Against Intentionalism Bernhard Nickel · bnickel@fas.harvard.edu February 4, 2007 Forthcoming in Philosophical Studies Abstract Intentionalism is the claim that the phenomenological properties of a perceptual experience supervene on its intentional properties. The paper presents a counterexample to this claim, one that concerns visual grouping phenomenology. I argue that this example is superior to superficially similar examples involving grouping phenomenology offered by Peacocke (1983), because the standard intentionalist responses to Peacocke’s examples cannot be extended to mine. If Intentionalism fails, it is impossible to reduce the phenomenology of an experience to its content. 1 Introduction When we look at the world, we have visual experiences. Two important features of these experiences are their phenomenology and their content. The phenomenology of an experience is what it is like to have it; its content is how the experience rep- resents the world as being. I NTENTIONALISM is an influential theory about how these two features are related. The view says, roughly, that phenomenology super- venes on content, so that any two experiences that differ in their phenomenology differ in their content. Refinements will be introduced shortly. Interest in Intentionalism derives, at least in part, from the role it can play in a reductive project in the philosophy of mind. We may well be able to explain the content of mental states in naturalistically acceptable terms. 1 If the phenomenol- 1 For example, by giving a causal co-variation account of content, as in Fodor (1994) or Stalnaker (1984). 1