Category: Brentano
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One-Category Trope Bundle Theory and Brentano’s Reism
This morning's mail brought a longish letter from philosophy student Ryan Peterson. He would like some comments and I will try to oblige him as time permits, but time is short. So for now I will confine my comments to the postscript of his letter: P.S. Just as crazy as one category trope bundle theory…
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Franz Brentano, The Teaching of Jesus and its Enduring Significance
An old book recently translated. Reviewed here.
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A Kantian Aporia?
This just in: I know you like puzzles in aporetic form, so here you are. 1. My perception involves (though is not necessarily limited to) the immediate awareness of mental phenomena. 2. When I look at the visible surface of this desk, all I am immediately aware of is the visible surface of this desk. 3. The…
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The Brentano Inference
London Ed writes, Early on I commented on the following ‘Brentano’ inference, with the question of whether it is valid or not. (1) Jake is thinking of something, therefore Jake’s thinking contains something as object. I think you said it was valid. It is not a question easy to answer properly, and my impression is…
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Demarcation and Directedness: Notes on Brentano
Here again is the famous passage from Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874): Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and what we might call, though not wholly unambiguously, reference to a content, direction toward an object (which is not…
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Franz Brentano on the Charge of Excessive Rigorism
On his Facebook Page, Vlastimil V. quotes Franz Brentano, approvingly, I think: It is certain that no man can entirely avoid error. Nevertheless, avoidable or not, every erroneous judgement is a judgement that ought not to have been made, a judgement in conflict with the requirements of logic, and these cannot be modified. The rules…
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Intentionality, Potentiality, and Dispositionality: Some Points of Analogy
The influential Austrian philosopher Franz Brentano took intentionality to be the mark of the mental, the criterion whereby physical and mental phenomena are distinguished. For Brentano, (i) all mental phenomena are intentional, (ii) all intentional phenomena are mental, and (iii) no mental phenomenon is physical. (Franz Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (1874), Bk. II, Ch.…
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Are Propositions Counterexamples to Brentano’s Thesis?
Franz Brentano, for whom intentionality is the mark of the mental, is committed to the thesis that all instances of (intrinsic) intentionality are instances of mentality. Propositions and dispositions are apparent counterexamples. For they are nonmental yet intrinsically object-directed. Whether they are also real counterexamples is something we should discuss. This post discusses (Fregean) propositions. Later,…
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Bonum Progressionis and the Value of One’s Life
The value of a whole is not determined merely by the values of the parts of the whole; the order of the parts also plays a role in determining the value of the whole. One of several order principles governing the value of a whole is the bonum progressionis. Glossing Franz Brentano, R. M. Chisholm (Brentano and…
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Two Puzzles Anent Brentano’s 1874 Locus Classicus on Intentionality
All contemporary discussion of intentionality traces back to an oft-quoted passage from Franz Brentano's Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint. First published in 1874 in German, this influential book had to wait 99 years until it saw the light of day in the Anglosphere. And in the Anglosphere to go untranslated is to go unread. Here is…
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What Is Intentionality?
He now calls himself 'Edward Ockham.' I was pleased to receive an e-mail from him this morning in which he directs me to his latest post, Is There a Problem of Intentionality?, and suggests a crossblogging effort. So I perused his post. He opens: Is there a problem of intentionality? That depends what intentionality is.…
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How Philosophers Should Greet One Another
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 80: Der Gruss der Philosophen unter einander sollte sein: "Lass Dir Zeit!" This is how philosophers should greet each other: "Take your time!" A similar thought is to be found in Franz Brentano, though I have forgotten where he says this: Wer eilt, bewegt…
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Original and Derived Intentionality, Circles, and Regresses
1. Original/Derived Intentionality. All will agree that there is some sort of distinction to be made here. A map is not about a chunk of terrain just in virtue of the map's physical and geometrical properties. Consider the contour lines on a topographical map. The closer together, the steeper the terrain. But that closer together…
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Brentano and Whether Propositions are Intrinsically Intentional
Franz Brentano, for whom intentionality is the mark of the mental, is committed to the thesis that all instances of (intrinsic) intentionality are instances of mentality. The last post in this series considered apparent counterexamples to this thesis. But there are others. Joseph Jedwab usefully pointed out in a comment on my old blog that…
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Brentano, Dretske and Whether There is Intentionality Below the Level of Mind
For Brentano, intentionality is the mark of the mental: (i) all mental phenomena are intentional, and (ii) all intentional phenomena are mental. This post considers whether there is intentionality below the level of conscious mind, intentionality that can exist without any connection, actual or potential, to conscious mind. If there is, then of course (ii)…