Introduction to the Special Issue: The Phenomenological Turn in Analytic Philosophy of Mind

Talk of “turns” is widespread in analytic philosophy—the linguistic turn, the cog- nitive turn, the naturalistic turn, and so forth. With the title of this special issue, we would like to capture an important trend that is currently emerging in the phi- losophy of mind. Looking back at what analytic philosophy was in the ’80s, one can clearly see that a theoretical attitude dominated the debate over minds, and in particular over mental content and intentionality. The attitude was that inten- tionality and content could—and should—be naturalised. That is, analysed in non- semantic, non-mental and non-contentful terms. To use one of Fodor’s catch- phrases, the zeitgeist declared that “if intentionality is real, it really must be some- thing else” (Fodor 1987: 97). Accordingly, philosophers were called to take up the task of discovering what parts of the natural world intentionality and mental content really were.