Original intentionality is the original directedness of consciousness toward an object, intrinsically grounded in the bearer of the act. It is not conferred by another consciousness but arises from the act of a spiritual Substance itself. John Searle, in Intentionality (1983), set this determination against the derived intentionality of texts, maps, and computer programs: only a living being with phenomenal consciousness has original intentionality — the meaning of a map, by contrast, is parasitic, depending on the consciousness of the reader.
In substance-ontological terms, original intentionality is the faculty of a spiritual substance that is actualised in the act of knowing the true. Thomas Aquinas describes it as the reception of the object’s form through the species intelligibilis: the form that exists naturally in the horse exists intentionally in the mind of the knower. This reception of the form without its matter is the essence of original intentionality — it is not causal-mechanical but formal-receptive.
Phenomenologically, it appears as the act-structure of an I-pole that performs its act as its own. Husserl and Edith Stein unfolded this as the correlation of noesis (act-structure) and noema (intentional content). The Person is a person precisely in that it itself bears its intentional act and does not merely execute it.
Original intentionality is the necessary condition for capacity for truth, responsibility, and Personhood. Whoever performs a truth-apt act — passes a judgement, takes up an assertion as his own — must himself be directed toward the true. This is precisely what is lacking in a syntactic engine that strings words together without meaning them.
The distinction from derived intentionality is not gradual but categorial. Daniel Dennett’s symmetry thesis — that both are equally derivative — is rejected here: it confuses the genesis of explanation (evolutionary or programmatic) with ontological status. Agere sequitur esse — action follows being, not the reverse.
Ontological classification: Broader concept: Intentionality; mutually exclusive with Derived Intentionality.
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Searle, John R. (1983): Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Searle, John R. (1980): “Minds, Brains, and Programs”. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3(3), pp. 417–457.
- Stein, Edith: Finite and Eternal Being: An Attempt at an Ascent to the Meaning of Being, transl. Kurt F. Reinhardt. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2002.
- Aquinas, Thomas: Summa Theologiae I, qq. 79, 84–85.
See also
- Intentionality
- Derived Intentionality
- Esse intentionale
- Substance-Ontological Conception of Intelligence
- Phenomenological Conception of Intelligence
- Truth-Apt Act
- Personhood
- Agere sequitur esse
- John Searle
- Edmund Husserl
- Edith Stein
- Thomas Aquinas
Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.