RECENT WORK

Recent Work on Intentionality

MICHELLE MONTAGUE

1. Introduction Intentionality can be simply characterized. It is nothing more or less than the phenomenon of somethings being about something or of something (in the special sense of of according to which a picture can be of something, such as a battle). Until recently, the attempt to naturalize intentionality dominated philosophical theorizing about intentionality, and the consensus was that the way to naturalize intentionality was to identify a natural relation that holds between states of the brain and states of the environment when and only when the former are about the latter. Philosophers pointed to the example of tree rings tracking the age of trees (an entirely non-mental phenomenon) to ground the sense in which intentionality could be a natural relation. Internal states of the brain were thought to track the presence of specific external conditions in a fundamentally similar way, and to carry information about the environment in virtue of this tracking relation. Different theories expanded on this basic idea, diverging in their more detailed expositions of the tracking relation.1 This naturalization project carried with it a powerful implication: that there was a sharp theoretical distinction between the intentional properties of mental states, the properties they have in virtue of being about or of something, and the phenomenological properties of mental states, the properties they have in virtue of having experiential qualitative character, subjective phenomenal character the properties they have in virtue of there being something it is like to be in them. Intentional properties and phenomenological properties were widely assumed to be independent, and were accordingly often studied in isolation from one another. Lyons (1995: 34) described this approach to intentionality as follows: what contemporary philosophers have been trying to do . . . is to give an up-to-date and tough-minded account which they feel is consonant with the findings in the relevant sciences that deal with the mind. One
1 The dominant naturalistic theories have been causal or co-variational theories (see, e.g. Fodor 1990 and Dretske 1981) and teleosemantic theories (see, e.g. Millikan 1984, Papineau 1993, and Dretske 1995). For a general doubt about the whole programme, see Johnston (2009: Ch. 9).

Analysis Reviews Vol 70 | Number 4 | October 2010 | pp. 765782 doi:10.1093/analys/anq090 The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

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significant upshot is that contemporary theories have concentrated on the notion of information-bearing content and its processing. In comparison, other aspects of intentionality have been far less important. So another upshot is that, in contrast with the theorizing of Brentano and Husserl, consciousness or attention [has] no longer been seen as essential to intentionality We can summarize the situation by saying that the following group of connected assumptions and claims held sway in the philosophy of mind. (1) Mental states can have intentional properties without phenomenological properties.2 Since discussion of intentionality very often focused on beliefs and desires, paradigm examples of dispositional states, or on non-conscious or subpersonal occurrent states, and was (more generally) conducted in a behaviourist and then functionalist context, in which the very existence of phenomenology was downplayed or even denied, (1) may have seemed obvious. The converse of (1) was also typically assumed (by those who admitted the existence of phenomenological properties): (2) Certain mental states, such as experiencing a pain or experiencing an afterimage, have phenomenological properties but no intentional properties. Given the independence of intentional properties and phenomenological properties claimed by (1) and (2), it was often supposed, quite generally, that (3) If a mental state S has both intentional properties and phenomenological properties, then these are (logically) independent of one another. We can express a strengthening of (1) in terms of the popular notion of content: (4) A mental state Ss property of having intentional content is not a phenomenological property of S and doesnt depend in any way on Ss having any phenomenological properties. (4) followed, on the then prevailing view, from the fact that unconscious mental states dispositional or not can have any intentional content that conscious mental states can have. Another factor was also in play. Since it is not clear how to directly define the notion of subjective qualitative character or phenomenology, it is often introduced by way of example, and the examples are almost exclusively restricted to sensory cases (Ill use sensory widely to cover all emotional and mood phenomena). This tendency reflects, and perhaps also underwrites,
2 For my purposes here, I am going to put aside distinctions between states/episodes/events. I will mostly speak of mental or intentional states, but this usage carries no implication that they are dispositional states.

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another central assumption in contemporary philosophy of mind which persists to this day: (5) Sensory phenomenology is the only kind of phenomenology there is. There is no such thing as cognitive phenomenology, where this may initially be negatively defined as any phenomenology that is not sensory. On this view, even an ideally complete description of the character of a persons experience as they read these words, say, or listen to a story, or suddenly see a line drawing not as a duck but as a rabbit, will only use sensory terms. If, furthermore, we assume, reasonably, that all conscious states have phenomenological properties by definition, this leads to the troubling idea that (6) The intentional properties of conscious cognitive states like conscious thoughts have nothing to do with the phenomenological properties they must also have just in so far as they are conscious states. And this may lead some to say that conscious states need not have phenomenological properties after all, and in particular that (7) Conscious cognitive states like conscious thoughts can have intentional properties without any phenomenological properties. The status of (7) is less clear than the other six claims, and Im going to put it aside here. Note that although it seems implausible, if not self-contradictory, those who accept something like Ned Blocks notion of access-consciousness seem dangerously close to accepting it (see e.g. Block 1995/2002). Much recent work on intentionality involves questioning these claims, harking back, consciously or not, to the work of Brentano (1874/1995), James (1890/1950), Husserl (190001), and Moore (191011/1953), among others. Since the claims overlap in various ways, a rejection of one of them may lead to a rejection of another. Contrary to (1), Searle (1991, 1992: Ch. 7), Strawson (1994, 2008: 6) and Kriegel (in press) are among those who have argued that one cant make sense of the idea that a mental state has intentionality without some reference (which may be indirect) to consciousness/phenomenology. (1) is obviously incompatible with the old idea that only conscious states can be genuinely mentally contentful states, and hence genuinely intentional states, and Gertler (2007) has recently argued for a return to this view. Many philosophers now think, contrary to (3), that intentional properties and phenomenological properties are mutually dependent at least in certain cases. However, they have very different reasons for doing so. According to what is now called representationalism,3 for example, of the sort expounded
3 Its also sometimes called intentionalism or representationism. Note that representationalism is a standard name for Lockean indirect realism or representative realism, to which present-day representationalism is directly opposed.

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by Harman (1990) and Tye (2000, 2002, 2009), (3) and (4) are to be rejected because the phenomenological properties of certain mental states, for example, conscious perceptions, are reducible to or supervene on their intentional properties. Farkas (2008), Horgan and Tienson (2002), Kriegel (2007), and Loar (2003) also reject (3) and (4), but for a completely different reason: they argue that there is a kind of intentionality, which they call phenomenal intentionality, that is constitutively determined by phenomenology alone. I have also argued (Montague 2009) that (3) and (4) must be rejected, and also (2), because an adequate notion of content can only be developed with careful attention to phenomenological considerations. Finally, Pitt (2004), Siewert (in press), Strawson (1994: 1.4, in press), Tennant (2009), and others reject (5), (6) and (7). The notion of content has been central in recent discussion of intentionality, so Ill begin with a further consideration of (4). 2. Content Recent moves away from the older orthodoxy involve a mixture of terminological and substantive changes. One is a tendency to return to a wider use of the word content (as applied to mental content). The older orthodoxy had tended to shrink the use of content in such a way that it was true by definition that (8) all mental content is intentional content. The wider use keeps conscious states in the forefront of consideration and allows one to speak of sensory content, say (or, more widely, phenomenological or experiential content such as pain), without commitment to (8). Now it may turn out in the end (as Brentano holds, and as I also believe) that (8) is true, that all content is intentional content even sensory content of the kind that has been thought to constitute the best example of internal, non-intentional mental content. But (8), if true, is a substantive claim, and should not be made true by definition. I favour, then, a maximally inclusive conception of content. According to this definition, the content, the total content, of an experience, is everything that one experiences in having the experience. Equivalently, (9) content is (absolutely) everything that is given to one, experientially, in the having of the experience. It is everything one is aware of, in the having of the experience.4 (In what follows I will mainly focus on perceptual experiences, but much of what I say can be extended to emotional experiences and conscious thoughts.)

I discuss this conception of content in more detail in Montague 2009.

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Given this very broad definition of mental content, there will be many kinds of content included in any typical perceptual experience. This variety of content can be usefully divided into two distinct kinds, phenomenological and non-phenomenological. Consider the experience of seeing a tree in leaf. So far as non-phenomenological content is concerned, I take it that the subject will be aware of at least the following: the tree itself; certain properties of the tree; spatial/positional information, i.e. information about how she is situated with respect to the tree; whatever innate or learned grasp of opportunities for action is essentially involved in her perceptual experience; temporal as opposed to spatial/positional information relevant for action. On the phenomenological side, the subject will be aware of the total phenomenological character of the experience: not only what one might think of as the merely sensory what its likeness of seeing colours and shapes, but also, and no less importantly, the what its likeness of seeing something as a tree, and so on. All this will be part of the content of the perceptual experience. Once this sense of phenomenological content is introduced, we can ask again whether all content is intentional content. Some have wished to say no, holding that merely sensory content (pain, for example) is not intentional at all. But this view may be questioned, even after we have allowed the legitimacy of the notion of merely sensory content. According to one venerable tradition, conscious intentional episodes, including both perceptual and emotional conscious episodes, are of, i.e. intentionally of, a whole lot more than just non-phenomenological content. The basic idea is simple and ancient and Aristotelian. It is that in having a visual experience of a tree in leaf (e.g.), the subject, in addition to being aware of the tree and any other relevant external content, is also aware of the awareness of the tree. In having a particular conscious perceptual experience the subject is always and necessarily also aware of that very experience itself. There is always some sort of awareness of the experience or experiencing: (10) conscious awareness always involves constitutively involves some sort of awareness of that very awareness.5 But intentionality just is the property of aboutness or of-ness. So whatever an experience is about or of must be included in its intentional content. So an experience, considered just as such, or purely internally, is part of its own intentional content.

This view is well expounded in the Phenomenological tradition. See, for example, Brentano, Husserl, Gurwitsch, etc.; see also Kriegel 2009, Rosenthal 2005, and Zahavi 2006. Locke puts it strongly by saying that thinking consists in being conscious that one thinks (1689: II.i.19; he uses think in the wide Cartesian sense to cover all conscious mental goings on).

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Most agree that my visual experience of a tree in leaf is about or of the tree and its shape and colour, but many deny that it is also about or of its own visual phenomenological character. According to the view under discussion, however, there is a fundamental sense in which the visual (as opposed to say tactile) quality of ones seeing the tree is part of what one is aware of in having the experience.6 The greenness and shape of the tree is visually presented to me. And its being presented to me visually is part of the intentional content of the experience, on this view, because its being a visual experience is part of what I am aware of just in having it. This awareness does not require the possession of the concept VISUAL EXPERIENCE, or BEING VISUAL. Rather, it follows immediately, from the fact that ones awareness of the world consists partly in ones being visually aware of the world, that one is, in having that experience, aware of the visual character of ones experience. And the content of this awareness of ones experiences being visual can be specified only in terms of (by reference to) the sensory phenomenology associated with visual experiences, i.e. what its like to see colours, shapes, etc. So the phenomenological content essential to having an experience is part of an experiences intentional content, whatever else may be part of its intentional content. Chalmers (2006) offers a different kind of challenge to (4), in the case of perception, in terms of what he calls phenomenal content. The central idea is that the phenomenal character of a perceptual experience itself places a constraint on what it takes for that experience to be veridical.7 More specifically, the intentional content of a particular experience is a condition of satisfaction such that the experience is veridical if and only if the world satisfies the condition of satisfaction. The phenomenal content of a particular perceptual experience is the experiences intentional content as determined by that experiences phenomenal character. The notion of phenomenal content posits a relationship between the phenomenological and the intentional properties of a perceptual experience quite independently of the claim, considered above, that all conscious awareness involves awareness of that very awareness. Clearly one can hold both positions together. But a question remains: given that there is such a relationship between the phenomenological and the intentional, is this because (i) the intentional properties are grounded in the phenomenological properties or (ii) the phenomenological properties are grounded in the intentional properties?
6 Aristotle puts the point by saying that when we perceive, we perceive that we perceive, but the former kind of perceiving is obviously different from the latter: the claim is not that we see that we see. It is controversial what the first kind of perception amounts to, and the present claim is simply that it will involve appeal to phenomenological properties, whatever its full account. See Caston 2002 for an excellent discussion. See also Siewert 1998.

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3. Representationalism In the last section I introduced a maximally inclusive notion of content that left open the question whether (8) is true i.e. whether all content is intentional content. I then argued that (8) is a substantive claim, which I accept. In so doing, I rejected (3) and (4), at least for the case of conscious mental states: since a conscious perceptual experience, for example, is partly about its own phenomenological content, its intentional content is inextricably tied to its phenomenological content. So I endorsed (i) above. Advocates of representationalism also accept (8), and they also reject (3) and (4) for conscious perceptual experiences. But they do so for very different reasons, backing (ii) instead of (i). They argue that the phenomenological properties of a perceptual experience supervene on or are identical to its intentional properties. On their view, then, if two experiences have the same intentional content, they ipso facto have the same phenomenological properties (this rules out colour-spectrum-inversion cases). According to this view, the phenomenological properties of an experience are grounded in its intentional properties, as in (ii), and its intentional properties are, furthermore, in no way about any of its phenomenological properties. Representationalism has been developed in a variety of ways, but I will just briefly note two, which we might call externalist representationalism, and internalist representationalism.8 Roughly, the difference concerns whether one takes it that all content is external content, i.e. wholly determined by relations to the environment, or whether one allows that some content is internal content, content that is determined by how things are with the subject independently of the environment. Most of the original advocates of representationalism were externalist representationalists, and so that will be my focus. In the end, I doubt that internalist representationalism is really a form of representationalism at all. Chalmers (2006), for example, appeals to irreducible phenomenal properties to specify the modes of presentation that partly constitute internal content. But are these phenomenological properties themselves intentional? If not, it seems we are left with non-intentional features of experience after all, contrary to representationalisms basic claim. The same point applies to any form of so-called representationalism that appeals to irreducible phenomenal properties as constitutive of perceptual modes or perceptual attitudes, for example, seeing or hearing.9

8 9

See Chalmers 2004 for a nice discussion of the varieties of representationalism. See, for example, Crane 2009, Kulvicki 2007, Pautz 2009, and Thompson 2009.

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One often cited motivation for representationalism is the so-called transparency thesis, which we can for present purposes express as follows: (11) when we see a tree (say) we are only conscious of the trees properties and not of any experience of the tree; so the trees properties constitute the whole intentional content of the experience. On this view, then, the intentional content of the visual experience is wholly external content. But now, drawing on the transparency thesis, while at the same time not wishing to deny the existence of phenomenology, representationalists claim that (12) the phenomenological properties of the experience (its sensory phenomenological properties) are either identical to, or at least supervene on, the intentional content of the experience where again the trees properties constitute the whole content of the experience. Representationalists hold, furthermore, that all phenomenological properties supervene on intentional properties, and are therefore bound to reject (2), according to which certain states such as experiencing a pain or experiencing an afterimage have a phenomenology but no intentionality. Thus, Tye (1995) argues that pain represents bodily damage, and Crane (2009) argues that the object of pain is the felt location of the pain. There have been many challenges to representationalism. Here I will only mention a few central objections to the externalist variety. Ill begin with an experiment cited by Ned Block (2010).10 The basic idea is that shifts of attention can affect the phenomenology of a visual experience, and that these phenomenological changes cannot be accounted for either in terms of representational content or in terms of pure externalist content.11 The experiment involves a fixation point situated between two gabor patches (small grids made up of sinusoidal luminance strips) with different degrees of contrast. The patch on the left has 22% contrast and the patch on the right has 26% contrast. When the subject attends to the fixation point, the subject veridically experiences the relative contrast the patch on the right is experienced as having a higher contrast. When the subject fixates on the left patch, however, it looks (non-veridically) to the subject as if the left patch and right patch have the same degree of contrast. The difference between the two experiences of the 22% patch is entirely mental, since the subjects spatial relations are the same for both experiences. Now consider the subjects two experiences of the 22% patch itself, and put aside the subjects experience of sameness or difference of contrast
10 See, for example, Chalmers 2004 and Macpherson 2006 for further discussions of how attention may affect phenomenology. 11 Blocks other target in this article is a direct realist position as advocated by Brewer 2006 and Martin 2002.

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between the two patches in the comparison case. Block claims that there are distinct phenomenal experiences of the same item, the 22% patch. That is, attentively seeing the 22% patch and less attentively seeing the 22% patch result in phenomenal differences between the two experiences, despite the fact that the same patch, with the same instantiated properties, is being seen. So the phenomenal properties of the experiences of the 22% patch cannot supervene on or be identical with the intentional content of the experience, i.e. the perceived properties of the 22% patch. Block then argues at length that the case cannot be explained in terms of one of the experiences of the 22% patch being illusory. Joe Levine (2003) offers a different kind of objection.12 He argues that if its possible, as seems highly plausible, to generate Frege cases in the perceptual realm, such that two colours look different although they pick out the same colour, then externalist representationalism will not be able to account for this fact. For according to externalist representationalism, if the two visual experiences pick out the same colour, it would be impossible for them to look different. Representationalism at first appears to be breaking with the recent tradition, in rejecting assumptions (3) and (4). But in doing so, it too is typically driven by the naturalistic approach that dominated theories of intentionality mentioned at the beginning of this article. In reducing phenomenological properties to intentional properties and by then naturalizing intentionality as a tracking relation, it leaves us with much the same approach that gripped previous philosophers. I now want to consider more radical departures from the traditional picture, ones that once again give a central place to phenomenology in discussing intentionality, and thus again represent a return to the approach advocated by Brentano and Husserl. 4. Phenomenal Intentionality Like representationalists, proponents of phenomenal intentionality reject (3) and (4). But instead of reducing phenomenology to a form of naturalized intentionality in the sense so far discussed, they claim that there is a kind of intentionality that is constitutively determined by phenomenology alone.13 Horgan and Tienson (2002) argue for phenomenal intentionality by imagining subjects of experience situated differently (one in the actual world, one in a twin world, one a brain-in-a-vat, and one a disembodied Cartesian mind), who are phenomenal duplicates of each other, in the sense that they all have phenomenologically identical experience. All are having a

12 See also Macpherson 2005. 13 See, for example, Farkas 2008, Horgan and Tienson 2002, Kriegel 2007, and Loar 2003.

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sensory experience as of a crooked picture hanging on the wall in front of them. Based on the sensory phenomenology alone, we can determine how things have to be with them in order for their experience to be accurate. For each duplicate, there has to be a crooked picture hanging on a real wall in front of them in real space. So, each phenomenal duplicates experience shares what Horgan and Tienson call narrow truth conditions. The idea is that the kind of intentionality involved must be phenomenologically determined because it is the same for all four duplicates despite their external environments being radically different. Although the phenomenal duplicates experiences share narrow truth conditions, there is also a respect in which the truth conditions of their experiences are different. The accuracy of each duplicates experience (if accurate at all) also depends on the individual picture he is looking at, and since these pictures are numerically distinct, the wide truth conditions for each experience differ. Horgan and Tienson make two further claims based on the idea of phenomenal intentionality. First, strong externalist theories (according to which all intentional content is external content) are fundamentally mistaken about intentionality because phenomenal intentionality is independent of external factors. So the full phenomenon of mental intentionality cannot be explained in terms of external relations between the subject and his environment. Second, they argue that phenomenal intentionality is the fundamental kind of intentionality and is a prerequisite for wide content or wide truth conditions. They argue that phenomenal intentionality also determines certain grounding presuppositions, for example, existence presuppositions, that objects are of a certain kind, that objects are 3dimensional rather than 2dimensional and so on. If so, what can be referred to externally by a given intentional thought is determined by its phenomenal-intentional content, by the grounding presuppositions of the thought which are themselves determined by phenomenal intentionality, and appropriate causal conditions. Drawing further on the phenomenal-duplicate thought experiment Horgan and Tienson go on to argue for cognitive phenomenology. The idea is that the respect in which the phenomenal duplicates have the same conscious thoughts extends beyond just conscious thoughts based on perceptual experiences to thoughts about whats for dinner, what to wear for dinner and so on. I will now turn to a discussion of cognitive phenomenology. 5. Cognitive Phenomenology Proponents of cognitive phenomenology reject assumption (5), that sensory phenomenology is exhaustive of all phenomenology. Many also reject (6), that the intentional properties of conscious cognitive states like thoughts have nothing to do with the phenomenological properties they must also have

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just in so far as they are conscious states.14 Ill consider (5) and (6) in turn, but first it will be helpful to clarify briefly the notion of cognitive phenomenology. I understand cognitive phenomenology to be a kind of phenomenology associated paradigmatically with conscious thought, but also with conscious perception and emotion, that is something essentially over and above sensory phenomenology. For example, there is something it is like to think that 2 2 4, or that temperance is a virtue, something that is irreducible to any sensory phenomenology that may be associated with these thoughts. This is the standard use of the term cognitive phenomenology and should be distinguished from certain deflationary uses. Levine (in press) offers one such deflationary use in allowing that there might be such a thing as what he calls impure cognitive phenomenology.15 He considers the phenomenon of sensory experience being cognitively inflected. The idea is that although all phenomenology is sensory phenomenology, cognitive states can influence the way the sensory manifold is experienced in such a way that two distinct thoughts can result in the same set of sensible features being experienced differently. (An x-ray scan looks different to a radiologist from the way it looks to a non-expert; if you know bananas are yellow an achromatic banana may look yellow.)16 Another suggestion is that we use the term cognitive phenomenology to denote any phenomenology whatever that is experienced as essentially tied up with a particular conscious occurrent thought, even if we think that in the end all phenomenology is sensory. But this use of the term cognitive phenomenology obscures the central question of the cognitive phenomenology debate, which is whether there is a kind of phenomenology entirely distinct from sensory phenomenology. It also runs the risk of confusing a position that accepts cognitive phenomenology with positions that accept (5) but reject (7). For example, one could hold that only an experiential being can have conscious occurrent thoughts. But this only commits one to the idea that it is a necessary condition on a beings having conscious occurrent thought that it has phenomenology of some sort or other, and leaves open the possibility that this phenomenology may be merely sensory. A related view is that any particular conscious occurrent thought must involve some associated phenomenology or other, but that this may be merely sensory.

14 For an overview of the cognitive phenomenology debate, see Bayne and Montague in press. 15 See also Carruthers 2000. 16 I think these phenomena are better labelled cognitive penetration. For more on this notion see, for example, Siegel in press and Macpherson in press.

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Philosophers have argued that there is distinctive cognitive phenomenology for both propositional-attitudes types and intentional content. Horgan and Tienson (2002: 522) argue for this view: Intentional states have a phenomenal character, and this phenomenal character is precisely the what-it-is-like of experiencing a particular propositional attitude type vis-a-vis a specific intentional content. ` Change either the attitude type (believing, desiring, wondering, hoping, etc.) or the particular intentional content, and the phenomenal character thereby changes. However, here I will only consider arguments that focus on the cognitive phenomenology involved in experiencing particular contents. We believe in sensory or emotional phenomenology because it is immediately obvious to us. Its existence is undeniable given the simple fact that we have sensory and emotional experiences. The claim that it is also immediately obvious that there is cognitive phenomenology has, however, left sceptics cold. In light of this, proponents of cognitive phenomenology have appealed to number of contrast cases. The basic idea of a contrast case, in this setting, is to offer a comparison between two cases that attempts to hold all sensory phenomenology fixed, while arguing that there is nevertheless a phenomenological difference between the cases. The claim then is that only cognitive phenomenology can explain the phenomenological difference. Strawson (1994) proposes that monolingual English speakers and German speakers may conceivably have exactly the same auditory experience and overall sensory experience, during two seconds of time during which they both hear der Schnee ist weiss, while there is nevertheless a phenomenological difference between them. The overall character of their experience will be different because the German speakers understand what the sentence means and so have an understanding experience, which is indubitably cognitive.17 Sceptics typically respond to contrast cases by granting the phenomenological difference, while attempting to explain that difference by appealing to something sensory. In the aforementioned linguistic case, one typical response is to claim that hearing a language one understands versus hearing a language one doesnt understand will involve processing the sound stream differently, for example, the groupings of the sounds is different, thus resulting in differences in auditory phenomenology.18 Strawson (1994) counters this claim with a case in which two English speakers hear English words that have familiar coded meanings for one but not the other.

17 See also Siewerts in press cases of delayed understanding and interpretive switch. 18 See, for example, Robinson 2005, Wilson 2003, and Tye and Wright in press.

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Many contrast cases involve some sort of sensory phenomenology, whether verbal or non-verbal. Some have argued, however, that there is such a thing as pure cognitive experience, which involves neither verbal nor non-verbal sensory phenomenology. Pitt (2004) argues for thoughts with no linguistic phenomenology on the basis of our immediate awareness of their content; Siewert (1998, in press) argues for them by pointing to sudden realizations. Prinz (in press), by contrast, rejects the possibility of pure cognitive experience. He argues that our conscious thoughts are partly constituted by silent-speech images of the sentences we would use to express those thoughts, and that in thinking thoughts there need only be (sensory-phenomenological) verbal imagery. Strawson (2008) argues that cognitive phenomenology is necessary for getting a fix on the correct object of thought what he calls the stopping problem. Consider a subject, Lucy, who is having an experience of perceiving or thinking about Mandy the moose. Assuming that Lucy has the appropriate causal connections to Mandy, how does Lucys experience manage to be only and exactly about Mandy the moose, rather than about the photons impacting on her retinas, or any of the other causes along the causal chain leading to the experience? What allows Lucy to stop at Mandy rather than any of the other causes on the causal chain? Strawson argues that Lucys experience contains her conception of what particular thing her experience is about, in this case a moose, a physical object. She takes her experience to be about such a thing, and this taking, which is part of the cognitive phenomenology of her experience, is an essential part of what enables it to be specifically about Mandy. Fodor (2008: Ch. 7), by contrast, claims that Lucys thought can be shown to be about Mandy without appeal to cognitive phenomenology, simply by appealing to a strategy of counterfactual triangulation. Many proponents of cognitive phenomenology reject (6): they claim that there is an intimate connection between the cognitive-phenomenological properties and the intentional properties of a given conscious thought. If we restrict our attention to conscious thoughts that extend beyond conscious thoughts based on what is presented in perceptual experiences, this raises the question of how (exactly) cognitive-phenomenological properties relate to individual thought contents? Is there a unique cognitive-phenomenological character associated with each thought content? If my twin on twin-earth and I are respectively thinking that water is wet and that twater is wet, do we necessarily share the same cognitive phenomenology? If my sister Sonny and I are both thinking that the Merced River is dangerous, do we necessarily share the same cognitive phenomenology? These are as yet unsettled questions. How one answers them will depend on ones notion of content and what role that notion plays in thought individuation. Many advocates of phenomenal intentionality take phenomenology to be narrow, and also accept the existence of cognitive phenomenology. So far as

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conscious thoughts that extend beyond conscious thoughts based on what is presented in perceptual experiences are concerned, they seem committed to the following principle: [C] Every conscious thought has a certain (narrow) intentional content in virtue of having a particular kind of cognitive-phenomenological character. If phenomenal intentionality is the only kind of intentionality there is,19 then for a certain class of conscious thoughts, cognitive-phenomenological intentionality is the only kind of intentionality there is. However, many philosophers (e.g. Chalmers 2006, Horgan and Tienson 2002, and Strawson in press) argue that in addition to internal content, there is also external or wide content. As mentioned earlier, Horgan and Tienson construe narrow and external content in terms of narrow and wide truth conditions.20 The motivation for accepting wide or external content is largely based on taking to heart the work of Putnam, Kripke, and Burge. These philosophers have shown us that the very concepts we use to think with, such as WATER and ARTHRITIS, directly hook up to our environment in such a way that if our environment were different, despite appearing the same, the concepts we use to think with would be different. Consider the following two cases: [A] My classical twin and I are both consciously thinking thoughts expressed by the sentence water is wet in our respective languages. [B] My sister and I are both consciously thinking that the Merced River is dangerous. By hypothesis, my twins and my experiences will have the same cognitivephenomenological character. There is a problem, however, for those who also accept external content. My word water hooks onto H2O; my WATER concept hooks onto H2O. My twins word water hooks onto XYZ; her WATER concept hooks onto XYZ. Since these water concepts are different, how can they be used to characterize our cognitive-phenomenological character given that it is the same?
19 See, for example, Farkas 2008 and Pitt 2004. 20 Not everyone who accepts both internal and external content construes narrow content in terms of truth conditions. Those who do must accept the following consequence. Suppose, unbeknownst to you, that you have been transported to classical twin-earth, where the watery-stuff is composed of XYZ, and you have the thought that water is wet. If you share narrow truth conditions with your twin, then your thought is true, according to those narrow truth conditions; but since your concept WATER is keyed to your home environment, according to wide truth conditions, your thought is also false.

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One proposal is to grant that internal cognitive-phenomenological content can only be expressed approximately, so that the narrow content of the thought expressed by water is wet is something like the watery stuff is wet.21 What about [B]? Do my sister and I have the same cognitive phenomenology? For those who accept phenomenal (narrow) intentionality as the only kind of intentionality, if my sister and I are having the same thought, then we must have the same cognitive phenomenology. If our cognitive phenomenology is different, then we are having different, although perhaps closely related, thoughts. Given this views strict requirement on having the same thought, a pressing question is how often do my fellow human beings and I have the same thoughts? If one accepts external content, its clear that my sister and I have the same external content. What is not so clear is whether my sister and I have to have the same cognitive phenomenology as well. If one accepts that our cognitive phenomenology could be different, a weaker version of C may seem plausible. [C1] Every conscious thought has a (narrow) intentional content in virtue of itself having some kind of cognitive-phenomenological character. So our cognitive-phenomenological character could differ even though our external content is the same, and to some extent our narrow content overlaps. One challenge for this position is to give a plausible way of characterizing the cognitive-phenomenological character of a thinkers thought. For example, how are we to understand the concepts RIVER and DANGEROUS in such a way that they can be used to characterize our different cognitive phenomenology? One proposal is to allow a sense in which concepts can vary somewhat across individuals in the way envisaged in conceptual role semantics. In summary, much recent work on intentionality has been dedicated to exploring the complex relationship between the intentional properties and the phenomenological properties of mental states. A lot of this work has focused on perception, but with the introduction of cognitive phenomenology, conscious thought and the role cognitive-phenomenological properties may play with respect to conscious thought, are likely to receive an increasing amount of attention. University of Bristol Bristol BS8 1TB, UK michellemontague@mac.com

21 For a discussion of this point see, for example, Chalmers 2002, Farkas 2008, and Horgan et al. 2004.

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