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Turning Aboutness About
Author(s) -
Sandgren Alexander
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
pacific philosophical quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.914
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1468-0114
pISSN - 0279-0750
DOI - 10.1111/papq.12342
Subject(s) - intentionality , relation (database) , epistemology , philosophy , computer science , database
There are two families of influential and stubborn puzzles that many theories of aboutness (intentionality) face: underdetermination puzzles and puzzles concerning representations that appear to be about things that do not exist. I propose an approach that elegantly avoids both kinds of puzzle. The central idea is to explain aboutness (the relation supposed to stand between thoughts and terms and their objects) in terms of relations of co‐aboutness (the relation of being about the same thing that stands between the thoughts and terms themselves).