Conceived of a relation between thought and object, involvement is opposed to aboutness, the alleged distinguishing mark of mental states to concern entities to which they are not causally related (cf. Brentano 1874). Supposedly, aboutness is necessary for explaining how thought can be about non-existent entities, but as Section 3 will make clear, this simply is not true. There are other ways of explaining this, which means that a major reason for assuming aboutness has disappeared.
