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Abstract
This paper argues that three characteristic modern positions concerning intentionality – namely, (1) that intentionality is ‘the mark of the mental’; (2) that intentionality concerns a specific type of objects having intentional inexistence; and (3) that intentionality somehow defies logic – are just three ‘modern myths’ that medieval philosophers, from whom the modern notion supposedly originated, would definitely reject.
Notes
1 Brentano (Citation1995), p. 89.
2 This idea comes in many shades and colors; here I will simply take a ‘Meinongian’ to be anyone who is willing to distinguish in their domain of quantification entities that belong to a subdomain of it (say, existents or existent entities) and those that are outside this subdomain (say, merely subsistent entities or beings); obviously, from this perspective, terminological variations are of no importance.
3 As we shall see in more detail, from a logical point of view, intentional contexts can be treated as a subset of intensional contexts in general, and with good reason: the more generic feature of intensionality requires the semantic evaluation of our phrases to be dependent on situations other than the actual one; but our ability to do so is dependent on our ability to perform mental acts that can concern such situations in the first place, and it is precisely such mental acts that are signified by the intentional verbs and their cognates in question.
4 This paper derives from a lecture I gave at the 7th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities, 9 January 2009, in Honolulu. Since that lecture did not address a specialist audience, as neither does this paper, it should come as no surprise that the main theses advanced here – namely, that the three modern positions concerning intentionality discussed below would not be endorsed without further ado by medieval philosophers – are well known by specialists, who have thoroughly discussed the topic for decades. The point of this presentation is to make the main results of those discussions available to non-specialists (without the otherwise inevitable technicalities of a specialist discussion), and to provide an opportunity for reflection on the paradigmatic differences of the medieval and modern notions, thereby highlighting some of the otherwise unquestioned presumptions of modern discussions.
5 But then, of course, we shall also have to clarify exactly where and on what grounds they would draw the ‘demarcation line’ between mental and non-mental phenomena, an issue that I’ll return to in a moment.
6 Cf. ‘sensus recipit formam sine materia, quia alterius modi esse habet forma in sensu, et in re sensibili. Nam in re sensibili habet esse naturale, in sensu autem habet esse intentionale et spirituale.’ Sentencia De anima, lib. 2, l. 24, n. 3. See also the quotes in n. 8.
7 Granting, for the time being, the modern (post-Cartesian) usage that would classify even sensory operations as ‘mental’. Aquinas would reject this usage, because he would regard only intellectual or voluntary operations as properly mental, namely, the proper operations of a soul having intellect and will, properly called a mind, mens, in Latin.
8 ‘Nam ipse Angelus est forma subsistens in esse naturali, non autem species eius quae est in intellectu alterius Angeli, sed habet ibi esse intelligibile tantum. Sicut etiam et forma coloris in pariete habet esse naturale, in medio autem deferente habet esse intentionale tantum.’ Summa Theologiae I, q. 56 a. 2 ad 3; ‘medium recipiat alio modo speciem coloris quam sit in corpore colorato ... Actus enim sunt in susceptivis secundum modum ipsorum: et ideo color est quidem in corpore colorato sicut qualitas completa in suo esse naturali; in medio autem incompleta secundum quoddam esse intentionale; alioquin non posset secundum idem medium videri album et nigrum.’ Sentencia De sensu, tract. 1, l. 5, n. 4.
9 Cf. Cohen (Citation1982), Haldane (Citation1983), Hoffman (Citation1990), Tweedale (Citation1992), Pasnau (Citation1997), Perler (Citation2002).
10 Again, this observation has already been made by Sheldon M. Cohen in his paper mentioned in the previous note, and has often been repeated in the specialist literature, say, by Pasnau and Perler in their respective studies referenced there.
11 Buridan’s text is as yet unavailable in a critical edition. The relevant passages were first edited by Peter Sobol in his PhD thesis. Currently, a critical edition of Buridan’s entire work is being edited by an international research team of scholars under my direction. To find out more about the project, please visit the project’s web site, http://buridanica.org. The translations of the quotations from the working draft of the critical edition are mine.
12 Klima (Citation2009), c. 7. In this context I will conveniently disregard Brentano’s original idea that even what we would normally take to be real, physical objects, would on his view be just phenomena, ontologically on a par with imaginary objects, but indicating something real, although in itself inaccessible to our consciousness, as presented by Tim Crane (Citation2006), pp. 20–35. After all, as we shall see, the question of ‘the problem of intentional objects’ will turn on the homogeneity vs. non-homogeneity of the domain of quantification, and from this perspective it is irrelevant whether homogeneity is purportedly established in terms of ‘real’ or merely ‘phenomenal’ objects in that domain.
13 Buridanus (1983, pp. 12–14). Cf.: ‘All verbs, even in the present tense, which of their very nature can concern future, past and possible things as well as present ones such as “think”, “know”, “mean” and the like ampliate their terms to all times, future, past and present. And what accounts for this is that a thing can be thought of without any difference of time, namely, abstracted from any place and time. And so, when a thing is thought of in this way, then a thing which was, or will be, or can be may be thought of as well as a thing which [actually] is. Therefore, if I have the common concept from which we take this name “man”, then I can think indifferently of all men, past, present and future. And this is why these verbs can concern past or future things as well as present ones’ (Albert of Saxony, 1974, Tr. 2, c. 10, 8a regula). For an earlier example of the same explanation of ampliation, see the selection from the Logica Lamberti in Kretzmann and Stump (Citation1988), pp. 104–63, esp. pp. 116–8.
14 I take this to be pretty much the presentation of the issue one can find in a recent paper by Tim Crane (Citation2012), just as in my not-so recent papers (Klima, Citation2001, 1987).
15 Thus, despite similarities to the contrary, for want of the requisite theoretical background, Tim Crane’s and others’ proposed solutions to ‘the ontological problem of intentional objects’ are rather different from our medieval colleagues’ dissolution of the problem or rather their refusal to allow the emergence of a pseudo-problem.
16 SD 4.3.8.4: ‘Sic autem appellant illos conceptus quia intelligimus res secundum illos conceptus; non sic tamen, per conceptum, ignis calefacit aquam vel lapis tangit terram’.
17 The recent and not-so recent boom in the contemporary literature on the medieval theories of supposition, ampliation, appellation, and other ‘properties of terms’, would make it impossible to give even a fair sampling of that literature. Thus, I would only mention here some of my earlier work containing direct confrontations of the relevant medieval and contemporary theories, and a useful survey of the specialist literature containing numerous pointers to more detailed or more specific studies: Klima (Citation1988, Citation1993, Citation2008, Citation2010); Read (Citation2011).