Definitions
In [Brentano 1874], one can find the famous thesis that intentionality is the charac-teristic feature of mental phenomena. That is, every mental representation (a fortiori linguistic ones) is defined as “having an object”:
Every mental phenomenon is characterised by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an ob-ject, and what we might call, though not wholly unambiguously, reference to a content, direction toward an object (which is not to be understood here as meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity. Every mental phe-nomenon includes something as an object within itself, although they do not so in the same way. In presentation, something is presented, in
fictional discourse. The first problem points to the semantics and the other to the ethics of fictional discourse. Both are related, in Plato’s work, through a presupposed ontology of fictional objects.
I am about to show that the conceptual framework for the semantics of fictional discourse can be fruitfully updated if one shift to Brentano. Interestingly, Schaeffer argues, there is no updated framework for thinking about the ethics of fictional discourse.
11Another way of putting it, following Rorty, is: “Whatever is referred to must exist.”
judgment something is affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired and so on.
This intentional in-existence is characteristic exclusively of mental phenomena. No physical phenomenon exhibits anything like it. We can, therefore, define mental phenomena by saying that they are those phe-nomena which contain an object intentionally within themselves.12
But this definition, as appealing as it sounds, comes with a serious problem.
“Having an object” is intuitively thought of as relational in nature: the intentional object is related to the cognitive agent via the mental act (presentation, judgment, love, etc.). At the same time, intentionality cannot be a real relation, because some mental representations are empty, meaning that they relate the cognitive agent to, literally, nothing:
What is characteristic of every mental activity is, as I believe I have shown, the reference to something as an object. In this respect, every mental activity seems to be something relational. [...] In other relations both terms – both the fundament and the terminus – are real, but here only the first term – the fundament – is real. [...] If I take something relative, [...] something larger or smaller for example, then, if the larger exists, the smaller one exists too. If one house is larger than another house, the other house must also exist and have a size. Something like what is true of relations of similarity and difference holds true for relations of cause and effect. For there to be such a relation, both the thing that causes and the thing that is caused must exist. [...]
It is entirely different with mental reference. If someone thinks of something, the one who is thinking must certainly exist, but the object of his thinking need not exist at all. In fact, if he is denying something, the existence of the object is precisely what is excluded whenever his denial is correct. So the only thing which is required by mental reference is the person thinking. The terminus of the so-called relation does not need to exist in reality at all. For this reason, one could doubt whether we really are dealing with something relational here, and not, with something somewhat similar to something relational in certain respect, which might, therefore, better be called “quasi-relational”.13
Brentano’s problem thus concerns the articulation between two fundamental no-tions: relation and existence. Given the data he considers, there are two very different
12[Brentano1874], p. 68.
13[Brentano1874], p. 211-2.
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cases.
In the first case, the relation comes with afull ontological constraint: both relata must exist for the relation to hold.14 Brentano’s examples are the relation “being smaller than” and “being the cause of”. We can think of more naïve examples like:
“spilling one’s coffee on”, “kissing”, etc. Let us call them the natural or extensional relations.
In the second case, the relation comes with ahalf ontological constraint: only one of the relata must exist, i.e. the cognitive subject. Brentano’s example is the relation
“deny the existence of”. One can think of other intuitive examples like “dreaming about”, “imagining”, etc. Let us call them the intentional relations or the mental ones.
Important distinction between direct intentionality and derived intention-ality
Direct intentional relations: As suggested above by Brentano’s light, the paradigmatic intentional relation is a relation holding between a cognitive agent and an object of cognition. All cognitive states require the existence of the cogni-tive agent, by definition. Interestingly,prima facie, some cognitive state require the existence of the object of cognition and some others do not. For instance, perceiv-ing, remembering or having a singular thought are usually regarded as putting an ontological constraint on what is perceived (it must be in the vicinity of the cog-nitive agent), remembered (it must have been experienced by the cogcog-nitive agent), singularly thought (the cognitive agent must be able to deploy a causal informational channel to the object of cognition). In this sense, these cognitive states behave like natural relations. By contrast, as seen above, many other cognitive states do not put any constraint on the existence of the object of cognition and are thus paradigmatic cases of intentional relations.
So the mental lives of cognitive agents is a complex mixture of the two kinds of relations. The pressure a philosopher might feel in considering that all mental states are of one kind justifies their calling all mental relations intentional. But, eventually, one should have a more fine-grained picture of the mind. This is part of Brentano’s program: explain how intentional and natural relations are integrated in one’s mental lives.
14More rigorously the constraint on the relation is: if the relation holds in reality, then both relata must exist qua objects in reality. In Brentano’s quoted passage he puts the constraints on theobjects and not on the relation when he says: “if the larger exists, the smaller one exists too”.
This is part of Brentano’s mistake, that was later corrected by his students, as seen below.
Derived intentional relations: But there is another very important class of in-tentional relations which do not involve any cognitive agent. It is the relation between a representation and that which is represented. In this case, one usually talk of de-rived orborrowed intentionality, since it is usually acknowledged that representations are created and used by cognitive agents.
Classic examples are: maps, pictures, descriptive sentences, etc. The intentional relation, in this case, is a relation which holds between a physical object and the object of representation. The physical object must exist by definition, because oth-erwise there is no representation. But the object of representation need not exist, for maps can chart imaginary territories, one can draw nonexistent individuals, etc.
Just as in the case of intentionality of cognitive states, some representations im-pose an ontological constraint on the object of representation, because of the struc-ture of the representation. The main contrast between a drawing and a photograph, for instance, is that the object of the photograph must have been causally connected with the photograph, so it must (have) exist(ed); not so for the object of a draw-ing. Again, one might want to put the photographic relation in the natural relations instead of the intentional ones or rather insist on representations as being of one kind.
Following the tradition, such borrowed intentionality of representations is usually called “signification”. It is because representations are traditionally called signs.15 Here is, for instance, the definition of a sign in thePort-Royal Logic which precisely corresponds to a representation as defined above. The borrowed intentionality can be defined as a “prompting relation”, to borrow Arnauld and Nicole’s expression:
When we consider an object in itself and in its own being, without carrying the view of the mind to what it can represent, our idea of it is an idea of a thing, such as the idea of the earth or the sun. But when we view a certain object merely as representing another, our idea of it is an idea of a sign, and the first object is called a sign. This is how we ordinarily think of maps and paintings. Consequently the sign includes two ideas, one the thing which represents, the other of the thing represented. Its nature consists in prompting the second by the first.16
15The tradition goes back (at least) to Augustine’s work who defined the notion ofsignumin this manner (seeDe doctrina christiana– II, i, 1).
16[Arnauld and Nicole1996], Part 1, Chapter 4, p. 35. Here is the original of the last two phrases, in which one finds the beautiful, suggestive expression defining a sign:
Ainsi le signe renferme deux idées, l’une de la chose qui représente, l’autre de la chose représentée; et sa nature consiste à exciter la seconde par la première.
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