Intentional Objects Research Articles

Munchʼs “Scream” as a sense-giving object for the conceptual entity

A conceptual entity is a phenomenon that only exists in our thoughts as knowledge, linguistic, cultural, iconic, etc. All objects falling under this category are those that were created only by human intellect (power of eason or emotions). The article focuses on how a conceptual idea about the object chosen or given for in-depth discussion or study in an academic setting might be constructed and how the sense-giving potential of this object forms the conceptual entity. In this context, the object acts as a symbol for the idea and transforms into a sense-making tool that affects how linguistic or visual patterns manifest in the human mind. The articleʼs goal is to illustrate the problem of the expansion of every field of knowledge through the development of new concepts. This goal involves visual art as a reference point, notably Edvard Munchʼs Scream series becoming an object for idea generation. Practically, conceptualization strategies can make teaching a foreign language easier. The use of visual art images as nonverbal communication tools gives teachers a chance to improve studentsʼ discourse skills. The cognitive approach to understanding the scream image in the artwork enables us to connect it to symbolic qualities that heighten its emotional resonance and give it fundamentally indivisible characteristics. This article takes a cognitive approach to communication. Hence, teaching it involves developing mental representations of the conversational subject and its linguistic realizations. As the result, considering the object (image) as a conceptual phenomenon of visual culture gives the following sequence of causal modes of its cognition: stimulation – intentional stances and cognitive attitude – mentalization / presence of mental content – ideation / reasoning / presence of substantial content – conceptualization. All of these are either postures or processes in which a kind of object appears, depending on the psychodynamic or psychoemotional state of its meditator, more specifically: stimulus object – intentional object – mental object – ideative object – substantial object / semantic object – conceptual object. So, Munchʼs conception of the scream has not assumed a stable character, we are not inclined to consider the scream as a concept and leave it to us to designate it as a conceptual sense-given object. Future studies might focus on creating conceptual frameworks for the language learning process.

Das intentionale Objekt als Unding

Abstract The so-called “intentional object” occupies a central position in the debates about intentionality in Brentano and the Brentano School. How does it relate to the correlate, the content, or the intended, possibly external, transcendent object? Does it perhaps even coincide with one of these? There was no clear consensus on this neither in Brentano’s time nor today. In order to develop a new perspective on the problem of the intentional object, I would like to introduce a deliberately radical interpretation and related terminological change: what if we were to avoid any talk of “object” in this context altogether? Perhaps this could help avoid the ambiguities and misunderstandings associated with talk of “intentional objects.” In my contribution I would like to sketch such an interpretation and consider whether this attempt could be useful to reframe the debate.

Moods and situations

ABSTRACT Do moods have intentional objects? If so, what kinds of intentional objects might they have? Some theorists hold that moods are objectless affective states, not ‘about’ anything. Others argue that moods are directed toward a maximally general object like ‘the world’, and so they are about everything, in some sense. In this article, I advance a new theoretical account of the intentional object of moods. According to what I call the ‘present-situation view’, moods are directed toward, or about, the present situation. In other words, a mood is essentially an interpretation of one’s current situational context. As such, our moods change over time in a way that tracks our changing sense of how things are going, here and now. This article aims to make the case that the present-situation view, so understood, offers unique theoretical resources to describe and explain how we experience moods and how they change over time, while also suggesting a helpful way to think about the functional role moods play in our broader cognitive architecture, and pointing toward promising directions for future research into the ways that moods can be experienced, managed, and shared.

READER’S PERCEPTION IN LITERATURE STUDIES: TOWARDS THE HISTORY AND THEORY OF THE QUESTION. PART 2

The second part of the article is devoted to the phenomenon of surprise, which is significant for studying the reader’s perception of a literary text (CT) and for understanding estrangement (ostranneniе) not only as a literary device, but also as a certain state of the reader’s consciousness. In the ambiguous interpretation of this state of the human psyche, taken in the status of both basic emotion and intellectual assessment, by modern psychology, there is no contradiction, since an attempt to understand the world is accompanied by the experience of an intentional object, if it does not begin with it. However, the new, the unknown, being the objectcause of surprise as an intellectual-cognitive state of consciousness, induces opposite emotional reactions in different people - like (acceptance up to delight) and hostility (rejection up to irritation). It is these emotional epiphenomena of surprise that can serve as an argument for distinguishing within the considered intellectual state «surprise+», when the new causes emotional acceptance and intellectual interest, and «surprise-», when the new causes such emotional rejection that leaves no room for the cognitive aspirations of the mind. Speech examples of the emotional ambivalence of surprise are presented both in Russian and in other languages. Particular attention is paid to the connection between the concept of ‘surprise’ and the concept of ‘estrangement’ (ostranneniе), as well as their connection with the author’s position. Th e formation of the text also has a cognitive-aesthetic reason, which consists in the author’s understanding of life through surprise in its two forms - acceptance and rejection (as a rule, in their complex interweaving), and a formalaesthetic goal, confirmed by draft s. The study of the material made it possible to come to the conclusion that the surprise of the author (in any of the author’s artistic incarnations) with his diametrically opposed epiphenomena is the reason for the estrangement as a verbal-compositional embodiment of this mode of consciousness in CT. At the same time, «surprise-» dominates and the method of estrangement adequate to it in the linguistic embodiment given within the framework of this type of surprise.

Between Fiction, Reality, and Ideality: Virtual Objects as Computationally Grounded Intentional Objects

Virtual objects, such as online shops, the elements that go to make up virtual life in computer games, virtual maps, e-books, avatars, cryptocurrencies, chatbots, holograms, etc., are a phenomenon we now encounter at every turn: they have become a part of our life and our world. Philosophers—and ontologists in particular—have sought to answer the question of what, exactly, they are. They fall into two camps: some, pointing to the chimerical character of virtuality, hold that virtual objects are like dreams, illusions and fictions, while others, citing the real impact of virtuality on our world, take them to be real—an actual part of the real world, just like other real objects. In this article, we defend the thesis that both sides are wrong. Using Roman Ingarden’s phenomenological ontology, we advocate a position according to which a virtual object is a computationally grounded intentional object that has its existential foundation in computational processes, which are compliant with a certain model of computation. We point out that virtuality is framed by some kind of ideal mathematical objects: i.e., mathematical models of computation, which in turn fall, each of them, under their respective ideas. We also refer to the idea of natural computation, which in conjunction with the ontological analysis carried out leads to the thesis that an object can be more or less virtual.

Obligation and Value in the Phenomenological Philosophy of Law (Edmund Husserl’s Works)

Basing upon the two fundamental works of Edmund Husserl (Logische Untersuchungen and Idee) the author presents Husserl’s concepts of obligation and value according to the phenomenological reduction and the theory of the constitution of objects. Within the context of reduction the conclusions are: as according to Husserl the substance of normative sentences in valuation, the problems of obligation may be reduced to problems of valuation. The sense (Sinn) proves to be fundamental, prior to the existence. If anything should come to being in the ontological meaning it must become a moment of intentional life of consciousness. That is why the object and value exist in the same way but are only different names of some units of sense. The difference becomes clearer on a ‘higher’ level when they are characterised as intentional objects and the intentional experience directed towards them. Contrary to objects we can be directed towards values in a perceptible way (erfassenseise). The experience of value is always a based act. These acts are analysed against the background of noesis and noema. On the stage of constitution of the world it appears however that the substance of morality may be cognised with a personalistic attitude.

READER’S PERCEPTION IN LITERATURE STUDIES: TOWARDS THE HISTORY AND THEORY OF THE QUESTION. PART 2

The second part of the article is devoted to the phenomenon of surprise, which is significant for studying the reader’s perception of a literary text (CT) and for understanding estrangement (ostrannenie) not only as a literary device, but also as a certain state of the reader’s consciousness. In the ambiguous interpretation of this state of the human psyche, taken in the status of both basic emotion and intellectual assessment, by modern psychology, there is no contradiction, since an attempt to understand the world is accompanied by the experience of an intentional object, if it does not begin with it. However, the new, the unknown, being the object-cause of surprise as an intellectual-cognitive state of consciousness, induces opposite emotional reactions in different people — like (acceptance up to delight) and hostility (rejection up to irritation). It is these emotional epiphenomena of surprise that can serve as an argument for distinguishing within the considered intellectual state «surprise+», when the new causes emotional acceptance and intellectual interest, and «surprise–», when the new causes such emotional rejection that leaves no room for the cognitive aspirations of the mind. Speech examples of the emotional ambivalence of surprise are presented both in Russian and in other languages. Particular attention is paid to the connection between the concept of ‘surprise’ and the concept of ‘estrangement’ (ostrannenie), as well as their connection with the author’s position. The formation of the text also has a cognitive-aesthetic reason, which consists in the author’s understanding of life through surprise in its two forms — acceptance and rejection (as a rule, in their complex interweaving), and a formal-aesthetic goal, confirmed by draft s. The study of the material made it possible to come to the conclusion that the surprise of the author (in any of the author’s artistic incarnations) with his diametrically opposed epiphenomena is the reason for the estrangement as a verbal-compositional embodiment of this mode of consciousness in CT. At the same time, «surprise–» dominates and the method of estrangement adequate to it in the linguistic embodiment given within the framework of this type of surprise.

Descartes On Referring the Passions

As suggested by the title, Descartes’ Passions of the Soul deals primarily with states of the soul that he calls ‘passions.’ This designation includes all mental states that are actively caused by the body and passively received by the soul. However, as Descartes points out to the reader, there is a more specialized or proper usage of ‘passion’ that picks out a subclass of these and which aligns more-or-less with what we might now call ‘emotions.’ In this paper, I will address how Descartes classifies these ‘proper passions,’ paying special attention to how he distinguishes them from the other species of the passions in general. One of my primary aims will be to highlight an under-appreciated feature of the proper passions; namely, that they are distinct from other perceptions in their systematic divergence in terms of their distal or ‘first’ cause, their intentional object, and how they are ‘referred.’ After arguing for this distinctive feature of the proper passions, I show how it enables Descartes to provide a nuanced and multi-faceted account of our emotional experiences that incorporates external sensory perceptions, internal or bodily perceptions, and various cognitive assessments.

CONSTITUTION OF MEANING VS DISCOVERY OF REALITY: HOW IS TRANSCENDENTAL PHENOMENOLOGY POSSIBLE TODAY 2.0?

This article attempts to outline the contours of a transcendental phenomenology that would retain the intuition of a healthy realism. In this connection it is proposed to reinterpret the Husserlian notion of constitution, presenting constitution as a discover of reality. A distinction is made between strong and weak versions of constitution. It is constitution in the weak sense that combines, in our opinion, with the realist attitude. In order to achieve the above-mentioned goal (to present constitution as discovery), the Husserlian notion of object sense is clarified: it is excluded as a representative or substitute of an intentional object; object sense is seen as a mode of givenness, as а medium by means of which the object is implied or given. The idea of a meaningful discovery of reality is best matched by this treatment of object meaning. It is thus possible to combine the realist attitude with the idea of meaningful access to the real, thus avoiding, on the one hand, naive realism and, on the other hand, transcendental-idealist implications. The Husserlian notion of constitution is further related with the idea of forming interpretative schemes of understanding the world, which may include political agendas, scientific paradigms, systems of speculative metaphysics, and religious faith. It is emphasized that, although the rejection of interpretation is impossible, interpretive schemes must be reconciled with real facts and events in order to “fine-tune” reason and reality. Finally, a separation is undertaken with the conception of J.- L. Marion, which relies on the deflation of meaning in favor of the given as such, calling into question the status of man as a being who possesses reason, who discovers reality and constitutes its meaning.

Ingarden’s Aesthetic Argument Against Husserl’s Transcendental Idealism Turn

Husserl’s allegiance to realism came under attack following his Ideas. Ingarden was a fierce critic of his teacher’s turn to transcendental idealism, and provided compelling arguments both for his idealist reading of Husserl and for his rejection of idealism. One of the main arguments Ingarden devised against Husserl’s turn was based on his aesthetics. Against Husserl, Ingarden established literary works and fictional objects as purely intentional objects that are (1) doubly-structured, vis-à-vis their formal ontology, and (2) endowed with spots of indeterminacy. These facts, Ingarden argues, necessitate the transcendence of the purely intentional object. In this paper, I explore his argument, while establishing the ontological foundation on which it rests.

Modelling disruptions of intentionality in psychosis.

In philosophy, intentionality involves directedness, aboutness, or reference of mental states. It seems to have intense connections with mental representation, consciousness, as well as evolutionary selected functions. Naturalizing intentionality, in terms of tracking or functional roles, is one of the most important goals in philosophy of mind. Such what-matters models would be useful, employing a combination of the principles of intentionality and causality. For example, the brain contains a seeking system that is responsible for its capacity of having an instinct-like urge towards something or towards wanting. Reward circuits are linked with emotional learning, reward seeking, reward learning, as well as with the homeostatic system and the hedonic system. We may suggest that such brain systems reflect components of a broad intentional system, whereas non-linear dynamics can explain the complex behavior of such chaotic or fuzzy systems. Historically, the cusp catastrophe model has been used to predict health behaviors. It can explain why relatively small changes in a parameter can result in catastrophic changes in the state of a system. If distal risk is low, then proximal risk will be linearly related to psychopathology. If distal risk is high, then proximal risk is nonlinearly related to a severe psychopathology and small changes in proximal risk predict a sudden lapse. The phase of hysteresis can explain how a network stays active long after the events in the external field that triggered its activation have waned. It seems that in psychotic patients there is a failure of intentionality, due to the inappropriateness of an intentional object or connection, or due to the absence of an intentional object altogether. In psychosis, these failures seem to occur through a non-linear and multifactor fluctuating pattern of intentionality. The ultimate goal is to provide a better understanding of relapse. The sudden collapse can be explained by an already fragile intentional system rather than by a novel stressor. The catastrophe model may help individuals remove themselves from a hysteresis cycle, and strategies for sustainable management of such cases should focus on maintaining resilience. Focusing on disruptions of intentionality can deepen and enrich our understanding of radical disturbances involved in different psychopathologies, including psychosis.

Misprinted Representations in Stoicism

Abstract This paper deals with the Stoic concept of misprinted representation (φαντασία παρατυπωτική), which has received little attention compared to other concepts of Stoic epistemology and philosophy of mind. I aim at showing that a better understanding of this concept is important for grasping some elements of the Stoic account of mental representations that have been ignored or misunderstood in modern Stoic scholarship. First, by clarifying the status of the misprinted representation as a genuine representation, we can understand what it means (and does not mean) to say, from the Stoic point of view, that the intentional object of a representation is the external object that caused it. Second, by understanding this issue, we obtain some resources to deal with the ambiguity of the preposition ἀπό in the definition of cognitive representation. Thus, the concept of misprinted representation proves to be important for appropriately understanding the Stoic concepts of representation and cognitive representation.

Merely Intentional Objects: A Defense

Merely Intentional Objects: A Defense

Does Each of Us Think Our Own Universal? An Averroean Challenge for (Aquinas and) Hervaeus Natalis

AbstractThis paper aims to address a problem faced by any philosopher who treats universals as intentional objects: in defending this thesis, aren't they committed to the view that each of us thinks an individuated universal, since each of us, when thinking of a universal, must have our own intentional object? This problem, which is mentioned by Brentano at the turn of the twentieth century, originated in the Middle Ages in debates initiated by Averroes about the nature of the intellect. It shows up in the later Aquinas, due to his theory of the verbum, which might be interpreted as a sort of intentional object, but it is solved without too much difficulty. It is later found in Hervaeus Natalis, who does accept intentional objects; in contrast to Aquinas, it is not clear that Hervaeus has a good solution to the problem. After first presenting the problem, this paper then turns to its medieval origins by analyzing its occurrence in Aquinas's criticism of Averroes. It then explains why Hervaeus has more difficulties than Aquinas in solving the problem. It concludes with a systematic reflection on the various possible solutions to the problem.

Knowing value and acknowledging value: on the significance of emotional evaluation

ABSTRACT It is widely assumed that emotions are evaluative. Moreover, many authors suppose that emotions are important or valuable as evaluations. According to the currently dominant version of cognitivism, emotions are evaluative insofar as they make us aware of value properties of their intentional objects. In attributing to emotions an epistemic role, this view conceives of them as epistemically valuable. In this paper, I argue that proponents of this account mischaracterize the evaluative character of emotions and, a fortiori, their value. Moreover, I propose an alternative view of emotional evaluation, according to which emotions are practically rather than epistemically important. As I argue, emotions are ways of acknowledging their intentional objects as (dis)valuable. As such, they do not apprehend values but make them count. I elaborate this idea by drawing an analogy with legal and political sanctions. The resulting view has it that emotions are practically important in that they affirm the cares and concerns which serve as standards of emotional evaluation.

A Contrastive Analysis of Descartes’ Methodic Doubt and Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology

This work is expository, analytic, critical and evaluative in its methodology. Admittedly, both thinkers were dualists. But, where Descartes turned out to be a dualist in the stronger sense, Husserl had brought the Ego closer to the objects it perceives, constituting them through intentionality. More specifically, through h the intertwinement between the intentional act and the intentional object. The goal of Descartes’ method was to arrive at an inconcussum quid, at something which cannot be subjected to doubt: his own existence as a thinking substance, in addition to the proof(s) of the existence of God. So, he methodically doubted all the things he had been certain about, in order to reaffirm their existence. Husserl’s method, on the other hand, employs what is sometimes seen as a twofold approach: phenomenological ἐποχή, (epoche) or “suspension of belief,” and phenomenological reduction. Husserl’s main philosophical problem had nothing to do with being certain about reality. He understood our certitude about reality as a basic fact of our everyday experience, as something to be taken at face value. Therefore, he did not need to doubt whether reality is as it seems to be, or even exists at all. Although there are many ways to explain Husserl’s main issue, but to take the epistemological route, the one he took in his first public communication on this topic, The idea of phenomenology, it pertains to the manner in which exterior objectivity, as something whose existence transcends the subject, can reach an immanent subject.

Inter-imperiality: Vying Empires, Gendered Labor, and the Literary Arts of Alliance

Inter-imperiality: Vying Empires, Gendered Labor, and the Literary Arts of Alliance

The phenomenal contribution of attention

ABSTRACT Strong or Pure Intentionalism is the view that the phenomenal character of a conscious experience is exhaustively determined by its intentional content. Contrastingly, impure intentionalism holds that there are also non content-based aspects or features which contribute to phenomenal character. Conscious attention is one such feature: arguably its contribution to the phenomenal character of a given conscious experience are not exhaustively captured in terms of what that experience represents, that is in terms of properties of its intentional object. This paper attempts to get clearer on the phenomenal contribution of conscious attention. In doing so it considers and sets aside two prominent impure intentionalist accounts, namely the Phenomenal Structure view of Sebastien Watzl, and the Demonstrative Awareness view of Wayne Wu. As an alternative I outline a Modification view, which draws on ideas in Husserlian phenomenology. On this view, we should think of the phenomenal contribution of conscious attention in terms of attentive modifications of what I call a ‘pre-attentive phenomenal field’. I develop this view and highlight its benefits over alternatives.

An object-centric solution to Edelberg's puzzles of intentional identity

My belief that Socrates was wise, and your belief that Socrates was mortal can be said to have a common focus, insofar as both these thoughts are about Socrates. In Peter Geach’s terminology, the objects of our beliefs bear the feature of intentional identity, because our beliefs share the same putative target. But what if it turned out that Socrates never existed? Can a pair of thoughts share a common focus if the object both thoughts are about, does not actually, really exist? Object-centric accounts of intentionality which explain the aboutness or directedness of thought in terms of the intentional object the thought in question is about, contend that thoughts which share a common focus do so in virtue of both thoughts simply being about the same intentional object. However, Alexander Sandgren contends that such theories face difficulties in explaining a puzzle of intentional identity put forward by Walter Edelberg, in which a pair of sentences seem to differ in truth value but are purportedly logically equivalent on the object-centric theory. If this is right, then it seems that any account which explains intentionality with reference to an intentional object is threatened by this result, whether this object be abstract, merely possible, Meinongian, or otherwise. In this paper, I argue that Edelberg’s Puzzle is analogous to Frege’s Puzzle and the same tools conventionally used to solve Frege’s Puzzle can be used to solve Edelberg’s Puzzle. I then propose a new object-centric solution to Edelberg’s Puzzle which takes into account modes of presentation and which is able to accommodate all the relevant linguistic data.

Inquiry & Ordinary Truthmakers

Abstract This paper argues that accepting an ordinary approach to truthmakers and rejecting something I call “the metaphysical knowledge assumption” (MKA) allows us to account for inquiry in terms of truthmaking. §1 introduces inquiry and the potential place of truthmakers in inquiry. §2 presents the relevant ordinary notion of truthmakers. §3 presents and motivates MKA. This assumption, I argue (§4), makes a truthmaker-focused account of inquiry whose objects are not the fundamental nature of things impossible and thus should be rejected. The ordinary picture, which understands truthmakers not exclusively in terms of the objects of fundamental reality or of semantics (§5), but in terms of the relevant, intentional objects of inquiry, gives us an attractive, general, truthmaker-based view of inquiry.