2. Mental Representation. To the classic assumption that beliefs and desires underlie and explain human behavior, Descartes adds that in order for us to perceive, act, and, in general, relate to objects, there must be some content in our minds–some internal representation–that enables us to direct our minds toward each object. This “intentional content” of consciousness has been investigated in the first half of this century by Husserl1 and more recently by John Searle.2
Heidegger questions the view that experience is always and most basically a relation between a self-contained subject with mental content (the inner) and an independent object (the outer). Heidegger does not deny that we sometimes experience ourselves as conscious subjects relating to objects by way of intentional states such as desires, beliefs, perceptions, intentions, etc., but he thinks of this as a derivative and intermittent condition that presupposes a more fundamental way of being-in-the-world that cannot be understood in subject/object terms.
Cognitivism, or the information-processing model of the mind, is the latest and strongest version of the mental-representation idea. It introduces the idea of formal representations and thus seeks to explain human activity in terms of a complex combination of logically independent symbols representing elements, attributes, or primitives in the world. This approach underlies decision analysis, transformational grammar, functional anthropology, and cognitive psychology, as well as the belief in the possibility of programming digital computers to exhibit intelligence. Heidegger’s view on the nonrepresentable and nonformalizable nature of being-in-the-world doubly calls into question this computer model of the mind.
Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy ( The Hague: Nijhoff, 1982). ↩
John Searle, Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). For a comparison of Husserl’s and Searle’s account of intentionality, see Hubert L. Dreyfus, ed., Husserl, Intentionality, and Cognitive Science ( Cambridge: Bradford Books/MIT Press, 1982). ↩