Pardon while I get a bit technical again. I was thinking about something. Actually, I was thinking about the process of thinking about something. This is what psychologists do sometimes, especially if they are interested in the way people think or experience life.

In the late 19th century this guy named Franz Brentano, a philosopher, dusted off a concept Aristotle had originated and the Medieval Scholastics had developed, and Brentano made it a load-bearing wall in his effort to establish psychology as a scientific endeavour. He called it "intentionality," but he didn't mean by that that a person has something in mind as a plan. He simply meant that whenever a person thinks, he or she thinks about something.

Okay. Maybe this isn't earth shattering, and now you have a reason to doubt whether it's ever good thinking to contemplate visiting a psychologist who has nothing more profound to say but that people think about something. What might the alternative be ? that when people think, they are thinking of nothing? Even to think about nothing would be to think about something, right? Well, bear with me, here, because Brentano's simple observation has become a rather important and practical player in our every day lives.

For the last 150 years or so philosophers and scientists have been grappling with this construct called intentionality. Along the way some have pointed out that there is a difference between thoughts and experience ? the words "about" and "of" being important. The first can be thought of as cognitive intentionality and the second can be understood as perceptual intentionality (are you still with me?).

If I talk about something, I keep it as an object "out there" somewhere, somewhat remote and even abstract; I, as one subject, contemplates a relatively distant object. However, if I have an experience of, then that object comes right up close and interacts with me; it's the meeting of two subjects instead of a subject and an object. What it's like to be me meets what it's like to be you. When that happens, neither one of us is abstracting the other; we're too busy trying to deal with the concrete situation.

So, where is the practical side to all this? Well, at work, at school, at home, or in bed, what kind of communication style do you tend to use most? Are you thinking about or having an experience of?

You know, it's possible to make yourself into an object and think about yourself just as easily as it is to make another person into an object of thought, to contemplate an idea, consider a value, or attend to a need. However, when you do that, when you become self-conscious, you bring together these two modalities. In thinking about yourself and how you are doing, you begin to have an experience of yourself. So, in that case, just when you start to feel the warmth of your lover, you start to wonder how you are doing as a sex partner. Ironic.

Even thinking about doing (the experience of) can be cognitive intentionality. It often takes getting out of one's head to experience perceptual intentionality, and even then such experience is fleeting, because as soon as one becomes aware of it and starts putting it into words, that person has switched intentional modalities. Remember the Nike ad that demanded, "Just Do It!"

That's the essence of perceptual intentionality ? the experience OF. It is not about-ness and separation; it is of-ness and contact.

Well, I didn't say this was going to shift the axis of the earth, but it is something to think about. Perhaps you can do something with it. The next time you're with your lover, get into your body. The next time you're with your children, play. The next time you are alone with the sunset, just take it in.