Penultimate draft

We receive information about the world through our sensory organs. The surface of the organ receives some stimulus, and the complex mechanisms of our perceptual system produce perceptual experiences. It is a characteristic feature of these experiences that they present a world that seems to be outside our body, and to exist independently of our experiences. At least in one sense of the term "intentional", this is to say that perceptual experiences are intentional. The term has been used in different ways, and sometimes people say that a mental state or event is intentional simply if it has an object, even if this object is experience-dependent, like a sensation. I am interested in a different phenomenon: I will confine my interest in this chapter to intentionality as the apparent directedness of a mental state at something beyond itself, moreover, at something which could exist independently of being experienced. I say "apparent " directedness, because hallucinations, that is, experiences that lack an object, can also be intentional in this sense: in hallucinations too, it can seem that an experience-independent world is presented to us. I take the question of whether an experience is intentional a phenomenal question, in the sense that it deals with what appears to be presented by an experience. Some philosophers are interested in a notion of intentionality or representation that separates th