The World as We See It: a Late-Wittgensteinian Argument

Ever since Brentano (re-)introduced the notion of 'intentional inexistence' it has become a commonplace in philosophy of mind to characterize (at least) most of our mental episodes by their being directed towards something as an object. The majority of these mental episodes, most notably our perceptual experiences, are directed towards objects that are part of our physical environment. The difficulty that philosophers since Brentano struggle with is to explain how our mental episodes that are part of the realm of the mental can be directed towards physical objects. In this paper I will argue that many of these attempts have had little success because they work with an underlying picture that is deceiving, a picture according to which there is a gap between mental episodes on the one side and physical objects that are "out there," on the other; and according to which that gap is bridged, in some mysterious way, by the intentional relation.