Excerpt from Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der Allgemeinen Grammatik und Sprachphilosophie Uber den Begriff und die Aufgaben der Sprachphilosophie und allgemeinen Grammatik und ihr Verhältnis zur Psychologie. Erstes Kapitel. Begriff der Sprache und der Sprachphilosophie. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in (...) the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Elijah Chudnoff elaborates and defends a view of intuition according to which intuition purports to, and reveals, how matters stand in abstract reality by making us aware of that reality through the intellect. He explores the experience of having an intuition; justification for beliefs that derives from intuition; and contact with abstract reality.

Der Band 'Versuch über die Erkenntnis' wurde von A. Kastil im Jahre 1925 in der Philosophischen Bibliothek herausgegeben. Seinen Inhalt bildet hauptsächlich Franz Brentanos nachgelassene, umfangreiche Schrift: 'Nieder mit den Vorurteilen!' Sie trägt den Untertitel: 'Ein Mahnwort an die Gegenwart, im Geiste von Bacon und Descartes von allem blinden Apriori sich loszusagen'. Die aus dem Jahre 1903 stammende Abhandlung: 'Nieder mit den Vorurteilen!' beschäftigt sich im I. und II. Teil vorwiegend mit Kants synthetischen Urteilen a priori, die mit aller Entschiedenheit (...) abgelehnt werden, weil wir - nach Brentanos Auffassung - in ihnen keine Erkenntnisse, sondern nur blinde Vorurteile gegeben haben. (shrink)

The phenomenology of a priori intuition is explored at length (where a priori intuition is taken to be not a form of belief but rather a form of seeming, specifically intellectual as opposed to sensory seeming). Various reductive accounts of intuition are criticized, and Humean empiricism (which, unlike radical empiricism, does admit analyticity intuitions as evidence) is shown to be epistemically self-defeating. This paper also recapitulates the defense of the thesis of the Autonomy and Authority of Philosophy given in the (...) author’s “A Priori Knowledge and the Scope of Philosophy” (Philosophical Studies, 1996). (shrink)

Unlike the first English translation in 1974, this edition contains the text corresponding to Brentano's original 1874 edition.

Radical empiricism is the view that a person's experiences (sensory and introspective), or a person's observations, constitute the person's evidence. This view leads to epistemic self-defeat. There are three arguments, concerning respectively: (1) epistemic starting points; (2) epistemic norms; (3) terms of epistemic appraisal. The source of self-defeat is traced to the fact that empiricism does not count a priori intuition as evidence (where a priori intuition is not a form of belief but rather a form of seeming, specifically intellectual (...) as opposed to sensory). Moderate rationalism, by contrast, avoids self-defeat. (shrink)

This article argues that Brentano’s classification of mental phenomena is best understood against the background of the theories of natural classification held by Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill. Section 1 offers a reconstruction of Brentano’s two-premise argument for his tripartite classification. Section 2 gives a brief overview of the reception and historical background of the classification project. Section 3 addresses the question as to why a classification of mental phenomena is needed at all and traces the answer back to (...) Mill’s view that psychological laws are class-specific. Section 4 and 5 connect the second premise of Brentano’s argument to Comte’s principle of comparative likeness and Mill’s insistance that class membership is determined by the possession of common characteristics. And section 6 briefly discusses the evidence Brentano provides for the first premise. (shrink)

Mon objectif dans cette étude est de montrer l'influence que la philosophie positive d'Auguste Comte a exercée sur la pensée du jeune Brentano durant la période de Würzburg (1866-1874). J'examine d'abord quelques-uns des facteurs qui ont amené Brentano à s'intéresser à la philosophie de Comte et je résume, dans un deuxième temps, les grandes lignes de l'article de Brentano sur Comte dont la version française est reproduite dans ce numéro. Dans la troisième partie de cette étude, je commente brièvement quelques (...) passages de la Psychologie d'un point de vue empirique où Brentano discute de thèmes comtiens. Je conclue cette étude par quelques remarques sur les traces laissées par le positivisme de Comte dans l'œuvre de Brentano. (shrink)

This paper aims to discuss some aspects of the Marty–Husserl debate about grammar. My suggestion is that the debate is first of all an epistemological debate, that is, a debate about what a priori knowledge is and how it is acquired. The key opposition is between Marty’s Brentanian notion of ‘analytic intuition’ and Husserl’s Bolzanian notion of ideation. As I will argue, the underlying issue is the possibility of a psychological a priori. On the one hand, analytic intuition provides the (...) psychologist with a priori knowledge about empirical facts. On the other hand, ideation provides the logician with entities that are disconnected from empirical facts—entities which are ‘purely logical’. I conclude with some brief remarks on the Brentanian background of both conceptions. (shrink)

Phenomenology, according to Husserl, is meant to be philosophy as rigorous science. It was Franz Brentano who inspired him to pursue the ideal of scientific philosophy. Though Husserl began his philosophical career as an orthodox disciple of Brentano, he eventually began to have doubts about this orientation. The Logische Unterschungen is the result of such doubts. Especially after the publication of that work, he became increasingly convinced that, in the interests of scientific philosophy, he had to go in a direction (...) which diverged from Brentano and other members of this school (`Brentanists') who believed in the same ideal. An attempt is made here to ascertain Husserl's philosophical relation to Brentano and certain other Brentanists (Carl Stumpf, Benno Kerry, Kasimir Twardowski, Alexius Meinong, and Anton Marty). The crucial turning point in the development of these relations is to be found in the essay which Husserl wrote in 1894 (particularly in response to Twardowski) under the title `Intentional Objects' (which is translated as an appendix in this volume). This study will be of interest to historians of philosophy and phenomenology in particular, but also to anyone concerned with the ideal of scientific philosophy. (shrink)

This paper asks whether a good philosophical account of something can ever be circular. It explores the kind of circumstances in which an account of F might involve F itself while still serving the functions of and meeting the requirements on a philosophical account. The paper discusses two criteria for acceptable circularity, based on ideas from Humberstone 1997. And it illustrates the surprisingly wide variety of kinds of accounts in which circularity need not be bad.

Brentanos Reflexionen über das Verhältnis von Wahrheit und Evidenz wurden erst 1930 herausgegeben. Ihre Kenntnis ist unentbehrlich für das Verständnis seines Verhältnisses zu den an ihn anknüpfenden Denkern, insbesondere zu Husserl.

For the claim that the satisfaction of certain conditions is sufficient for the application of some concept to serve as part of the (`reductive') analysis of that concept, we require the conditions to be specified without employing that very concept. An account of the application conditions of a concept not meeting this requirement, we call analytically circular. For such a claim to be usable in determining the extension of the concept, however, such circularity may not matter, since if the concept (...) figures in a certain kind of intensional context in the specification of the conditions, the satisfaction of those conditions may not itself depend on the extension of the concept. We put this by saying that although analytically circular, the account may yet not be inferentially circular. (shrink)

The main purpose of this essay is to examine Brentano's rejection of Kant's theory of a priori concepts and synthetic a priori judgments. The essay begins by recalling the views of Descartes and Locke about the acquisition of knowledge, since Brentano regards them as on the whole correct or, at least, as pointing in the right direction and since he regards Kant's epistemology as obscurantist and reactionary (Section 1). There follows a brief characterization of Brentano's conception of knowledge as based (...) on self-evident inner perception and analytic propositions, i.e. propositions which are true ex terminis (Section 2). Next some aspects of Kant's epistemology are compared with corresponding features of Brentano's doctrine (Section 3). In the light of this comparison the validity of Brentano's criticisms is examined (Section 4). In conclusion an independent view of the function of concepts and of their relation to perception is briefly outlined and contrasted with the views of Kant and Brentano (Section 5). (shrink)

Erstmals 1951 publiziert, bilden die Vorlesungen über die Grundlagen und den Aufbau der Ethik ein geschlossenes und harmonisches Ganzes. Der Band geht zurück auf ein im Wintersemester 1876 niedergeschriebenes Manuskript, das Brentano 1894 als Kolleg an der Universität Wien vortrug.

Den Plan, seine Untersuchungen zur Deskriptiven Psychologie in einem umfassenden Werk zur Darstellung zu bringen, hat Brentano nicht verwirklicht. Neben kleineren Schriften zu diesem Gedankenkreis sind aber die Kollegmanuskripte der 1887 bis 1891 unter wechselnden Titeln gehaltenen Wiener Vorlesungen zur Deskriptiven Psychologie erhalten.

Ontological reism remains a defensible metaphysical position, and Kotarbiński’s unwillingness to propose a more robust defence of his views has some identifiable historical causes, i.e. his post-war engagement in practical philosophy (both praxeology and ethics), more relevant in the context of a war-ravaged country. There is however one more reason why it remains difficult to justify the ontological part of the doctrine. Kotarbiński assumes indeed that “the fundamental justification of concretism is both naively intuitive and ordinarily inductive” (Kotarbiński 1958, 402). (...) Does this mean that no decent philosophical discussion can be proposed in defence of intuitively grasped ideas? Certainly not, as, once again, is shown by the contemporary works on qualia. Ontological reism should be pursued as a negative theory though, not as a positive one. This question of the burden of the proof was raised by Kotarbiński in 1966, surprised by the fact that it is the reist, the one who rejects imaginary entities, who is supposed to bring new evidence in favour of his positions, whereas those who assume their existence do not feel compelled to go beyond intuitive claims. It cannot rely on analysis of language alone, but has to engage in the investigation of the world. This idea is coherent with the naturalistic tendencies of Kotarbiński’s approach, even if they did not yield any substantial results on their own. (shrink)