Intentionality as Constitution

This book develops a novel theory of intentionality. It argues that intentionality is an internal essential relation of constitution between an intentional state and an object, or between such a state and a possible state of affairs as subsisting.

The author’s main claim is that intentionality is a fundamentally modal property, hence a non (scientifically) natural property in that it does not supervene, either locally or globally, on its nonmodal physical basis. This is the property, primarily for an intentional mental state, to be constituted by the entities it is about. In the case of intentionality of reference, such constituents are objects, in the sense of individuals; in the case of intentionality of content, such constituents are possible states of affairs as subsisting. Constitution is meant in a mereologically literal sense: those constituents are essential parts of the relevant states. As a result, the theory claims not only that intentionality is relational but also that it is an internal, essential relation holding between an intentional state and its object or proposition-like content.

Intentionality as Constitution will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and cognitive science.

Author Biography

Alberto Voltolini (PhD Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa 1989) is a philosopher of language and mind whose works have focused mainly on intentionality, depiction and fiction, perception, and Wittgenstein. He is currently a Professor of Philosophy of Mind at the University of Turin (Italy). He has received scholarships at the Universities of Geneva and Sussex. He has been a visiting professor at the Universities of California, Riverside (1998), Australian National University, Canberra (2007), Barcelona (2010), London (2015), Auckland (2007, 2018), and Antwerp (2019). He has been a member of the Steering Committee of the European Society for Analytic Philosophy (2002–2008), of the Board of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology (2009–2012), and of the International Society for Fiction and Fictionality Studies. He is presently President of the Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy. His publications include How Ficta Follow Fiction (2006), as well as the “Fictional Entities” and the “Fiction” entries (with F. Kroon) of the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, A Syncretistic Theory of Depiction (2015) and Down But Not Out (2022).