The paper argues that Brentano was the exponent of a methodological monism, which is based on the requirement that science should be grounded on experience, and not on a speculative-idealistic principle, as in the case of German idealism. In Brentano’s psychological writings, this methodological requirement concretized in two different theses: (T1) The method of psychology is identical with the method of natural science; (T2) The method of psychology is inspired by the method of natural science. The thesis of this study (...) is that an important part of Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint is elaborated in accordance with T1. By contrast, Brentano’s Descriptive Psychology illustrates the subsequent decision to give up this idea. In its place, the aforementioned requirement is elaborated in the spirit of a methodological particularism that recommends the scientist elaborate his methods according to the specificity of the phenomena under investigation and to the difficulties that need to be overcome when approaching them. (shrink)

The paper argues that Brentano was the exponent of a methodological monism, which is based on the requirement that science should be grounded on experience, and not on a speculative-idealistic principle, as in the case of German idealism. In Brentano’s psychological writings, this methodological requirement concretized in two different theses: The method of psychology is identical with the method of natural science; The method of psychology is inspired by the method of natural science. The thesis of this study is that (...) an important part of Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint is elaborated in accordance with T1. By contrast, Brentano’s Descriptive Psychology illustrates the subsequent decision to give up this idea. In its place, the aforementioned requirement is elaborated in the spirit of a methodological particularism that recommends the scientist elaborate his methods according to the specificity of the phenomena under investigation and to the difficulties that need to be overcome when approaching them. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the different views of the founders of descriptive psychology in the 19th century about the meaning and purpose of this discipline and sketch a new plan for connecting descriptive psychology with the language-critical tradition of analytic philosophy. I will show that the goals Hermann Lotze, Franz Brentano, and Wilhelm Dilthey set for descriptive psychology were too lofty for different reasons. The common problem they faced was how to reconcile the ideal of autonomous philosophical knowledge with (...) the empirical relevance that descriptive psychology should have. Faced with this dilemma, I outline a new plan to conceive of descriptive psychology as a critical project aimed at overcoming the obstacles that language places in the way of our knowledge of mental phenomena. (shrink)