This paper argues that intentionality is not a sui generis mark of the mental but an embodied and neurally realized phenomenon. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s account of embodied perception and the Schneider case, I first motivate a functional split between motor intention and sense of agency in experience. I then point to neuroscientific evidence indicating both overlap and network-level dissociation between these functions. If this dissociation affords superior explanatory power over non-naturalis…
Read moreThis paper argues that intentionality is not a sui generis mark of the mental but an embodied and neurally realized phenomenon. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s account of embodied perception and the Schneider case, I first motivate a functional split between motor intention and sense of agency in experience. I then point to neuroscientific evidence indicating both overlap and network-level dissociation between these functions. If this dissociation affords superior explanatory power over non-naturalistic alternatives, the Brentano mark of the mental is weakened and naturalized readings of mind are strengthened—without committing to crude reductionism. I present a numbered core argument and address key objections (correlation ≠ ontology; anti-reductionist phenomenology; plurality of intentionality types), clarifying the scope: the claim is a conditional metaphysical conclusion grounded in explanatory considerations, not an identity thesis.
