Performative intentionality: On performativity of thought and language in Kant and Wittgenstein

The problem of intentionality is usually treated in a way that falls short of circumscribing its full spectrum. Theories of intentionality often do not go beyond the intentions of the thinker or speaker on the one hand or the intentional object or object intended on the other. A sound theory of intentionality must find the right kind of connection between mind or language and the thing thought or spoken about. In my dissertation I make the claim that there is no gap between mind or language and the things spoken or thought about in the first place, and that we therefore need a radically new take on intentionality, one that explains how in speaking or thinking thought and thing are always already connected. In order to prepare the ground for such an account I present the working together of receptivity and spontaneity in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and the way the proposition's form makes its structure possible in Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. I reveal these moments in Kant and Wittgenstein's work as forerunners to theories of use or performativity that will make possible a new theory of intentionality that I call performative. The basic thesis of the dissertation is that the connection between thought or language and what it is about is made in the use or performativity of thought and language. However, Kant and Wittgenstein give theoretical accounts in which the relationship of thought or language to that which it is about is spelled out and thus produce metaphysics: transcendental illusions in Kant and propositions that are nonsensical in Wittgenstein. Something important must nevertheless be gleaned from Kant's and Wittgenstein's metaphysical attempts, which is that the fact that something is thought or that language is used offers us an explanation of how our thought and language can be about things. This I call Performative Intentionality.