Intentionality, Representation, and Anticipation

摘要

Both Brentano and Merleau-Ponty have developed an account of intentionality, which nevertheless differ profoundly in the following respect. According to Brentano, intentionality mainly is a matter of mental presentations. This marks the beginning of phenomenology's difficult relation with the nature of the intentional reference. Merleau-Ponty, on the other hand, has situated intentionality on the level of the body, a turn which has important implications for the nature of intentionality. Intentionality no longer is primarily based on having (re)presentations, but is rooted in the dynamics of the living body. To contrast those approaches enables us to make clear in what way intentionality is studied nowadays. On the one hand, intentionality is conceived of as a matter of formal-syntactical causality in cognitive science, and in particular in classical-computational theory. On the other hand, a interactivist approach offers a more Merleau-Ponty-like point of view, in which autonomy, embodiment and interaction are stressed.