Searle's views have aroused a number of criticisms. The right relationship, he holds, is this: non-conscious states of mind must be ‘potentially conscious.’ If some psychological theories (of language, of vision) postulated an unconscious so deeply buried that its mental representations cannot even potentially become conscious, so much the worse for those theories. But then, Searle asks, what accounts for the fact that some states of affairs in world have intrinsic intentionality - that they are directed at objects under aspects - and why they are directed under the aspects they are (why they have the content they do)? With conscious states of mind, Searle says, their phenomenal or subjective character determines their ‘aspectual shape.’ Where non-conscious states of mind are concerned, there is nothing to do the job, but their relationship to consciousness.
Intrinsic intentionality, on the other hand - the kind that pertains to our beliefs, perception, and intentions - is neither a mere ‘manner of speech,’ nor our possession of it derived from others' interpretive stance towards us. And we may impose ‘conditions of satisfaction’ on our acts and creations (words, pictures, diagrams, etc.) by our interpretation of them - but they have no intentionality independent of our interpretive practices. We sometimes may speak as if artifacts (like thermostats) had beliefs or desires - but this isn't to be taken literally. The way of maintaining the necessity of consciousness to mind that can preserve some space for mind that is not conscious is Searle's agreement, roughly, that we should first distinguish between what he calls ‘intrinsic’ intentionality on the one hand, and merely ‘as if’ intentionality, and ‘interpreter relative’ intentionality, on the other. Even if we do not acquiesce in this view, we do (and long have) appealed to explanations of human behaviour that recognize some sort of intentional state other than phenomenally conscious experiences and thoughts. Freud's waning prestige has weakened tendencies to assume that he had somehow demonstrated the reality of unconscious intentionality, the rise of cognitive science has created a new climate of educated opinion that also takes elaborate non-conscious mental machinations for granted. A more qualified thesis does seem desirable.
It does not necessarily commit one to a Cartesian (or Brentanian or Sartrean) claim that all states of mind are conscious - a total denial of the reality of the unconscious. This type of thesis needs careful formulation. It seems one might then press farther, and argue for what Flanagan calls ‘consciousness essentialism’ - the view that the phenomenal character of experience is not only sufficient for various forms of intentionality, but necessary also. Suppose one rejects both the views that consciousness is explanatorily derived from a more fundamental intentionality, as well as the view that phenomenal character is insufficient for intentionality because it is a matter of pure inward feel.