INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, I would like to examine a realist view of the mind which I shall call intentional realism. At the heart of the version of intentional realism which I will discuss is Representationalism, i.e., the claim that the mind is primarily a representational system or that an individual's mind is a system whose job it is to deliver (or manufacture) representations of the environment for the benefit of the individual whose mind it is. Now, when we introspectively reflect upon our own human minds, we quickly discover that they are inhabited by two quite distinct sorts of states: propositional attitudes and experiences. Propositional attitudes, e.g., beliefs and desires, have what Brentano, reviving a medieval Scholastic word, called “intentionality.” Conscious experiences, sensations or qualia are paradigmatic states about which it makes sense to ask Tom Nagel's (1974) celebrated question: what is it like to have them, to enjoy them or to be in them? Qualia are so-called because there is a subjective, seemingly intrinsic, quality characteristic of states such as smelling a perfume, hearing the sound of a cello, seeing a red rose, or tasting a strawberry. This quality can only be experienced from a first person point of view or perspective. The representational claim seems true of propositional attitudes, not so obviously true of experiences.

In fact, there is a weak (almost analytic) reading of Representationalism: this is the claim that many of a mind's states – the so-called propositional attitudes – can be thought of as mental representations of (non-mental) states of affairs.