Beliefs, desires, and perhaps thoughts are statements that contain propositions, mental ideas, or situations {intentionality}|. They point to something, imaginary or real, inside or outside self. Intentionality logically relates person and objects, events, and statements. People can pay attention to, track, speak about, and know about objects, events, and statements.
Intention relates represented and representer. Agents have beliefs or wants about representations.
language
Reference can happen only in languages. Reference to something else is the foundation for all languages. Different symbolic representations can use different languages.
mental states
Perhaps, all mental states and events are intentions. For example, hopes, fears, ideas, beliefs, desires, thoughts, perceptions, dreams, and hallucinations are about, or of, something else. Sentences, questions, poems, headlines, instructions, pictures, charts, films, symphonic tone poems, and computer programs are intentions.
mental states: non-intentional
Mental phenomena, such as pain and pleasure, can be only about themselves, not intentional. Conscious states can be non-representational. However, pains and itches can be about body locations, orgasms can be about body changes, and emotions and moods can be body states.
consciousness
Representations can be non-conscious. Before uttering or comprehending, sentences seemingly represent. Perhaps, they represent only after conscious understanding. Unconscious beliefs represent. Perhaps, they represent only by association with conscious beliefs. Cognitive processing uses unconscious representation. Controlling machines use representations. Lower animals and plants represent environmental properties.
Consciousness can be about representation type, for example, behavior that controls representations (Tye) (Dretske). Consciousness selects from behavior sets or ranges. However, unconscious processes control most behavior (Libet) (Goodale).
comparison to relations
Because they reference something else, beliefs and hopes differ from ordinary relations like nouns or spatial relations.
Social Sciences>Philosophy>Epistemology>Thinking>Statement>Intention
6-Philosophy-Epistemology-Thinking-Statement-Intention
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Date Modified: 2022.0224