Languages of Intentionality: A Dialogue Between Two Traditions on Consciousness

Intentionality - the
relationship between conscious states and their objects - is one of the most
discussed topics in contemporary debates in philosophy of mind, cognitive
neuroscience and the study of consciousness. Long a foundational concept in
Phenomenology, it has also received considerable coverage in the writings of
analytic philosophers. This book is the first study to offer an impartial,
well-informed assessment of the two traditions' approaches through an in-depth
investigation of the principal thinkers' ideas, so that their positions emerge
side-by-side, converging and diverging on certain shared themes.

Beginning with a historical discussion of the
development of the term in the work of Continental thinkers in the 19th
and early 20th centuries, the book considers the work
of Brentano and Husserl and subsequent existentialist critiques. From
there, it explores how empirical-analytic philosophers took up the topic, drawn
as they were to materialist and computer models of the mind. Finally MacDonald presents
a new 'hybrid' account of intentionality that will be a crucial work for
scholars working on consciousness and the mind.

Paul
S. MacDonald is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Murdoch University,
Australia. He is the author of Descartes
and Husserl (SUNY Press, 2000), History
of the Concept of Mind (Ashgate, vol.1, 2003; vol. 2, 2006), and the editor
of The Existentialist Reader
(Routledge, 2001).