g. one may see a cat, see a tree, see a cow, see a house and so on.

Simplifying the matter a little, we can say that a mental act has been individuated qualitatively when (1) we know to what object it is directed and (2) we know in what way it is directed thereto. In other words, we have qualitatively individuated a mental act when we have shown (1) its object and (2) its psychological mode (or attitude).

The structure of psychological sentences (i.e. sentences describing psychological states and acts) reflects the difference between mode and object in that the verb of the sentence indicates the former and the grammatical object of the sentence indicates the latter. Consider, for example, the sentences:

(1)	Peter	is afraid of	snakes
(2)	Peter	is afraid	that it will rain tomorrow
(3)	Peter	believes	that it will rain tomorrow
(4)	Peter	sees	snakes

where in each case the verb, expressing mode, is italicised. Notice that the object may be either propositional (i.e. expressible by a that-clause, as in cases (2) and (3)) or it may be non-propositional (i.e. expressible by a nominal expression, as in cases (1) and (4)).

We repeat: the object of a mental act does not suffice to individuate the act; one has to know the psychological mode (or attitude), too. If we know only that the object of Peter's mental act is the rain of tomorrow, we do not know the whole truth about his mental act: we do not know whether he wishes for it, is averse to it, or just believes, disinterestedly, that it will come.

When, however, we know both the mode and the object, then we have at least loosely individuated the mental act. More properly: we have individuated the type of the mental act. If we further know whose mental act it is, then we can be said to have strictly individuated the mental act, i.e. to have picked out the particular act itself. It should be noted however that this individuation is not purely qualitative since it has recourse to the person who is the bearer of the act in question, and clearly the bearer of the act is not a property thereof.

THE OBJECT THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY

OT and CT defined

There are two competing theories of intentionality: the Content Theory (CT) and the Object Theory (OT). Their main disagreement concerns their respective proposals as to the manner of individuating mental acts.

According to OT, mental acts are to be individuated by their psychological mode and their object According to CT, mental acts are to be individuated by their psychological mode and their content The content is, roughly, to be identified with what we referred to above as the picture that is contained in the mental act.

Since both parties accept the role of psychological mode in the individuation of mental acts, we have nothing further to add on this point. We shall concentrate in what follows rather on the roles of the content and the object in the individuation of mental acts.

One could say, as a first approximation, that the difference between CT and OT consists in the fact that CT...