UC Irvine

The dissertation is a compilation of three papers in the philosophy of mind. The common theme running through the dissertation concerns the relationship between two components of the mind that, during the 20th–century, were normally kept distinct– the phenomenal, and the intentional. It was a common assumption during this time that one could give a proper account of intentionality without having to account for, or discuss, phenomenality. And similarly for giving an account of the phenomenal. Recently, however, there has been interest in the idea that phenomenality and intentionality are intimately related, and so these earlier assumptions may have been misguided.

Roughly, the proposed relation between phenomenality and intentionality is this: What an intentional state is about, i.e., its intentionality, is grounded in phenomenal, or qualitative, aspects of experience. This is the notion of phenomenal intentionality. In Chapter 1 I develop an account of this kind, and argue that phenomenality is the source of intentionality. Because my main test cases in this chapter are sensory, more needs to be said about how my account applies to non-sensory intentional states. In Chapter 2 I seek to expand the scope of my account by arguing that there is such a thing as cognitive phenomenology. This is the thesis that cognitive episodes, and their contents, have a proprietary phenomenal character, one not based in sense experience. By establishing this thesis I show that phenomenality grounds the intentionality of at least one kind of non-sensory state. Thus, in two central intentional domains, phenomenality plays a crucial role in grounding intentionality. Finally, in Chapter 3, I develop an account of empathy– the phenomenon by which we understand others– and apply the results of the previous two chapters to this account. The account of empathy I develop holds that empathy is a species of intentionality. What makes an experience one of empathy is that the formal intentional structure is modified in certain ways. As I show, phenomenality is an essential part of this experience. Thus, we have reason to think that phenomenality plays an important role in how we understand others.