Intentionality

INTENTIONALITY: 1. the human or non-human animal conscious mental representation of something or another; 2. the “aboutness” of the mental; 3. human or non-human animal cognition; 4. the basic innate capacity or power of an animal subject with other basic innate capacities for consciousness (i.e., immanently reflexive subjective experience) and affect, aka caring, aka emotion (i.e., feeling, desire, and passion), to carry out acts of mental directedness towards targets of all kinds, whether concrete or abstract, or objective or subjective (Franz Brentano, Alexius Meinong, Edmund Husserl); 5. things that human or non-human animal subjects with capacities for consciousness, emotion (i.e., feeling, desire, and passion), intentionality (i.e., mental directedness to targets of all kinds, whether concrete or abstract, or objective or subjective), self-consciousness or self-reflection (i.e., propositionally-based, higher-order reflexive awareness), and rationality do, or perform, and that do not merely happen to them (Harry Frankfurt), aka intentional action.

See also the entries on “cognition,” “epistemology,” “intentional action,” and “knowledge.”


PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTS: A TO Z
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