Here is a list of some special vocabulary you’ll encounter in discussions of the mind.
I already introduced the technical terms:
on another page.
I mentioned on that page that philosophers sometimes use the label intentional to mean the same as representational. This is a special technical use of the word “intentional.” There is also a more specific use of that word that’s familiar from ordinary language, where it instead means something like “on purpose” or “planned.” (Did you spill that beer intentionally, or was it an accident?) Philosophers sometimes use the word in that more specific way, too, especially when they’re talking about actions or responsibility.
But you should realize that some philosophers, when they say “intentional,” are meaning the broader idea of any representational state. This can include people’s intentions/plans, but it will include their beliefs and fears and regrets as well.
Note how we spelled the term “intentional.” There’s another term you may encounter in your reading, that’s spelled like this: intensional (with an “s” where the other word has a “t”). These concepts are connected but different. We’ll talk about the term “intensional” again in later classes.
Here’s some other special vocabulary you may come across:
This means a kind of intrinsic attractive or repulsive charge, as found in states like pain, desire, disgust, blame.
The narrow, folk usage of this term includes things like moods, emotions, and posturing (for example, acting snobby). Philosophers use this in a broader sense to mean any kind of mental relation to a content. (See “propositional attitudes.”)
This word is sometimes used for sensations or “raw phenomenal feels.” Other times it’s used as another name for emotions, like anger and excitement. It’s controversial what is the relation between emotions, phenemonal feels, and representational mental states. Often emotions have some affective component. I don’t know whether they always do.
There’s a broad usage of this to mean “having to do with any mental machinery at the level of psychology, rather than neurochemistry.” Used in that broad way, it’s roughly synonymous with how we’re using the word “mental.”
In philosophy, there’s also a narrower use of “cognitive” to mean “having to do with belief.” For instance, a “cognitive theory of fear” would be a theory that says fearing trolls always implies (and on some versions, may wholly consist in) having some belief, such as the belief that trolls are dangerous or may hurt you.
Sometimes “cognition” is used more or less interchangebly with intelligence, reasoning, rationality, or knowledge. (See also “sapience,” below.)
Some authors use “sapience” to mean aspects of mentality having to do with knowledge, rationality, or intelligence; and they contrast this to “sentience” which has to do with qualitative feelings. Other authors use “sentient” in the same way that the first authors use “sapient” (for example, when they talk about whether there’s sentient life on other planets, or about AIs becoming sentient, they’re thinking about life that’s self-aware and intelligent, not just life that can feel pains). That’s awkward, isn’t it? In the philosophical literature we’ll be looking at, this pair of words isn’t used very much.
This means having to do with choice and control (think of “voluntary”).