In this paper, I describe and discuss two mental phenomena which are somewhat neglected in the philosophy of mind: focused daydreaming and mindwandering. My aim is to show that their natures are rather distinct, despite the fact that we tend to classify both as instances of daydreaming. The first difference between the two, I argue, is that, while focused daydreaming is an instance of imaginative mental agency (i.e. mental agency with the purpose to voluntarily produce certain mental representations), mind-wandering is not-though this does not mean that mindwandering cannot involve mental agency at all. This personal-level difference in agency and purposiveness has, furthermore, the consequence that instances of mindwandering do not constitute unified and self-contained segments of the stream of consciousness-in stark contrast to focused daydreams. Besides, the two kinds of mental phenomena differ in whether they possess a narrative structure, and in how we may make sense of the succession of mental episodes involved.
In his paper, The Transparency of Experience, M.G.F. Martin has put forward a wellknown -though not always equally well understood -argument for the disjunctivist, and against the intentional, approach to perceptual experiences. In this article, I intend to do four things: (i) to present the details of Martin's complex argument; (ii) to defend its soundness against orthodox intentionalism; (iii) to show how Martin's argument speaks as much in favour of experiential intentionalism as it speaks in favour of disjunctivism; and (iv) to argue that there is a related reason to prefer experiential intentionalism over Martin's version of disjunctivism.
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