Consciousness and Intentionality of Action Essay -- Philosophy Philoso

Consciousness and Intentionality of ActionABSTRACT One much plowed issue in contemporary philosophical system is the relation between wittingness and intentionality. Philosophers debate whether consciousness and intentionality are someway connected whether we have reason to be more optimistic about an objective, scientific or third person account of intentionality than about an analogous account of consciousness. This paper is intended as a limited contribution to that debate. I shall be concerned only with the intentionality of action. Not everything which is true of intentionality of action is true of intentionality of other phenomena, such as beliefs. I shall discuss the question, What is the intentionality of action? More specifically, I shall discuss one partial answer to this question that a necessary condition of an agent performing a certain intentional action is that the agent is conscious of performing that action. This answer is fairly unpopular in contemporary philosop hy. In this paper, I shall try to say something about the ground for the rather wide-spread philosophical opposition to the answer, and I shall also outline the kind of considerations that I think are required to judge whether a wedge can or cannot be goaded between consciousness and intentionality of action. One much discussed issue in contemporary philosophy is the relation between consciousness and intentionality. Philosophers debate whether consciousness and intentionality are somehow connected (see Searle, chap. 7) whether the one or the other is the theoretically fundamental one (see Dennett) and whether we have reason to be more optimistic about an objective or scientific, or third-person account of intentionality ... ...6) The Conscious Mind In Search of a Fundamental Theory, Oxford UP.Dennett, Daniel C. (1994) Dennett, Daniel C in A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind, Samuel Guttenplan, ed., Oxford, Blackwell.Dreyfus, Hubert L. (1991) Being-in-the-World A translation on Heideggers Being and Time, Division I, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.Kripke, Saul A. (1982) Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard UP.Lycan, William G. (1996) Consciousness and Experience, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.McGinn, Colin (1996) The Character of Mind An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind, 2nd ed., Oxford UP.McGinn, Colin (1991) The Problem of Consciousness, Oxford, Blackwell.Searle, John R. (1992) The Rediscovery of the Mind, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1958) philosophical Investigations, 2nd ed, Oxford, Blackwell.