Intentionality: Or How to Buy a Loaf of Bread

Abstract

Parallels are drawn between the action-plans and basic-actions of intentionality advanced by Boden (1973) and the quantized factors of Q methodology. Concluding that intentions are complex is distinguished from making complexity itself the object of inquiry, and what this implies is made the basis of an experiment focused on the transitory thought in Boden's essay. Of the three operant factors which result, two correspond to Boden's own conclusions, but the third is suggestive of a greater complexity, as found in the quantum theory of Prigogine (1980). A second study reveals three feeling states relative to Boden's problem about shopping for a loaf of bread, indicating that intentionality extends from the simplest to the most complex of events. The conclusion is reached that the assumption of unity, present since the Middle Ages, must give way to complementarity and multiple intentionalities.