Avicenna and Husserl on the Concept of Intentionality

Bulletin d’analyse phénoménologique, 2021

The article is addressing one of the central but maybe the most ambiguous and multilayered concepts of Husserl's phenomenology. Husserl's insisting on a form of intentionality that implies not just conscious directedness towards objects, but also a constitutive function of mental acts, led to some serious accusations of his (not only transcendental) idealism and solipsism. Justification of such accusations depends exclusively on whether we understand constitution in an ontological sense, as a creative process that brings worldly entities into being, or in an epistemological sense, as a process that enables us to identify and to interpret a particular givenness as something. In the early stages of phenomenology, a so-called "hylomorphic" theory of constitution prevailed, which stated that the object of our experience can be present for us only if some sense-data (hyle) is formed in our intentional acts by a meaning giving component (which Husserl called morphe in his Ideas I). This theory proved to be unsatisfying when Husserl turned to a phenomenological description of temporal objects, discovering that not just objects, but also intentional acts have a distinct temporal structure. However, the analysis of temporal constitution reaches even further, because the idea of the "living present", and its triadic structure of retention-primal impression-protention, holds the key to an explanation of horizon-intentionality, and offers the answer to an essential transcendental question: How is it possible for us to be aware of the world towards which all of our intentional life is directed, and from which all of the motivation for our actions originates?

Deland (Florida) The concepts of intention and of intentionality have enjoyed a long history within Western philosophy. They were particularly important notions in the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic philosophical traditions of the Middle Ages and regained philosophical importance in the 20 th century, particularly in the writings of Edmund Husserl. In this essay, I wish to examine the account of intention that is found in the work of the Medieval philosopher Ibn Sina (latinized as Avicenna) and to develop a Husserlian critique of this account.

Archivio di Filosofia , 2015

In this paper, I offer an outline of the contemporary debate between phenomenology and ana- lytic philosophy of mind regarding the relationship between intentionality, consciousness, and self-consciousness in the early phenomenological movement, namely the work of Brentano and Husserl. The discussion focuses on the notion of phenomenal consciousness and interpretations of Brentano’s account of consciousness. I discuss some current interpretations (Thomasson, Kriegel), known as one-level theories of consciousness. I argue that the intrinsic property of a mental state is not phenomenal consciousness but the agential character of a mental act. My main conclusion is that in Brentano – and in the phenomenological tradition generally – there is an original view about the nature of intentionality and consciousness as a mental agency. This approach assumes that there is a conceptual coextension between intentionality, consciousness, and self-consciousness, in accordance with the one-level theory interpretation, where, however, the mental state as a real part of the act comes first and awareness of it follows. My main aim is to highlight some points from contemporary discussions in phenomenology that are connected to other contemporary concerns in philosophy of mind, in order to contribute to the current debate.

Human Studies, 2023

In this paper, I argue that according to Edmund Husserl "tendency" does not designate a specific class of intentional experiences but rather, on par with "consciousness-of," a universal mode of intentionality essential for any constitution of sense. In doing so, I explicate Husserl's distinction between intentionality as tendency (Tendenz), which he describes as a striving (Streben), and intentionality as consciousness-of (Bewusstsein-von), which he describes as a presentation (Vorstellung) of an intentional object. Then, I discuss Husserl's problematic way of relating these two universal modes of intentionality. Although he claims that intentionality as tendency presupposes intentionality as consciousness-of, I argue that the universal validity of this presupposition is put into question by the consideration of drives (Triebe), which Husserl describes as passive tendencies that originally lack any consciousness of the end strived toward, and, hence, do not seem to presuppose any presentation of it. I show that the lack of intentionality as consciousness-of poses two major problems in Husserl's account, in that it makes drives seemingly unintelligible as (i) strivings and as (ii) motivated experiences. Lastly, to find a possible solution to these problems and better clarify the relation between intentionality as tendency and intentionality as consciousness-of at the level of drives, I explore Edith Stein's account of drives as aimless strivings governed by experiential causality (Erlebniskausalität), discussing its advantages and potential drawbacks, as well as its compatibility with Husserl's account. In the phenomenological tradition, the description of the psychic life of the subject has revolved around the concept of intentionality as consciousness of something. The phenomenological analysis of conscious experiences aims to clarify how, for

This book addresses the question of intentionality through the intellectual context of enlighs literary theory in the twentieth century. The epistemological methodology, which is presented in the second chapter, is mainly developed from the works of Martin Heidegger, Ferdinand de saussure and Jacques Derrida on Language. The third chapter initially analyses the concept of intentionality in the New Criticism clearing that New Criticism was epistemologically founded on the metaphysical assumptions. Here the ontological discussions of Intentionality by Paul de Man, E. D. Hirsch and Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Micheals are further analysed. The fourth chapter explains the status of the concept of intentionality in theoretical writings of textual criticism and offers an ontological discussion of the concept of 'textual intentionality'. Finally the fifth chapter examines the concept of intentionality mainly at a functional level of language, in the context of Julia Kristeva's account of intertextuality and Harold Bloom's 'the anxiety of influence'. The originality of this work lies in its attempt to analyse the concept of intentionality ontologically and epistemologically.

Philosophy East and West, Vol. 54, No. 1 (Jan., 2004), pp. 71-82., 2004

Page 1. IBN SINA AND HUSSERL ON INTENTION AND INTENTIONALITY Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino Department of Philosophy, Florida Atlantic University The concepts of intention and intentionality have enjoyed a long history within Western philosophy. ...

Prolegomena, 2016

In his book The Significance of Consciousness, Charles Siewert argues that some of our phenomenal features are intentional features, because we are assessable for accuracy in virtue of having these phenomenal features. In this paper, I will, first, show that this argument stands in need of disambiguation, and will emerge as problematic on both available readings. Second, I will use Thomas Szanto’s recent ideas to develop a deeper understanding of the difficulties with Siewert’s argument. Szanto emphatically contrasts the Husserlian, constitutive conception of intentionality with the mainstream, representational conception. If we interpret Siewert’s ideas in representational terms, it will be possible to add to my critical objections. However, I will suggest that it is also possible to interpret, or perhaps to modify, Siewert’s views in Husserlian constitutive terms, thereby addressing the objections raised in the present paper.

This paper discusses Husserl's theory of intentionality and compares it to contemporary debates about intentionalism. I first show to what extent such a comparison could be meaningful. I then outline the structure of intentionality as found in Ideas I. My main claims are that -in contrast with intentionalismintentionality for Husserl (i) covers just a region of conscious contents; that it is (ii) essentially a relation between act-processes and presented content; and that (iii) the side of act-processes contains non-representational contents. In the third part, I show that Husserl also (iv) offers resources against intentionalism's exclusive concern with propositional content.

The Iranian Political Science Associaion/Gam-e-Nou, 2024

In this paper, I aim to show how Josiah Royce's philosophy contains many themes that will be at the core of Husserl's philosophical investigations. This paper is divided into two sections. The first one outlines the starting point of these two philosophers, contextualizing their background and showing how they share a common purpose: to put the experience at the center of their thought. For this reason, I want to analyze how they treat the concept of attention concerning intentionality to argue that their philosophies are strictly anchored to the givenness of the experience. In the second one, I deal with the rising of the precategorial dimension (prior to any objectivation) as a possibility of experience itself, paralleling the Husserlian concept of Lebenswelt and the Roycean of the World of Appreciation. Through this distinction, they criticize the scientific, naturalistic, and objectivistic Weltanschauung, showing how its method is founded in an intuitive and non-thematic relation with the world experience that comes ontologically before the scientific description.

I address the question of whether phenomenology is "prior to" all intentionality. I also sketch a multistage version of David Lewis's interpretationism in which phenomenal intentionality plays the role of source intentionality.