Abstract
Propositional attitudes are often classified as non-phenomenal mental states. I argue that there is no good reason for doing so. The unwillingness to view propositional attitudes as being essentially phenomenal stems from a biased notion of phenomenality, from not paying sufficient attention to the idioms in which propositional attitudes are usually reported, from overlooking the considerable degree to which different intentional modes can be said to be phenomenologically continuous, and from not considering the possibility that propositional attitudes may be transparent, just like sensations and emotions are commonly held to be: there may be no appropriate way of describing their phenomenal character apart from describing the properties and objects they represent.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Block (1997, 380) expresses a similar sentiment and recommends a similar strategy – “pointing via rough synonyms” and moving on to examples.
Siewert concentrates on the differences between hearing what others say understandingly and hearing it uncomprehendingly, arguing that there are non-sensory differences in the phenomenal character of experience. Strawson and Horgan and Tienson argue for the more comprehensive view (to which I am also sympathetic) that all genuine intentionality is phenomenal. Pitt’s arguments resemble mine more closely. They exploit the same basic intuition, which, however, I shall try to develop in a new direction in Phenomenal judgements and Phenomenological continuity sections.
See for example Wilson 2003, who in response to Horgan and Tienson remarks that “the notion of phenomenology itself is as contestable ... as is that of intentionality” (429).
One may argue – as Searle has done (Searle 1992, 151ff.) – that the notion of an unconscious mental state nevertheless implies accessibility to consciousness. But this is not relevant to the present investigation, since the unconscious states are nevertheless, on Searle’s proposal, themselves without phenomenal character. PPA is stronger than any doctrine which merely ascribes to PAs a general dependency on (other states with) phenomenal character.
In the phenomenological tradition this has been labelled “categorial intuition” (see e.g. Husserl 1984b, Section 45ff.).
I use the expressions “mental state,” “mental event” and “mental act” interchangeably. Nothing in my argument turns on using one of these terms rather than another.
A similar line of thought can be found in Price 1953, 310f.
Husserl famously maintained that the full content of an intentional act comprises both a presentation of the intentional object itself (its “core content” (Husserl 1976, Section 131) and the way it is intended (Husserl 1976, Section 94), and held that an attitudinal aspect of an intentional act always has a correlate in the mode of presentation of its object. I find this view very plausible, though there may be exemptions from it (i.e. some attitudinal aspects may not have a correlate in the way the object is presented; this does not, however, have any bearing on PPA).
There are several forms of what might be called “subjective” misidentification which are indeed possible, e.g. misapplication of concepts or mistakes about the content of past thoughts based on faulty memory, but which are also quite irrelevant. The crucial point is that there is a kind of immediate awareness of content that does not allow of misidentification. See also Pitt 2004, 13.
By this I mean roughly the same as what Dretske calls “simple seeing” (Dretske 1979).
Although a state of affairs does not supervene directly on its constituents; the constituents must be combined in a certain way. But this further requirement is met in the case were we have an object instantiating a property, like a red rose.
A similar thesis was put forward by Husserl at roughly the same time. See for instance his Logical Investigations (Husserl 1984a, Einleitung Section 3).
That is, manifested to the thinker herself. Price’s theory was not, I presume, intended to have any behaviourist implications.
One might prefer to follow Crane in distinguishing between qualia (or “qualitative features”) – which he uses for sensory properties alone – and phenomenal character, in the broader sense of what it is like to be in a mental state (Crane 2001, 76). But apart from being a departure from common usage, this distinction rest on the doubtful assumption that sensory qualities form a homogenous group which is markedly different from all non-sensory types of phenomenal character. This I find doubtful. Likewise, I will not recommend adopting Crane’s use of the term “qualia” for the intrinsic and non-intentional properties of experience (loc. cit.), since I do not think that their being intrinsic precludes qualia from being intentional. According to the classical, broadly Cartesian view of the mind, intentionality is itself an intrinsic quality of certain mental states or features. Though it may have fallen from favour, this view should not be ruled out by definition.
H.H. Price remarked that different forms of “concept-manifestations” seem to form a “graded series” (Price 1953, 341).
Another possibility is that conceptual thinking does after all possess non-intentional qualitative features akin to what Block calls “mental paint” and mental latex” (Block 1995). The possibility of transparency makes life easier for the proponent of PPA, but she can remain neutral as to whether transparency does in fact obtain.
Apart, of course, from the general “medium” of phenomenality, if it may be so called.
A big “if,” I should say, but that is a different matter.
References
Armstrong, D. (1997). A world of states of affairs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bayne, T., & Chalmers, D. (2003). What is the unity of consciousness? In A. Cleeremans, 2003, pp. 23–58.
Block, N. (1994). Qualia. In Guttenplan 1994, pp. 514–520.
Block, N. (1995). Mental paint and mental latex. In E. Villanueva (Ed.) Philosophical issues 7 (pp. 19–49). Northridge, CA: Ridgeview.
Block, N. (1997). On a confusion about a function of consciousness. In Block, et al. (Eds.)(pp. 375–415) (originally printed in Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (1995), 227–247.
Block, N., Flanagan, O., & Güzeldere, G. (Eds.) (1997). The nature of consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Boghossian, P. A. (1989). Content and self-knowledge. Philosophical Topics, XVII(1), 5–26.
BonJour, L. (1998). In defense of pure reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
BonJour, L. (2002). Epistemology. Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield.
Brewer, B. (1993). The integration of spatial vision and action. In N. Eilan, R. McCarthy, & B. Brewer (Eds.) Spatial representation (pp. 294–316). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Burge, T. (1997). Two kinds of consciousness. In Block, et al. (Eds.) (pp. 427–433).
Chalmers, D. (1996). The conscious mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chisholm, R. M. (1966). Theory of knowledge. Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Chisholm, R. M. (1982). The foundations of knowing. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.
Cleeremans, A. (Ed.) (2003). The unity of consciousness: Binding, integration, dissociation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Crane, T. (2001). Elements of mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dainton, B. (2001). Stream of consciousness. London: Routledge.
Dretske, F. (1979). Simple seeing. In D. F. Gustafson, & B. L. Tapscott (Eds.) Body, mind and method (pp. 1–15). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Dretske, F. (1995). Naturalizing the mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Fales, E. (1996). In defense of the given. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Goldman, A. I. (1993). Consciousness, folk psychology and cognitive science. Consciousness and Cognition, 2, 364–382 (reprinted in Block et al. 1997, 111–125).
Guttenplan S. (Ed.) (1994). A companion to the philosophy of mind. Oxford: Blackwell.
Harman, G. (1990). The intrinsic quality of experience. In J. Tomberlin (Ed.) Philosophical perspectives (pp. 31–52). Atascadero: Ridgeview.
Horgan, T. (2007). Agentive phenomenal intentionality and the limits of introspection. Psyche, 13/1, 1–29.
Horgan, T. & Tienson, J. (2002). The phenomenology of intentionality and the intentionality of phenomenology. In D. Chalmers (Ed.) Philosophy of mind: Classical and contemporary readings (pp. 520–533). Oxford.
Horgan, T., Tienson, J., & Graham, G. (2003). The phenomenology of first-person agency. In S. Walter & H. D. Heckmann (Eds.), Physicalism and mental causation: The metaphysics of mind and action (pp. 323–340). Exeter: Imprint Academic.
Husserl, E. (1976). Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischer Philosophie (Husserliana III/1). Den Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, E. (1984a). Logical investigations II/1 (Husserliana XIX/1). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, E. (1984b). Logical investigations II/2 (Husserliana XIX/2). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Johnson-Laird, P. (1983). Mental models. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Kosslyn, S. (1983). Ghosts in the mind’s machine. Creating and using images in the brain. New York: Norton.
Klausen, S. H. (2004). What is really wrong with representationalism? Res Cogitans, 1, 14–47.
Levine, J. (2001). Purple haze. The puzzle of consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Martin, M. G. F. (2002). The transparency of experience. Mind & Language, 17(4), 376–425.
McGinn, C. (1982). The character of mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McGinn, C. (1989). Mental content. Oxford: Blackwell.
Moore, G. E. (1903). The refutation of idealism. In Philosophical Papers. London: Routledge (1959).
Pitt, D. (2004). The phenomenology of cognition, or, what is it like to think that P? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LXIX, 1–36 July 2004.
Price, H. H. (1953). Thinking and experience. London: Hutchinson.
Searle, J. R. (1983). Intentionality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Searle, J. R. (1992). The rediscovery of the mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Siewert, C. P. (1998). The significance of consciousness. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Smith, M. (1994). The moral problem. Oxford: Blackwell.
Soldati, G. (1994). Bedeutung und psychischer Gehalt. Paderborn: Schöningh.
Strawson, G. (1994). Mental reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Strawson, G. (2004). Real intentionality. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 3(3), 287–313.
Strawson, G. (2005). Real intentionality v. 2: Why intentionality entails consciousness? Synthesis Philosophica, 40, 279–297.
Tye, M. (1995). Ten problems of consciousness: A representational theory of the phenomenal mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Tye, M. (2000). Consciousness, colour and content. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Tye, M. (2003). Consciousness and persons: Unity and identity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Wilson, R. A. (2003). Intentionality and phenomenology. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 84, 413–431.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Klausen, S.H. The phenomenology of propositional attitudes. Phenom Cogn Sci 7, 445–462 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-007-9081-z
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-007-9081-z