The extended mind argument against phenomenal intentionality

This paper offers a novel argument against the phenomenal intentionality thesis (or PIT for short). The argument, which I'll call the extended mind argument against phenomenal intentionality, is centered around two claims: the first asserts that some source intentional states extend into the environment, while the second maintains that no conscious states extend into the environment. If these two claims are correct, then PIT is false, for PIT implies that the extension of source intentionality is predicated upon the extension of phenomenal consciousness. The argument is important because it undermines an increasingly prominent account of the nature of intentionality. PIT has entered the philosophical mainstream and is now a serious contender to naturalistic views of intentionality like the tracking theory and the functional role theory (Loar 1987, 2003; Searle 1990; Strawson 1994; Horgan and Tienson 2002; Pitt 2004; Farkas 2008; Kriegel 2013; Montague 2016; Bordini 2017; Forrest 2017; Mendelovici 2018). The extended mind argument against PIT challenges the popular sentiment that consciousness grounds intentionality.

Consciousness Meets Lewisian Interpretation Theory

In “Radical Interpretation” (1974), David Lewis asked: by what constraints, and to what extent, do the non-intentional, physical facts about Karl determine the intentional facts about him? There are two popular approaches: the reductive externalist program and the phenomenal intentionality program. I argue against both approaches. I will agree with friends of phenomenal intentionality that reductive externalists neglect the role of our internally determined conscious experiences in grounding intentionality, but I will fault them for not adequately explaining intentionality. They cannot just say “conscious experience explains it” and leave it at that. However, I will sketch an alternative multistage account incorporating ideas from both camps. In particular, by appealing to Lewisian ideas, we can explain how Karl’s conscious experiences help to ground the contents of his other mental states.

Consciousness and Intentionality

Philosophers traditionally recognize two key features of mental states: intentionality and phenomenal consciousness. To a first approximation, intentionality is the ‘aboutness’ of mental states, and phenomenal consciousness is the felt, experiential, qualitative, or ‘what it’s like’ aspect of mental states. In the past few decades, these features have been widely assumed to be distinct and independent. But several philosophers have recently challenged this assumption, arguing that intentionality and consciousness are importantly related. This chapter overviews the key views on the relationship between consciousness and intentionality and describes our favored view, which is a version of the phenomenal intentionality theory, the view that the most fundamental kind of intentionality arises from phenomenal consciousness.