A study of mental aboutness: how beliefs, perceptions, desires and thoughts can be directed toward objects, states of affairs and possibilities beyond the mental event itself.
state→content→reference→fit→world
06intentionality lenses
05content problems
05reference failures
90Side
Mental states can be directed beyond themselves.
A belief can be about Paris, a fear about tomorrow, and a memory about an event that no longer exists. This directedness is the core problem of intentionality.
01 · State
What kind of mental state?
Belief, desire, perception, memory?
Different states relate to their contents in different ways.
02 · Content
What does the state present?
Object, proposition, possibility?
Content determines conditions under which the state is accurate, satisfied or fulfilled.
03 · Object
What is the state about?
Existing, absent, fictional?
Intentionality must explain reference even when the object is not present.
04 · Relation
How does the state connect to that object?
Causal, conceptual, historical?
Different theories explain aboutness through different relations.
05 · Accuracy
Can the state be wrong?
Misrepresentation matters.
A representation must allow both success and error to count as genuinely representational.
Content is what makes one mental state about this rather than that.
Philosophers disagree about whether content is determined internally, externally or by both.
Narrow content
Determined by what is inside the thinker.
Two internally identical thinkers would share narrow content.
Wide content
Environment partly determines meaning.
History and external relations can help fix what a thought refers to.
Conceptual
Structured through concepts.
Beliefs are often modeled as combining concepts into proposition-like content.
Nonconceptual
Content may outrun concepts.
Perception can discriminate more detail than a person can explicitly categorize.
Propositional
Can be true or false.
Beliefs and judgments often express conditions for correctness.
Objectual
Directed toward a particular thing.
Perception and emotion can be about objects without always taking full propositional form.
Reference links representation to what it represents.
The challenge is explaining how symbols or mental states pick out one thing rather than another.
Causal
Past interaction helps fix reference.
Perceptual and linguistic chains can connect a representation to its object.
Descriptive
Reference through associated properties.
A concept may pick out whatever uniquely satisfies a description.
Historical
Use inherits prior reference.
Names and concepts can preserve reference through social transmission.
Functional
Role within cognition contributes meaning.
Content can depend on how a representation interacts with inference and action.
Teleological
Function or selection history helps explain content.
A state may represent what it was selected or learned to track.
Different mental states aim at the world in different directions.
Beliefs typically aim to match reality; desires typically aim to make reality match them.
State
Direction of fit
Success condition
Belief
Mind → world
Belief matches how things are
Perception
Mind → world
Experience accurately presents its cause
Desire
World → mind
World comes to match desired state
Intention
World → mind through action
Agent brings about intended outcome
Memory
Mind → past world
Recollection appropriately tracks past event
A theory of intentionality must explain how thought can miss its target.
Error, fiction and absent objects show that aboutness cannot simply be ordinary physical contact.
False belief
Content remains meaningful when wrong.
A belief can represent a state of affairs that does not obtain.
Hallucination
Experience can represent what is absent.
Perceptual content can occur without the expected external object.
Fiction
Thought can target non-existent entities.
People can reason coherently about fictional characters without treating them as real objects.
Misidentification
Right object, wrong identity—or vice versa.
Reference and descriptive belief can come apart.
Ambiguity
One representation supports multiple targets.
Context helps determine which content is active.
Empty concept
A concept may fail to refer.
Meaning can still guide inference even without a real-world instance.
Intentionality sits at the border between mind, language and world.
No single theory is universally accepted because reference, content and error place different demands on explanation.
Phenomenological
Directedness is treated as a basic structure of consciousness.
Representational
Mental states carry content by functioning as internal representations.
Externalist
Content depends partly on relations to environment and linguistic community.
Teleosemantic
Biological or learned function helps explain what a state is supposed to represent.
Enactive
Meaning emerges through organism–environment engagement rather than detached inner symbols alone.
Psychology from an Empirical StandpointFranz Brentano · intentionality
Logical InvestigationsEdmund Husserl · content and directedness