Intentionality

By Crane, Tim

Intentionality is the mind’s capacity to direct itself on things. Mental states like thoughts, beliefs, desires, hopes (and others) exhibit intentionality in the sense that they are always ...

Intentionality

Intentionality is the mind’s capacity to direct itself on things. Mental states like thoughts, beliefs, desires, hopes (and others) exhibit intentionality in the sense that they are always ...

Collective intentionality

By Tollefsen, Deborah; Friedlaender, Christina

Intentionality refers to the capacity of mental states to be about or directed toward some object or state of affairs. Collective intentionality refers to a growing area ...

Intentionality, phenomenological perspectives

By Drummond, John

Intentionality – the directedness of mental experiences to an object – is one of the main themes of phenomenology. Franz Brentano revived the medieval doctrine of intentionality, but ...

Emotion

By Richardson, Louise

As befits the variety of roles that emotion plays in our lives, emotion is a topic of consideration in a variety of areas of philosophy and this is ...

Mental causation

By Loewer, Barry

Both folk and scientific psychology assume that mental events and properties participate in causal relations. However, considerations involving the causal completeness of physics and the apparent non-reducibility of ...

Imagination

By O'Leary-Hawthorne, J.

‘Imagination’ and ‘imagine’ enjoy a family of meanings, only some of which imply the use of mental imagery. If I ask you to imagine a red flower, I ...

Action

By Hornsby, Jennifer

Philosophical study of human action owes its importance to concerns of two sorts. There are concerns addressed in metaphysics and philosophy of mind about the status of reasoning ...

Artistic interpretation

Interpretation aims to advance understanding by providing explanations of various kinds. In art, it should aim to maximize our understanding and appreciation of a work, and enable us ...

Searle, John (1932–)

By Lepore, Ernie

John Searle was a pupil of J.L. Austin at Oxford in the 1950s. He is the Mills Professor of Mind and Language at the University of California, Berkeley, ...

Brentano, Franz Clemens (1838–1917)

By Textor, Mark

Franz Brentano (1838–1917) is one of the most influential nineteenth-century German philosophers. Brentano’s best-known work, Psychologie vom Empirischen Standpunkt (1874), offered a new way to think about ...

Meinong, Alexius (1853–1920)

By Simons, Peter

Meinong was an Austrian philosopher and psychologist who taught at the University of Graz. He contributed substantially to psychology, epistemology, value theory, ethics and probability theory, but is ...

Searle, John (1932–)

John Rogers Searle (born July 31, 1932) is the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. This analytic philosopher has made major contributions to the ...

Emotions, nature of

By Solomon, Robert C.

What is an emotion? This basic question was posed by William James in 1884, and it is still the focus for a number of important arguments in the ...

Husserl, Edmund (1859–1938)

By Follesdal, Dagfinn

Through his creation of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl was one of the most influential philosophers of our century. He was decisive for most of contemporary continental philosophy, and he ...

Brentano, Franz Clemens (1838–1917)

By Chisholm, Roderick M.; Simons, Peter

Brentano was a philosopher and psychologist who taught at the Universities of Würzburg and Vienna. He made significant contributions to almost every branch of philosophy, notably psychology and ...

Action

Philosophical study of human action owes its importance to concerns of two sorts. There are concerns addressed in metaphysics and philosophy of mind about the status of reasoning ...

Intensionality and hyperintensionality

By Nolan, Daniel

Roughly speaking, the extension of an expression is what it picks out in our world: an object for a name, a set of objects for a predicate, and ...

Physicalism

By Melnyk, Andrew

Physicalism is a view about the relationship between people’s mental properties and their physical properties. It claims that people’s mental properties are nothing over and above – nothing ...

Materialism in the philosophy of mind

By Robinson, Howard

Materialism – which, for almost all purposes, is the same as physicalism – is the theory that everything that exists is material. Natural science shows that most things ...

Artistic interpretation

By Goldman, Alan H.

Interpretation aims to advance understanding by providing explanations of various kinds. In art, it should aim to maximize our understanding and appreciation of a work, and enable us ...

Being

By Okrent, Mark

Although ‘being’ has frequently been treated as a name for a property or special sort of entity, it is generally recognized that it is neither. Therefore, questions concerning ...

Intersubjectivity

By Spaulding, Shannon

Intersubjectivity is the shared or mutual understanding among agents. Edmond Husserl first developed the concept of intersubjectivity as a critique of René Descartes’ problem of other minds. Husserl ...

Self-deception

By Mele, Alfred R.

Philosophical work on self-deception revolves around a trio of questions. What is self-deception? Is self-deception possible? How are cases of self-deception to be explained? The extent to which ...

Self-deception

Philosophical work on self-deception revolves around a trio of questions. What is self-deception? Is self-deception possible? How are instances of self-deception to be explained? The extent to which ...