Thanks!  My responses will begin with [J and end with ]

Stephen Shields wrote:

 jon gold wrote:So, I entirely reject the idea that objective knowledge is impersonal because the intentionality relation ties a whole person to the objects and the entities that are the objects of most mental acts!!!!!

In fact the great missing item from Descartes through Kant, is the intentionality relation, known to Aristotle, Scholastic Philosophy in the Middle ages, lost in modern philosophy, brought back by Franz Brentano a founder of psychology and a good Aristotelian Philosopher, and a great stimulus to E. Husserl.  Husserl's phenomenology is all about this intentionality relation, Heidegger develops an existential dimension to this in his "Being and Time'.  Gustav Bergmann, one of my philosophical heroes, along with Aristotle, Anselm, Aquinas, Husserl, Heidegger, Frege, develops intentionality in several papers and then in his great book on "Realism." Currently, John Searle has written much on intentionality as did Roderick Chisholm and Wilfred Sellars.ss:jon, I just wish to ensure I'm tracking here:  If I'm reading you correctly, the intentionality relation is the idea that all objects of knowledge are intentionally formed?  And when you use the words "object" and "objective" am I correct that you are retaining the object/thing distinction that we earlier discussed?  And would this then be the reason why object, technically defined in this way, necessarily requires a subject/thing relationship? 
[J   I do not want to use the word 'formed' as it is ambiguous and may suggest that we do more than I think we do in the constitution of objectivity.  Objects happen when there is encounter between a human and things, people, events.  We cannot help but to objectify what we encounter.  Playing roles in the objectification process are, of course, the things, people, and events that we encounter.  But things, events, and people that we encounter get filtered though our nervous systems, conceptual systems and our whole past history of attitudes, beliefs etc to become the objects for us that they are.
I am a direct realist as far as perception goes and so I am not implying that we cannot know things themselves.
 

Answers to second and third questions.  Yes.  Yes.

Another point, everything we are talking about here needs a a new vocabulary and a more radical type of description.  The real mystery is how things outside of a person take on new cognitive being within a person, while retaining their real being outside of the person.

Heidegger's "Being and Time" may be the best book on epistemology of the 20th century!!!!!   He shows how both subject and object are higher order constituted objectivities resting on many processes and structures in the human being's encounter with the world that are below the subject and the object and are foundational for both subject and object!]
 

If that is correct, then a question:  I'm struggling with the idea of ubiquitous intentionality in knowing.  There is a knowing that occurs when going through, for example, a radically paradigm shifting event that would seem to me to not be intentional.  Example:  a father discovers his teenage son smoking marijuana in his room.  Can you parse this out for me or help to see what I'm missing?  
[J    I think you are using 'intentionality' equivocally.  The intentionality relation includes all mental acts that were not purposed by someone but were nevertheless, say, reactive intentional acts of discovery, your example. ' Intentionality'  here refers to involuntary structures involved in all mental acts whether the acts derive from some purposeful intention of the person having them or whether they are random mental acts when a person is daydreaming, or when they are mental acts reactive to an unexpected discovery.  'Intentional' in  the sense of a characteristic of mental acts is simply that claim that in reality mental acts have content and are directed to objects.  I hope this helps!]

thanks - I loved your post and found it very helpful. 

[J  Thanks again!  Blessings, Jon]
 
 Stephen Shields
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