Intentionality

This study tries to show that how viewpoint functions in discourse. As it will be clarified, it is highly related to the intention of the speaker/writer, and as a result, the orientation (s)he adopts in the discourse. Deictic markers function as discourse markers to fix and anchor time, place, agent, and other discursive elements. In this way, the viewpoint adopted by the enunciator/utterer is determined. Different types of viewpoint, then, are introduced and exemplified. Its relation with perspective is also examined.

My aim in this paper is to show how Josiah Royce’s philosophy contains many themes that will be at the core of Husserl’s philosophical investigations. This paper is divided in two sections. The first one outlines the start point of these two philosophers, contextualizing their background and showing how they share a common purpose: put the experience at the center of their thought. For this reason, I want to analyze how they treat the concept of attention in relation to that of intentionality to argue that their philosophies are strictly anchored to the givenness of the experience. In the second one I deal with the rising of the precategorial dimension (prior to any objectivation), as a possibility of experience itself, making a parallel between the Husserlian concept of Lebenswelt and that Roycean of World of Appreciation. Through this distinction they both criticize the scientific, naturalistic and objectivistic Weltanschaung, showing how its method is founded in an intuitive and non-thematic relation with the world experience that comes ontologically before the scientific description.

The mind-body problem is one of the most fundamental and complex issues in the philosophy of mind, addressing the relationship between mental states and brain processes. John Searle, the contemporary American philosopher, has attempted to offer a distinctive response to this problem through a theory known as biological naturalism. In his view, mental phenomena such as consciousness are not only the result of biological processes in the brain, but also constitute higher-level features of those processes. By distinguishing between causal reductionism and the ontological irreducibility of consciousness, Searle seeks to establish a middle path between reductive physicalism and dualism. Key concepts in his view—including intentionality, mental causation, and emergent properties—play a central role in explaining the workings of the human mind. Nevertheless, his theory has faced significant criticism from philosophers such as Dennett, Nagel, and Chalmers, some of whom consider Searle’s biological naturalism to be a new form of property dualism. This paper analyzes the theoretical foundations and structure of biological naturalism, aiming to assess its explanatory power in addressing the mind-body problem and to clarify its relation to competing philosophical approaches.