Intentionality

The capacity of minds and mental states to be about, represent or be directed at something.

Also: aboutness, intentional, directedness, intentional inexistence

What it means

Intentionality is the 'aboutness' of thought. A belief that it will rain is about the weather; a fear is of something. Remarkably, minds can be about things that do not exist, as when someone admires Sherlock Holmes or worships Zeus. The word derives from the Latin for aiming or stretching towards, and medieval scholastic philosophers used related terms. Franz Brentano revived the idea in the nineteenth century and held that intentionality is the mark of the mental: all and only mental states have it. His student Edmund Husserl made it central to phenomenology. A major modern debate asks whether aboutness can be explained in purely physical terms, for instance through information or biological function.

The questions it belongs to

• 1.3.3 IntentionalityHow can one thing be about another thing?

Thinkers

• Franz Brentano
• Edmund Husserl
• Fred Dretske
• Ruth Millikan

Traditions

• Medieval Christian
• Continental
• Analytic

To read

• Logical Investigations — Edmund Husserl
• Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint — Franz Brentano
• The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology — Edmund Husserl

Sources and further reading

• Intentionality (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• Franz Brentano (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Written by the Coordinates of Thought editors and checked against the sources above on 29 October 2026. Not peer-reviewed. How we write and check.

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