André Leclerc

Discuto aqui, principalmente, três pontos do artigo-alvo de Fisette, a saber: 1) É verdade que a consciência é tão fundamental - ou mesmo mais fundamental – que a intencionalidade na filosofia da mente de Brentano? Tento mostrar que a intencionalidade vem primeiro e elucida o papel da consciência no trabalho de Brentano de 1874; 2) questiono a idéia de auto-consciência como algo intrínseco ao agente mental e irredutível à intencionalidade; 3) finalmente, é possível ler Brentano como um intencionalista? Acredito que sim, mesmo que muitos intencionalistas hoje não aceitariam inteiramente a concepção de mente de Brentano.

In most countries of Latin America, there are philosophers working in the philosophy of mind. Interesting contributions has been made to all the important themes of recent Philosophy of mind in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, and Columbia. There are works on Externalism, Naturalism, Enactivism, Extended Mind, Physicalism, Mental Causation, Intentionality, Consciousness and the phenomenal mind, Action Theory, Philosophy of Information, Ecological Psychology, Philosophy of Perception, of Emotion, of Memory, etc. There are many organized research groups working on the theory of mind and cognitive sciences, and regular conferences on these subjects. It will be hard to consider all the contributions in a short paper. My aim is to highlight the main contributions and to emphasize the relevance of the current research in that domain as part of the analytic movement in Latin America.

I first present a conception of the relata involved in the dialogic relation. I and thou are persons endowed with a first-person perspective and concepts through which they can represent themselves as distinct of anyone or anything else. Then I briefly discuss the epistemology and metaphysics of persons as agents. I adopt a realist view against any epistemological projects denying (or feigning to deny) the existence of the second person. Then I expose the complementary view of the secondperson perspective, which close the gap between the first- and third-person perspectives. I expose some historical milestones recognizing the importance of the second-person perspective in dialogue. After an examination of the conditions for the use of mental terms, I propose an analysis of dialogue in sequences of illocutionary acts, stressing the importance of perlocutionary plans. Any dialogue worthy of the name involves mutual understanding. In my reconstruction, I use distinctions proposed by Burge, Dummett and Austin. There are degrees of understanding in dialogue. In the highest degree, we have a real “meeting of minds.” Finally, a genuine dialogue is different from a fictional dialogue. I also suggest, taking side with Descartes, that the interaction man-machine cannot be classified as genuine dialogue.