[phaenomenologica] the possibility of transcendental philosophy volume 98 || intentionality and...

12
ESSAY 2 INTENTIONALITY AND NOEMA * I. INTENTIONALITY: NATURALISTIC OR TRANSCENDENTAL One may want to have an account of intentionality within the frame- work of a naturalistic theory. For such an account, mental acts, charac- terised by intentionality, occur as events within the spatiotemporal and causal order of nature. How precisely these events are to be located within the causal order of nature, more particularly within the structure of the human body, would have to be worked out in detail. But, in prin- ciple, on such an account, a physicalistic theory of nature, body, and the mental is perceived as capable of making room for a specific sort of natural occurrences which exhibit, at the phenomenal level, the prop- erty of intentionality. Consequently, physical nature, which as a whole is nonintentional, may still be regarded as exhibiting intentionality with regard to one of its proper subsets. Physical theory, then, allows for a subordinate theory which is not truth-functional, but intensional. The two theories would coexist inasmuch as the intensional theory holds good for the phenomenal properties of that subset, while the physical, extensional theory is true of its noumenal reality. If intentionality is true of the mental states in their phenomenological aspects, physics is still true of their real, ontological nature. Intentionality, then, would be an appearance of physical nature under specificable conditions. Phenom- enology would be grounded in physics. I consider this naturalistic conception of intentionality to be fun- damentally flawed, i.e., flawed in its very project. If nature is a causal * First read in a symposium at the Eastern Division Meetings of the American Philosophical Association, held at Philadelphia, in 1981. The other symposiast was John Searle. Richard Aquila commented. Originally published in The Journal of Philosophy LXVIII (1981), pp. 706-717. Reprinted with permission. J. N. Mohanty, The Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy © Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht 1985

Upload: j-n

Post on 08-Dec-2016

218 views

Category:

Documents


2 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: [Phaenomenologica] The Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy Volume 98 || Intentionality and Noema

ESSAY 2

INTENTIONALITY AND NOEMA *

I. INTENTIONALITY: NATURALISTIC OR TRANSCENDENTAL

One may want to have an account of intentionality within the frame­work of a naturalistic theory. For such an account, mental acts, charac­terised by intentionality, occur as events within the spatiotemporal and causal order of nature. How precisely these events are to be located within the causal order of nature, more particularly within the structure of the human body, would have to be worked out in detail. But, in prin­ciple, on such an account, a physicalistic theory of nature, body, and the mental is perceived as capable of making room for a specific sort of natural occurrences which exhibit, at the phenomenal level, the prop­erty of intentionality. Consequently, physical nature, which as a whole is nonintentional, may still be regarded as exhibiting intentionality with regard to one of its proper subsets. Physical theory, then, allows for a subordinate theory which is not truth-functional, but intensional. The two theories would coexist inasmuch as the intensional theory holds good for the phenomenal properties of that subset, while the physical, extensional theory is true of its noumenal reality. If intentionality is true of the mental states in their phenomenological aspects, physics is still true of their real, ontological nature. Intentionality, then, would be an appearance of physical nature under specificable conditions. Phenom­enology would be grounded in physics.

I consider this naturalistic conception of intentionality to be fun­damentally flawed, i.e., flawed in its very project. If nature is a causal

* First read in a symposium at the Eastern Division Meetings of the American Philosophical Association, held at Philadelphia, in 1981. The other symposiast was John Searle. Richard Aquila commented. Originally published in The Journal of Philosophy LXVIII (1981), pp. 706-717. Reprinted with permission.

J. N. Mohanty, The Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy© Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht 1985

Page 2: [Phaenomenologica] The Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy Volume 98 || Intentionality and Noema

14

order, the intentional act quii intentional cannot have a place within it. If a causal explanation of intentionality is permissible, as it has to be within a naturalistic theory, then such an explanation should be allowed to go through. Philosophers such as functionalists pay lip service to in­tentionality, only in the long run to eliminate it (without at the same time wanting to give the impression that they are doing so). But a causal explanation misses the very point about intentional reference. Nor does functional explanation fare any better. Denial of intentionality and elimination of intensional discourse certainly would be a more cons is­tent and honest course for naturalistic philosophies. The claim to have a theory of intentionality within a naturalistic framework is an act of "bad faith." Intentionality and causal theory are compatible, not in the sense that they supplement or complement each other, nor in the sense that the former is the phenomenal explanandum while the latter is the theoretical explanans, but rather in the sense that the two belong to two different levels of discourse. Of these two levels of discourse, the inten­tional is prior in a transcendental sense. The causal theory is an ontic theory. It presupposes the possibility of talking about, identifying, referring to entities (phenomenal or theoretical) and to nature as a system of entities. This possibility of referring has to be found in inten­tionality; so a theory of intentionality has to be a transcendental theory. Such a theory cannot presuppose that very order of entities, i.e., nature, whose sense derives from intentionality.

The priority and independence, consequently the transcendental character of a theory of int~ntionality, can be shown in another way. Suppose the basic category of a theory TJ is F and that of a theory T2 is G. TJ is prior to and independent of T2 if TJ can have, within its dis­ourse, an analogue of G, while T2 cannot have, within its discourse, an analogue of F. In other words, it is not enough if TJ offers a theoretical explanation of T2. It is necessary that TJ does not deny G, but finds a place within its discourse for a G-like category, while T2 cannot find a place within its discourse for an F-like category. In this case, TJ is a more powerful theory than T2. My contention is that the intentional discourse (or theory) is, in this sense, mote powerful and prior to the causal. J The causal theory cannot capture, within its discourse, anything intentionality-like. However, an intentionality theory may have, within its discourse, something like causality. I have in mind, as

I. I must emphasise that being a more powerful theory is not the same as being transcendental (this was pointed out to me by Charles Brown). However the theory of intentionality is both. The point of this argument is that the intentional discourse is in­dependent of, and prior to, the causal.

Page 3: [Phaenomenologica] The Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy Volume 98 || Intentionality and Noema

15

far as perceptual experience is concerned, Merleau-Ponty's category of "motivation," a sort of phenomenological account of "being acted upon by what the act intends as its object" without postulating, or making use of the belief in the real existence of the object in the order of physical nature?

What I am then suggesting is that a theory of intentionality has to be transcendental. Only such a transcendental theory of intentionality can account for the possibility of a causal theory. A rather extreme version of this approach, one I do not want to defend for my present purpose, would be as follows: a causal theory has ultimately to be a physical theory. A physical theory is constituted by intentional acts of a com­munity of scientists. Since the theoretical entities of physics are posited in the context of the theory, the talk of such entities, and of scientific realism itself, presupposes intersubjectively performed and validated intentional acts of scientific theorising. By the very sense of physical theory, its entities are posited as independent of such theorising; but such independence is itself in a sense constituted by intentionality. One can go even further: by a sort of Hegelian "cunning of reason," inten­tionality conceals its own operation and constituting function beneath a theory which, by its very sense, is sustained by such concealment and the consequent naIvete of denying intentionality. Although such a metaphysics of intentionality provides a healthy antedote to the dogmatic scientific realism in prevalence, I am opting for a weaker version.

One may want to suggest, in response to the transcendental problem posed, that what a physical theory needs is not a transcendental theory of intentionality, but a linguistic, semantic metatheory of that physics. Such a metatheory of physics would assign to names and predicates in that theory appropriate entities as their referents, and, if the semantics is Fregean, appropriate senses. Such a metatheory may be initially an uninterpreted semantics, and an interpretation of that semantics would work for a given physical theory. I am not questioning the possibility of such a semantic theory, nor am I questioning its value. What I am denying is that such a semantics, which shares in the ontological naIvete of a physical theory, can provide a solution of the transcendental prob-

2. I understand that John Searle has been developing such a concept of phenomenol­ogical causality. Hintikka's construal of the causal relation as an intentional relation is a very different move from this. An opposite move, i.e., a move to find within a causal theory an analogue of the intentional, is suggested by the information-theoretic approach of Fred Dretske. To my mind, Dretske's theory remains causal. The "flow of information" is a restricted causal process.

Page 4: [Phaenomenologica] The Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy Volume 98 || Intentionality and Noema

16

lem I have formulated. A phenomenology of acts with their correlative senses and intentional objects is needed for this purpose. In the rest of this paper, the talk of intentional acts will be from a transcendental perspective. In other words, it will be talk not about mental acts as referred to within the discourse of naturalistic epistemology or psychol­ogy, but as belonging to an autonomous founding domain.

II. NOEMA AND FREGEAN SINNJ

In order to introduce the concept of noema, it is best to begin with the simple Brentano thesis:

(1) All mental acts are directed towards some object or other.

This thesis needs to give an account of the sort of relation "being directed towards" is, and also of the ontological status of the object towards which an act is allegedly directed. With regard to the first, Brentano recognised that "directedness" is not a relation, but is relation-like; as for the second question, he wavered between taking the object as having a mental existence (suggested by his term "inex­istence") and taking it to be an entity that may be either existent or non­existent. If the object is nonexistent, to what is the mental act directed? We need a theory that would be equally well applicable to thinking about the moon and to thinking about dragons. Brentano did not have one. Husserl gives us such a theory.

(2) All mental acts have their correlative noemata or senses.

No matter whether the object exists or not, it is presented in the act intending it in a certain manner, as having certain features, under a cer­tain description, as such and such.

As a preliminary step in understanding (2), it has been customary to start with linguistic expressions, which refer through the medium of their senses. What the Fregean sense is to a linguistic expression (word or sentence), the noema is to all intentional acts. Like the Fregean sense, the noema of an act makes reference possible, i.e., makes it possible that the act be directed to this, and such an, object rather than to another; it is the object of the act of reflecting upon the primary act (whose noema it is); it is that of which "truth" and "falsity" and their

3. The theme of this section has been developed more fully in my Husserl and Frege.

Page 5: [Phaenomenologica] The Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy Volume 98 || Intentionality and Noema

17

modalisations are originarily to be predicated; as contrasted with the act which is a temporally individuated particular, the noema is nontem­poral, intersubjectively available, and so makes "understanding" and "communication" possible. We may now formulate the new thesis thus:

(2') To be intentional is to have a (correlative) sense or noema.

It is this last move, with its closeness to the Fregean semantics, which is a likely source of mistake, against which I want to caution. The mistake consists in overlooking the deep differences between the Fregean Sinne and noemata, and between their roles in intentionality. These differences may, for my present purpose, be formulated in the following manner:

The Fregean Sinne are either linguistic meanings or timeless entities or cognitive contents. Frege explicitly characterised them as timeless en­tities. Although he conceded that there may be unexpressed meanings, he also thought we have no access to them save through language. His sense are senses of linguistic signs. But again the concept of sense is in­troduced for explaining "cognitive value." Not only is the sense what one grasps when one understands an expression, but it also contains the "mode of presentation" of the object referred to. Since the mode of presentation is determined by the unique context and (subjective) per­spective of the thinker, the sense is also the "cognitive content." But what sense can we attach to the locution of "cognitive content" within the framework of Frege's philosophy of mind? It appears to me that, in spite of Frege's concern with acts in his later essays, a sense remains externally related to the acts that grasp it. There is no suggestion in his writings of a concept of intentionality of acts. The senses are still senses of the appropriate signs. The mental acts grasp them, or exhibit some appropriate attitude toward them. When in an act of thinking I grasp a thought, the thought is not the content but the object of my grasping. That in an act one grasps an object - no matter if the latter is a concrete or an abstract entity - does not amount to the intentionality of that act. One needs some concept of the structure of the act (and not merely a structure which that act grasps) which would account for its directed­ness. Since the senses are abstract entities, Frege saw and dealt with the problems associated with intentionality but he did not arrive at a con­cept of intentionality.

The point of the thesis that the Fregean Sinne are not senses of acts which the noemata in phenomenology are - may be clarified in another manner. Of course, an act of presenting Venus as the morning star does

Page 6: [Phaenomenologica] The Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy Volume 98 || Intentionality and Noema

18

grasp Venus as the morning star. But it is not the act of presentation which, for Frege, originarily does this. It is the expression "morning star" which, through its sense, refers to Venus as the morning star. The intentional act of presenting Venus as the morning star is itself possible because the expression' 'morning star" has that sense and that reference in the first place. Likewise in judging: a sentence itself expresses a thought, whereas an act of judging consists in grasping that thought and recognising its truth value.

Now, as contrasted with this thesis, a noema, in phenomenology, is the sense of an act itself - no matter whether the act is linguistic (as in speech acts) or nonlinguistic (as in perception). It is true that mental acts, insofar as they intend such senses, are expressible in language, but for that reason it would not do to say that the meaning of the sentence expressing an act is the same as the sense of the act that is being express­ed. This thesis that the noemata are senses of acts has two important consequences to which I now want to draw attention. The first of these is:

(3) All noemata are not conceptual. The noema of an act of percep­tion is not so.

This has been challenged by some, especially by those who want to assimilate the concept of noema too strongly into the Fregean model. A correct understanding of the perceptual noema, i.e., of the concept of "the perceived exactly as it is perceived" requires that we avoid the two extremes of construing it either as the sensible percept or as the Fregean abstract, conceptual Sinn. It is not the former, for whereas the percept is a sensible particular, the perceptual noema is thematised only as a result of a reduction; it is grasped by reflection on perception, not by the perceptual act itself. In this it resembles the Fregean Sinn, but, unlike the Sinn, it is not in toto linguistically expressible. It is not itself a conceptual entity, but an entity that is implicitly conceptual, that can be raised to the level of conceptual meaning.

But the Fregean Sinn itself is not linguistic meaning. Recent commen­tators, most notably Tyler Burge,4 have noted that it is rather a cognitive content. I am in full agreement with this reading of Frege. I would only want to add that Frege's philosophy of mind has no place for a genuine notion of cognitive content. If the content is a real part of mental life, it is incurably psychological, i.e., private; if the content

4. T. Burge, "Sinning against Frege," Philosophical Review LXXXVIII (1979), pp. 398-432.

Page 7: [Phaenomenologica] The Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy Volume 98 || Intentionality and Noema

19

is to be intersubjectively available, then it becomes the timeless object extrinsic to the act. Not having the notion of a structured and inten­tional mental act, Frege's Sinn remains in an unstable poise between the concepts of cognitive content, linguistic meaning and ontological abstract entity. I am suggesting that, instead of assimilating the Hus­serlian noema to the Fregean Sinn, i.e., understanding the former in the light of the latter, it would be more profitable to assimilate the Fregean Sinn to the Husserlian noema. A Fregean reading of Husser! I reject, but a Husserlian reading of Frege is what I espouse.

The other consequence of the thesis that noemata are senses of acts may be brought out by considering an issue with which semantics, at least since Frege's time, has been concerned. Frege had recognised that different persons may attach different senses to "Aristotle," but he also insisted that these variations of sense should be avoided in a scientifical­ly perfect language. But if different speakers attach different senses to "Aristotle," one may still want to know which of those many senses really is the sense of "Aristotle" and how to single out this sense from all the many true descriptions of the philosopher. There are two re­sponses to this demand, both of which are rendered unnecessary by the thesis that noemata are senses of acts. The first of these is to say that there is a true sense of "Aristotle" and this is but the unique essence of Aristotle. The second is to say that the word" Aristotle" does not have a sense at all. The first response confuses the sense of "Aristotle" and the essence of Aristotle; the two need not coincide. Not finding a way to ascertain the true sense from among a host of variable senses, the sec­ond response denies that the name has a sense after all. My contention is that, since the sense contains the mode of presentation, what sense one attaches to the proper name depends upon how the person Aristotle is presented to one. This is part of the thesis that the signs derive their senses from intentional acts, that senses do not originally belong to the signs. Since an intentional act is also interpretive - either itself ini­tiating an interpretation or taking over an already available interpreta­tion - the sense is conferred by an interpretive act. The question, "What is the sense of' Aristotle'?" is then misconceived, as much as the view that it has no sense after all.

III. SOME INTERPRETATIONS OF NOEMA CONSIDERED

In the preceding section, I have maintained that intentional acts are those which have senses or noemata, and that these senses or noemata are originally those of acts, only derivatively of the signs (words or

Page 8: [Phaenomenologica] The Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy Volume 98 || Intentionality and Noema

20

sentences) in which these acts are expressed. As a consequence, the Fregean Sinn is given a phenomenological reading. If only Frege's philosophy of mind is enriched by a sufficiently powerful concept of in­tentionality, the Sinne could then be understood as cognitive contents.

I shall now briefly consider two recent attempts to interpret the con­cept of noema (and, therefore, the concept of intentionality): one from the perspective of semantics, and the other from the perspective of cognitive psychology. The former views the noema as a function from possible worlds to truth values; the latter as an "internal representa­tion." On the semantical account,5 the meaning function in question is given in extension, i.e., simply as a set of ordered pairs [( WI, Od, ... (Wi, Oi) ... ]; consequently, all we have is a list of what is "picked out" in each world by a noema N. We have no account of why Oi is the image under N of Wi, i.e., of why Oi is picked out. We are given nothing in virtue of which Oi is the relevant object in Wi. Cognitive psychology claims precisely to be able to give such an account by construing the noema as an "inner representation," regarded either as mental or as neural or as both. It is held that it is because of such an inner representa­tion that an act refers to its object and to none other, in the precise man­ner it happens to refer and in no other.6 This inner representation is, for one thing, a theoretical entity, posited in the theory of cognitive psychology, whereas I want the noema to be an entity that is grasped in a reflective act which thematises the act whose noema it is. Further­more, the inner representation, if it is a real neural inscription or a real mental picture, is as such nonintentional, and to juxtapose such an enti­ty between an act and its referent is hardly a gain in explanatory power. For such a state to be o/whatever the act refers to, it is necessary that it be interpreted as being its representation. In effect, we need another intentional act of interpretation, but we are dealing here not with a datum in need of interpretation (as in the case of a picture claiming to be a picture of), but with a theoretical entity which is posited precisely with the interpretation that it is a representation of so and so.

The semantic interpretation and the cognitivist interpretation have their respective merits. The semantic interpretation, even if it does not provide us with an entity that is grasped when the intentional act is being

5. Cf. J. Hintikka, The Intentions of Intentionality and Other New Models for Modalities (Boston: Reidel, 1975). For a detailed criticism of Hintikka's interpretation of "noema," see my "Intentionality and Possible Worlds: Husserl and Hintikka" (together with Hintikka's response), in: Hubert L. Dreyfus, (Ed.), Husserl, Inten­tionality, and Cognitive Science. Reprinted in this volume.

6. Dreyfus appears to suggest something like this in, among other places, his In­troduction to Husserl, Intentionality and Cognitive Science.

Page 9: [Phaenomenologica] The Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy Volume 98 || Intentionality and Noema

21

reflectively thematised, does however bring out the close relation be­tween intentionality and the modalities. But the relevant modalities are not logical but epistemological - not open, but motivated, to use a Husserlian terminology. 7 The cognitivist interpretation offers us an en­tity, but the entity, the internal representation, is only seemingly inten­sional, and so powerless to do what it is called upon to do. As contrasted with the semantic meaning function, the internal state fails to account for the reference to possible objects of possible acts (having the same sense), unless one covertly construes the (extensionally conceived) inter­nal state as a meaning, i.e., as an intensional entity.

It is at this point that we begin to see the merits of John Searle's ver­sion of the cognitivist thesis: the "internal representation" is construed by Searle as a representation of the condition of an act's own satisfaction. 8 Every intentional state, on this account, has conditions of its satisfaction, which are internal to that state. Searle also calls it the "intentional object." To have an intentional experience is also to know that the experience has those conditions of satisfaction. And yet he also says that "where the conditions of satisfaction contain actual things (objects, events, etc.) I call these the Intentional objects of the Inten­tional states." What I find puzzling here is the use made of: (a) "condi­tions of satisfaction" as internal to an intentional state; (b) "represen­tation" (or "presentations," in the case of perceptual states) of the same conditions of satisfaction, which are also internal to that inten­tional state; and (c) intentional objects are actual things which may be "contained in" those conditions of satisfaction. Of these three, actual things cannot account for intentionality, the intentionality of a state does not require that there be an actual object as its intentional object. A representation, even if it is an internal representation (neural or men­tal), is posited as a real "inscription" and cannot be the "bearer" of intentional reference any more than a picture can intentionally refer to its original except through the medium of an interpretive act. If it is an internal language, its intentionality would be on a par with the inten­tionality of any other sign, and we would therefore be required to posit its meaning. The idea of "conditions of satisfaction" is closer to the idea of "noema." The noema determines the reference; to grasp the sense is to know what sort of experiences (or objects) would satisfy/ verify/fulfil it. My hesitation, nevertheless, to say that the noema is the same as Searle's "conditions of satisfaction" is due to several reasons. In the first place, a noema may be a priori incapable of satisfaction; this

7. Cf. my "Husserl on Possibility," Husserl Studies 1 (1984), pp. 13-29. 8. "The Intentionality of Intention and Action," Inquiry XXII (1979), pp. 253 - 280.

Page 10: [Phaenomenologica] The Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy Volume 98 || Intentionality and Noema

22

is true in the case of the thought of "round square." Secondly, to say that the noema is a set of conditions that would satisfy (e.g., render a belief true) is to identify it with a set of entirely disjoined events, things or states of affairs, any of which may possibly satisfy. We would lack something that could bind them together. We appear to be back with an extensional set like that yielded by the semantic reading of meaning functions.

I conclude this section by briefly returning to the question, Why is the concept of noema introduced after all? What role does it play? In some sense, it accounts for, explains, or renders intelligible, an act's inten­tional reference to its object. If the question were, How does this object over there become my intentional object?, the noema theory would look trivial, for the theory says it is through its noema that this object becomes the intentional object of this act. The noema is, then, iden­tified through the object. But there is another, quite different question, and this is, How does this act intend that object? A causal theory fails to answer that question; for (a) the object cannot be identified as the cause of the act: (b) even if the object is a cause, it is only one of the causes, and one still would want to know why does this one among the causes function as the object; and (c) the intentional object may be non­existent, in which case being the object does not, even extensionally, coincide with being a cause. The theory of noema answers the question, How does this act intend that object and none other?, by saying that this act has a structure which determines what its intentional object is. This structure, regarded as an irreal correlate, is the noema, and it is because the act has this noema as intrinsic to it, that the act refers to an object of such and such sort.

At this point, one is tempted to make what appears to me to be a serious, but widely shared, mistake. I am referring to the view that, if the sense or noema is to determine reference, as Frege and Husser! thought it did, then the sense or noema must determine reference unique­ly. In other words, the sense, consisting as it does of a set of predicates, is a description that must be true of one and only one object. Now, I think this is too rigid an interpretation of the thesis "sense determines reference." The sense by itself always leaves room for some indeter­minacy with regard to the referent. This indeterminacy is removed by perception and by the contextual clues. Even if a description is true ex­actly of one and only one object, it does not follow that one who grasps the sense, i.e., the description, could, merely by virtue of that accom­plishment of having understood it, pick out the object. If it were so, ref­erence would have been part of the sense, and understanding (the sense) would have been equal to knowing (Le., identifying) the referent.

Page 11: [Phaenomenologica] The Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy Volume 98 || Intentionality and Noema

23

IV. DE RE INTENTIONALITY

One may want to distinguish between acts that are intentional by virtue of the noematic structures of those acts themselves, and acts which, though intentional in that sense, also refer to a real object out there as the unique individual that it is by being related to it in some appropriate manner. These latter acts possess de re intentionality; they are related to a res. An account of de re intentionality, paradigmatically ex­emplified in perceptual experiences, would then require, besides the noematic structures of the acts concerned, also real factors - contex­tual and causal - which make it possible for the act to be related to a real object. I cannot, however, follow this approach, which would amount to giving a naturalistic account of de re intentionality. What is still more important is that this concept of de re intentionality, and not merely the theory suggested, is naturalistic. It makes intentionality, when it is de re, a real relation between an act and an object out there. Because of our commitment to a transcendental concept of intentionali­ty, we need to make a fresh beginning.

If for all intentionality, then also for de re intentionalities, the real existence, or in fact any sort of existence, of the object is not essential. The object of de re intentionality may be a real thing out there (e.g., the tree I see through my window), an abstract entity such as the number 2 or a fictional object (Ulysses). It is not the existence or nonexistence of the object which is at issue, but the well-definedness and uniqueness. It would not then do, for our purpose, to construe de re intentionality as relational and de dicto as propositional. We have an over-all category of "noematic intentionality." All intentionality is determined by the noematic structure of the act. Without having to relate the act to an ob­ject, we need to look, within the noema, for some structural element or elements which are such that they succeed in making possible, a deter­minate reference to a unique intentional object in its uniqueness. To have a concept of de re intentionality, and also in order to give an ac­count of it, we do not want to step outside the noematic point of view. Upon the success of this project, would depend the adequacy of a tran­scendental theory of intentionality.

That de re beliefs require the mediation of names has been recog­nised. Names, in the strict sense, require: for Russell, knowledge by ac­quaintance; for Husserl, Vorstellung; for David Kaplan, some sort of vivid presentation. A connected thesis concerns the role of perception in making de re belief possible. 9 More recently, Roderick Chisholm has

9. Cf. T. Burge, "Belief De Re," Journal oj Philosophy LXXIV (1977), pp. 338-362.

Page 12: [Phaenomenologica] The Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy Volume 98 || Intentionality and Noema

24

emphasised the idea of epistemic intimacy. 10 In consonance with these insights, I want to emphasise that the perceptual noema, along with the horizontal structure of the noema (which is the noematic equivalent of the objective idea of context) will provide the appropriate medium for de re intentionality. Two elements are particularly important in this structure: one is the temporal horizon, and the other is the presence of an indexical element within the structure of the perceptual noema. With regard to the first, in a transcendental theory of intentionality we can­not make use of the objective time series. Although the noema is an ir­real structure, and so not itself a temporal occurrent (even if the act is one), the noema may contain within its structure a temporal value at­taching to the object of reference. The temporal horizon of the act will be represented within the noema, and so the object will be intended as having a certain temporal sense. Connected with it is the fact that a perceptual noema has an indexical component, 11 the object is presented as a "this-there-now."

Although perceptual experience provides us with the paradigmatic in­stance of de re intentionality, it is by no means the case that all de re intentionality is perceptual. In fact, when a belief is de re, it is not necessary that the belief itself should be perceptual. One may neverthe­less argue that all de re belief must be, at some point, dependent upon perceptual experience of the object of belief. But sometimes the mere name may do the job by functioning like an indexical.

Between the two extremes of perceptual de re intentionality and total­ly de dicto acts, there is a whole range of intermediate possibilities, with regard to which the distinction between dicta and res tends to get blurred.

10. R.M. Chisholm, "The Logic of Believing," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly LXI (1980), pp. 31-49.

11. lowe this suggestion to Charles Brown.