Intentionality, Knowledge and Formal Objects

Abstract

Abstract What is the relation between the intentionality of states and attitudes which can miss their mark, such as belief and desire, and the intentionality of acts, states and attitudes which cannot miss their mark, such as the different types of knowledge and simple seeing? Two theories of the first type of intentionality, the theory of correctness conditions and the theory of satisfaction conditions, are compared. It is argued that knowledge always involves knowledge of formal objects such as facts and values, that emotions are reactions to (apparently) known values and that beliefs are reactions to known or apparently known facts or to the objects of relational states.