{"id":2535,"date":"2021-07-14T16:32:22","date_gmt":"2021-07-14T16:32:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2021\/07\/14\/demarcation-and-directedness-notes-on-brentano\/"},"modified":"2021-07-14T16:32:22","modified_gmt":"2021-07-14T16:32:22","slug":"demarcation-and-directedness-notes-on-brentano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2021\/07\/14\/demarcation-and-directedness-notes-on-brentano\/","title":{"rendered":"Demarcation and Directedness: Notes on Brentano"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here again is the famous passage from Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint<\/strong> (1874):<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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<\/em>, 68)<\/span><\/p>\n

Jedes psychische Ph\u00e4nomen 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 Ausdr\u00fccken, die Beziehung auf einen Inhalt, die Richtung auf ein Objekt (worunter hier nicht eine Realit\u00e4t zu verstehen ist), oder die immanente Gegenst\u00e4ndlichkeit nennen w\u00fcrden. Jedes enth\u00e4lt etwas als Objekt in sich\u2026 (Brentano, PES 124f)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Call such conscious contents non-directed<\/em>. They do not refer beyond one's mental state to a transcendent object.  Other contents are object-directed<\/em>. 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

4) Brentano conflates content and object, Inhalt<\/em> and Gegenstand<\/em>. 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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).<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Brentano-c-470x260\"<\/a>
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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 … Continue reading “Demarcation and Directedness: Notes on Brentano”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87,96,100,54,523],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brentano","category-consciousness-and-qualia","category-intentionality","category-mind","category-phenomenology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2535\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}