About “aboutness” - intentionality

Mental states always intend towards something; in other words you can’t have a thought unless it’s about something.

I have said that consciousness is about feelings. Feelings tell you that something is problematic in a biological scale of values. In order to solve the problem, the feelings intend towards objects in the outside world, because this is where the need can be met. This is intentionality – the third defining property of the mind.

These intentional states are not themselves necessarily conscious – we may not be aware of them. This was Freud’s great discovery. Today we are able to shed more light on the brain mechanisms that correlate with these mental processes.