Mental States & Intentionality

We now know that essences are fairly important.  But we have to keep going.  In keeping with the idea of this blog, being a site “for the rest of us,” I’m going to do my best to boil down these complicated topics.  Once you understand the concept of an essence, you can then apply it to mental states and intentionality.

“A mental state or mental process is a kind of condition or process which can be had only by thinking, feeling creatures.  Some examples to consider are:

• pains
• itches
• hearing yourself think
• wanting to go on vacation
• remembering that Henry VIII was an English king
• remembering your first kiss
• emotions”¹

Easy enough?  Mental states are basically all the things that go on inside your head: thoughts, beliefs, experiences, intentions.  That means when I think about the first time I drove a car, I’m creating a mental state.  Likewise, my back itches right now and me thinking about it is creating another mental state.  From here we can further break down mental states into two categories: representational and qualitative.

A representational mental state does exactly what you’d think; it represents something.  It might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s very important to grasp that a representational mental state is about something.  If it’s confusing then consider a quick example.  I believe that Wisconsin is a state in the United States of America.  My belief is about Wisconsin (and, to a lesser extent, about the USA).  There’s quite a bit more, but this will do for a basic understanding.

There are many mental states that also have a specific feeling to them.  Everyone has experienced pain before.  Although it may differ in the level and type (throbbing, dull, stabbing, etc) we all understand what it means to experience pain.  Mental states that also possess a distinct “feel” are called qualitative states.  There is a lot of debate in modern philosophy over the exact relationship between these two mental states, but that doesn’t stop us from understanding them.

Now consider “intentionality,” or, being intentional.  Being intentional in our everyday lives just means your decisions and actions.  I intentionally do this, etc.  An intentional state, however, is actually a technical expression used in philosophy to mean “representational states.”  To put it simply, intentional state=representational state.  This carries over to the idea of “intentionality,” which simply means that there are such things as representational states.This is a technical expression that just means the same thing as “representational states.” It includes, but is not limited to, things like decisions and intentions in the first sense. You may also see people talk about “intentionality.” This just means: the fact that there are such things as representational states.

We can sum it all up very easily:

Mental States: Thoughts, beliefs, experiences, intentions.  Can be representational of something, or qualitative in terms of having a unique quality associated with it.  Immaterial.

Intentionality: All mental states are inherently about something.  Knowledge is of something specific and experience is of something specific.  Immaterial.

When we looked at an essence, we discovered the core of an identity and a definition.  Essences give the foundation for a mental state; mental states are how we form thoughts and ideas.  But why does any of this matter?  Stay tuned for part 3!

¹Quotation and information from Jim Pryor‘s notes on Mental States.

Essence

I started planning this entry and realized it would turn into 10 pages.  So I’m going to split it up into a couple of entries and post them throughout the coming week.

What is an “essence” and why write about it?  In a world with every possible viewpoint, sometimes it’s useful to get past all the jargon and go right to the heart of an issue; understanding essences is how you can get past the jargon. “Essence” is one of those terms that gets thrown around in conversation without a proper understanding.

es·sence (sns)n. (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/essence)

1. The intrinsic or indispensable properties that serve to characterize or identify something.

2. The most important ingredient; the crucial element.

3. The inherent, unchanging nature of a thing or class of things 

“Essence” as we understand it was first proposed by Aristotle in his philosophical writings.  Without getting bogged down in a 100 pages of philosophy, Aristotle argued that: an essence is inherent to an individual, different species have different essences, and removing an essence destroys whatever the essence was related to.¹  Aristotle continues saying that essences of one kind cannot produces essences of a different kind (to put it simply, the essence of a human and a bird cannot combine to create a human-bird, it would still be distinct essences).  This is similar to the idea of creatures producing their own kind, as seen in Genesis.

The really important thing to remember is that essences aren’t material.  You cannot touch an essence, you cannot see an essence, but you can intrinsically understand an essence.  Reread that if it didn’t make sense. Now I’m going to add to it.  Ready?  Essences aren’t limited to just individuals or species; everything has an essence.  Experiences (again, immaterial) have intrinsic essences, making experience A objectively different from experience B.  Likewise, concepts have an essence–this is how we derive definitions for something.

Definitions assign a value to an object, an idea, etc.  Definitions are most certainly not arbitrary because without proper definitions, communication (even thought) is impossible. A chair has a different definition (both denotation and connotation) than a river.  This is because a chair has a different essence than a river. I realize this is a bit abstract, but when you take time to consider it, you’ll realize you already inherently understood this concept.  

So what’s the point of all this?  Essences are the reasons we can think.  A mental state (thoughts, beliefs, experiences, intentions, concepts) is only viable if there’s a foundation to it.  The reason you can understand a phrase like, “my favorite color is green,” is because you understand the essence of every word in that phrase.  For people who have studied a foreign language, it’s the same.  Sometimes a word has no literal translation, but its meaning, its essence, does.  The reason you can understand it is because the essence remains the same no matter what language it is expressed in.  

That’s all for part 1, keep an eye out for part 2!

 

¹Aristotle’s Metaphysics