TWO PROBLEMS IN COMMON BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY:

INTENTIONALITY OF MENTAL STATES AND PHENOMENAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Abstract

Intentionality of mental states and phenomenal consciousness are part of the topics in psychology –the cognitive sciences– and in philosophy. The first subject originally come from the philosophy and psychology of Franz Brentano and has been approached with the symbolic representations model relatively successfully; however, the second one is the source of perplexities leading a great number of neurobiologists to consider that phenomenal consciousness presents basically a conceptual problem. In this work, we are trying to illustrate how is it that mental intentionality is present in cognitive sciences and why phenomenal consciousness is a complex problem. At last, some reflections by Ludwig Wittgenstein will be taken into account to illustrate the point.