Intentionality Bifurcated: A Lesson from Early Modern Philosophy?

Abstract

This paper examines the pressures leading two very different Early Modern philosophers, Descartes and Locke, to invoke two ways in which thought is directed at objects. According to both philosophers, I argue, the same idea can simultaneously count as "of" two different objects-in two different senses of the phrase 'idea of'. One kind of intentional directedness is invoked in answering the question What is it to think that thusand-so? The other kind is invoked in answering the question What accounts for the success of our proper methods of inquiry? For Descartes as well as Locke, the two kinds of "ofness" come apart as a result of strong rationalist commitments. However, I will suggest that even if we reject such commitments, we go wrong if we assume that a single kind of intentional directedness suffices to address both questions.

On the inseparability of reasoning and virtue: Madame de Maintenon's Maison royale de Saint‐Louis

“…We can see this activity as the basis of the meditator's Second Meditation insight into his nature. Through the meditator's decision at the end of the First Meditation to “turn my will in completely the opposite direction and deceive myself” (7:22; 2:15) about even those matters that will soon enough be perceived clearly and distinctly (that a square has four sides, and that 2 + 3 = 5), he demonstrates his freedom (Shapiro 2008), and Omri Boehm has argued that the cogito depends on this act of doubt: “[T]he absolutely clear experience of freedom achieved through doubt may be taken for the mode by which the meditator becomes aware and certain of his own existence” (Boehm 2014, 717). It is thus non‐trivial that doubting is the first thing on the list of what a thinking thing does.…”