Concept of Intentionality

Intentionality for Edmund Husserl, according to Michael Hammond, Jane Howarth, and Russell Keat in their work Understanding Phenomenology, means that "consciousness is intentional or possesses intentionality." Intentionality does not mean that the observer's "conscious acts . . . are intended or deliberate acts, but that they point to, or reach out towards, objects." Intentionality is both a "fundamental characteristic of 'psychic phenomena'" and presents "the method for a descriptive transcendental-philosophical theory of consciousness" (62). However, the object which is being observed or experienced and the observer or experiencer of the object are not what is connected by intentionality. Mental phenomena to phenomenologist Husserl "contain an object intentionally within themselves" (62). In other words, mental consciousness does not exist separate from the object, but the object is a part of the mental phenomenon, rather than a part of the world outside the observer's consciousness. To Husserl, what exists is the thinker and the thought, not the thing or external object thought about. The intentionality exists in the thought or mental phenomenon, not in the object, whose reality is not taken for granted by Husserl. We determine specific intentionality in individual cases by examining the particular language which applies to the mental phenomenon being analyzed. The statement "She was angry at the insult" reveals the intentionality (anger) of the thinker toward the object

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her as having a different perspective, but a perspective on the same world (218-219). Still, it would seem that Husserl is making assumptions with respect to intersubjectivity which are not wholly consistent with the subjectivity of phenomenology. On the other hand, there is a major difference between the thinker's relationship with or perception of a tree, for example, and the thinker's relationship with or perception of another human subject or Ego. That difference is communication. The tree does not communicate with the thinker in the basic component of philosophy in general or phenomenology in particular, namely, the component of language. The other Ego can communicate to the Ego what it experiences or perceives in the world, and the Ego can then compare that communication with the Ego's own experience and perception. Husserl acknowledges that there are differences between these communications and experiences, but those differences are inevitable because of the subjectivity of experience. There are enough similarities in the communications of the subjects to provide the "implicit" conclusion that the other Ego does exist and that an intersubjectivity can be accepted as existing as a result. Still, the phenomenologist Husse

Category: Psychology - C