On Certainty Of Intentional Content

The content of intentional state is the way it represents the object as being by the bearer of the state, and it is always presented with the form of propositional content. Thus, it has a semantic structure, which could be judged true or false. If then, what can we make the judgment by? Or, what can we determine the content by? In fact, these two questions are the same one, because once we make a judgment about the proposition by some factors, we also determine the intentional content by these factors. Different theories have different answers to this question, this paper will consider two theories of these:tracking theory and phenomenal intentionality theory.Tracking theory aims to understand intentionality in terms of tracking or suitably co-varying with items in the environment. Correspondingly, the intentional content depends on the factor tracked by the intentional state. For the tracking theory, this paper will focus on the causal theory and teleology. The causal theory explains intentionality in terms of causal relation, while the teleology claims that we can determine the intentional relation by the realization of proper function. However, these theories always encounter the disjunction problem, the problem of indeterminacy of proper function and so on. These problems show that the tacking theory has its own defect, that is, the items tracked by intentional states are not always consistent with intentional objects. Thus, we can’t determine the intentional content in terms of external items alone.Unlike tracking theory, the phenomenal intentionality theory asserts that we can determine the intentional content in terms of the factors within mental state, specifically, by the phenomenal character. Terence Horgan and John Tienson support this claim with an argument:since consistency of phenomenal characters determines consistency of truth conditions, so the duplicate of phenomenology implies the duplicate of intentionality, thereby, they argue that certain intentional states are constitutively determined by phenomenal states. However, Andrew Bailey and Bradley Richards assert that Horgan and Tienson’s argument is unsuccessful, without consideration that one intentional content could map to two different phenomenal characters. In addition, they also give their counter-examples.To the view of this paper, the rebuttal of Bailey and Richards is problematic. Especially, for perceptual experience, their counter-examples are invalid, because of presupposition of tracking theory. This paper argues that, for duplicates of phenomenology, consistency of phenomenal characters guarantees consistency of test of perceptual experiences, thus, the things presented to two duplicates are consistent, and the intentional content of them is consistent. These content is constitutively determined by phenomenal character, that is, phenomenal intentional content, which indicates the rationality of phenomenal intentionality. In addition, this paper agrees with Bailey and Richards that non-perceptual propositional attitudes have no phenomenal intentional content. At this time, the subject can’t judge the mental state in term of phenomenal character, because the propositional content is beyond the scope presented by phenomenal character. Perceptual experiences have phenomenal intentional content while non-perceptual propositional attitudes have no phenomenal intentional content, which shows that there is a limitation to the rationality of phenomenal intentionality.Phenomenal intentional content is a kind of narrow content, the existence of this content means that the strong externalist theories of mental content are wrong. Thus, we can’t interpret all of intentional content in terms of relations of mental states and items of external environment alone. Besides, the existence of phenomenal intentional content makes the scope of "the hard problem" broader than it has often been thought to be. Usually, the hard problem is to say that why what depends on this brain process should be phenomenal consciousness seems inexplicable. Thus, if we admit the intentionality is depended on phenomenal consciousness, then the interpretation of intentionality would be hard too.