INTENTIONNALITÉ RÉELLE 2 : POURQUOI L’INTENTIONNALITÉ ENTRAÎNE LA CONSCIENCE?

Intentionality is an essentially mental, essentially occurrent, and essentially experiential (conscious) phenomenon. Any attempt to characterize intentionality that detaches it from conscious experience faces two insuperable problems. First, it is obliged to concede that almost everything (if not everything) has intentionality—all the way down to subatomic particles. Second, it has the consequence that everything that has intentionality has far too much of it—perhaps an infinite amount. The key to a satisfactory and truly naturalistic theory of intentionality is (1) a realistic conception of naturalism and (2) a properly developed understanding of the phenomenon of cognitive experience.Intentionalität ist ein essenziell mentales, essenziell ereignishaftes und essenziell auf Erfahrung beruhendes (bewusstseinsbetontes) Phänomen. Jeder Versuch, der die Intentionalität charakterisieren will und sie von der bewussten Erfahrung entkoppelt, sieht sich zwei unüberwindbaren Problemen gegenübergestellt. Erstens muss man einräumen, dass beinahe alles (wenn nicht geradezu alles) Intentionalität besitzt – bis hin zu den subatomaren Partikeln. Zweitens hat dies zur Folge, dass alles, was Intentionalität besitzt, viel zuviel davon besitzt – ja vielleicht sogar unendlich viel davon. Der Schlüssel zu einer zufrieden stellenden und wirklich naturalistischen Theorie der Intentionalität ist (1) ein realistisches Konzept des Naturalismus und (2) ein wohl entwickeltes Verständnis des Phänomens der kognitiven Erfahrung.L’intentionnalité est un phénomène essentiellement mental, essentiellement événementiel et essentiellement expérienciel (conscient). Toute tentative de caractérisation de l’intentionnalité qui la sépare de l’expérience consciente est confrontée à deux problèmes insurmontables. D’abord elle est obligée de reconnaître que presque tout (sinon tout) – y compris même les particules subatomiques – est doté d’intentionnalité. En conséquence de quoi, tout ce qui est doté d’intentionnalité en est beaucoup trop – peut-être infiniment. La clé d’une théorie de l’intentionnalité satisfaisante et vraiment naturiste est (1) une conception réaliste du naturalisme et (2) une compréhension correctement développée du phénomène de l’expérience cognitiv

Mind and Being: The Primacy of Panpsychism

I endorse a 12-word metaphysics. [1] Stoff ist Kraft ≈ being is energy. [2] Wesen ist Werden ≈ being is becoming. [3] Sein ist Sosein ≈ being is qualit[ativit]y. [4] Ansichsein ist Fürsichsein ≈ being is mind. [1]–[3] are plausible metaphysical principles and unprejudiced consideration of what we know about concrete reality obliges us to favor [4], i.e. panpsychism or panexperientialism, above all other positive substantive proposals. For [i] panpsychism is the most ontologically parsimonious view, given that the existence of conscious experience is certain and that panpsychism doesn’t posit the existence of any kind of stuff other than conscious experience. [ii] A question also arises about why metaphysicians have posited the existence of something for which there is zero evidence: non-experiential concrete reality. The question is the more pressing because of the silence of physics: physics with its numbers and equations is perfectly silent on the question of the intrinsic non-structural nature of reality

Postface

The author comments the monographic section The queens’ estates: fiscal properties and royal policy (9th-10th Century), highlighting the different courses which each author has followed ‒ despite a very precise set of questions common to all ‒ in compliance with the diverse cases taken under examination. Thus the ensemble of studies, in tight dialogue both with contemporaneous and earlier historiography, contributes to clarify the conscious and flexible use of fiscal lands in the dowers bestowed to the queens and, within that same perspective, the articulated function of monastic foundations

Real Intentionality 2. Why Intentionality Entails Consciousness?

Intencionalnost je esencijalno mentalni, esencijalno zgodimični, te esencijalno iskustveni (svjesni) fenomen. Svaki pokušaj karakteriziranja intencionalnosti koji je izdvaja iz svjesnog iskustva suočuje se s dva nesavladiva problema. Prvo, obvezno je priznati da gotovo sve (ako ne i sve) ima intencionalnost – sve do subatomskih čestica. Drugo, ima za posljedicu da sve što ima intencionalnost, ima je puno previše – možda beskonačno mnogo. Ključ zadovoljavajuće i istinski naturalističke teorije intencionalnosti jest (1) realistička koncepcija naturalizma i (2) ispravno razvijeno razumijevanje fenomena spoznajnog iskustva.Intentionality is an essentially mental, essentially occurrent, and essentially experiential (conscious) phenomenon. Any attempt to characterize intentionality that detaches it from conscious experience faces two insuperable problems. First, it is obliged to concede that almost everything (if not everything) has intentionality—all the way down to subatomic particles. Second, it has the consequence that everything that has intentionality has far too much of it—perhaps an infinite amount. The key to a satisfactory and truly naturalistic theory of intentionality is (1) a realistic conception of naturalism and (2) a properly developed understanding of the phenomenon of cognitive experience

Video Nasty: The Moral Apocalypse in Koji Suzuki’s Ring

Although overshadowed by its filmic adaptations (Hideo Nakata, 1998 and Gore Verbinski, 2002), Koji Suzuki’s novel Ring (1991) is at the heart of the international explosion of interest in Japanese horror. This article seeks to explore Suzuki’s overlooked text. Unlike the film versions, the novel is more explicitly focused on the line between self-preservation and self-sacrifice, critiquing the ease with which the former is privileged over the latter. In the novel then, the horror of Sadako’s curse raises questions about the terrors of moral obligation: the lead protagonist (Asakawa) projects the guilt he feels over his self-interested actions, envisaging them as an all-consuming apocalypse

Affective Experience, Desire, and Reasons for Action

What is the role of affective experience in explaining how our desires provide us with reasons for action? When we desire that p, we are thereby disposed to feel attracted to the prospect that p, or to feel averse to the prospect that not-p. In this paper, we argue that affective experiences – including feelings of attraction and aversion – provide us with reasons for action in virtue of their phenomenal character. Moreover, we argue that desires provide us with reasons for action only insofar as they are dispositions to have affective experiences. On this account, affective experience has a central role to play in explaining how desires provide reasons for action

The Disunity of Consciousness

It is commonplace for both philosophers and cognitive scientists to express their allegiance to the "unity of consciousness". This is the claim that a subject’s phenomenal consciousness, at any one moment in time, is a single thing. This view has had a major influence on computational theories of consciousness. In particular, what we call single-track theories dominate the literature, theories which contend that our conscious experience is the result of a single consciousness-making process or mechanism in the brain. We argue that the orthodox view is quite wrong: phenomenal experience is not a unity, in the sense of being a single thing at each instant. It is a multiplicity, an aggregate of phenomenal elements, each of which is the product of a distinct consciousness-making mechanism in the brain. Consequently, cognitive science is in need of a multi-track theory of consciousness; a computational model that acknowledges both the manifold nature of experience, and its distributed neural basis