Necessary Intentionality: A Study in the Metaphysics of Aboutness - Hardcover

Simchen, Ori

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199608512 ISBN 13: 9780199608515

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2012

Synopsis

Some things in the world--intentional items such as words, thoughts, portraits, and passport photos--are about things, whereas other things in the world--sticks, stones, and fireflies--are not about anything. Necessary Intentionality is a study of aboutness, or intentionality, with a focus on the following question: are intentional items typically about whatever they are about as a matter of necessity, or is their aboutness, rather, a matter of mere contingency? Consider, for example, a particular name referring to a particular person, or a specific belief with respect to some particular thing that it is such and so. Is it possible for the name not to have referred to the person and for the belief not to have been about the thing? Ori Simchen defends a negative answer to such questions. That the name refers to the person is necessary for the name and that the belief is about the thing is necessary for the belief. Simchen articulates his overall position in two main stages. In the first stage he fleshes out a requisite modal metaphysical background. In the second stage he brings the modal metaphysics to bear on cognition, specifically the aboutness of cognitive states and episodes. Simchen presents a productivist approach, which takes aboutness to be determined by the conditions of production of intentional items, rather than an interpretationist approach that takes aboutness to be determined by conditions of consumption of such items.

About this title

About the Author

Ori Simchen received his PhD in 1999 from Harvard University and is now Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia.

Review

"In Necessary Intentionality, Ori Simchen crafts razor-sharp arguments for a surprising package of theses in metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. On Simchen's view, all modal facts are determined by the essences of actual particular objects, a word's being of a given type depends necessarily on what the word is about, and a thought of a given type cannot occur absent its particular object. In developing these views, Simchen rejects many bits of prevailing philosophical wisdom...Most radically, he develops a parameter-based account of cognitive states that explains much about cognition while doing entirely without mental representations or mental content. Simchen masterfully integrates these strands into a single coherent picture and in doing so provides a model of careful, substantive philosophical investigation." -- Professor Robert D. Rupert, University of Colorado at Boulder

"A sustained defense of the necessary aboutness of language and of cognitive states, based on an account of modality according to which the space of possibilities is determined by the natures of existing particular things. Simchen revisits arguments about, among other topics, actualism, essentialism, rigidity, the de re/de dicto distinction, and the distinction between narrow and wide content shedding new light on old themes. This book should be of interest to anyone working on reference, modality or cognition." -- Professor Genoveva Marti of Western University, Ontario

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0199608512
• ISBN 13: 9780199608515
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208