The York Research Database

In this essay we explore the elusive idea of aboutness, arguing it is integral not just to how we comport ourselves in the world, but to knowing, thinking and dwelling. Bringing key aspects of language to bear onto the issue of intentionality – such as that of polyphony and intertextuality - our contention is that aboutness is always forming itself immanently to its articulation. This is to say language is already in process of landscaping itself within consciousness. We illustrate how this landscaping imparts a more general form of directedness to intentionality than previously assumed, what we are calling ‘extentionality’. We then go on to elucidate issues here for the arts of dwelling. Critically, we argue that admitting the aboutness of thinking helps foreground relations between knowing and building and the arts of dwelling.