Beyond the constitutive-representational dichotomy: The phenomenological notion of intentionality

This paper addresses the constitutive-representational dichotomy presented in John Stewart's two recent books. First, I review the logic of representa tion within the terms encoding and decoding, and, relying on the ideas of J ohn Dewey, I explicate its various theoretical inadequacies. Hence, I add D ewey's support to Stewart's claim that speech is not a tool-like system of representations, but rather, is primarily constitutive. Second, and more cr itically, I appeal to several interrelated concepts in Dewey's writings to show that the representational view is valid and legitimate if it is taken as a derivative possibility given to speech's constitutive nature. Third, I unpack developments in the phenomenological notion of intentionality to ar gue that humans are fundamentally suspended in a network of intentional rel ations. Thus, with the notion of "intentionality" developed mainly by Heide gger and Merleau-Ponty, I argue that we can accommodate for representationa l accounts while holding fast to speech's primary constitutive character I conclude by suggesting that the different intentional relations (e.g., cons titutive and representational) are nothing less than different modes by whi ch we temporalize the temporality we are.