Intentional Objects Research Articles

Emoções e valores: uma abordagem sentimentalista

Neste artigo, uma tese sentimentalista qualificada é formulada para explicar a relação entre emoção e valor, em especial a aquisição de conceitos e de competências valorativas. Esta tese defende, por um lado, que sentimentos são os elementos essenciais para a caracterização de emoções e, por outro lado, que valores devem ser compreendidos em referência a emoções. Duas objeções à tese serão consideradas: as objeções da recalcitrância e da circularidade. Para responder a estas, será defendida a ideia de que sentimentos podem possuir objetos intencionais, juntamente com a ideia de que conceitos valorativos são conceitos de ordem superior sobre condições de adequação de experiências emocionais valorativas. No que diz respeito especificamente à objeção da recalcitrância, argumentaremos que a tese sentimentalista está em melhor situação do que a sua principal rival, a tese judicativa. Por último, mostraremos como o sentimentalista pode explicar níveis de complexidade entre emoções e valores. O resultado final é uma tentativa de mostrar como uma tese sentimentalista pode ser coerente sobre a relação entre emoção e valor.

Event Semantics: A Husserlian Critique

Event semantics is concerned with the formal structure of sentences which appear to describe an event of some kind, e.g. ‘Brutus kills Caesar,’ or ‘My tooth fell out.’ Phenomenologists should be interested in work in this field, if they hope to rescue Husserl’s phenomenology of judgment from its narrow focus on copular judgments of the form ‘S is p.’ An adequate phenomenology of judgment must ultimately develop an account of judgments whose intentional correlates seem to be events, rather than states of affairs, since such judgments are ubiquitous. For this endeavor, existing work on the formal structure of event sentences provides a crucial foothold. However, phenomenologists cannot simply import semantic theories for their own use, without first evaluating them for phenomenological plausibility. This concern is particularly acute in the case of the widely-adopted “Davidsonian” approach, according to which the logical structure of event sentences diverges radically from natural language syntax. The Davidsonian form introduces a “covert” variable, which stands in for an event. Thus, the sentence ‘Brutus kills Caesar’ becomes, ‘There is an event e that is a killing of Caesar by Brutus.’ Such a theory, if correct, would have decisive consequences for the phenomenology of event sentences, and even of events themselves. Yet the introduction of covert variables in turn introduces—I argue—a covert intentional object, without assessing this idea for phenomenological plausibility. Building on Husserl’s phenomenology of predication, I develop a criterion for evaluating this hypothesis, and argue that the Davidsonian approach, as it stands, is phenomenologically untenable.

The Singularity of Experiences and Thoughts

Recently, various people have maintained that one must revise either the externalistically-based notion of singular thought or the naive realism-inspired notion of relational particularity, as respectively applied to some thoughts and to some perceptual experiences. In order to do so, one must either provide a broader notion of singular thought or flank the notion of relational particularity with a broader notion of phenomenal particularity. I want to hold that there is no need of that revision. For the original notions can still play the role for which they were invoked. This requires that (i) both the first and the second notion respectively involve a dependence on and a metaphysical relation to the intentional objects of certain mental states once we are ontologically committed to such objects; (ii) both that object-dependence and that metaphysical relation are interpreted in terms of a substantive individuation of the relevant mental state via the object it is about: that object constitutes the state.

Un'ontologia dell'opera musicale, ripartendo da Ingarden

The recent philosophical debate about the musical ontology, between Platonist and Nominalist positions, has to face several unsurmountable objections. The aesthetics of Roman Ingarden, in spite of intrinsic limitations, can be considered in order to relaunch the research about the ontological status of musical works. Three Ingarden's ideas seem particularly useful: the work of music as pure intentional object, as scheme with many points of indeterminacy and as object founded on score, performance or recording. A comparison arises with the theory of documentality proposed by Maurizio Ferraris.

A History of Qualia

The philosophers’ concept of qualia is an artifact of bad theorizing, and in particular, of failing to appreciate the distinction between the intentional object of a belief (for instance) and the cause(s) of that belief. Qualia, like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, have a history but that does not make them real. The cause of a hallucination, for instance, may not resemble the intentional object hallucinated at all, and the representation in the brain is not rendered in special subjective properties (qualia).

Cross-Cultural Comparison of Self-Construal and Well-Being between Japan and South Korea: The Role of Self-Focused and Other-Focused Relational Selves.

Relational self, along with individual and collective selves, is a fundamental aspect that makes up self-concept. Proposing its two aspects: self-focused relational self (i.e., perceiving the self as the object of other people's referential awareness or intentionality) and other-focused relational self (i.e., perceiving the self as being attuned and empathetically connected to close others), the current study explored the way the four selves affect well-being in Japan and South Korea, the East Asian cultures that have been assumed to be homogeneously collectivistic in previous psychological literature. Japanese and Korean participants rated a set of well-being and self-related scales. There were visible sample differences within culture by collection method (classroom vs. online) in relative degrees of selves and related constructs, possibly associated with generational differences. Other-focused relational self was greater in the Korean classroom sample than the Japanese counterpart, whereas no difference was found between the online samples. On the other hand, it was consistent between cultures that the two types of relational self showed different associations with social anxiety and self-esteem as expected, and that they predicted well-being in different ways. We discuss implications for the generational differences and their interactions with culture and the importance of separating the two aspects of relational self in the study of self and culture.

Presentation and the Ontology of Consciousness

The idea that we can understand key aspects of the metaphysics of consciousness by understanding conscious states as having a presentational character plays an essential role in the phenomenological tradition beginning with Brentano and Husserl. In this paper, the author explores some potential consequences of this connection for contemporary discussions of the ontology of consciousness in the world. Drawing on Hintikka’s analysis of epistemic modality, the author argues that the essential presentational character of consciousness can be seen as accounting for the familiar failure of substitutivity of identicals in intensional contexts of conscious presentation and further provides for an ontology of conscious presentation that avoids metaphysically problematic commitments to “special” intentional objects. The author next considers how the irreducibility of intensional contexts, if grounded in the presentational character of consciousness, also may provide for a kind of irreducibility of the “first-person” perspective to third-person or objective description across possible worlds. Finally, drawing on Chalmers’ “two-dimensionalist” semantic framework, the author argues that attention to the presentational aspect of consciousness as thus understood, while it provides significant motivation for the existence of the “hard problem” of the irreducibility of consciousness to physical and structural description, is nevertheless consistent with a globally monist, rather than dualist, ontology.

Perceptual Consciousness as a Mental Activity

AbstractI argue that perceptual consciousness is constituted by a mental activity. The mental activity in question is the activity of employing perceptual capacities, such as discriminatory, selective capacities. This is a radical view, but I hope to make it plausible. In arguing for this mental activist view, I reject orthodox views on which perceptual consciousness is analyzed in terms of (sensory awareness relations to) peculiar entities, such as, phenomenal properties, external mind‐independent properties, propositions, sense‐data, qualia, or intentional objects.

Noemat jako sens. Problem przedmiotu świadomości w transcendentalnym idealizmie Husserla

The paper develops the argument presented in my earlier article, Intentional Reference and Its Object in Husserl’s Transcendental Idealism (Diametros 50). It contains further considerations on the proper understanding of Husserl’s notion of noema. My aim is not only to present an interpretation of Husserl’s text, but primarily to understand what constitutes an intentional reference of an act of consciousness. I agree with some of Husserl’s claims in Ideas, Book I , that noema, sense and intentional object are basically the same. This standpoint implies, however, a drastic reinterpretation of the notion of an object. I refer to Ingarden’s conception of a purely intentional object to show the difficulties connected with regarding noema as an object separate from consciousness but still existentially dependent on it. Analyzing Husserlian notion of a noematic core I emphasize the relevance of universals for Husserl’s theory of consciousness.

Conscious Intentionality in Perception, Imagination, and Cognition

Participants in the cognitive phenomenology debate have proceeded by (a) proposing a bifurcation of theoretical options into inflationary and non-inflationary theories, and then (b) providing arguments for/against one of these theories. I suggest that this method has failed to illuminate the commonalities and differences among conscious intentional states of different types, in the absence of a theory of the structure of these states. I propose such a theory. In perception, phenomenal-intentional properties combine with somatosensory properties to form P-I property clusters that serve as phenomenal modes of presentations of particulars. In imagination, somatosensory properties are replaced with phenomenal-intentional properties whose intentional objects are somatosensory properties, thus resulting in imaginative facsimiles of perceptual P-I property clusters. Such structures can then be used as phenomenal prototypes that pick out individuals and kinds. Sets of such prototypes constitute a subject’s conception of individuals and kinds. Combined with a few additional elements, these imaginative P-I property clusters serve as the building-blocks of conscious cognitive states. Different ways of carving up theoretical space classify my theory either as inflationary or as non-inflationary. I conclude that the theory is anti-inflationary in letter but inflationary in spirit.

The Moral Agency of Group Agents

Christian List and Philip Pettit have recently developed a model of group agency on which an autonomous group agent can be formed, by deductive inference, from the beliefs and preferences of the individual group members. In this paper I raise doubts as to whether this type of group agent is a moral agent. The sentimentalist approach to moral responsibility sees a constitutive role for moral emotions, such as blame, guilt, and indignation, in our practices of attributing moral responsibility. These moral emotions are important for the alignment of moral understandings, and for valuing other members of the moral community. I argue that while the intentional objects of beliefs and preferences are propositions, the intentional objects of moral emotions are other agents. Because agents are not subject to rules of inference, we cannot generate group agent emotions—such as guilt—in the same way as we can generate group agent beliefs and preferences. And because the group agents lack moral emotions, we have reason to resist treating them as moral agents.

Entanglement of quantum clocks through gravity

In general relativity, the picture of space-time assigns an ideal clock to each world line. Being ideal, gravitational effects due to these clocks are ignored and the flow of time according to one clock is not affected by the presence of clocks along nearby world lines. However, if time is defined operationally, as a pointer position of a physical clock that obeys the principles of general relativity and quantum mechanics, such a picture is, at most, a convenient fiction. Specifically, we show that the general relativistic mass-energy equivalence implies gravitational interaction between the clocks, whereas the quantum mechanical superposition of energy eigenstates leads to a nonfixed metric background. Based only on the assumption that both principles hold in this situation, we show that the clocks necessarily get entangled through time dilation effect, which eventually leads to a loss of coherence of a single clock. Hence, the time as measured by a single clock is not well defined. However, the general relativistic notion of time is recovered in the classical limit of clocks.

Can Emotions Have Abstract Objects? The Example of Awe

Can we feel emotions about abstract objects, assuming that abstract objects exist? I argue that at least some emotions can have abstract objects as their intentional objects and discuss why this conclusion is not just trivially true. Through critical engagement with the work of Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt, I devote special attention to awe, an emotion that is particularly well suited to show that some emotions can be about either concrete or abstract objects. In responding to a possible objection, according to which we can only feel emotions about things that we take to matter to our flourishing, and thus cannot feel emotions about causally inefficacious abstract objects, I explore how abstract objects can be relevant to human flourishing and discuss some emotions other than awe that can be about abstract objects. I finish by explaining some reasons why my conclusion matters, including the fact that it presents a challenge to perceptual theories of emotion and causal theories of intentionality.

Dual-Aspect Reflexivism in Śāntarakṣita's Philosophy of Mind

Dual-Aspect Reflexivism in Śāntarakṣita's Philosophy of Mind Matthew MacKenzie 1. Introduction In this paper, I will pursue a contemporary philosophical reconstruction of the connections, both conceptual and phenomenological, between reflexive awareness (svasaṃvedana) and the subjective and objective aspects (svākāra, viṣayākāra) of experience in Śāntarakṣita's philosophy of mind.1 Focusing on the Madhyamakālaṁkāra (with Mipham's commentary),2 I argue that there is a deep connection between (1) the rejection of the transparency of experience (namely, sākāravāda); (2) the dual-aspect (dvairūpya) structure of experience; (3) reflexive awareness as the distinguishing mark (svalakṣana) and ineliminable core of conscious experience; and (4) the embrace of a form of idealism at the conventional level. These connected ideas, taken together, form an integrated, multimodal theory of consciousness that can be brought into fruitful dialogue with contemporary philosophy of mind and phenomenology. Śāntarakṣita begins his discussion of these issues in the Madhyamakālaṁkāra in verses 16–18: 16Consciousness arises as the contraryOf matter, gross, inanimate.By nature mind is immaterialAnd it is self-aware. [End Page 97] 17A mind that is by nature one and without partsCannot possess a threefold character;Self-awareness thus does not entailAn object and an agent as real entities. 18Because this is its very nature,Consciousness is apt for self-cognition.But how can consciousness cognizeThose things of nature foreign to itself? (2005, 194–204)3 Here we see Śāntarakṣita introduce three interconnected concerns at the conventional level of analysis. First, in verse 16 he is concerned with the nature of consciousness as immaterial and self-luminous (svaprakāśya). Second, in verse 17 he is concerned with the internal structure of a moment of consciousness. Third, in verse 18 he is concerned with the relation between consciousness and its cognitive or intentional object, both phenomenologically and ontologically. That is, in terms of a proper analysis of experiential structure and in terms of the reality of mind-independent objects. In what follows, I will take up each concern in turn, starting with the third, Śāntarakṣita's rejection of the transparency of consciousness and (provisional)4 affirmation of the theory of mental aspects or phenomenal form (ākāra). 2. Against Transparency Proponents of nirākāravāda argue that consciousness is transparent or without form (ākāra). That is, in cases of veridical cognition, consciousness provides a direct or phenomenologically and epistemically unmediated presentation of its object. Thus, like a transparent window, consciousness presents no phenomenal form of its own. As Mipham puts it in his gloss on Vaibhāṣika nirākāravāda: Consciousness is like a crystal sphere and does not grasp the aspects of objects. On the contrary, the object (such as material form) is apprehended directly, "nakedly" by the sense organ itself, supplied with its support. What need is there, they ask, for a mental aspect to act as the connecting link between the subject and the object? The Vaibhasikas [sic] consider that when one sees a pot, for example, [End Page 98] one beholds directly and nakedly the specific characteristics of the pot precisely in the location occupied by the object in question. (2005, 194–95) In the classical Indian context, this view was closely associated with an other-illuminationist (paraprakāśavāda) account of intentionality. In this view, the presenting or revealing capacity of consciousness (its luminosity, prakāśyatā) is essentially other-directed. Consciousness exclusively reveals that which is other, and hence no aspect of consciousness itself is revealed. Note there are two philosophically important dimensions to the debate over ākāra: one having to do with the philosophy of perception and the other with introspection. Is a perceiver immediately aware of a nonmental object of perception? If consciousness is transparent, then when I perceive a pot, I am directly aware of the pot itself, and the phenomenal character of my experience is exhaustively fixed by the features of the pot. Thus, nirākāravāda is associated with direct realism about perception. Further, if I introspectively reflect on my perceptual...

Власть и табу: о культурно-психологических истоках традиционализма

Traditionalism as a "return to traditional values" is widely represented today in the world political process, but it is particularly striking in the East. This phenomenon is analyzed from the standpoint of cultural-historical psychology. The revival of "archaic" manifestations is explained by the political elites’ (conscious or unconscious) appeal to deep layers of people's consciousness which provided the legitimacy of the "power of tradition" in the traditional society. The paper reveals the essence of this power embodied in social fear that had emerged together with first behavioral norms. It analyses taboo as a norm which initially labeled the hierarchy in the primary society, prescribing an asymmetry of behavior to the higher and lower strata (the ones in power and the ones in their power). There is a relation between the taboo and the psychophysiological mechanism of the prohibition (I. Pavlov, J. Castro) which transformed the "natural" fear into the "social" one. The paper describes the ambivalent nature of social fear as well as its intentional object: representatives of the higher strata (L. Vygotsky). The archetype of power behavior is illustrated by the political practices of the East where taboos in the shape of «absurd laws», religious and etiquette norms are widely existent in the legal field of this region’s states. This archetype also largely determines the behavior of politicians which often appears in archaic forms. Similar "psychological documents" (L. Vygotsky) are recorded in the behavior of actors in the political process of the West.

Is Purple a Red and Blue Chessboard? Brentano on Colour Mixtures

Can we maintain that purple seems composed of red and blue without giving up the impenetrability of the red and blue parts that compose it? Brentano thinks we can. Purple, according to him, is a chessboard of red and blue tiles which, although individually too small to be perceived, are together indistinctly perceived within the purple. After a presentation of Brentano’s solution, we raise two objections to it. First, Brentano’s solution commits him to unperceivable intentional objects (the chessboard’s tiles). Second, his chessboard account fails in the end to explain the phenomenal spatial continuity of compound colours. We finally sketch an alternative account of compound colours, which, while holding fast to their phenomenal compoundedness and to the impenetrability of colours, avoids introducing inaccessible intentional objects and compromising on the continuity of the purple. According to our proposal, instead of being indistinctly perceived spatial parts of the purple, red and blue are distinctly perceived nonspatial parts of it.

Even Laughter? From Laughter in the Magic Theater to the Laughter Assembly Line

Even Laughter? From Laughter in the Magic Theater to the Laughter Assembly Line

Apuntes sobre la posibilidad de objetividad en la crítica de arte (inspirados en Joseph Margolis)

Especialmente ante la consideración de las obras de arte como objetos Intencionales, radicalmente distintos de los objetos meramente físicos, surge la pregunta acerca de la posibilidad de objetividad en los juicios críticos sobre arte. Con esta interrogante como hilo conductor, en el siguiente trabajo se intentará sostener que, sobre todo en el marco de la tradición analítica de este problema, la propuesta de Margolis parece ser la apuesta más sólida, ya que logra responder a los desafíos que sugiere el peculiar carácter de las obras de arte. Además, propondré que el concepto de intersubjetividad histórica permite hacerse cargo adecuadamente de los retos y dificultades que suponen las obras de arte y enunciaré las ventajas de este término en relación con el de objetividad.

Odniesienie intencjonalne i jego przedmiot w perspektywie transcendentalnego idealizmu Husserla

The following issues are considered in the paper: The proper understanding of the ‘attempt to doubt’ recommended by Husserl in Ideas, Book I , as a point of departure on a way to the transcendental reduction. How intentional reference of an act of consciousness is possible and what it consists in, according to Husserl. A logical dependence between the characteristics of intentional reference and the standpoint of transcendental idealism in Husserl’s Ideas, Book I . How to understand Husserl’s claim that the intentional object (noema) is equivalent to sense. I arrive at the conclusion that a fully consistent interpretation of Husserl’s declarations regarding the aforementioned issues does not seem to be possible; for one needs to modify Husserl’s standpoint in certain respects. These considerations will be carried on in an article titled ‘The Noema as Sense. The Problem of the Object of Consciousness in Husserl’s Transcendental Idealism’, forthcoming in Diametros .

The Sense of Touch: From Tactility to Tactual Probing

ABSTRACTBecause philosophical reflections on touch usually start from our ability to perceive properties of objects, they tend to overlook features of touch that are crucial to correct understanding of tactual perception. This paper brings out these features and uses them to develop a general reconception of the sense of touch. I start by taking a fresh look at our ability to feel, in order to reveal its vital role. This sheds a different light on the skin's perceptual potential. While it is commonly observed that tactile experiences have two intentional objects, an external object and one's own body, I will advance a more accurate alternative: in tactile experiences, one becomes aware of what one's body undergoes. This alternative not only fits better with tactility's vital role; it is also key to explaining how active touching provides for a unique contribution to our perceptual relation to material objects. By thus connecting tactility's vital role to the way we rely on touch while manipulating objects, this essay offers a cross-sectional survey of our tactile powers that reveals the interplay between sensing and touching.