Brentano – Maverick Philosopher

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 is to me, is the later Brentano’s attempt at a different one category ontology, ‘reism’, where “For example, ‘Socrates is wise’ and ‘Socrates is Greek’ are made true, respectively, by wise-Socrates and Greek-Socrates, where wise-Socrates and Greek-Socrates are two coinciding but numerically distinct concrete particulars (which also coincide with Socrates)” (from Uriah Kriegel’s Thought and Thing: Brentano’s Reism as Truthmaker Nominalism). I like to rigorously understand all the different views put forth by intelligent philosophers on a topic but I do like to spend the most time understanding the more plausible seeming views first.

Leaving trope theory to one side for the moment, I am happy to agree with Peterson's assessment of Brentano. While not literally a product of insanity, Brentano's view I find to be incomprehensible. (And I don't mean that to be a merely autobiographical remark.)

I assume what to me seems to be well-nigh self-evident: some, but not all, truths need truth-makers. (I am not a truth-maker maximalist.) A truth is a true truth-bearer. The primary truth-bearers — the primary vehicles of the truth-values — are propositions. An assertive utterance at a particular time by a particular person of the declarative sentence 'Socrates is wise' expresses the proposition Socrates is wise. I will assume that propositions are abstract in the Quinean, not the trope-theoretic, sense of 'abstract.' (You can hear an asserted sentence and see a written sentence; you cannot hear or see a proposition.) A truth-bearer is not a truth-maker, except in some recherché cases I won't mention. (And don't confuse a truth-maker with a truth condition.)

There has to be something in the world of concreta (the spatiotemporal realm of causal reality) that makes it true that Socrates exists. To avoid the word 'makes,' we can say that the sentence and the proposition it expresses need an ontological ground of their being-true. Now you either get it or you don't. There are those who don't have a clue as to what I am talking about. Such people have no philosophical aptitude, and must simply be shown the door. A contingent truth cannot just be true, nor can it be true in virtue of someone's say-s0: a contingent truth requires something in reality external to the truth-bearer and its verbal expression that 'makes' it true, where this 'making' or grounding is neither narrowly logical nor causal. (Its not being either the one nor the other sensu stricto is what prejudices some against it. I kick them off my stoa as lacking philosophical aptitude.)

Now what in the world could function as the ontological ground of the contingent truth of 'Socrates exists'? The obvious answer is: the concrete particular Socrates. (Aristotle makes this very point somewhere in The Categories.) A particular may be defined as an unrepeatable entity by contrast with universals (if such there be) that are by definition repeatable.

There is an obvious difference between 'Socrates is wise' and 'Socrates is Greek,' on the one hand, and 'Socrates exists' on the other. It is the difference between predicative and existential sentences. Now we come to the nub of the issue. It seems blindingly evident to me that the two predicative sentences (and the propositions they express), if they need truth-makers at all, need concrete states of affairs (STOAs) as truth-makers, and that these truth-making states of affairs must be numerically distinct. I have no objection to saying that wise-Socrates makes true the first sentence and Greek-Socrates the second if 'wise-Socrates' and 'Greek-Socrates' refer to concrete states of affairs (not to be confused with Chisholmian abstract states of affairs).

But that is not what Brentano is saying. His reism cannot allow for concrete states of affairs of the form a's being F. For the predicate 'F' either picks out an abstract particular, a trope, or it picks out a universal. But on reism, all you've got are things, concrete particulars, which, moreover, cannot be assayed as concrete states of affairs along either Bergmannian or Armstrongian lines.

On reism one must therefore swallow the absurdity that "wise-Socrates and Greek-Socrates are two coinciding but numerically distinct concrete particulars (which also coincide with Socrates)." So they are one and the same and yet numerically different?? A question for Peterson: Is Kriegel defending truth-maker nominalism? I hope not. For it makes no bloody sense. For one thing it implies that the putatively two but at the same time one concrete particular(s) are property-less and are thus 'bare,' though not in Gustav Bergmann's precise sense. They are property-less if there are no properties, and there are no properties if there are no tropes nor any universals. A predicate is not a property.

'Red,' 'rot,' 'rouge,' and 'rosso' are four different predicates in four different languages. If Tom the tomato is red, as we say in English, he is not red only in English or rosso only in Italian. That way lies an absurd linguistic idealism. The predicates are true of Tom because there is something in or related to Tom that makes the predicates true of him, that grounds their applicability to him. This something in Tom is either the trope in him (assuming he is a complete bundle of tropes) or a universal that he instantiates. Nominalism makes no sense. The reality of properties is non-negotiable. But of course they needn't be universals. Trope-nominalism makes sense. 'Ostrich' nominalism does not. The same goes for van Inwagen's 'ostrich realism.'

Here is another argument. Socrates, while essentially Greek (Cf. Kripke's essentiality of origin), is only accidentally wise: had he lived long enough he might have gone 'Biden.' At every time at which he exists, our man is Greek, but only at some times is he wise. (He wasn't wise when he peeped his head out from between the legs of his mother, inter faeces et urinam nascimur.) So if he is one and the same concrete individual over time, then there has to be a distinction between him and real properties (not predicates!) that are either in him as tropes or related to him as universals.

Franz Brentano, The Teaching of Jesus and its Enduring Significance

An old book recently translated. Reviewed here.

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 visible surface of this desk is not a mental phenomenon.

All three cannot be true. If (1) is true then my perceiving the desk involves the awareness of mental phenomena. Note that this does not assert that the visible surface of this desk is a mental phenomenon, only that, if it is not, then I must be immediately aware of some mental phenomena in addition to my awareness of the desk.

But (2) says that the visible surface of this desk is all I am immediately aware of. Hence (3) cannot be true.

Likewise, if (2) and (3) are true, (1) is false, and if (1) and (3) are true, (2) is false.

Nicely presented. I agree that the three propositions are collectively inconsistent: they cannot all be true. But there is an interesting problem here only if the propositions are, in addition, individually plausible. The more plausible, the tougher the problem.

(3) is plausible to a high degree. (Plausibility, unlike truth, comes in degrees.) A desk is a physical thing. The surface of a desk is a physical part of a physical thing. A mind, its states, and its contents are none of them physical. An occurrent episode of visual perceiving is a mental phenomenon. So, yes, (3) is highly plausible and I would rank it as the most plausible of the three propositions.

(2) is the least plausible of the three. It is true that when I look at my desk I do not see my visual perceiving of the desk or of some part thereof. But it does not follow that I am not aware of my perceiving. Right now, as I stare at my desk, I am not only visually aware of (part of) the desk; I am also aware of being visually aware of it. This is what Franz Brentano calls innere Wahrnehmung, inner perception, which he distinguishes from innere Beobachtung, inner observation. This ongoing inner perception, or rather perceiving, is a simultaneous secondary awareness of the primary 'outward' visual awareness of the (surface of) the desk.

This inner awareness of being outwardly aware of something is not the same as full-blown reflection which one could, but need not, express by saying 'I am now seeing the surface of a desk.' It also must be distinguished from the type of awareness in which I am outwardly aware of something without being aware of being aware of it at all. Suppose you have been driving for some time, stopping at the red, going at the green, negotiating turns, etc. when you suddenly realize that you have no memory of doing any of those things. And yet your present physical integrity shows that you must have been aware of all those traffic changes. You were outwardly aware via the five outer senses without being explicitly aware of being aware or implicitly aware via Brentano's inner perception.

And so I solve the above problem by rejecting (2). (2) is the least plausible of the three and a very strong case can be made for its being false.

(1) leaves something to be desired as well. Later on this.

So we don't have an aporia in the strict sense, an intellectual impasse, or insoluble problem. And even if we did, it is not clear what this has to do with Kant.

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 that Ed does not appreciate the depth of the issue or the complexity of its ramifications. You cannot just return a 'valid' or 'invalid' answer; the question has to be explicated. The explication may be expected to turn up points of disagreement. We might, however, be able to agree on some of the following. Perhaps only the first.

a) If Jake is thinking of something, it does not follow that there exists (in reality) something such that Jake is thinking of it. I am sure that we will agree on this most basic point.

b) If Jake is thinking of something, a distinction must be made between the occurrent episode of Jake's thinking (a datable event or process in Jake's mental life) and what the thinking purports to be of or about. Typically, this will be something of a non-mental nature. And given (a), what the episode purports to be of or about may or may not exist without prejudice to the episode's being the very episode it is.

c) That the episode is occurrent as opposed to dispositional Ed will surely grant. Jake may be disposed to think of London when he is not thinking of it, but if he is thinking of the city, then his thinking is a mental act — 'act' connoting actuality, not activity — and thus a particular occurrence.

d) Now if Jake is thinking about London, his act of thinking purports to be about London which, of course, cannot be internal to anyone's mind or mental state. London with all its buildings and monuments is and remains in the external world whether or not anyone thinks about it. 'Cannot be internal' means that London herself cannot be a constituent of anyone's thinking about London. It cannot be 'in Jake's head,' not even if that phrase is taken figuratively to mean: in Jake's mind. London cannot be a part of Jake's psychic state when he thinks about London. And yet Jake and the rest of us can think about London and many of our thoughts are veridical.

e) Although London is not a constituent of anyone's thinking about London, there must be some factor internal to the mental state, a factor epistemically accessible to the subject of the state, that somehow represents or perhaps presents London to the subject of the state. This factor is a feature of the mental state whether or not the external thing (the city of London in our example) exists. This internal factor does not depend on the existence of the external thing. If Jake in Arizona is thinking about London, and the city goes the the way of Sodom and Gomorrah, i.e., ceases to exist, and if this event occurs while Jake is thinking about the English city, nothing changes in Jake's mental state: the thinking remains and so does its particular outer-directedness, its directedness to London and to nothing else. In other words, if Jake is thinking about London and, unbeknownst to Jake, the city ceases to exist while he is thinking about it, Jake remains thinking and his thinking retains the same specific aboutness that it had before the city ceased to exist. Thus neither the thinking nor its aboutness, depend on the existence of London. This aboutness or outer-directedness to a particular external thing — I am studiously avoiding for the moment the polyvalent term 'intentional object' — is or is closely related to the internal factor I mentioned above. What should we call it? If the act is the noesis, the internal factor responsible for the particular outer-directedness can be called the noema.

f) Much more can be said, but enough has been said to answer Ed's question. He wants to know whether the inference encapsulated in the following sentence is valid or invalid:

(1) Jake is thinking of something, therefore Jake’s thinking contains something as object.

The question cannot be answered as it stands. (1) needs disambiguation.

(1a) Jake is thinking of something in the external world; therefore, this thing, if it exists, is contained in Jake's thinking of it.

INVALID.

(1b) Jake is thinking of something in the external world; therefore, there is something internal to Jake's thinking in virtue of which his act of thinking has the precise directedness that it has, and this item — the noema — is 'contained in' in the sense of dependent upon Jake's act of thinking.

VALID.

Further questions arise at this point. How are we to understand the 'relation' of this noema to the external thing that it presents or represents? And what exactly is the status of the noema?

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 to be understood here as meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity. Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself…(Brentano PES, 68)

Jedes psychische Phänomen ist durch das charakterisiert, was die Scholastiker des Mittelalters die intentionale (auch wohl mentale) Inexistenz eines Gegenstandes genannt haben, und was wir, obwohl mit nicht ganz unzweideutigen Ausdrücken, die Beziehung auf einen Inhalt, die Richtung auf ein Objekt (worunter hier nicht eine Realität zu verstehen ist), oder die immanente Gegenständlichkeit nennen würden. Jedes enthält etwas als Objekt in sich… (Brentano, PES 124f)

1) For Brentano, intentionality is the mark of the mental: it is what distinguishes the mental from the physical. All and only mental phenomena are intentional. Call this the Brentano Thesis (BT). It presupposes that there are mental items, and that there are physical items. It implies that there is no intentionality below the level of conscious mind and no intentionality above the level of conscious mind. BT both restricts and demarcates. It restricts intentionality to conscious mind and marks off the mental from the physical.

2) BT does the demarcation job tolerably well. Conscious states possess content; non-conscious states do not. My marvelling at the Moon is a contentful state; the Moon's being cratered is not. Going beyond Brentano, I say that there are two ways for a conscious state to have content. One way is for there to be something it is like to be in that state. Thus there is something it like to feel tired, bored, depressed, elated, anxious, etc. even when there is no specifiable object that one feels tired about, bored at, depressed over, elated about, anxious of, etc.

Call such conscious contents non-directed. They do not refer beyond one's mental state to a transcendent object. Other contents are object-directed. Suppose I am anxious over an encroaching forest fire that threatens to engulf my property. The felt anxiety has an object and this object is no part of my conscious state. The content, which is immanent to my mental state, 'points' to a state of affairs that is transcendent of my mental state. In short, there are two types of mental content, object-directed and non-object-directed.

3) 'Every consciousness is a consciousness of something' can then be taken to mean that every conscious state has content. Read in this way, the dictum is immune to such counter examples as pain. That pain is non-directed does not show that pain is not a content of consciousness.

4) Brentano conflates content and object, Inhalt and Gegenstand. The conflation is evident from the above quotation. As a consequence he does not distinguish directed and non-directed contents. This fact renders his theory of intentionality indefensible.

Suppose I am thirsting for a beer. I am in a conscious mental state. This state has a qualitative side: there is something it is like to be in this state. But the state is also directed to a transcendent state of affairs, my downing a bottle of beer, a state of affairs that does not yet exist, but is no less transcendent for that. If Brentano were right, then my thirsting for a bottle of beer would be a process immanent in my conscious life — which is precisely what it is not.

5) To sum this up. Brentano succeeds with the demarcation project, but fails to explain the directedness of some mental contents, their reference beyond the mind to extramental items. This failure is due to his failure to distinguish content and object, a distinction that first clearly emerges with his student Twardowski.

Brentano was immersed in Aristotle and the scholastics by his philosophical training and his priestly formation. Perhaps this explains his inability to get beyond the notion of intentionality as intentionale Inexistenz (inesse).

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 of logic are not to be given up merely because of the weakness of our powers of reasoning. Similarly, the rules of ethics are not to be given up because of weakness of will. If a man is weak willed, ethics cannot cease to demand from him that he love what is known to be good, prefer what is known to be better, and place the highest good above all else. Even if one could show (and one cannot) that there are circumstances under which no one could remain true to the highest good, there would not be the slightest justification for setting aside the requirements of ethics. The one and only correct rule would remain evident and unalterably true: Give preference in every case to that which is better. (emphasis added)

Brentano is out to rebut the charge of excessive rigorism laid at his door step; his rebuttal, however, I find unconvincing.

Let's examine the passage sentence by sentence.

It is certain that no man can entirely avoid error.

True! So far, so good.

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.

Ambiguous. What is the force of the 'ought not' here? Is it agential or non-agential? I agree with Brentano if he is speaking of non-agential oughts. Permit me to explain.

It seems to me there are states of affairs that ought to be even in situations in which there are no moral agents with power sufficient to bring them about, and states of affairs that ought not be even in situations in which there are no moral agents with power sufficient to prevent them. In other words, there are non-agential oughts. Here are some examples of non-agential ought statements, statements that express an ought to be or an ought not to be as opposed to an ought to do or an ought not to do.

There ought to be fewer diseases than there are.

There ought never to have been any natural disasters.

There ought to be morally perfect people.

There ought to be perfectly logical people.

Human life ought never to have arisen.

One can imagine someone like David Benatar making the last claim. He would be saying that it would have been better had human life never arisen. And this despite the fact that no agent on his naturalist scheme could have prevented human life from arising. It even makes sense to say that it would have been better had nothing ever existed at all. Perhaps this view can be laid at Schopenhauer's door step: Ens et malum convertuntur. To be is bad. Being itself is bad to the bone. Nothingness would have been preferable.

There is a sense in which I ought to be morally perfect whether or not it is in my power to become morally perfect. And the same holds for my being logically perfect. This sense is axiological but not deontic. My being morally perfect is a better state of affairs than my being morally imperfect as I am. And this despite the fact that it is not in my power to perfect myself.

Similarly, the rules of ethics are not to be given up because of weakness of will.

True, as long as the strong-willed have the ability to abide by the rules.

If a man is weak willed, ethics cannot cease to demand from him that he love what is known to be good, prefer what is known to be better, and place the highest good above all else.

True, but see preceding comment.

Even if one could show (and one cannot) that there are circumstances under which no one could remain true to the highest good, there would not be the slightest justification for setting aside the requirements of ethics.

Here is where I disagree. Consider 'One ought to be morally perfect.' This sentence expresses an axiological requirement but (arguably) not a moral obligation because it is simply not in any human's power to perfect himself, nor is it in any finite person's power or any group of finite person's power to perfect him.

The bolded sentence conflicts with the principle that Ought implies Can. I cannot stand under a moral obligation to do what which I do not have the power to do. Now I do not have the power to perfect myself morally. Therefore, contra Brentano, one is justified, not in setting aside the requirements of ethics, but in so amending them that that reflect what is concretely possible for humans to achieve.

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. 1.)

What is intentionality? ‘Intentionality’ is Brentano's term of art (borrowed from the Medievals) for that property of mental states whereby they are (non-derivatively) of, or about, or directed to, an object. Such states are intrinsically such that they 'take an accusative.' The state of perceiving, for example is necessarily object-directed. One cannot just perceive; if one perceives, then one perceives something. The idea is not merely that when one perceives one perceives something or other; the idea is that when one perceives, one perceives some specific object, the very object of that very act. The same goes for intending (in the narrow sense), believing, imagining, recollecting, wishing, willing, desiring, loving, hating, judging, knowing, etc. Such mental states refer beyond themselves to objects that may or may not exist, or may or may not be true in the case of propositional objects. Reference to an object is thus an intrinsic feature of mental states and not a feature they have in virtue of a relation to an existing object. This is why Brentano speaks of the "intentional in-existence of an object." It is also why Husserl can 'bracket' the existence of the object for phenomenological purposes. Intentionality is not a relation, strictly speaking, though it is relation-like. This is an important point that many contemporaries seem incapable of wrapping their heads around.

There are some interesting points of analogy between intentionality and potentiality. An intentional state exhibits

a. directedness to an object
b. an object that may or may nor exist
c. an object that may be, and typically is, indeterminate or incomplete.

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, dispositions — if I am so disposed.

On one approach, propositions are abstract objects. Since abstracta are categorially barred from being mental, it is clear that if intrinsic intentionality is ascribed to abstract propositions, then the thesis that all instances of intentionality are instances of mentality must be rejected. For specificity, we consider Frege's theory of propositions. He called them Gedanken, thoughts, which is a strangely pyschologistic terminological choice for so anti-psychologistic a logician, but so be it.

A proposition is the sense (Sinn) of a certain sort of sentence in the indicative mood, namely, an indicative sentence from which all indexical elements, if any, such as the tenses of verbs, have been extruded. Consider the following sentence-tokens each of which features a tenseless copula:

1. The sea is blue
2. The sea is blue
3. Die See ist blau
4. Deniz mavidir.

(Since Turkish is an agglutinative language, the copula in the Turkish sentence is the suffix 'dir.')

The (1)-(4) array depicts four sentence-tokens of three sentence-types expressing exactly one proposition. Intuitively, the four sentences say the same thing, or to be precise, can be used by people to say the same thing. That same thing is the proposition they express, or to be precise, that people express by uttering them. The proposition is one to their many. And unlike the sentence-tokens, it is nonphysical, which has the epistemological consequence that it, unlike the sentence-tokens, cannot be seen with the eyes. It is 'seen' (understood) with the mind. Frege is a sort of latter-day Platonist.

So one reason to introduce propositions is to account for the fact that the same meaning-content can be expressed by different people using different sentences of different languages. Another reason to posit propositions is to have a stable entity to serve as vehicle of the truth-values. The idea is that it is the proposition that is primarily either true or false. Given that a proposition is true, then any sentence expressing it is derivatively true.

There is quite a lot to be said for the view that a sentence-token cannot be a primary truth-bearer. For how could a string of marks on paper, or pixels on a screen, be either true or false? Nothing can be either true or false unless it has meaning, but how could mere physical marks (intrinsically) mean anything? Merely physical marks, as such, are meaningless. You can't get blood from a stone, or meaning from meat, no matter how hard you squeeze, and no matter how wondrously organized the meat.

Fregean propositions are especially useful when it comes to the necessary truths expressed by such sentences as '7 is prime.' A necessary truth is true in all possible worlds, including those worlds in which there is nothing physical and so no means of physically expressing truths. If truth is taken to be a property of physical items or any contingent item, then it might be difficult to account for the existence of necessary truths. The Fregean can handle this problem by saying that propositions, as abstract objects, exist in all possible worlds, and that true ones have the property of being true in all possible worlds. The Fregean can also explain how there can be necessary truths in worlds in which there is nothing physical and nothing mental either.

Propositions also function as the accusatives of the so-called 'propositional attitudes' such as belief. To believe is to believe something. One way to construe this is de dicto: to believe is to stand in a relation to a proposition. Thus if I believe that the river Charles is polluted, then the intentional object of the belief is the proposition expressed by 'The river Charles is polluted.' (Of course, there is also a de re way of construing the belief in question: To believe that the Charles is polluted is to believe, of the river Charles, that is is polluted.)

Well, suppose one endorses a theory of propositions such as the one just sketched. You have these necessarily existent Platonic entities called propositions some of which are true and some of which are false. My believing that p is an intentional state directed upon p; but is it not also the case that p is directed upon the world, or upon a truth-making state of affairs in the world in the case in which p is true?

But now it looks as if we have two sorts of intentionality, call them noetic and noematic, to borrow some terminology from Husserl. Noetic intentionality connects a mental state (in Frege's Second Reich) to a proposition (in Frege's Third Reich), and noematic intentionality connects, or purports to connect, a proposition to an object in Frege's First Reich. Frege wouldn't think of this object as a state of affairs or concrete fact, of course, but we might. (The peculiarities of Frege's actual views don't matter for this discussion.)

The problem for Brentano's thesis above is that propositions — which are abstract objects — seem to display intrinsic aboutness: they are about the concrete world or states of affairs in the world. Thus the proposition expressed by 'The Charles is polluted' is intrinsically about either the river Charles or else about the state of affairs, The Charles River's being polluted. Intrinsically, because the proposition's being about what it is about does not depend on anyone's interpretation.

If this is right, then some instances of intentionality are not only not conscious but not possibly conscious. Does this refute Brentano's thesis? Brentano himself denied that there were such irrealia as propositions and so he would not take propositions as posing any threat to his thesis. But if there are (Fregean) propositions, then I think they would count as counterexamples to Brentano's thesis about intentionality.

Is there a way to uphold Brentano's thesis that only the mental is intrinsically intentional? Yes, if there is a way to identify propositions with thoughts or rather content-laden thinkings. My thinking that 7 is prime is intrinsically intentional. Unfortunately, my thinking is contingent whereas the content of my thinking is necessarily true and hence necessarily existent. To identify propositions with content-laden thinkings one would have to take the thinkings to inhere in a necessarily existent mind such as the mind of God.

So I end on an aporetic note. Intentionality cannot be the mark of the mental if there are Fregean propositions. But given that there are necessary truths and that truth-bearers cannot be physical items, then only way to avoid Fregean propositions is by identifying propositions with divine thoughts, in which case they are Gedanken after all.

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 Intrinsic Value, Cambridge, 1986, p. 71) writes:

The principle of the 'bonum progressionis' or the 'malum regressus' might be put by saying: 'If A is a situation in which a certain amount of value x is increased to a larger amount y, and if B is like A except that in B there is a decrease from the larger amount of value y to the smaller amount x, then A is preferable to B.' Thus Brentano writes: "Let us think of a process which goes from good to bad or from a great good to a lesser good;then compare it to one which goes in the opposite direction. The latter shows itself as the one to be preferred. This holds even if the sum of the goods in the one process is equal to that in the other. And our preference in this case is one that we experience as being correct." (Foundation, pp. 196-197) (In comparing the two processes, A and B, we must assume that each is the mirror image of the other. Hence the one should not include any pleasures of anticipation unless the other includes a coresponding pleasure of recollection.)The bonum progressionis, then, would be a good situation corresponding to A, in our formulation above, and the malum regressus would be a bad situation corresponding to B.

Now let's see if we can apply this insight of Brentano to the question of the value of one's life. A human life can be thought of as a whole the parts of which are its periods or phases. It seems obvious that the value of the whole will depend on the values of the parts.

But order comes into it as well. Suppose lives L1 and L2 are such that the sums of the values of their constituent phases (however you care to individuate them) are the same quantity of value, however this may be measured. (There is also the serious question, which I set aside, of whether it even makes sense to speak of an objective measure of the value of a human life.) But whereas L1 begins well in childhood and adolescence but then deteriorates in quality, L2 begins poorly in childhood and adolescence and gets better.

If Brentano's bonum progressionis principle applies here, and I would say it does, then L2 is a more valuable life than L1 despite the fact that the sums of the values of their constituent phases are equal in value. So we can say that the value of a life is more than the sum of the values of its parts when the life is ascending in value, but less than the sum of the values of its parts when the life is descending in value.

This may shed some light on why some people in old age (which I define as beginning at age 60), feel their lives to be not very valuable or satisfying while others in the same age cohort from similar backgrounds find their lives to be valuable and satisfying despite the obvious limitations that old age imposes.

The above analysis of course only scratches the surface. Another thing to consider is that what is real and important to us is primarily what is real and important now. The memories of past satisfactions are no match for the perceptions of present miseries. So if the whole of one's life up to the present has been excellent while the present is miserable, the balance of good over evil cuts little or no ice. But to explore this further is for another time.

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 the passage:

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 to be understood here as meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity. Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself, although they do not all do so in the same way. In presentation something is presented, in judgment something is affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired and so on. (Humanities Press, 1973, ed. McAlister, p. 88)

This passage is not only puzzling in itself, but also puzzling in that it is not clear what it has to do with the discussions of intentionality that it spawned. I think most philosophers nowadays would agree that something like the following is the thesis of intentionality:

Thesis of Intentionality. It is characteristic of certain mental states (the intentional states) to refer beyond themselves to items (i) that are not part of the state and (ii) may or may not exist.

Example. If I am in a state of desire, then a complete description of this mental state must include a specification of what it is that I desire. One cannot simply desire, or just desire. At a bare minimum we need to distinguish between the desiring and that which is desired. As Brentano says above, in desire something is desired.

Unfortunately, the word 'something' will cause some people to stumble including some esteemed members of the Commenter Corps. They will get it into their heads that a concrete episode of desire cannot exist unless there also exists, independently of the desire, something that is desired. But this cannot be what is meant. For if Poindexter desires a perpetuum mobile, he is just as much in a state of desire as his pal Percy who desires Poindexter's sloop, despite the fact that there is and can be no perpetuum mobile, while there is Poindexter's sloop. And as for wanting a sloop, it could be that Percy wants a sloop without wanting any sloop that (presently) exists: he wants a sloop that satisfies a description that no sloop in existence satisfies. Or a woman wants a baby. She doesn't want to adopt or kidnap an existing baby; she wants to 'bring a baby into the world.' Obviously, her longing is for something that does not presently exist, and indeed for something that does not exist at all if what does not yet exist does not exist.

In cases like these , the states of desire refer beyond themselves to items that are (i) not part of the states and that (ii) do not exist. After all, someone who wants a sloop does not want a mental state, or any part of a mental state, or anything immanent to a mental state, or anything whose existence depends on the existence of a mental state. Wanting a sloop, by its very intentional structure, intends something which, if it exists, exists independently of any mental state. And note that from the fact that there is nothing that satisfies the sloop-desire it does not follow that the desire is directed to an immanent object.

It is also important to realize that the reference beyond itself of mental acts is an intrinsic (nonrelational) feature of these acts: what makes my thought of Las Vegas precisely a thought of Las Vegas is not the obtaining of a relation between me (or my mental state) and the city of Las Vegas. For suppose I am thinking of Las Vegas, and while I am thinking of it God does to it what he is said to have done to Sodom and Gomorrah. Would my thinking of Las Vegas be in any way affected as to its own inner nature? No. The act of thinking and its content are what they are whether or not the external object exists.

Part of the thesis of intentionality , then, is that certain mental states are intrinsically such as to point beyond themselves to items that may or may not exist. Intrinsically, because the object-directedness is not parasitic upon the actual existence of the external object. But can one find the thesis of intentionality as I have spelled it out in the above passage?

No, and that is our first puzzle. It is puzzling that the 1874 'charter' has little to do with what subsequently flew under the flag 'intentionality.' Two points:

a. Although Brentano speaks of "reference to an object," he makes it clear that this object is an immanent object, one contained in the mental phenomenon or act. As such, the object is indistinguishable from a mental content. And then there is the talk of "the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object." 'Inexistence' does not mean nonexistence but existence-in (inesse). The idea is that the object exists in the act and not independently of the act. But then the object is a mere content, and the notion of a reference beyond the mental state to something transcendent of it is lost.

b. It is also striking that in the 1874 passage there is no mention of the crucial feature of intentionality that is always mentioned in later discussions of it, namely, that the items to which intentional states refer may or may not exist, or may or may not obtain (in the case of states of affairs). For example, if Loughner believes that the earth is flat, then his mental state is directed toward a state of affairs which, if it obtains, is a state of affairs involving the earth and nothing mental. But neither the obtaining nor the nonobtaining of this state of affairs follows from Loughner's being in the belief-state.

It seems as if for the Brentano of 1874 intentionality is something wholly internal to the mental phenomenon, a relation that connects the act with its content, but does not point beyond the content to the external world. "If every mental phenomenon includes as object something within itself," then every intentional object exists in the mode: existence-in. I am therefore inclined to agree with Tim Crane: "Brentano’s original 1874 doctrine of intentional inexistence has nothing to do with the problem of how we can think about things that do not exist."

Of course, in the later Brentano intentionality is tied to the latter problem. On Crane's analysis, Brentano simply changed his mind after 1874. I see it slightly differently: the later view is implicit in the 1874 passage but cannot emerge clearly because of Brentano's adherence to Scholastic conceptuality. But this is a contested exegetical point.

The second puzzle concerns an apparent misunderstanding by Brentano of the Scholastic doctrine of esse intentionale. This is puzzling because Brentano was steeped in Aristotle and the Scholastics due to his priestly formation, not to mention his doctoral work under Trendelenburg.

In the passage quoted Brentano identifies intentional inexistence with mental inexistence, which implies that below the level of mind there is no esse intentionale. But this is not Scholastic doctrine. For an explanation of this, see Gyula Klima. We will come back to this.

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. Let's accept the following definition, for the sake of argument.

(1) Intentionality: the existence of some thoughts depends on the existence of external objects

Is that a problem? Yes, and for two reasons.

As far as I can see, the definition on offer bears little resemblance to anything called 'intentionality' in the discussions of this topic since the time of Brentano. So before discussion of any problem of intentionality, we need to come to some agreement as to what intentionality is. Here is how I characterized it in an earlier post:

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. 1.)

What is intentionality? ‘Intentionality’ is Brentano's term of art (borrowed from the Medievals) for that property of (some) mental states whereby they are (non-derivatively) of, or about, or directed to, an object. Such states are intrinsically such that they 'take an accusative.' The state of perceiving, for example, is necessarily object-directed. One cannot just perceive; if one perceives, then one perceives something. The idea is not merely that when one perceives one perceives something or other; the idea is that when one perceives, one perceives some specific object, the very object of that very act. The same goes for intending (in the narrow sense), believing, imagining, recollecting, wishing, willing, desiring, loving, hating, judging, knowing, etc. Such mental states — thoughts or thinkings, cogitationes, in the broad Cartesian sense of the term — refer beyond themselves to objects that may or may not exist, or may or may not be true in the case of propositional objects. Reference to an object is thus an intrinsic feature of mental states and not a feature they have in virtue of a relation to an existing object. This is why Brentano speaks of the "intentional in-existence of an object." It is also why Husserl can 'bracket' the existence of the object for phenomenological purposes. Intentionality is not a relation, strictly speaking, though it is relation-like. This is an important point that many contemporaries seem incapable of wrapping their heads around.

This is nearly the opposite of what 'Ockham' is saying above. He seems to be saying that intentional thoughts are all and only those thoughts whose existence depends on the existence of an external object. Accordingly, the intentionality of a thought is its existential dependence on an existing external object.

But this misses the crucial point that the directedness of a cogitatio to a cogitatum qua cogitatum — which is the essence of intentionality standardly understood — does not at all depend on the external existence of the cogitatum. So I find the above definition of 'Ockham' wildly idiosyncratic. He goes on to argue against it, but that's like rolling a drunk or beating up a cripple. Too easy, a 'slap job.'

My posts on intentionality are collected here (Intentionality category) and here (Brentano category).

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 sich nicht auf dem Boden der Wissenschaft.

One who hurries is not proceeding on a scientific basis.

Philosoblogging, I should think, is one way to avoid hurrying things into print: one tests one's ideas in the crucible of the 'sphere before submitting them to a journal.

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 should mean steeper is a meaning assigned by the community of map-makers and map-users. This meaning is not intrinsic to the map qua physical object. Closer together might have meant anything, e.g., that the likelihood of falling into an abandoned mine shaft is greater.

So some things derive their referential and semantic properties from other things. What about these other things? I draw you a map so that you can find my camp. I use the Greek phi to mark my camp and the Greek psi to mark the camp of a heavily-armed crazy man that you are well advised to avoid. I intend that phi designate my camp. That intending (narrow sense) is a case of intentionality (broad sense). This is not in dispute. What is in dispute is whether my intending is a case of original or of derived intentionality.

If the latter, then a regress ensues which appears to be both infinite and vicious. But before discussing this further, I need to bring in another point.

Continue reading “Original and Derived Intentionality, Circles, and Regresses”

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 propositions and dispositions are apparent counterexamples. Whether they are also real counterexamples is something we should discuss. This post discusses (Fregean) propositions. Later, dispositions — if I am so disposed.

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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) is false.

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