Brentano's concept of intentional inexistence
In Mark Textor (ed.), The Austrian Contribution to Analytic Philosophy. Routledge (2006)
| Abstract | Franz Brentano’s attempt to distinguish mental from physical phenomena by employing the scholastic concept of intentional inexistence is often cited as reintroducing the concept of intentionality into mainstream philosophical discussion. But Brentano’s own claims about intentional inexistence are much misunderstood. In the second half of the 20th century, analytical philosophers in particular have misread Brentano’s views in misleading ways.1 It is important to correct these misunderstandings if we are to come to a proper assessment of Brentano’s worth as a philosopher and his position in the history of philosophy. Good corrections have been made in the recent analytic literature by David Bell (1990), Dermot Moran (1996), and Barry Smith (1994) among others. But there is also another, more purely philosophical lesson to be learned from the proper understanding of Brentano’s views on this matter. This is that Brentano’s struggles with the concept of intentionality reveal a fundamental division between different ways of thinking about intentionality, an division which Brentano himself does not make fully clear. Making the nature of this division explicit is the aim of this paper | |||||||||
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Richard Menary (2009). Intentionality, Cognitive Integration and the Continuity Thesis. Topoi 28 (1):31-43.
Philip J. Bartok (2005). Brentano's Intentionality Thesis: Beyond the Analytic and Phenomenological Readings. Journal of the History of Philosophy 43 (4):437-460.
Linda L. McAlister (1970). Franz Brentano and Intentional Inexistence. Journal of the History of Philosophy 8 (4):423-430.
Werner Sauer (2006). Die Einheit der Intentionalitätskonzeption Bei Brentano. Grazer Philosophische Studien 73 (1):1-26.
Tim Crane (1998). Intentionality as the Mark of the Mental. In Tim Crane (ed.), Contemporary Issues in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge University Press.
Stephen F. Barker (1982). Intensionality and Intentionality. Philosophy Research Archives 8:95-109.
Linda L. McAlister (ed.) (1977). The Philosophy of Brentano. Humanities Press.
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