Object-Directedness and Object-Dependence

Intentionality cannot be identified with object-dependence. Here is why.

Suppose that  I begin thinking about some faraway thing such as the Washington Monument (WM) and  that I think of it without interruption through some short interval of time.  Half-way through the interval, unbeknownst to me, the monument is destroyed and ceases to exist.  Question: does my thinking become objectless half-way through the interval? Or does my thinking have an object and the same object throughout the interval?

The answer depends on what is meant by 'object.'  'Object' could mean the infinitely-propertied thing intended in the act of thinking, or it could mean that which is before my mind precisely as such with all and only the properties I think of the thing intended as having.  Either could be called the intentional object, which goes to show that 'intentional object' is ambiguous.  On the first alternative the intentional object = the real object; on the second, the intentional object is some sort of incomplete item that either plays an intermediary role, or else is a proper part of the thing intended.  (Husserl aficionados will gather that I am alluding to the difference between West Coast and  East Coast interpretations of the status and function of the noema .)  To avoid the ambiguity of 'intentional object,' I will distinguish the thing intended from the noema, leaving open how exactly the noema is to be understood. 

One answer to the above question is that, during the entire interval, my thinking has one and the same object, but this object is not the thing intended but the noema.   The noema is the thing-AS- intended in certain ways (under certain incomplete descrioptions) appropriate to finite minds such as we possess, for example, the x such that x is made of marble and honors George Washington. This distinction between noema and thing intended needs  explanation, of course, and it raises some difficult if not insoluble questions, but it fits the phenomenological facts.  When the WM ceases to exist, nothing changes phenomenologically. If the intentional object were the real, extra-mental, physical thing, then, when the WM ceases to exist, my conscious state would become objectless -- which is not what happens.  So we need the distinction, and we must not conflate object-directedness with object-dependence.  

DEP: The objective reference or aboutness of a mental state S is object-dependent =_df S's having objective reference entails the (extra-mental)  existence of the thing intended by S.

DIR:  The objective reference or aboutness of a mental state S is object-directed =_df  S's having objective reference is logically consistent both with the (extra-mental) existence and (extra-mental) nonexistence of the thing intended by S.

If we understand aboutness in terms of (DIR), then the answer to my question is that nothing changes phenomenologically throughout the interval: my thinking has an object and the very same object throughout the interval despite the WM's ceasing to exist half-way though the interval.

(DEP) codifies an externalist understanding  of  'objective reference' whereas (DIR) codifies an internalist understanding.  On (DEP), it is the existence in the external world of the thing intended that grounds S's objective reference or aboutness; without this external ground S would lack aboutness, and S would be objectless.  On (DEP), then, the aboutness of a mental state is a relational property of the state as opposed to an intrinsic property thereof.  On (DIR), intrinsic features of the subject and his acts suffice to ground S's objective reference or aboutness.  This implies a strict act-object correlation: necessarily, every act has an object, and every object is the object of an act.

You will have noticed that 'object' has different senses in the above definitions. In (DEP), 'object' refers to a entity that exists in itself, and thus independently of the existence of minds and their acts. In (DIR), 'object' refers to an intentional correlate which cannot exist apart from minds and their acts.

I'll say a bit more by way of elaboration.

The thing intended is the monument itself, the infinitely-propertied physical thing. Surely that is what my thinking intends when I think about the WM and ask: How tall is it? What is its shape? What is it composed of? I am not asking about any content of my consciousness. So I am not asking about the occurrent episode of thinking itself, the act, or any other contents such as felt sensory data (Husserl's hyletic data).  Contents are immanent to consciousness and nothing immanent to my consciousness is 550 feet tall, made of marble, monolithic, or in the shape of an obelisk.  

Nor am I asking about the noema.  Noemata are akin to Fregean senses.  Like the latter, noemata cannot be made of marble or 550 feet tall. (This is the 'California' or 'West Coast' interpretation sired by Dagfinn Follesdal.) Like Fregean senses, they are not contents of consciousness that the subject experiences or lives through. Senses and noemata are more like objects than like contents, except that they are abstract or ideal objects that serve a mediating function.  The senses of 'Hesperus' and 'Phosphorus' mediate my linguistic reference to that massive chunk of physical reality, the plant Venus. They are neither mental nor physical; they are 'third world' entities albeit more Platonic than Popperian.   Noemata are similar: they mediate thinking reference but are neither mental in the manner of a content of consciousness nor physical.  

But there is an important difference. Fregean senses exist whether or not minds and their contents exist.  They also exist whether or not physical items exist including marks on paper or acoustic disturbances in the air.   But noemata exist only as the correlates of acts or intentional experiencings. They have a curious in-between status. They are not contents of consciousness, but they are also not entities in their own right inasmuch as they exist only as correlates of acts.

Because noemata are ideal or abstract intermediaries, they do not have physical  properties and dispositions.  A tree is disposed to catch on fire if struck by lightning, say.  But no tree-noema can catch on fire. (See Husserl, Ideas I, sec. 89) 

 

Comments

[oz]

On which matter, I see you derive

"BV's thinking has an object" from

"BV is thinking of the Washington Monument"

I.e. you derive a relational sentence using the verb phrase 'has' from a relational sentence using the verb phrase 'is thinking of'.

What exactly licenses that inference? My point will become clearer if you look at the material I sent, and which you are free to post.

[BV]

Change the example slightly. I suddenly realize that I left the garage door open. You see my change of facial expression, and say what's the matter? I say, "I just thought of the garage door."

The sentence reports an occurrent episode of thinking. At a bare minimum, we need a distinction between the thinking and something else. What might that be? I say it is the object thought of.

You might reply that there is no object; what there is is an adverbial modification of an activity. You might say that thinking is an activity of an agent, just as running is an activity of an agent. (The one activity is mental, the other physical.) Now there are different ways of running: slowly, quickly, short-stridedly, long-stridedly, girlishly, etc. One cannot just run, one has to run in some WAY or other. If Tom is running slowly, his running has no object, but there is a way he is running. So one might propose that to think of Jupiter is to think jovianly; to think of a unicorn is to think unicorn-ly; to think of a garage door is to think garage-doorly.

The adverbial approach has several problems. I'll mention one. My sudden thinking of the garage door is not a mental action, but an a mental act, an occurrent mental event. And even if the subject of the mental act is a mental agent, a doer, the subject in this instance is not doing anything. Since the sudden thinking is not an action of agent, it makes no sense to speak of ways in which the action is performed.

As I said, at a bare minimum there has to be a distinction between the thinking and something else; in this instance the something else must be an object. Or is there a third possibility?

Or suppose I suddenly notice a coyote in the yard. Lo, a coyote! Can we make sense of that sudden noticing without the act-object distinction?

[oz]

OK, so I asked what licenses the inference from

(A) BV is thinking of the garage door
to
(B) BV’s thinking has an object

and you replied that it is not enough to specify a way in which the thinking is performed, but there must be an object.

I agree that to specify a singular thought, we need a linguistic expression containing an intentional verb (‘is thinking of’), with an accusative singular noun phrase (‘the Washington Monument’, ‘the garage door’). An adverbial expressions is not enough. But what licenses the inference that some object corresponds to that singular noun phrase, that the noun phrase has a referent? Surely the whole point of your example about the WM being annihilated is that there doesn’t have to be a referent?

I.e. what licenses the inference from the statement “BV is thinking of the Washington Monument”, which doesn’t require a referent for the accusative, to a statements like “BV’s thinking has an object”, where the non-intentional verb phrase ‘has’ requires, by its semantics, that the accusative denotes something?

My claim is that some constructions require a reference or denotation for the accusative, some do not. What justifies your apparent assumption that all accusatives have a referent?

[BV]

>> But what licenses the inference that some object corresponds to that singular noun phrase, that the noun phrase has a referent?<<

The 'licensing' is phenomenological. I know what I am thinking about when I think about something. When I think about Waterloo Station, I know that I am thinking about Waterloo Station. Having passed through said station back in '71, I have memories of it that are jogged whenever I hear the Kink's song, "Waterloo Sunset."

When I was a young man in Boston in the early '70s, I wanted to visit the storied Scollay Square. I asked someone where it was and she told me that it no longer existed. I was thinking about Scollay Square then, when I believed it existed, and I am thinking about it now, when I know that it does not exist. Phenomenologically, there need be no difference between the content of the two acts of thinking, the one in 1971, the other as I write this. The content of the two acts could be exactly the same, say, "famous place in Boston frequented by sailors on shore leave in WWII who went there to dissipate and debauch."

[BV]

>>Surely the whole point of your example about the WM being annihilated is that there doesn’t have to be a referent?<<

The whole point is that object-directedness does not entail object-dependence as I defined those terms. The object-directedness of at least some conscious states does not depend on the extramental existence of what you are calling a referent.

And therefore: we must distinguish among: the occurrent episode of consciousness-of, the noema, and the transcendent thing. Noesis-noema-external thing.

More fully: ego-cogitatio- cogitatum qua cogitatum - res extramentis.

This schema can be attacked in various ways. The alternative theories, however, are also, perhaps equally, problemtic.

[BV]

>>I.e. what licenses the inference from the statement “BV is thinking of the Washington Monument”, which doesn’t require a referent for the accusative, to a statement like “BV’s thinking has an object”, where the non-intentional verb phrase ‘has’ requires, by its semantics, that the accusative denotes something?

My claim is that some constructions require a reference or denotation for the accusative, some do not. What justifies your apparent assumption that all accusatives have a referent?<<

The quick answer is to say that I am using 'has' and 'have' differently than you. I'll grant you this: if I own a house, then there exists a house that I own, and given that a house is a physical thing, the thing that I own cannot be spatially inside my head or a content of my consciousness given that contents can be 'lived through,' er-lebt. I live through pain, but I cannot live through a house or a brick.

There are also legitimate uses of 'have' according to which 'I have a house' means that I own a house. But suppose I don't have a house, but I want one, and I have a particular one in mind that I plan to buy. 'Have in mind' is an intentional phrase. If today I have in mind to buy a house that I walked through and inspected yesterday, but that overnight was demolished, my having in mind to buy that house does not entail the existence outside the mind of that particular house.

Is it true that >>the non-intentional verb phrase ‘has’ requires, by its semantics, that the accusative denotes something?<< Everyone has a mother, but it is not the case that everyone's mother exists.

What licenses the inference from 'BV is thinking of the WM' to 'BV's thinking has an object'? What licenses the inference is that the two sentences have the same sense.

[oz]

> The quick answer is to say that I am using 'has' and 'have' differently than you.

I thought you would make this objection, and I address it in Part II, which you have not seen.

>The whole point is that object-directedness does not entail object-dependence as I defined those terms.

But it does. The object-directedness is towards your Intentional Object, and as I understand your position, it is that all intentional states ‘have’ an Intentional Object. The dependence in question is Object-dependence, Intentional-Object-dependence, if you like.

> The object-directedness of at least some conscious states does not depend on the extramental existence of what you are calling a referent.

But they do depend on ‘having’ some Intentional Object, according to you.

[Oz]

For purposes of clarification only, it would be helpful to know where the following chain of inference breaks down, if at all.

(1) BV is thinking of the Washington Monument

(2) BV’s mental state has an Intentional Object

(3) The Intentional Object = the Washington Monument

(4) The Washington Monument is a physical object, therefore (from 3 above) the Intentional Object is a physical object.

(5) If the Washington Monument ceased to exist, the Intentional Object would cease to be a physical object

[BV]

Response to 10:03:

You didn't carefully attend to what I wrote in the OP:

"You will have noticed that 'object' has different senses in the above definitions. In (DEP), 'object' refers to a entity that exists in itself, and thus independently of the existence of minds and their acts. In (DIR), 'object' refers to an intentional correlate which cannot exist apart from minds and their acts."

More later.

[oz]

>You didn't carefully attend to what I wrote in the OP

I paid very careful attention to that, hence my (3) above. If (3) does follow from (2), then the Intentional Object is both "a entity that exists in itself", and an object "which cannot exist apart from minds and their acts".

So your burden is to clarify whether (3) follows or not.

[BV]

Response to 1:58.

I don't understand why you say this: >>(5) If the Washington Monument ceased to exist, the Intentional Object would cease to be a physical object.<<

If a physical thing ceases to exist, it does not cease to be a physical thing. It ceases to exist.

[oz]

>If a physical thing ceases to exist, it does not cease to be a physical thing. It ceases to exist.

Depends on your answer to (3) above. When the WM exists, then is it identical to the Intentional Object?

If so, then the Intentional Object is a physical object. Do you agree?

Now suppose that the WM has ceased to exist. It then follows logically that the Intentional Object was a physical object but is no longer a physical object.

If you see a difference between 'was an A but is no longer an A' and 'has ceased to be an A', then let me know.

What happened to the guest post, by the way.

Let me know if you agree with (3) and (4) above.

[oz]

Or perhaps you mean that the when the the Washington Monument ceases to exist, then it (and by implication Intentional Object) does not cease to be a physical object, but rather becomes a non-existing physical object?

But then all sorts of problems follow from that.

What do you mean?

[BV]

You have to realize that 'object' and 'intentional object' are ambiguous terms. As I said in the OP:

" 'Object' could mean the infinitely-propertied thing intended in the act of thinking, or it could mean that which is before my mind precisely as such with all and only the properties I think of the thing intended as having. Either could be called the intentional object, which goes to show that 'intentional object' is ambiguous. On the first alternative the intentional object = the real object; on the second, the intentional object is some sort of incomplete item that either plays an intermediary role, or else is a proper part of the thing intended."

Can you distinguish between a Fregean sense and a Fregean referent? If you can, then you should be able to see the necessity of a disambiguation of 'intentional object.' Let the Fregean referent be Venus, a physical thing. This thing can be accessed via different "modes of presentation," Darstellungsweisen. These modes of presentation are not physical things. They are abstract/ideal items for Frege. They are not in any way immanent to consciousness for Frege. Now imagine that there are modes of presentation that are immanent to consciousness. You should be able to see that such a mode of presentation cannot be identical to the massive chunk of physical reality in the external world. 'Intentional object' is ambiguous as between such an immanent item and the transcendent item, Venus in the example.

[BV]

Why not just answer the question I posed in the second para of the OP?

[oz]

I will attempt to answer your question on the assumption that the following inference is valid:

(1) BV is thinking of the Washington Monument
(2) BV’s mental state has an Intentional Object

I think it is not valid. But assume it is. Then I think it follows that

(3) The Intentional Object = the Washington Monument

From which it further follows that, if the Washington Monument is an infinitely-propertied thing, the Intentional Object is also an infinitely-propertied thing. Thus ‘Intentional Object’ is not ambiguous, at least on the assumption that (2) follows from (1).

As to what you mean by ‘Intentional Object’, it depends whether you think the inference from (1) to (2) and thence to (3) is valid.

[oz]

Also note what you said above. “What licenses the inference from 'BV is thinking of the WM' to 'BV's thinking has an object'? What licenses the inference is that the two sentences have the same sense.”

That’s clear. Then you say “Suppose that I begin thinking about some faraway thing such as the Washington Monument (WM) and that I think of it without interruption through some short interval of time.” It follows that your thinking has an object without interruption. You ask “does my thinking have an object and the same object throughout the interval?”.

Yes it does have the same object throughout, by your own assumption that the two sentences have the same sense.