1 I am grateful to Christine Tappolet for this piece of “Haitian” wisdom.
2 Except when explicitly indicated, I will be using the term “judgement” as a generic term covering any intentional state, act, or attitude which can be described as true or false, whether or not it is linguistic in nature.
3 Or, in Dummettian terminology, for each “region” or “area” of discourse.
4 Following Carnap (1937).
5 More accurately, strong F-realism claims that for every p such that p only if various conditions are satisfied, whether it is the case that p is in-dependent of ourselves, and weak F-realism, that for some p such that p only if various conditions are satisfied, whether it is the case that p is in-dependent of ourselves.
6 Which is not to say that there can be no realism about judgements or terms. Actually, this is one aspect of the problem of intentional realism, which will be the main concern of this paper.
7 See, e.g., Loux (2002: 254–5) and Miller (2002: 3).
8 I said above that judgements about intentional phenomena constituted what might be called “intentional discourse.” Thus understood, inten-tional discourse certainly includes, but is not restricted to, attributions of
intentional states, and the form of intentional realism expressed in the text would seem to be incomplete. However, there is a sense in which attributions of intentional states are basic to intentional discourse, for it would seem that the truth-value of any judgement “about” intentional phenomena will depend at least in part on that of some atttributions of intentional states. Taking now attributions of intentional states as consti-tuting “basic intentional discourse,” it will appear that a realist conception of intentional discourse (in the wide sense) should entail a realist concep-tion of basic intenconcep-tional discourse, though not conversely. It follows that an irrealist conception of basic intentional discourse is sufficient for an irrealist conception of intentional discourse as a whole. Since I am mainly interested in defending intentional irrealism and attacking intentional realism, it seems apt to concentrate on attacking the weakest forms of realism and defending the strongest forms of irrealism. Furthermore, I take it that no one would seriously want to endorse a realist conception of intentional discourse as a whole (i.e., when it is construed as including all judgements “about” any intentional state or attitude). For this would require that every judgement to the effect that a certain intentional state possesses some property P refers to something independent of “ourselves,”
which in turn requires that something’s being P be independent of “our-selves.” The trouble is that (unless one is a global realist) some such prop-erties will belong to areas of discourse about which one will not want to be an realist. This explains why I think intentional realism/irrealism is best construed as pertaining primarily (if not exclusively) to the status of basic intentional discourse. I will accordingly restrict myself to this part of in-tentional discourse.
9 And as will shortly be made clear, it remains problematic even in this case.
10 The term “ontological dependence” is more fit to the “thing” language in which most of the foregoing remarks are put; for it denotes a relation between the existence of something and the existence of some other thing. But the relation I have in mind has wider scope and should rather be seen as a relation between propositions (or states of affairs). The claim that “X depends on Y” may be read either as the claim that the existence of X depends on the existence of Y (when X and Y are taken as objects) or as the claim that X’s obtaining/being true depends on Y’s obtaining/being true (when X and Y are taken as states of affairs or propositions). What is distinctive of the traditional realist debates is that the reference point is taken to be either something like “ourselves” or “our minds,” or (in the
“fact” language) our possessing certain “mental” features. Some discussion of the restricted notion of ontological dependence can be found in Lowe (1994) and Fine (1995).
11 I’m unable to say, in general, on what condition it would be true that X would not exist/obtain if Y didn’t exist/obtain, but I take it as trivially true that Y would not exist/obtain if Y didn’t exist/obtain. One could be under the impression that no matter which Y is chosen as the reference point, it would be correct to say that, in the corresponding perspective, it is some-thing the existence/obtaining of which doesn’t depend on that of anysome-thing else, with the result that, far from being conceived in an irrealist way, the reference point would actually be posited as something which is somehow
“more real” than anything else. But one must be careful here; it is not the claim that something depends on something else which is “perspectival.”
It is the act of taking something as the reference point which creates the perspective, and the fact that something Y is taken as the reference point doesn’t by any means imply that its existence/obtaining doesn’t depend on that of anything else.
12 More accurately, they are intentional acts which I have the capacity to perform, and correspond to thoughts and beliefs I have the capacity to have. But for the purpose of this paper, and for the sake of simplicity, I intend the phrase “intentional state” to cover all kinds of intentionally contentful acts, states or attitudes.
13 This is not to say that the other interpretation doesn’t make sense. It’s only that it yields weaker forms of intentional realism, which an inten-tional irrealist may not want to challenge. For even an inteninten-tional irrealist may want to grant, for example, that Paul may believe that the sky is blue even when she is not actually attributing this belief to him.
14 Recall that we are here concerned with basic intentional discourse.
15 Trivial as it may be, this fact will play an important role below in help-ing us to reach a more satisfyhelp-ing understandhelp-ing of what intentional realism really ought to be.
16 Laurier (2001).
17 That much arguably follows from Evans’ well known Generality Con-straint. See Evans (1982: 104).
18 Miller (2002) is a very clear example.
19 One can also deny that Y itself exists. But it is interesting to note that this doesn’t necessarily yield an irrealist thesis. If there is no Y, then if the relevant judgements refer to something, this something can only be inde-pendent of Y. To get an irrealist thesis by denying the existence of Y, one