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Intentionality
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Figure 1: Three arbitrary physical objects in meaningless configuration (see text). Figure 2: Physical objects with intentionality.
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Intentionality

philosophy
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ā€¢History

Intentionality, in phenomenology, the characteristic of consciousness whereby it is conscious of somethingā€”i.e., its directedness toward an object. The concept of intentionality enables the phenomenologist to deal with the immanent-transcendent problemā€”i.e., the relation between what is within consciousness and what extends beyond itā€”in a manner different from that employed by many philosophers who have claimed that an experienced, represented, and remembered object (e.g., a tree) is inside consciousness (immanent), whereas the real object itself is...

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