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 (the insult), although, again, this does not mean that the insult necessarily exists outside of the thinker's thoughts.
Intentionality to Maurice Merleau-Ponty differs from Husserl's concept. To Merleau-Ponty, intentionality is not first and foremost a matter of what the thinker thinks about the object, but rather a matter of the thinker's ability to perform the articulation of his or her thought about the object, thought which when articulated "moves" the thin...