The purpose of this book is to develop a terminological structure in which private perceptions can be discussed publicly without bringing into existence the usual unnecessary philosophical problems of confused usage of language. chisholm displays an appraisive, quasi-ethical use of language, whereby he claims that a thing has some particular sensible property is to have adequate evidence that it actually does have that property. (staff).

Metaphysics and psychology are two of Brentano’s main areas of interest in philosophy. His first writings, the dissertation On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle (1862) and the habilitation thesis, The Psychology of Aristotle (1867), bear witness to the duality of his concerns. As such, these works were not only significant contributions to the German Aristotelianism of the second half of the XIXth century, but they also played an important role in the development of Brentano’s later philosophy and in (...) defining his school of thought. At the same time, the dissertation, now celebrating the sesquicentennial of its first publication, was received beyond the immediate sphere of the Brentanian school, for its reading played a significant role in young Heidegger’s thought on being, and thus in his development of a new type of phenomenology, distinct from the Husserlian one. The studies comprising this volume examine the relevance of Brentano’s dissertation, of his metaphysics and psychology for contemporary philosophical research. Generally, the papers emphasize a tendency in Brentanian research, which has become more conspicuous in the last two decades, and can be described as a gradual shift in focus from the specific problems of Brentano’s late philosophy, towards his earlier philosophy, especially his first writings and manuscripts. Taking into account both Brentano’s published works, and the manuscripts of the dissertation and the Psychology, the contributions of this volume manage to emphasise unexplored aspects of Brentano’s philosophy and stand witness to the complexity and the historical dimension of a legacy whose richness still awaits full discovery. -/- Table of Contents -/- Ion Tănăsescu, Foreword Edoardo Fugali, Trendelenburg, Brentano und die Aristoteles-Renaissance in der deutschen Philosophie des 19. Jahrhunderts. Die Frage nach dem Ursprung der Kategorien Dale Jacquette, Brentano on Aristotle’s Categories: First Philosophy and the Manifold Senses of Being Klaus Hedwig, „... eine gewisse kongeniale Denkweise“. Brentanos Rückgriffe auf Thomas von Aquin in seiner Dissertation Susan Krantz Gabriel, Heidegger’s Question and the Fundamental Sense of Being in Brentano Ion Tănăsescu, Franz Brentano’s Dissertation and the Problem of Intentionality Josef Seifert, Über das notwendige Dasein Gottes. Eine kritische Antwort auf Franz Brentanos Kritik des ontologischen Gottesbeweises Paul Janssen, Die Gottesrede bei Brentano Robin Rollinger, Brentano's Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint: Its Background and Conception Guillaume Fréchette, Deux aspects de l’intentionnalité dans la Psychologie de Brentano Denis Seron, The Fechner-Brentano Controversy on the Measurement of Sensation Carlo Ierna, Brentano and Mathematics Roberto Poli, Modes and Boundaries Federico Boccaccini, La vérité efficace. L’épistémologie de Brentano entre Evidenzphilosophie et pragmatisme Thomas Binder, Der Nachlass Franz Brentanos. Eine historische Annäherung an einen schwierigen Fall. (shrink)

Which entities should be accepted as part of the furniture of the world, and which not? What are pseudo-objects, if they are not properly objects? This collection explores the answers given to these questions by some key philosophers throughout the 20th century. It brings together essays by leading scholars on a subject of central importance to both metaphysics and the history of philosophy.".

Franz Brentano was a systematic philosopher, in the sense that he presented his views in an orderly manner and considered it important to work out the significant regularities, where the significance was to be seen in relation to the whole of the problem considered at the moment, and ultimately, in relation to the entire field in which the problem arose. He was not a system-builder, in that he did not seek to produce an all-embracing philosophical answer. He was concerned with (...) truth rather than with elegance, and he distrusted philosophical flights of fancy. According to him, philosophy ought to be built up by collective, carefully considered and checked labours of a number of researchers. In an age when philosophy was largely characterised by imaginative systems of poetic appeal and based on bold armchair theorising, he was concerned with making it scientific and dependable. -/- The intention in this book is to re-interpret and re-emphasise some aspects of Brentano's philosophy. Another purpose is to provide a contemporary introduction to Brentano for the English-speaking reader. The third, and perhaps the most important, is to present, to analyse and to learn something from Brentano's analysis of truth. (shrink)

This is a review article on Franz Brentano’s Descriptive Psychology published in 1982. We provide a detailed exposition of Brentano’s work on this topic, focusing on the unity of consciousness, the modes of connection and the types of part, including separable parts, distinctive parts, logical parts and what Brentano calls modificational quasi-parts. We also deal with Brentano’s account of the objects of sensation and the experience of time.

We provide a detailed exposition of Brentano’s descriptive psychology, focusing on the unity of consciousness, the modes of connection and the types of part, including separable parts, distinctive parts, logical parts and what Brentano calls modificational quasi-parts. We also deal with Brentano’s account of the objects of sensation and the experience of time.

The objective of this paper is to refute the widely held view that in the wake of his so-called reistic turn Brentano subjected his notion of intentionality to a deep-going revision, viz., that he turned from an ontological account of the intentional object by way of identifying it with the thought-of-thing, i.e., the intentional correlate, or by way of attributing to it a peculiar sort of existence, to a non-ontological account thereof. It will be shown that neither the pre-reistic Brentano (...) espoused anything of an ontological account of the intentional object in that he both distinguished it sharply from the intentional correlate and definitely rejected the idea of there being different sorts of existence, and it will be argued that the apparently ineradicable inclination to ascribe to the pre-reistic Brentano an ontological account of the intentional object stems from ignoring the Aristotelian background of Brentano's thinking about relations. (shrink)

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)

How come we can represent Bigfoot even though Bigfoot does not exist, given that representing something involves bearing a relation to it and we cannot bear relations to what does not exist? This is the problem of intentional inexistence. This paper develops a two-step solution to this problem, involving an adverbial account of conscious representation, or phenomenal intentionality, and the thesis that all representation derives from conscious representation. The solution is correspondingly two-part: we can consciously represent Bigfoot because consciously representing (...) Bigfoot does not involve bearing a relation to Bigfoot, but rather instantiating a certain non-relational property of representing Bigfoot-wise; and we can non-consciously represent Bigfoot because non-consciously representing Bigfoot does not involve bearing a relation to Bigfoot, but rather bearing a relation to conscious representations of Bigfoot. (shrink)

Intentional states appear to relate thinkers to objects and situations even when these latter do not exist. Given the concern to allow that thought is a mode of engagement between subject and world, many writers have presented relational theories of intentionality and introduced odd relata to account for thought of the non‐existent. However there are familiar epistemological and ontological objections to such accounts which give reason to look for other ways of accommodating the appearance of relationality. A little explored possibility (...) is to countenance not odd relata but odd relations, ones not requiring existent terms other than those which ground the relation on the side of the subject. Proposals to this effect by Findlay and Grossmann are underdescribed and not obviously different from more familiar odd relata theories. Here a more developed view is explored, which derives from scholastic accounts of intentionality, in particular that presented by John of St Thomas, as this has been elaborated and defended in recent writings by John Deely. While judging it to fail, I suggest that it leads us towards an older tradition according to which the intentionality of thought is constituted by the occurrence of the forms of things in the mind. ‘Formally and principally the whole difference between a mind‐independent relation and a mind‐dependent one comes down to this, that a physical relation has a mind‐independent fundament with a coexistent terminus while a mental relation lacks such a foundation.’(Joannes a Sancto Thoma, Cursus Philosophicus: Ars Logica; Tractatus de Signis)1. (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)

Franz Brentano (1838-1917) led an intellectual revolution that sought to revitalize German-language philosophy and to reverse its post-Kantian direction. His philosophy laid the groundwork for philosophy of science as it came to fruition in the Vienna Circle, and for phenomenology in the work of such figures as his student Edmund Husserl. This volume brings together newly commissioned chapters on his important work in theory of judgement, the reform of syllogistic logic, theory of intentionality, empirical descriptive psychology and phenomenology, theory of (...) knowledge, metaphysics and ontology, value theory, and natural theology. It also offers a critical evaluation of Brentano's significance in his historical context, and of his impact on contemporary philosophy in both the analytic and the continental traditions. (shrink)

Das Buch bietet die erste systematische esamtdarstellung der Ontologie Brentanos. Es zeigt, daß es in Brentanos ontologischem Denken drei Perioden gibt: die frühe "konzeptualistische" (1862-1874), die mittlere "deskriptiv-psychologische" (1874-1904) und die späte "reistische" (1904-1917). Diese drei Perioden werden in ihrer Kontinuität und komplizierten Dialektik unter Rückgriff auf unveröffentlichte Manuskripte Brentanos dargestellt. Dabei wird von dem logischen Handwerkszeug der zeitgenössischen analytischen Ontologie Gebrauch gemacht. Das Buch wendet sich nicht nur an Brentano-Forscher, sondern an alle an ontologischen Fragen Interessierten. Die Analysen zur (...) Ontologie der Intentionalität sind insbesondere für Phänomenologen und für Forscher im Bereich der cognitive science von Interesse. (shrink)

The book is an analytic exposition of Brentano's early theory of intentionality. In spite of the immense influence of this theory it is the first separate monograph on this topic. The book is based in great part on the unpublished manuscripts where one can find substantially better articulated formulations then those expressed in the already published `standard' works. Our analysis concentrates mainly on the ontological and epistemological problems of Brentano's immanent object. We highlight an interesting ambiguity of this concept and (...) try to outline the inner logic of its evolution. It turns out that Brentano's early philosophy of intentionality should be conceived not as a single, well defined theory but rather as a bundle of kindred but not always fully consistent and sometimes even competing ideas. Primary audience for the work are philosophers interested in Brentano's philosophy, theory of intentionality and its epistemology and ontology, phenomenologists and cognitive scientists. Das Buch bietet eine analytische Darstellung von Brentanos früher Theorie der Intentionalität. Trotz der großen historischen Bedeutung dieser Theorie bildet es die erste Monographie zu diesem Thema. Das Buch basiert zum größten Teil auf den unveröffentlichten Manuskripten, in denen man die Formulierungen findet, die viel besser artikuliert sind als jene, die in den publizierten Standard-Werken Brentanos zu finden sind. Unsere Analyse konzentriert sich in erster Linie auf die ontologischen und epistemischen Probleme des Brentanoschen immanenten Objekts. Wir besprechen eine interessante Mehrdeutigkeit dieses Begriffs und skizzieren die innere Logik seiner Entwicklung. Es stellt sich heraus, daß die frühe Philosophie der Intentionalität Brentanos nicht als eine einheitliche, eindeutig bestimmte Theorie, sondern eher als ein Bündel von verwandten, jedoch nicht immer völlig koherenten und manchmal sogar konkurrierenden Ideen interpretiert werden soll. Das Buch wendet sich in erster Linie an die Philosophen, die sich für die Philosophie Brentanos, für die österreichische Philosophie, für die Theorie der Intentionalität und ihre Epistemologie und Ontologie interessieren. Es wird ferner auch für die Phänomenologen und die Forscher im Bereich der cognitive science interessant sein. (shrink)

What do thoughts, hopes, paintings, words, desires, photographs, traffic signs, and perceptions have in common? They are all about something, are directed, are contentful - in a way chairs and trees, for example, are not. This book inquires into the source of this power of directedness that some items exhibit while others do not. An approach to this issue prevalent in the philosophy of the past half-century seeks to explain the power of directedness in terms of certain items' ability to (...) reliably track things in their environment. A very different approach, with a venerable history and enjoying a recent resurgence, seeks to explain the power of directedness rather in terms of an intrinsic ability of conscious experience to direct itself. This book attempts a synthesis of both approaches, developing an account of the sources of such directedness that grounds it both in reliable tracking and in conscious experience. (shrink)

Phenomenal intentionality is supposed to be a kind of directedness of the mind onto the world that is grounded in the conscious feel of mental life. This book of new essays explores a number of issues raised by the notion of phenomenal intentionality.

What is the mind? Is consciousness a process in the brain? How do our minds represent the world? Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings is a grand tour of writings on these and other perplexing questions about the nature of the mind. The most comprehensive collection of its kind, the book includes sixty-three selections that range from the classical contributions of Descartes to the leading edge of contemporary debates. Extensive sections cover foundational issues, the nature of consciousness, and the (...) nature of mental content. Three of the selections are published here for the first time, while many other articles have been revised especially for this volume. Each section opens with an introduction by the editor. Philosophy of Mind is suitable for students at all levels and also for general readers. (shrink)

It is often claimed that the beginnings of Brentano’s ontology were Aristotelian in nature; but this claim is only partially true. Certainly the young Brentano adopted many elements of Aristotle’s metaphysics, and he was deeply influenced by the Aristotelian way of doing philosophy. But he always interpreted Aristotle’s ideas in his own fashion. He accepted them selectively, and he used them in the service of ends that would not have been welcomed by Aristotle himself. The present paper is an exposition (...) of the development of Brentano’s ontology, beginning with the Lectures on Metaphysics first delivered by Brentano in Würzburg in 1867 and concluding with his late work from 1904–1917. (shrink)

I argue that the most common interpretation of experiential transparency’s significance is laden with substantive and ultimately extraneous metaphysical commitments. I divest this inflated interpretation of its unwarranted encumbrances and consolidate the precipitate into a position I call core transparency. Core Transparency is a thesis about experience’s presentational character. The objects of perceptual experience are there, present to us, in a way that the objects of most beliefs and judgments are not. According to core transparency, it is in the disclosure (...) of that which is central to experience’s presentational character, an intrinsic and irreducibly phenomenal aspect of experience I call phenomenal presence, that transparency’s significance principally consists. Phenomenal presence is uniquely positioned to illuminate the relationship between perceptual experience’s most important features: its intentionality and its phenomenality. The position I defend comprises two main claims. (1) The representational features of experience, understood in isolation from experiential phenomenality, neither constitute nor explain phenomenal presence. Consequently, the representational features of experience neither determine completely nor explain exhaustively experiential phenomenality. (2) Phenomenal presence is not representational, but is nevertheless the minimal realization of experiential intentionality. (shrink)

This paper will present an analysis of the relational aspect of Brentano’s last theory of intentionality. My main thesis is that Brentano, at the end of his life, considered relations (relatives) without existent terms to be genuine relations (relatives). Thus, intentionality is a non-reducible real relation (the thinking subject is a non-reducible real relative) regardless of whether or not the object exists. I will use unpublished texts from the Brentanian Nachlass to support my argument.