Voltolini, A. (2005). How to Get Intentionality by Language. In G. Forrai, & G. Kampis (Eds), Intentionality. Past and Future (pp. 127-41). Rodopi, . HOW-TO-GET-INTENTIONALITY-BY-LANGUAGE.pdf
[Abstract]One is often told that sentences expressing or reporting mental states endowed with intentionality — the feature of being “directed upon” an object that some mental states possess — contain contexts that both prevent those sentences to be existentially generalized and are filled by referentially opaque occurrences of singular terms. Failure of existential generalization and referential opacity have been traditionally said to be the basic characterizations of intentionality from a linguistic point of view. I will call those contexts directional contexts. In what follows, I will argue that this traditional conception is incorrect. First, the above characterizations do not provide both necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for directional contexts. Appearances notwithstanding, these characterizations are not the adequate linguistic counterparts of two elements folk-psychologically featuring intentionality, namely existence-independence and the possible apparent aspectual character of the intentional object, the target of a mental state endowed with intentionality. Indeed, they do not retain the prima facie ontological commitment to intentional objects the above elements contain. I will replace failure of existential generalization and referential opacity with other linguistic factors, namely success of mere existentially unloaded particular quantification and pseudo-opacity. I will contend that they provide both necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for directional contexts, and claim that these factors are the adequate counterparts of the above folk-psychological elements, precisely because they retain the prima facie ontological commitment to intentionalia those elements possess.
[Citing Place (1996g)]  
Citing Place (1996g) in context (citations start with an asterisk *):
Section 1. The inadequate linguistic criteria of intentionality
* To be sure, what I have just told is a well-known story. Failure of existential generalization and referential opacity are nowadays taken to be sufficient conditions of the different, linguistic, phenomenon of intensionality, not of intentionality (Crane, 1995, pp. 32–36; 2001a, p. 11; Place, 1996).
* The possible apparent aspectual character of the intentional object matches another feature of such an entity, namely its phenomenological indeterminacy. Indisputably, an intentional object appears as indeterminate with respect to many properties — we think Nessie neither as having nor as not having a black ring on its tail, the morning star neither as having nor as not having a particular mass, and so on. The possible apparent aspectual character of the intentional object casts light on its phenomenological indeterminacy. An intentional object appears to be indeterminate insofar as if it may turn out to seem just a facet of another individual it contributed, along with other seeming facets, to disclose. The phenomenological indeterminacy of the intentional object was first noticed by Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe, who said, “I can think of a man without thinking of a man of any particular height” (1965, p. 161). Yet Anscombe actually originated the erroneous conflation of this phenomenological indeterminacy with the ontological indeterminacy of the intentional object. On this point, see Place (1996). Ontological indeterminacy amounts to the so-called incompleteness of the intentional object, according to which for some property F and its opposite not-F, that object has neither. That such an indeterminacy subsists is a controversial metaphysical thesis on which I will remain neutral. Definitely, phenomenological indeterminacy of the intentional object does not provide enough evidence for it.