Chapter 17: Disclosing the World: Intentionality and 4E

Central to this argument is a reinterpretation of the standard model of intentionality, which draws upon Gottlob Frege’s work to distinguish between empirical modes of presentation (aspects of an object we are aware of) and transcendental modes of presentation (that in virtue of which the object is presented),. The author posits that intentionality is a disclosing activity that reveals the world, and this activity often straddles neural, bodily, and environmental processes rather than occurring solely within the brain,. This is phenomenologically supported by Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s example of the blind person’s cane, where the cane functions not as an object of awareness but as a vehicle of disclosure, extending the subject's perceptual activity into the world,. The chapter further analyzes information processing by comparing David Marr’s classical computational theory of vision with J.J. Gibson’s ecological approach, arguing that both frameworks ultimately describe operations designed to make information available, whether through internal neural processing or external manipulation of the optic array,. Finally, the text addresses the "original intentionality" objection, which claims that external symbols possess only derived meaning compared to the intrinsic meaning of mental states; the author refutes this by arguing that "deeds," such as the skilled bodily adjustments made while catching a ball, satisfy naturalistic criteria for original intentionality—including teleology, misrepresentation, and decouplability—thereby validating the claim that cognition extends beyond the skin and skull,.