Intentionalism, Cognition, and Representation
Intentionalism, Cognition, and Representation
This chapter continues consideration of reductive intentionalism without embracing the doctrine, framing it in the context of cognitive science. Cognition, including perception, is representation. An agent’s cognitive, perhaps perceptual, state is a relation binding the agent to a proposition by means of her mental representation. Intentionalism would explicate the phenomenal character of a perceiver's experience in terms of the content of her prevailing perceptual representation. While minimal intentionalism maintains that the phenomenal character of the perceiver's experience merely supervenes on her representation's content, maximal intentionalism would reduce character to content. For maximal intentionalism maintains that phenomenal character is simply what introspection finds. Yet, according to maximal intentionalism, introspection, when tuned to conscious perception, detects only the content of experience. Hence, the maximalist identifies phenomenal character with the content carried by perceptual representation.
Keywords: Keywords: cognition, cognitive science, content, intentionalism, perception, phenomenal character, proposition, reduction, representation, supervenience
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