Consciousness, and Intentionality

All references indicate a problem of semantics with the word "intentionality", but consciousness must be consciousness of something. There are two stages of "intentionality": that which occurs at birth, and that which comes after consciousness of being conscious.
 

"But here [in the semantics] the difficulty lies partly in the fact that the relevant use of cognate terms is simply not that found in common speech (as when we speak of doing something ‘intentionally’)." http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consci…

This problem in semantics is better explained this way: "Every intentional state is mental, but not every conscious mental state is intentional. For example, one may have feelings of anxiety that do not have any intentional content. http://science.jrank.org/pages/9796/Inte…

"Philosopher Franz Brentano has suggested intentionality or aboutness (that consciousness is about something). However, within the philosophy of mind there is no consensus on whether intentionality is a requirement for consciousness."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousne…

That "consciousness is about something" can be explained if you consider that any 'intentionality' (of any semantic persuasion) absolutely requires consciousness---after we become conscious of it:

"Concepts and, therefore, language are primarily a tool of cognition—not of communication, as is usually assumed. Communication is merely the consequence, not the cause nor the primary purpose of concept-formation—a crucial consequence, of invaluable importance to men, but still only a consequence. Cognition precedes communication............."
Ayn Rand  http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/langua…

Cognition precedes intentionality, because without consciousness one cannot have any intentions, no matter which semantic definition you use. 

 The question seems to be this:
Does some 'intention' of mind cause consciousness? 

But it can only be answered by acknowledging that the brain is hard-wired at birth to 'intentionally' seek objects of cognition, just as the lungs are hard-wired to seek oxygen and the liver is hard-wired to strain the blood stream.

But there is the matter of retaining intentionality after one become conscious of being conscious. Drugs and alcohol are only two of the means people use to try to eliminate their own intentionality.

But it still comes down to which semantic definition you use. "...within the philosophy of mind there is no consensus on whether intentionality is a requirement for consciousness." I think we can see that at birth there can be no intention that requires a reasoned purpose for it, but only one that is hard-wired. Because "Concepts and, therefore, language are primarily a tool of cognition—", it is at that point that it would seem we can choose to maintain our individual, purposeful "intentionality" or let it go.

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How Do Our Eyes Know What's In Front of Us?

This is a common enough type of question for people who know little or nothing of the 'simple level' cognitive mechanics of the mind, the kind that might be called in college "Cognition 101". The eyes don't "know" anything; but lets use this question as a metaphor.

Our eyes don't know until our mind figures it out. Our mind doesn't figure it out until it has enough prior examples in the memory from which to make inferences and draw conclusions. The mind doesn't have any prior (a priori) examples at birth.

"As far as can be ascertained, an infant’s sensory experience is an undifferentiated chaos. Discriminated awareness begins on the level of percepts.

"A percept is a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism. It is in the form of percepts that man grasps the evidence of his senses and apprehends reality. When we speak of “direct perception” or “direct awareness,” we mean the perceptual level." http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/percep…

We must go from that state of undifferentiated chaos, to a mental state whereby we can begin to makes sense of the world. We can only do that by using the hard-wired system of the brain that is like an empty thumb drive--empty except for the operating software called "logic"; a thumb drive which gets filled by life's experiences--like seeing and touching a tree for the first time. You don't know what it is. You parents or a sibling or someone tells you.

("Logic" has two connotations. The one we think of first and most often is that of an induction, deduction, argument, etc., that demonstrates a thought that is in accord with reason; in other words, it appears rational, whether or not we detect a mistake in it, such as a fallacy. The second connotation is the processes of the mind by which thought would be impossible without, like a car without an engine.

(The second form of logic is built in to our brains. If it was not, then Aristotle could not have deduced that there are exactly 256 forms of categorical syllogism, no more no less, that the mind has at its disposal. These 256 are identical in every culture and language on earth. But they are devoid of content, i.e., of metaphysical measurement, until we gain experience from which to form percepts using that system of logic.)

Just as your lungs know how to breath, and your stomach knows how to digest, your mind knows how to perform the functions of logic. But an empty stomach can't digest; and an empty mind can't make inductions.

Until your mind knows whatever basic percepts it requires for survival in its specific environment, your eyes "know" nothing that is front of you--neither things of empirical content, nor the things of conceptual content that you can "see" even with your eyes closed.

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Human Cognition

The question: Are the cognitive capabilities of all organisms(including humans)limited by their biology? If yes, does it also imply that sciences ( which are made of the results of human cognition) are cognizant of only those aspects of existence which fall with in the spectrum of their cognitive faculties, rathar than of all aspects of existence?

Answer: Man has the faculty of reason, which is not fully developed yet in our nearest cousin, the chimp. Evolutionary and cognitive sciences tell us the chimp is about 400,000 years behind us in that category, (though it does deserve to be removed from the genus Pan and placed in the genus Homo).

Our reason is, or at least can be, continual. In other words, where "Brutes abstract not", [Hume] humans continually abstract. It doesn't mean they always use their faculty of reason, but they are capable of continuously doing so if they have the will and the discipline. A chimp moves unwillingly in and out of states of reason.

Our ability to remain continually rational (thought not always right) means that what Kant called "Noumena" and Plato called "Forms" are no longer barriers. No such things exist any longer--they never did--, because we know we have the means to discover tomorrow what we don't know today, if we stay the course of reason.

This does not mean we are not limited by our biology. We are not omniscient, nor can we ever be. We must, as Aristotle said, "acquire knowledge". But the things that Plato would have said were Forms, and which Kant would have said were Noumena, have since been proved to be phenomena. Reasons task is to discover the nature of the phenomena, and that is an ongoing, never-ending task precisely because of the limitations of our biology, limitations which reason itself overcomes with time.

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What is Reality? Using Cognitive Surgery

Q: How does everyone else around me know that this world is real? I don't have a clue, all I see is images. But everyone in the streets knows that this world is real. What makes them know more than me?

The existential angst demonstrated in this real question I answered in another forum is common and becoming more common every day. The belief that existence exists because our consciousness creates existence takes two forms:

• the primacy of consciousness, which is, "An argument as to why the ultimate nature of reality is mental not material; http://www.peterrussell.com/SP/PrimConsc.php;
• and the primacy of perception, which is the "problematic of human subjectivity in its relationship to the body and to its world." http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/eps/PES-Yearbook/1998/albano.html
  
  

A:Those "images" you see are called "cognoscendi." Those are objects of cognition, according to multiple dictionaries of philosophy.

If you have objects of cognition, you have cognition. Why do you think they are merely images? If you mean "images" as visual sensations of things which may not be what they appear to be, you are not alone in your estimation of them. But whether they are what they appear to be, the fact that they are images of something means that something exists that is more than just the image you perceive.

Kant had this problem, and solved it by inventing what he named "noumena." Noumena (plural of noumenon), Kant thought, are the "real" reality behind the images. But why should there be something behind the curtain?

You can't have cognition of things that don't exist unless you are mentally ill, and Kant knew this, so we are not discussing mental illness. We are discussing how people evaluate the things they perceive.

You may wrongly identify them once in a while. Someone who hears voices or "sees things" is identifying the objects of his cognition wrongly. You might also mistake one thing for another. We've all done this.

Otherwise, if you have cognition, it is cognition of real objects, meaning the objects exist, that the "image" is an image of "something". As to whether or not the images are the "real reality," that is a matter of metaphysics, and you are quite free to believe the metaphysic of your choice. You can believe the metaphysics that leave you feeling insecure and fearful, and as if you know nothing, as you have suggested that you feel.

Or you can accept the metaphysics that allow you to feel that you do indeed have the faculty of knowledge, that knowledge is knowable, and that you are a person of capability who is walking through a real world.

Why should the "images" of your perception be something other than what you identify it to be? Why do you fear that there is something "behind" what you perceive? Science will break down the physics of every object in existence if man has enough time in the universe to do so. Every time physics reveals something previously unknown about any object, it is like peeling the layers of an onion.

Will you be satisfied that things are what you perceive them to be when physics finally gets to the inside layer? No, because there is no "inside layer." The more we know about anything, the more there is to discover. Every answer creates more questions. That is the nature of man's mind.

It is the nature of man's mind and not the nature of the universe, because it is man's nature to discover. There ought to be nothing to fear in the discovery that the wizard behind the curtain is merely a man. That is the purpose in the doctrine of naturalism---to prove that all things are natural, and not as Kant would have us believe, unknowable. Noumena are absolutely unknowable, and your fear is that you cannot know what "everyone in the streets" seems to know.

You already know what "everyone in the streets" knows, and that is the world is something to be known, not something that is unknowable. But you must accept that the "images" are merely man's means of dealing with the world, and that what science ultimately shows us about the inside layers of the onion do not change the fact that a table is a table, and that a rose by any other name is still a rose.

We all, everyone of us, is constantly doing "cognitive surgery" on reality; in other words, each of us is constantly re-evaluation the things we think we know--when it is appropriate to re-evaluate them. But you cannot re-evaluate what you fail to accept in the first place because you will never accept any re-evaluation. You will still consider your perceptions and your thoughts about them to be about "images" instead of about the reality of acceptance.

You can remain in existential angst, unaccepting of the metaphysics that says your mind is capable and reliable; or you breath a sigh of relief in the knowledge that the only difference between you and the average Joe is that Joe knows the world changes, that he can accept change, and that for now, the images he sees are the images that make the world go 'round.

The choice is yours.

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