Abstract
The 1970’s brought revolutions in both philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. In the one revolution, mind and mental representation became respectable once more. (Contrast the mentalism of Fodor and other philosophers of cognitive science1 with the antimentalism of Quine, Skinner, and some Wittgensteinians. Ironically, the mind returned on the back of a machine.) In the other revolution, names and indexical pronouns (“this”, “I”, etc.) were said to refer directly, without the mediation of senses or thoughts in the speaker’s head, because their reference is determined by context, e.g., by the causal connection between the speaker and the referent. (Compare the neo-Russellian, anti-Fregean views of Donnellan, Putnam, Kaplan, and Kripke with the great Fregean semantical tradition.2) Where representation was restored to the mind in one revolution, reference was pulled away from mind and thought in the other. And causal theories of reference spawned causal theories of perception, knowledge, mind, and mental representation. All this, within the Anglo-American tradition of analytic philosophy.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See Fodor [1975], The Language of Thought
Block [1981], editor, Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology, for some of the attitudes of “your thoroughly modern mentalist”.
Cf. the essays in Schwarz [1977], Naming, Necessityand Natural Kinds
Kaplan [1977], Demonstratives
Kripke [1972], “Naming and Necessity”
Putnam [1975], Mind Language and Reality
Salmon [1981], Reference and Essence.
Cf. Føllesdal [1969], “Husserl’s Notion of Noema”
the other essays in Dreyfus [1982], Husserl, Intentionality and Cognitive Science.
David Woodruff Smith and Ronald McIntyre [1982], Husserl and Intentionality.
Cf. Christian Knudsen [1982], “Intentions and Impositions” (Chapter 23)
John F. Boler [1982], “Intuitive and Abstractive Cognition” (Chapter 22)
Kretzmann, Kenny, and Pinborg, editirs, [1982], The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy. The former essay traces the notions of intentio and noema from Aristotle into the Middle Ages, wherefrom we know Brentano retrived his notion of intentionality, whence Husserl in adapting Brentano’s notion of intentionality reinstated the term “noema” (though I do not know if he anywhere cites Aristotle’s use of the term). The second essay traces the notion of intuition (= acquaintance) from Aristotle through Augustine into Scotus and Ockham and the late Medievals, from whom we know Descartes, Kant, and finally Husserl took up the term.
For a brief account of the history of the notion of intuition, see John F. Boler [1982] and John F. Lad [1973], On Intuition, Evidence, and Unique Representation (doctoral dissertation). On meanings of “intuition”, including an early use in reference to carnal knowledge, see The Oxford English Dictionary.
See: Kant, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics [1783], section 8, and Critique of Pure Reason [1781/1787], A 19 - B 34
See Russell, “Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description” (1910–1911), in his Mysticism and Logic [1917]. Most of that essay is reproduced in the chapter of the same title in his Problems of Philosophy [1912]. A kindred essay is “On the Nature of Acquaintance” (1914), in his Logic and Knowledge [1901-].
Cf. David Woodruff Smith, “Husserl on Demonstrative Reference and Perception” [1982c], in Dreyfus [1982].
It is observed: When two people in different contexts or circumstances utter an indexical word, saying “That is Mount Hood” or “I am thirsty” or “It is now noon”, they may express the same meaning or content or be in the same type of psychological state, and yet refer to different objects and assert different things, different propositions, with perhaps different truth-values. Cf. Romane Clark, “Sensuous Judgments” [1973], p. 49
Hilary Putnam, “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’”, in his [1975], p. 234
John Perry, “The Problem of the Essential Indexical” [1979], which Perry announces as inspired by ideas of Hector-Neri Castañeda, in his “‘He’: a Study in the Logic of Self-Consciousness” [1966] and related essays. One form of the observation (manifest in the distinction between “character” and “content”) is central to David Kaplan’s definitive logic of demonstratives, in his [1977] and [1979] (the latter presented in lectures in 1971). The famous Twin Earth scenario, described at length by Putnam in the above essay, will serve us well in suitable variations.
See Smith and McIntyre [1982], Chapters II and III, for details of the contrast between object and content approaches.
Cf. J. N. Findlay, Meinong’s Theory of Objects and Values [1963]
D. W. Smith, “Meinongian Objects” [1975].
On recent causal and computational functionalism, see Ned Block, editor, Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology [1980]
Volume One. Varieties of cultural functionalism have been seen in Martin Heidegger, Being and Time [1927], and in Wildrid Sellars1 various works including Science, Perception, and Reality [1963] and Naturalism and Ontology [1979].
Cf. Smith and McIntyre [1982], Chapters I and VII on the relations between intentionality and the logic of sentences reporting intentional states.
Cf. Husserl [1913], Ideas, § 124
Wittgenstein [1948], Investigations
Jaakko and Merrill Hintikka [1987], Investigating Wittgenstein.
See in particular: Husserl, Logical Investigations [1900- 01], V, § 20ff, on quality versus matter
Husserl, Ideas [1913], § 90, 128–130, on Sinn versus thetic character or way of givenness
Smith and McIntyre [1982], Chapter III, §§2.2, 2.4
John Searle, Intentionality [1983], Chapter 1, on representational or intentional content versus psychological mode.
The Husserlian theory outlined in this section is expounded in detail in Chapters m and IV of Smith and McIntyre [1982].
See: Husserl, Ideas [1913], and Cartesian Meditations [1931]
Heidegger, Being and Time [1927]
Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception [1945]
J. J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception [1979]
David Blinder, “A New Look at Vision” [1986]
Putnam, “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’”, in his [1975]
Burge [1979], “Individualism and the Mental”, and [1981], “Other Bodies”.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1989 Kluwer Academic Publishers
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Smith, D.W. (1989). Acquaintance and Intentionality. In: The Circle of Acquaintance. Synthese Library, vol 205. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-0961-8_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-0961-8_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-6922-9
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-0961-8
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive