 How did Brentano relate consciousness to intentionality? He did so by holding first, that every mental phenomenon is “of an object” in the intentional sense. Secondly, he held that every mental act is, in fact, conscious, which he took to imply there is an intentional consciousness of it, which in turn he construed as a kind of “inner perception”—every conscious mental act is itself presented, and judged (accepted) as presented. Brentano did not consider it absurd to suppose there are unconscious (for him, unperceived) mental acts. But he found inadequate such reasons as had been offered in his time to posit their occurrence. On his view, wherever this is proposed on the grounds of explanatory usefulness, nonmentalistic (e.g., physiological) explanations would do as well. In this connection, he also took seriously the worry that if we hold (as he does) that all mental acts are conscious, and all conscious acts are objects of consciousness, an infinite regress would erupt. But he thought his theory could handle the problem: the key was to see that, since inner perception is not separate from the object it makes conscious, no regress gets started.