The Ontology of Intentionality

Regarding methodology, it is suggested that good philosophy is not usually done by axiomatic methods, which presume that self-evidently true statements are present at the start of theorizing. Rather, it is claimed that we need to start with vague explananda, which stand out by the virtue of being interesting for philosophers from many different 'camps', and perhaps even for thinkers from other fields. The criterion of what makes a good philosophical theory should then be how many of these explananda it can make sense of in a coherent way. Thus, the truth of the theory appears at the end of the theoretical investigation, and is not present at the beginning. The great advantage of this method is that it makes philosophical theorizing an essentially positive endeavour, in which many different researchers can cooperate constructively, rather than facing unhappy stalemates in which each side appeals to different yet supposedly self-evident intuitions. These ideas are then applied to a problem from the philosophy of mind, namely how intentionality - conceived as the connection between the human mind and its environment together with the possibility of error - can best be understood. To this aim four different adequate ontologies of intentionality are introduced. After then taking into consideration two additional data from the philosophy of mind - phenomenal experience and subjectivity - it is argued that Whitehead's ontology of experience is the 'best' ontology for the philosophy of mind, because it can offer the most adequate and most coherent explanation. von Andrae, Benjamin