Understanding conative phenomenology: lessons from Ricœur

Abstract

The core aspiration of the science and philosophy of mind of the past half-century has been the search for a mechanistic conception of mind modeled on our mechanistic conception of matter. The aim is to ultimately understand the field of mental phenomena in terms of a web of lawful causal interconnections among mental states. Many different pictures of the mind are consistent with this general conception, but they all tend to approximate a certain ideal that impresses somewhat as follows. Mental states divide in the first place into two groups: (i) states that are essentially and universally phenomenal though occasionally and accidentally intentional, and (ii) states that are essentially and universally intentional though occasionally and accidentally phenomenal. States of group (i) include prominently perceptual experiences (experiences as of red, as of shrieks, etc.) and bodily sensations (tickles, orgasms). States of group (ii) divide in turn into two sub-groups: (ii1) cognitive states, characterized by a theoretical intentionality, and (ii2) conative states, characterized by a practical intentionality. The theoretical/practical distinction is often cast, within this framework, in terms of the direction of fit between mind and world: cognitive states have a mind-to-world direction of fit, conative states a world-to-mind one. The former include prominently belief, supposition, doubt, and expectation; the latter include prominently desire, wish, intention, and preference. The basic mental phenomena are thus phenomenal states, cognitive states, and conative states; other mental phenomena can be exhaustively accounted for in terms of causal and/or constitutive relations to these basic ones. Recent critics of this general picture have found two kinds of miscue in it. First, the mechanistic aspiration itself is claimed to be appropriate only for phenomena to Phenom Cogn Sci (2013) 12:537–557 DOI 10.1007/s11097-013-9307-1