Iulia Nistor

Intention is a necessary condition for John Searle’s concept of derived intentionality; it is what bestows the intentionality of mental states on physical phenomena. This may be true for illocutionary acts but not for all instances of intentionality in the physical realm. I discuss cases of unintentional intentionality, starting with the example of the wave-poem by Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels (1982) and continuing with cases that implement images rather than text, that is, pareidolia. Furthermore, I criticise the dependency of the intentionality of physical phenomena on the intentionality of mind, suggested by the adjective ‘derived’.

Instead of treating the paradox of fiction as a problem to be solved, we can use it as a tool for analyzing the underlying concepts. Intentionality ‒ the ›aboutness‹ or ›directedness‹ of our mental states ‒ lies at the core of the paradox. Our emotional responses are usually formulated as directed toward the fictional characters and situations in a story: we feel pity for Anna Karenina and we are afraid of Nosferatu. Iulia Nistor shows how the paradox invites us, on the one hand to ask whether there is a difference between the intentionality of thought and that of emotion, and on the other hand whether intentionality differs when directed toward factual or fictional states of affairs.