Intentionality and Its Importance

The author offering a general sense of intentionality asks about its importance and answering this question refers to egocentric or the Cartesian predicament with which the philosophy was involved in the previous centuries. In the Cartesian, and Lockean tradition, When we are conscious, we are primarily aware of ourselves or our own ideas. In these traditions Consciousness is taken to be like a bubble or an enclosed cabinet and our awareness is directed toward impressions and concepts in this enclosed space, not directly toward the things "outside. "Our consciousness, first and foremost, is not "of "anything at all. Rather, we are caught in what has been called an "egocentric predicament. " The author then referring to Samuel Beckett's novel Murphy tries to explain the egocentric predicament more explicitly and says that we know instinctively that we are not trapped in our own subjectivity and emphasis that one of phenomenology's greatest contributions to have broken out of the egocentric predicament, to have checkmated the Cartesian doctrine. Phenomenology shows that the mind is a public thing, that it acts and manifests itself out in the open, not just inside its own confines. Everything is outside. Things can exist in different ways. The way things appear is part of the being of things; things appear as they are, and they are as they appear. Things do not just exist; they also manifest themselves as what they are.