Phenomenal Intentionality with Compromise

Terry Horgan (University of Arizona)

ABSTRACT

In her book The Subject’s Point of View and her paper ‘Phenomenal Intentionality without Compromise’, Katalin Farkas articulates and defends the view that phenomenal intentionality is the only genuine kind of mental intentionality. She calls this position ‘phenomenal intentionality without compromise’; I hereby label it uncompromising phenomenal intentionality, or UPI for short. (Other fans of phenomenal intentionality, including Uriah Kriegel and David Pitt, also favor the UPI position.) Farkas argues that UPI is theoretically superior to the view—advocated, for instance, in Horgan and Tienson’s ‘The Intentionality of Phenomenology and the Phenomenology of Intentionality’ and in Horgan, Tienson and Graham’s ‘Phenomenal Intentionality and the Brain in a Vat’—that there is also another kind of mental intentionality, “externalistic” intentionality. (I hereby label the Graham/Horgan/Tienson position compromising phenomenal intentionality, or CPI for short.)

In this talk I will begin by offering an expanded, partially novel, articulation of CPI—elaborated compromising phenomenal intentionality, or ECPI for short. Then, relying on ECPI, I will address the principal theoretical considerations which, according to Farkas, supposedly count against CPI and in favor of UPI. I will argue that those considerations do not make serious trouble for ECPI. Finally, I will discuss the comparative theoretical benefits and costs of UPI and ECPI respectively, aiming to argue that on balance, ECPI fares better.