Terence Horgan

 ( 1948 Births ) 

Together with George Graham and Tienson, Horgan developed PIT in a moderate, derivativist direction: many non-phenomenal intentional states (for example, standing beliefs) have their content in virtue of suitable functional or other systematic relations to phenomenal intentional states, rather than being phenomenal themselves.Graham, George; Horgan, Terence E.; Tienson, John L. (2007), "Consciousness and intentionality," in M. Velmans & S. Schneider (eds.), pp. 468–484. They further defended internalism and a corresponding account of narrow content via "brain-in-a-vat" scenarios, arguing that phenomenal consciousness provides the best basis for narrow intentional content even if reference and truth-conditions involve external relations.Horgan, Terence E.; Tienson, John L.; Graham, George (2004), "Phenomenal intentionality and the brain in a vat," in R. Schantz (ed.), pp. 297–318.

Horgan has also linked PIT to issues of content determinacy, contending (with Graham) that purely physical, functional, or informational facts underdetermine the specific contents we represent (e.g., RABBIT vs. UNDETACHED-RABBIT-PARTS), and that appeal to phenomenal character helps explain how content is fixed.Horgan, Terence; Graham, George (2012), "Phenomenal Intentionality and Content Determinacy," in R. Schantz (ed.), Prospects for Meaning, Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 321–344. In parallel, he has been a prominent defender of cognitive phenomenology: he connects agentive phenomenology to thought phenomenology,Horgan, Terence (2011a), "From Agentive Phenomenology to Cognitive Phenomenology: A Guide for the Perplexed," in T. Bayne & M. Montague (eds.), pp. 57–78. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579938.003.0003. argues for the evidential role of perceptual experience,Horgan, Terence (2011b), "Phenomenal intentionality and the evidential role of perceptual experience: comments on Jack Lyons, Perception and Basic Beliefs," Philosophical Studies 153(3): 447–455. and maintains that original (non-derived) intentionality is phenomenal intentionality.Horgan, Terence (2013), "Original Intentionality is Phenomenal Intentionality," The Monist 96(2): 232–251.

Across these contributions, Horgan (often with Tienson and Graham) has used a range of phenomenological devices—contrast cases, spontaneous-thought examples, and agency-involving experiences—to argue that much of a thinker's web of belief and desire is structured by, or derives from, phenomenal character.Horgan, Terence E.; Tienson, John L. (2002), "The intentionality of phenomenology and the phenomenology of intentionality," in D. J. Chalmers (ed.), pp. 520–533.Graham, George; Horgan, Terence E.; Tienson, John L. (2007), "Consciousness and intentionality," in M. Velmans & S. Schneider (eds.), pp. 468–484.

To motivate both premises, Horgan, Tienson, and Graham adapt brain-in-a-vat scenarios: a physical duplicate of a subject's brain, sustained and stimulated so as to match the subject's internal states, would (they contend) share the subject's phenomenology; because phenomenal character fixes phenomenal intentional content, many of the duplicate's intentional contents would match the original's too. This is intended to show both the narrowness of phenomenology and the reality of phenomenally determined (hence narrow) content.

Although perceptual experience is the most immediate case, Horgan and collaborators extend the program beyond perception, arguing for distinctive phenomenologies of agency and of propositional attitudes (belief, desire), and for the thesis that all intentionality is either identical with, or derived from, phenomenal intentionality—thereby grounding a broad class of narrow contents for thought as well.

On the theoretical side, Horgan and Tienson suggest affinities between their approach and two-dimensional modal semantics for characterizing content, while related work with Uriah Kriegel emphasizes a broadly descriptive connection between phenomenal intentionality and reference.Kriegel, Uriah; Horgan, Terry (forthcoming). "The Phenomenal Intentionality Research Program". In T. Horgan; U. Kriegel (eds.), Phenomenal Intentionality: New Essays. Oxford University Press.

In Austere Realism: Contextual Semantics Meets Minimal Ontology (2008), Horgan and Potrč defended a version called blobjectivism: the view that only one concrete particular exists—the entire cosmos ("the blobject"). Thus, Horgan and Potrč's view is a form of "Existence Monism". This entity has enormous spatiotemporal variability but no proper parts. Truth, on their account, is a matter of indirect correspondence rather than mirroring discrete objects. This view has been discussed in metametaphysical debates.

Multiple realizability might well begin at home. For all we now know (and I emphasize that we really do not now know), the intentional mental states we attribute to one another might turn out to be radically multiply realizable at the neurobiological level of description, even in humans; indeed, even in individual humans; indeed, even in an individual human given the structure of his central nervous system at a single moment of his life. (p. 308; author's emphases)

In an essay from 2002, Horgan describes his ambivalent stance towards physicalism as follows: "I remain deeply attracted to materialism in philosophy of mind; I would like to believe that the mental is supervenience on the physical. But the whole hard problem looks very hard indeed, and I see no prospects currently in sight for dealing with it satisfactorily. … Much as I would like to be a materialist, at present I do not know what an adequate materialist theory of mind would look like."