Theo Todman's Web Page - Paper Abstracts

Introductory Paragraph₁

1. I suppose that sooner or later the physicists will complete the catalogue they've been compiling of the ultimate and irreducible² properties of things. When they do, the likes of spin, charm, and charge will perhaps appear upon their list. But aboutness surely won't; intentionality simply doesn't go that deep.
2. It's hard to see, in face of this consideration, how one can be a Realist about intentionality without also being, to some extent or other, a Reductionist³. If the semantic and the intentional are real properties of things, it must be in virtue of their identity with (or maybe of their supervenience⁴ on?) properties that are themselves neither intentional nor semantic.
3. If aboutness is real, it must be really something else.