That consciousness is characterised by intentionality is an error sustained by the fact that it is difficult to formulate the alternative thesis without it. The same goes for qualia, which are in a sense the logical complements of intentionality. 'To be conscious is to be conscious of some X' and the 'X' is pure particularity which can only be specified by the limit of a net of (general) predicates, a set ot tasting notes. Phenomenology would be the belief that all experience has its tasting notes. This idea is not without considerable literary or cultural value; it is a practice, a program, a world-view as much as a faith - a kind of neo-epicureanism. To dispute this is not to insist that it goes too far in every case, that consciousness is something else than intentional, but rather to notice that the failures of intentionality, where you mean without ever being able to say what you mean, are not themselves intentional states. Say, everything begins in a vague and cloudy mixed state which can't be specified precisely because specification emerges out of it. There is naturally no language for this, but you can acknowledge it by a sort of peripheral knowing - it is not unconscious or pre-conscious, is living time and not lived time, koanish like the sound of one hand.