Assaf Weksler

Intentionalism Upgraded

One fundamental idea we find in Brentano’s „Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint“ (1874) is that differences among mental states consist either in differences in (intentional) content or in differences in psychological mode. This idea is reflected in the contemporary view of intentionalism (sometimes called “representationalism”), according to which the phenomenal character of a given mental state is determined by its content plus its psychological mode. In this paper, I suggest and motivate an upgraded intentionalist view, which I call „dispositional intentionalism“, according to which the phenomenal character of a given mental state is determined by its content plus its psychological mode plus its dispositions to react to other experiences (typed by their content and psychological mode). I motivate and elucidate my suggested view by revisiting a famous challenge to intentionalism presented in Peacocke’s „Sense and Content“ (1983).