Hello, friend. Want to jump off a cliff with me?

Never fear! Stop believing in gravity and you’ll be fine!

Sounds absurd, right? Things are what they are, whether we believe in them or not. This is true for physics, math, and logic. And it’s also true for intentionality.

Intentionality means that something is “about” something else. When we think, we are always thinking about something. Even if we think nothing, we are thinking about nothing. Thus, intentionality is an inescapable property of our minds. Consciousness is fundamentally intentional. We only cease to be intentional when we become unconscious.

But, intentionality does not live only in our minds. We embed intentionality in the world around us. When I pin a note to myself to pick up milk onto the fridge, the note is about something. Thus I have embedded intentionality within the reality of the fridge.

Intentionality in the mind vs. in the world around us

There is a difference between the intentionality of our minds and the intentionality we find in the world. The intentionality of the mind is fundamental to how it works. If intentionality is taken away, the mind ceases to operate and we become unconscious. By contrast, the intentionality of the world is not fundamental. I can take the ink used to write the milk reminder and rearrange it into a random, meaningless smudge — and it still remains ink. That tells us something: We can embed intentionality in the world, but the intentionality does not come from the world.

At the same time, because we can embed intentions ourselves, we can also recognize intentions embedded by others, even within nature. The entire universe is organized around embedded intentions, all the way down to fundamental forces of nature. Every particle in the universe is attracted to every other particle by the force of gravity. In this way, every particle is about every other particle, and contains intentionality. Plants grow towards the sunlight, and their roots grow towards water; thus they are are intentional about their nutrition. Animals have social intentionality, grouping with their kin and fighting outsiders. Humans have an even higher order of intentionality; we are able to focus on abstract concepts that do not have physical existence.

Intentionality and the nature of reality

Intentionality undergirds the organization of reality. Intentionality is what holds everything together, while it is, at the same time, the foundation of our conscious existence. In this way, we are constantly aware of an intuitive link to the principle of all reality, since intentionality is the basis of all intuition, awareness and reality.

With intentionality comes organization, with organization comes hierarchy, and with hierarchy comes value. Hierarchy implies lesser and greater, above and below, the origin of value judgments. Value judgments establish conventions and customs, which become our mores and morals. As a result, our intentions are also our moral framework.

This is why everyone has an inescapable moral intuition. Even in the very act of escaping morality, one must use intention and thus exercise the foundation of morality. A nihilist, for example, can seek to extinguish intentionality, but he must be intentional during the entire effort. To the nihilist’s consternation, his intentionality can never be ultimately extinguished, because it did not originate in the natural world. So, all efforts to extinguish intentionality and morality only serve to further establish their inescapable reality.

Intentionality also establishes an inescapable duality in reality, because all intentions require a subject and an object. What results is not merely a duality but a trinity: The intentional act is a third thing, along with the subject and object.

The ultimate origin of intentionality

Finally, the conclusion we must reach by examining our own intentionality carefully is that it has an ultimate origin from a conscious being outside of our world. All physical things can exist in a degraded form without their intentionality, so we can see that intentionality is not inherent in physicality. On the other hand, intentionality is essential to consciousness. This means intentionality cannot have come from unconscious physical matter. The only other option is an origin from an entity that is both conscious and non-physical.

By taking a few minutes to be aware of awareness, we expose one of the mysteries of the universe. And the outcome is much more fun than that of jumping off a cliff.