Intentionality of Bodily Sensation

Puzzles about Bodily Sensations

Reports of certain bodily sensations seem to involve the use of transitive verbs whose object is some sensible quality of an external object or event, such as temperature or pressure—for example, “I can feel the warmth of the cup.” Other reports appear to involve the use of intransitive verbs—for example, “My foot is itching.” Disagreements over whether bodily sensations have intentionality are usually concerned with the latter, “intransitive” bodily sensations. Some have argued that although sensations like itches, tickles, and pains, may be caused by events in one's body, such mental occurrences are not directed toward anything. It is suggested that although we can distinguish between a perceptual (e.g., visual) experience and what that experience is an experience of, this sort of distinction is inapplicable in the case of bodily sensation.

A common objection to this position is that it fails to accommodate the felt location of bodily sensations. For example, some argue that the phenomenological difference between an itch on your nose and an itch on your back is best accommodated by holding that such bodily sensations involve experiences that are intentionally directed toward different locations. If a bodily sensation, such as a tickle, is identified with something that is felt to have a location on some part of one's body, then arguably the bodily sensation is not itself an intentional mental state or event. Rather, the experience of it is. To mark this distinction, two distinct sensation terms are sometimes introduced: one that refers to the sensation as intentional experience (henceforth, SE) and one that refers to the object it is directed on (henceforth, SO).

Accounts of the Intentionality of Bodily Sensation

For those aiming to provide an account of the intentionality of the experience of located bodily sensation, three central concerns are the following: (a) to provide an account that accommodates the distinctive manner in which a bodily sensation feels to be located; (b) to provide an account of what the subject is aware of at the relevant location, for example, whether it is simply some part of her body, or something obtaining or occurring at that part of the body; and (c) to provide an account that can accommodate the affective dimension of certain bodily sensations, for example, the negative affective component of pain.