Degrees and dimensions of intentionality

pp. 183-204

in: Jaakko Hintikka, The logic of epistemology and the epistemology of logic, Berlin, Springer, 1989

Abstract

In the title essay of my book, The Intentions of Intentionality,¹ I proposed a touchstone for the intentionality of a concept in Brentano's and Husserl's sense of the term. According to this suggestion, a concept is intentional if and only if we have to consider several possible situations or courses of events in their relation to each other in spelling out the semantics of the concept. I dubbed this claim the thesis of intentionality as intensionality. By way of an intuitive explanation, the thesis says that the hallmark of intentional, that is, conscious and conceptualizable mental life is that it is transacted against the backdrop of a range of unrealized possibilities.