Facing up to the problem of intentionality

Abstract

Abstract We distinguish between different problems of “aboutness”: the “hard” problem of explaining the everyday phenomenon of intentionality and three less challenging “easy” sets of problems concerning the posits of folk psychology, the notions of representation invoked in the mind‐brain sciences, and the intensionality (with an “s”) of mental language. The problem of intentionality is especially hard in that, as is the case with the hard problem of phenomenal consciousness, there is no clear path to a solution using current methods. We argue that naturalistic theories of mental representation do not address the hard problem—either they are only intended to address the easy problems, or the claims they make help address the problem of intentionality only under undefended and prima facie implausible assumptions to the effect that the hard problem reduces to some combination of the easy problems. We offer a positive account of what would be required to properly face up to the problem of intentionality.