Intentionality

During the conscious episodes that constitute intuitions, it seems or appears to one that Non-Contradictionor thatTorture. Intuitions are thus not like oranges, trees, kangaroos, fires or smokes that – assuming they’re not part of a symbolist artwork – stand for nothing apart from themselves. By “just being there” oranges, trees, kangaroos, fires or smokes don’t “say” anything.¹¹ This is different for intuitions. They are more like pictures, street-signs, lists of items, loudspeaker announcements, or fortune cookie slips that — besides having their physical dimension — also have an intrinsic informational dimension: They “say” something and what they say is about or is directed at things that are not the intuition itself, i.e. are external to the intuition (Crane 2009). If you have the intuition thatPermanence, then the intuition is about thePermanence proposition, not the intuition itself.

A shorthand for saying that, is to say that intuitions are intentional states; that the things they are about or directed upon, say, propositions, are the intentional objects

10This is William James telling us something he felt to be profoundly true—while on laughing gas (James 1882, p. 207, see also section 7.2).

11This, of course, does not mean that these things do not carry information for a suitably equipped interpreter (Dretske 1981, 1986).

of the intuitions; and that the intuitions can be said to be about or to represent¹² their intentional objects, say, the specific propositions (cf. Koksvik 2011, p. 3, 2017, p. 2). This is not to exclude that intuitions can be about non-propositional objects (see e.g. Bonjour 2001, pp. 676 sqq.; Chudnoff 2011b, 2013a; Molyneux 2014, pp. 450 sqq.).¹³ However, if not indicated otherwise I will focus on propositions as the intentional objects of intuitions, i.e. on propositional intuitions for now (cf. Sosa 2007a, p. 52). I will refer to the intentional object of an intuition in the form of a proposition as the content of the intuition.

Saying that a state is intentional leaves a free parameter as to what kind(s) of inten-tionality, “aboutness” or “directedness” the state exhibits and what kind(s) it does not.

Although here I will remain neutral on this issue, let me make some qualifying remarks:

There are various (and variously demanding) notions of intentionality on the market, for instance: tracking or co-variational theories (e.g. Dretske 1981; Millikan 1984; Millikan 1993); inferential or conceptual role semantics (e.g. Block 1986; Harman 1987); and phe-nomenal intentionality theories theories (e.g. Horgan and Tienson 2002; Kriegel 2013).

Intuitions might be intentional in one or more of these ways and not intentional in one or more others. Thus far, all that is needed is that intuitions are intentional in at least one way.

Different kinds of intentionality are not mutually exclusive.¹⁴ For instance, part of the information or content that a state carries can be “broadcasted” and become phenom-enally conscious. In doing so, phenomenal intentionality might become instantiated in relation to part of a state’s content. This might, in turn, engender certain (e.g. global and person-level) functions for which e.g. a transition over phenomenal to access

con-12For now I use ”to represent X” synonymously with ”to be about X” or ”to be directed onto X”. I thus take being representational as synonymous with being intentional and not, as some do, as being intentionalandassertive (see section 2.2.2). This is similar to Bengson’s distinction between “merely contentful” (here: intentional) and representational states (here: intentional and assertive) (Bengson 2015, footnote 11).

13A fortiorithere is no commitment to the controversial and more encompassing thesis of Propositional-ism according to whichallintentional states are relations to propositions or something proposition-like (for a critical review see Montague 2007). See McGahhey and Van Leeuwen 2018 for a refreshing critical discussion of Propositionalism specifically in relation to intuitions.

14On the other hand, differentviews or theories of intentionality are often pitted against each other in a mutually exclusive fashion. That is, each view describes a property that it argues to be what intentionalityreally is. In effect, a view of intentionality does not usually deny the existence of the property that another view of intentionality describes. What it denies instead is that this property is (a form of) intentionality. So different theories of intentionality usually come together with the assumption of monism about intentionality. For my purposes it is for now acceptable to be pluralist (or, in fact, agnostic) about intentionality, taking the distinct properties that different views describe as varietiesof intentionality. This is how my talk of kinds of intentionality is to be understood.

sciousness is necessary (Bayne and Chalmers 2003). At the same time, plausibly, not all intentional features need to be “phenomenally encoded”, i.e. be part of phenomenal intentionality. Consequently, other parts of the information or content that the state carries are not “broadcasted” but are nevertheless fed to under-the-phenomenal-radar (e.g. more specialised or local) processes, assuming therebypart of their functional (e.g.

inferential) role that does not require broadcasting or consciousness.¹⁵ Consequently, the information or content that a state carries can be more than is apparent via its phenomenal – and phenomenally intentional – character. That is to say that the state in question has both, phenomenal intentionalityandfunctional role semantics. At the same time, it seems that both these mechanisms enjoy a degree of independence and might also come apart as the ventral and dorsal visual pathways, blindsight or hemispatial neglect demonstrate.¹⁶

Within the intuition literature, intuitions are generally assumed to be intentional. How-ever, it is more often than not left open what kind(s) of intentionality applies to intu-itions. Nevertheless, those that concern themselves explicitly with intuition experiences can usually be positioned at least in relation to phenomenal intentionality, i.e. the thesis that the intentional content of a state is fixed by the phenomenology of the state.¹⁷ Chudnoff seems to attribute phenomenal intentionality to intuitions (Chudnoff 2013b).

Bengson is less clear on that matter but, with his emphasis on the phenomenal direct-ness of the content of intuitions, seems plausibly understood to lean towards phenomenal intentionality (Bengson 2015). Koksvik explicitly attributes phenomenal intentionality to perceptual experiences but not to intuition experiences. On his view, phenomenal intentionality can only be realised via content-specific phenomenal properties which are, according to him, lacking in intuitions (Koksvik 2011, pp. 200 sq., 248).¹⁸ To see this

15To give it a gloss of a metaphorical hierarchy: part of the informational value of a state might travel

”upwards” and be broadcasted while part might remain “on the same level” or travel downwards in the cognitive hierarchy.

16The ventral and the dorsal visual pathways both process and represent visual information but do not seem to equally give rise tophenomenally intentionalcontent (cf. Clark 2009). In blindsight, patients report to be not conscious of any visual objects (the “blind” part) but when forced to interact with objects in ways that typically depend on vision, perform significantly better than one would expect against the background of their report (the “sight” part) (Stoerig and Cowey 2007). This suggests that some information processing is going on without phenomenology. Similar lessons can be drawn from research on hemispatial neglect where patients loose awareness ofpart of the visual field (Rafal et al. 2006).

17The phenomenal intentionality thesis is easily confused with its mirror image: the intentionalist or representationalist thesis about phenomenal consciousness. Intentionalism is roughly the thesis that the phenomenology of a state is fixed by the intentionality of the state (e.g. Tye 1995; Chalmers 2004; Crane 2009).

18That is to say that according to Koksvik intuitions do not have content-specific phenomenal properties when stripped down to theiressence. This leaves open that intuitions can sometimes, i.e. incidentally,

we need to acquaint ourselves with Koksvik’s very useful distinction between content-specific and attitude-content-specific phenomenology. In his own words:

What sort of contribution does intuitional experience make? We can dis-tinguish between two different ways such contributions can be determined.

On the one hand, the contribution a mental state makes can depend on the content of that mental state. Suppose that if I perceive something red, this makes a different contribution to the character of my overall phenomenal experience than perceiving something green does. In that case, perception has content-specific phenomenology (and if not, it does not). On the other hand, it may be that whatever I visually perceive, the fact that I am hav-ing a visual perceptual experience makes a contribution to the character of my overall phenomenal experience: perhaps it contributes a certain ‘vi-sualness’ [...] In that case I shall say that perception has attitude-specific phenomenology. Of course, perception may have, and indeed actually does have, both attitude-specific and content-specific phenomenology. (Koksvik 2011, p. 104)¹⁹

So according to this distinction, a state can have content- and attitude-specific phe-nomenology, while Koksvik seems to grant phenomenal intentionality only to content-specific phenomenology (see also footnotes 24, 69 and section 4.4).

have content-specific phenomenal properties. For instance, when they happen to have a content with phenomenal properties (e.g. iconic content). In order to exclude this, it must be additionally essential to intuitions that they canonly have content without phenomenal properties.

19Koksvik goes on to helpfully clarify the distinction:

The terms ‘content-specific phenomenology’ and ‘attitude-specific phenomenology’ are not perfect. For one, ‘attitude-specific phenomenology’ might make it sound like the phenomenol-ogy suffices to distinguish one attitude from another. As I will be using the terms, this is a substantive question, and in fact I shall argue that intuition and perceptionshareaspects of their attitude-specific phenomenology. The terms may also suggest that the ultimateorigin of the phenomenology is in the content, or in the attitude, respectively. However, the issues here are subtle, and the terms are intended to leave questions of origin open. It is possible, for example, that a certain attitude only admits content of a particular kind. Some think that perception is like this; it admits only non-conceptual content. Suppose that it does, and further that nonconceptual content always makes a different contribution to the char-acter of a person’s overall phenomenal experience than conceptual content does. Though suppose that, contrary to fact, no-matter what the content is, the contribution is always the same. In that case, the way the terms are used here, perception would have attitude-specific phenomenology but not content-specific phenomenology, even though the origin of the phe-nomenology is in the content. Thus the terms are intended to indicatevariation with, rather thanultimate origin in, content and attitude (although, again, two different attitudes can share aspects of their attitude-specific phenomenology). (Koksvik 2011, p. 104)

In effect, depending on what kind of intentionality one ascribes to intuitions, intention-ality itself might or might not count as a phenomenal feature. In the case of intuitions, phenomenology and intentionality might or might not come apart.