The Mark of the Mental
Abstract
In this paper, I want to show that the so-called intentionalist programme, according to which the
qualitative aspects of the mental have to be brought back to its intentional features, is doomed to
fail. For, pace Brentano, the property that constitutes the main part of such intentional features, i.e.,
intentionality, is not the mark of the mental, neither in the proper Brentanian sense, according
to which intentionality is the both necessary and sufficient condition of the mental, nor in its
‘watered down’ counterpart recently defended by Tim Crane, according to which intentionality is
just the necessary condition of the mental. However, this does not mean that being mental is just
a heterogenous category. For there may be another mark of the mental, i.e., consciousness, in the
phenomenological sense of the property of being experienced.