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The Relationship Between Conscious and Unconscious Intentionality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 December 2021

Raamy Majeed
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Abstract

The contemporary view of the relationship between conscious and unconscious intentionality consists in two claims: (i) unconscious propositional attitudes represent the world the same way conscious ones do, and (ii) both sets of attitudes represent by having determinate propositional content. Crane (2017) has challenged both claims, proposing instead that unconscious propositional attitudes differ from conscious ones in being less determinate in nature. This paper aims to evaluate Crane's proposal. In particular, I make explicit and critique certain assumptions Crane makes in support of his asymmetry, and argue for a conditional claim: if Crane is right that unconscious intentional states are (relatively) indeterminate, this suggests that conscious intentional states are indeterminate in a similar fashion as well.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 97 , Issue 2 , April 2022 , pp. 169 - 185
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Royal Institute of Philosophy.

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