Follesdal and Searle on Intentionality.

1. Follesdal:

   "Brentano had characterized intentionality as a special kind of directedness upon an object. This leads to difficulties in cases of hallucination and serious misperception, where there is no object. Also, it leaves open the question of what the directedness of conscious consists in. Husserl therefore endeavors to give a detailed analysis of those features of consciousness that make it as if of an object. The collection of all features Husserl calls the act's 'noema'. The noema unifies the consciousness we have at a certain time into an act that is seemingly directed towards an object. The noema is hence not the object that the act is directed towards, but is the structure that makes our consciousness be as if of such an object."
   [From Follesdal D. 1998. Edmund Husserl. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol 4:574-588. Routledge: London. p 574.]

   (Clarification of the Follesdal quote, using the example of my Feedback Phenomenological analysis of my religious experience called, variously, purgation (Malachi 2:3), dark night of the soul (John of the Cross 1959), refiner's fire (Malachi 2:2), overcoming samsara (Suzuki 1970), etc:
   • The noema is the complete flow diagram for purgation.
   • The intentionality of each variable in the flow diagram for purgation is directed toward the following state variables or stocks in the flow diagram:
     1. PrayerIntensity, PrayerTrueness, and PrayerQuality are directed toward a formless and imageless God in the presence of an image of Death. This image of Death is thought to be an agent of God who observes and judges prayer.
     2. FearOfDeath is directed toward the image of Death.
     3. HeartRigidityFactor HeartUnfoldmentRate, etc. are directed toward the somatosensory mental image composed of the two stocks or state variables, KnotsInHeart and HeartOpenness.
     4. This list is under construction.
2. Searle:

   "...conscious states typically have intentionality, that property of mental states by which they are directed at or about objects and states of affairs in the world. Philosophers use the word intentionality not just for 'intending' in the ordinary sense but for any mental phenomena at all that have referential content. According to this usage, beliefs, hopes, intentions, fears, desires, and perceptions all are intentional. So if I have a belief, I must have a belief about something. If I have a normal visual experience, it must seem to me that I am actually seeing something, etc. Not all conscious states are intentional and not all intentionality is conscious; for example, undirected anxiety lacks intentionality, and the beliefs a man has even when he is asleep lack consciousness then and there. But I think it is obvious that many of the important evolutionary functions of consciousness are intentional: For example, an animal has conscious feelings of hunger and thirst, engages in conscious perceptual discriminations, embarks on conscious intentional actions, and consciously recognizes both friend and foe. All of these are conscious intentional phenomena and all are essential for biological survival. A general neurobiological account of consciousness will explain the intentionality of conscious states. For example, an account of color vision will naturally explain the capacity of agents to make color discriminations."
   [From Searle JR. 2000. Consciousness. Annual Review of Neuroscience 23:557-578. p. 564.]

Arlen Wolpert
October 26,2001
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
http://world.std.com/~awolpert/gtr440.html

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