ERWIN TEGTMEIER

Intentionality is not Representation

Abstract
Descartes initiated representationalism which led into idealism. It was
Franz Brentano who overcame idealism by finding an alternative to
representationalism (call it Brentano's Revolution). Brentano's Slogan
could have been: Intentionality is neither mental action, nor mental
representation. Unfortunately, his topic of intentionality was introduced
into mainstream analytical philosophy in representationalist terms ignoring
his revolution completely.

1. Representationalism and Idealism

epresentationalism has a bad reputation among contemporary

analytical philosophers. Nevertheless, all mainstream analytical
philosophers think representational, mostly without noticing it. That is due
to two circumstances: firstly, they are linguistic philosophers and language
is a representation. Secondly, four hundred years of representationalist and
in its wake idealist thinking do not vanish without trace.
The key notion of traditional representationalism is idea. Therefore,
it is also called ideaism. Some speak of the new way of ideas relating
it to Plato's old way of ideas. It was Descartes who began the new way of
ideas. Like Plato's Descartes' ideas are first of all natures of things.
Secondly, however, Descartes' ideas are always mental unlike Plato's. The
designation representationalism derives from the role attributed to ideas
of mentally representing things.
Some scholars protest that in Descartes ideas are not representatives of
things which serve as surrogates.1 Rather, ideas present us the object (in
the sense of phenomenologists) as being so and so. Thus, it is the way the
object is for us. That is just the confused concept of appearance of
idealism, the heir of representationalism. If one gets to the bottom of
appearances, it turns out that they are nothing but representations in the
mind.
It is true that Descartes takes ideas to serve as means to get at the
1 D. Perler: Reprsentation bei Descartes. Frankfurt am Main 1996

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objects. He is not an idealist. Ideas do not become the proper objects as in
idealism. But ideas and the knowledge of ideas are critical for the
knowledge of things. Descartes' famous criterion of evidence is applicable
to ideas only. Thus ideas inevitable become primary objects even in the
cognition of the non-mental and also representatives of those (more
distant) objects. The mediation view of cognition characterises
representationalism. Cognition is taken always to involve a medium, a
representation to which one has to attend. Cognition is thought to be
nothing but the representation of the object.
The main difficulty of representationalism concerns the relation
between representation and object. Descartes and his disciples consider
causation and similarity. With respect to the knowledge of physical
objects Descartes rules out similarity because he takes the mental and the
physical to be radically different. He assumes a causal transaction between
the physical object and certain semi-physical entities in the mind. But the
causal chain from object to mind seemed neither to him nor to the
Cartesians a satisfactory candidate for the basic cognitive relation. The
latter remained a mystery and that created scepticism. Scepticism is a
position concerning the realism issue, i.e., the question whether we know
the world as it is in itself independently of our cognition. This question has
to be answered on the basis of one's categorial analysis of congnition.
The empiricist analysis of Gassendi, Locke and Hume was an attempt
to avoid the realism issue and to concentrate on what is given: the ideas in
the mind. Locke is always vague on the relationship between ideas and
objects. Sometimes he identifies ideas and qualities of physical objects and
physical objects with complexes of ideas. That identification which
Berkeley and Hume adopt is Kants starting point. He claims that the
physical objects we perceive are mere appearances, i.e., ideas in the mind
produced by it and he does not shy away from the contention that that is in
accordance with common sense and from calling his view realistic
(empirical realism).
Kant pretends to be able to finally lay scepticism (which was, as we
have seen, the legacy of representationalism) to rest and prove the
existence of the external world by taking space and time as subjective, i.e.,
as forms of perceptual representation. He upholds that there is something
non-mental (the thing in itself), which he assumes to be the cause of sense
data in the mind. However, he takes it to be absolutely unknowable. Thus,
the physical objects with which we are acquainted by perception are turned
into mental objects and the thing-in-itself cannot be conceived of as

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physical in any customary sense, if only because it is unknowable.
Kant is not a representationalist any more since he does not consider
the non-mental as an object of knowledge and since he transforms the
physical objects into mental objects and thus into objects with which are
directly acquainted. Thus he holds all knowledge to be direct knowledge.
In this way, he escapes from the impasse into which the representationalist
theory of knowledge leads. And he is able to claim that a priori knowledge
though being self-knowledge of mind is knowledge about the physical
objects.
Kant dissolves the realism problem by turning physical into mental
objects and non-mental objects into unknowables. He is convinced that he
solved the problems of representationalism and overcame scepticism.
However, his solution of turning the physical into a mental object and
making knowing into a purely mental production with only a loose causal
connection to a non-mental I know not what(Locke's characterisation of
an Aristotelian substance) is absurd.
The connection between mind and physical object on which the
empiricists base their analysis is causal. They understand perception as a
causation of ideas by objects and their test of validity of an idea is to trace
it back causally to perceptual ideas (sensations). However, since we know
only the last link of the causal chain, we know nothing about that causation
and therefore have no ground for inference to the physical object. Hence,
Kant, who draws the final consequences from representationalism does not
admit the non-mental as an object of knowledge, although he sticks to it as
the first cause of perception. He grounds the validity of knowledge wholly
on the process of knowing which he takes to produce its object in the first
place.
Being primarily a practical philosopher, Kant has the stomach to
swallow such a subjectivist theory of knowledge. But a philosopher who
strives for a tenable realism has not. Kants so-called Copernican
revolution which should rather be called Ptolemeian revolution (because it
places the subject in the centre) amounts in his eyes to complete failure.
Kants theory of knowledge is clearly subjectivist (he equates objectivity
with intersubjectivity), while epistemological realism is objectivist.
Considering this opposition and the absurdity of the idealistic
transformation of the physical into a mental object, the philosopher who
strives to realism and sees that representationalism leaves mind and
physical object unconnected or leads into idealism has all reason absolutely
to avoid representationalism and to be on his guard against hidden

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representationalist premises.
2. Brentano's Revolution
In the 19th century it was Brentano who gave the movement towards
objectivity and epistemological realism, away from idealist subjectivism, a
decisive momentum. He wanted to make a new start in philosophy, a new
start from scratch, i.e., from phenomena not in the Kantian sense of mere
appearances, but in the sense in which natural scientists use the term.
First, he focuses his phenomenological research on the classification of
phenomena and he finds that there is a basic difference between psychical
and physical phenomena. After British empiricists and idealists who
dominated philosophy had blurred and dissolved that distinction, that
finding was a revolutionary step. As the essential feature of psychical
phenomena Brentano notes intentionality, i.e. the directedness to an object.
That was not new. It was new that intentionality is closely investigated.
Before all, Brentano brings out the difference between the mental act and
its object, which is also blurred by empiricism and idealism (in both views
knowing and the known are more or less fused which was made easier by
the process-product ambiguity of the term "presentation" (Vorstellung)).
However, Brentanos most important innovation is the discovery of the
intentional relation. It makes him focus on the ontology of relations.
Brentanos ontology of relations develops with respect to intentionality,
especially with respect to the circumstance that mental acts can stand in the
intentional relation to non-existent objects or, rather, that the second
relatum may be lacking. First, Brentano takes the view that genuine
relations require the existence of all their relata and that intentionality is
merely similar to a relation in contrast to relations of comparison such as
louder. Later, he arrives at the view that relations of comparisons are no
genuine relations and that intentionality is a model relation.
Against the idealists Brentano's revolution consisted in his distinction
between act and object, against representationalism it was the widening of
the range of alternatives with respect to the cognitive connection to the
non-mental. The representationalists took in to account only the whole-part
relation (in the case of the knowledge of the mental), the similarity and the
causal relation, while Brentano discovered a specific relation which holds
only between mental act and their objects.

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3. Representationalism in Mainstream Analytical Philosophy
One of the main themes of Quine's Word and Object is the rejection of
ideas and the consequences of such a rejection for epistemology. The
consequences are sceptical, as were those of the assumption of ideas. And
the reason for this similarity is clearly that Quine continues to think
representationalist. Quine's representatives are concepts instead of ideas.
He does not use the term "concept" in the traditional sense of definite and
clear ideas but means linguistic types by it.
Putnam's influential distinction between internal and metaphysical
realism also depends on a linguistic representationalism.2 It took a Spanish
physicist to make Putnam realise his representationalism.3 In his
philosophical zigzag Putnam thought later on to have arrived at a direct
realism. But his view reminds strongly of the Kantian view rather than
being realist. He wants to guard against a representation as "an interface
between ourselves and what we think about" (alias idea) and rely instead
on the activity of representation.4 This activity is not like Brentano's mental
act with the intentional relation but like Kant's spontaneous act of synthesis
or the later Husserl's act of objectification, since Putnam clearly implies
that the activity makes an intentional relation superfluous and that it
produces the cognitive connection with the object.
Putnam rarely uses the term "intentionality" but Searle made it even
the title of a book. He has the merit of introducing the subject of
intentionality into mainstream analytical philosophy, which was
courageous, indeed. Still he is as far from Brentano and did learn as little
from Brentano as Putnam. Searle prefers "mental state" to Brentano's
"mental acts" but the term "act" plays a role in Searle's analysis of
intentionality. Searle professes that in it he extended his theory of speech
acts to mind. This theory continues Austin's approach who investigated
"how to do things with words". Hence Searle's concept of acts is that of an
action or activity. Brentano contrasted mental acts to actions, especially to
the mental activity of the idealist which is taken to produce the objects. As
to the connection between mental act/state and object Searle says that the
2 cf. E. Tegtmeier: Realismus und Pragmatismus. Eine Kritik der Erkenntnistheorie
Hilary Putnams, in: V. Gadenne (ed.) Kritischer Rationalismus und Pragmatismus.
Amsterdam 1998
3 s. M. Willaschek (ed.) Realismus. Paderborn 2000, p. 129
4 s. H. Putnam: Sense, Nonsense, and the Sense: An Inquiry into the Powers of the
Human Mind. Journal of Philosophy 91 (1994) p. 505

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former represents the latter in the same sense of represent in which
speech acts represent.5 He collects what is represented with the notions of
objects and states of affairs. And he characterises them with respect to
linguistic as well as with respect to mental representation as conditions of
satisfaction. That a mental state m represents the state of affairs s or has s
as the condition of satisfaction does not imply that m acquaints with s.
Being in a mental state which represents the state of affairs s does not
imply being acquainted with s. Acquaintance with s involves knowing
whether the state of affairs holds. Not even understanding what a mental
state represents or what its conditions of satisfaction are does involve that
acquaintance. In Searle intentionality is a representation of the object by a
third entity (the content of the mental state) and not as in Brentano an
acquaintance with the object. Brentano's intentional relation between act
and object is taken to be so close, as to allow the metaphorical phrase of
the object being in the act. It is presumably because of this close
connection that Brentano denies the act has besides its object also a
content.
Searle expresses uneasiness with the terms representation and
represent and he claims that he could in principle dispense with them.6
Nevertheless, he uses them at crucial points. It seems to me that he is not
successful in his attempt to distance himself from representationalism. It is
not enough to emphasise that the contents of mental states are not pictures.
Descartes or Locke's ideas were neither. Moreover, it is revealing and
typically representationalist that Searle requires the mental state to fit or
match the world.7 We have here similarity playing the role of basic
cognitive relation between mind and object. Similarity did play that role
also in empiricist representational realism where it offered a categorial
analysis of the connection between mind and world.
It is regrettable the opportunity of introducing the subject of
intentionality into mainstream analytical philosophy as not seized also to
make Brentano's revolution known. Still worse is that mainstream
analytical philosophers tend to present Brentano, if the mention he at all, as
a representationalist.8 If Brentano knew he would turn in his grave. One
5 s. J.R.Searle: Intentionality. Cambridge 1983, p.4
6 s. Searle 1983, p.11f.
7 s. Searle 1983, p. 7, 9
8 e.g. A. Beckermann: Das Problem der Intentionalitt Naturalistische Lsung oder
metheoretische Auflsung? Ethik und Sozialwissenschaften 3 (19992) S.433f., s. also
my criticism on p.497ff.

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would like to apply the epigraph of Wittgenstein's Philosophical
Investigations taken from a play of Nestroy to the achievements of the
followers of the later Moore, of the later Wittgenstein and of Carnap: that
progress has a tendency to appear greater than it really is.9

In Tegtmeier 1998 I tried to show that Quine and Putnam with all their revolutionary
appearance presuppose the orthodoxies of the Vienna Circle.