19th Century Austrian Philosophy

By “Brentanian inner consciousness” I mean the conception of inner consciousness developed by Franz Brentano. The aim of this paper is threefold: first, to present Brentano’s account of inner consciousness; second, to discuss this account in light of the mereology outlined by Brentano himself; and third, to decide whether this account incurs an infinite regress. In this regard, I distinguish two kinds of infinite regress: external infinite regress and internal infinite regress. I contend that the most plausible reading of Brentano’s (...) account is the so-called fusion thesis, and I argue that internal infinite regress turns out to be inherent to Brentanian inner consciousness. (shrink)

Entry on the influence of Stumpf et Brentano on Husserl's early phenomenology during the Halle period.

Marx Textor's Brentano's Mind begins with a short, illuminating introduction which clearly sets out the author's main aims. The two questions Textor wants to consider are, "What is the nature of mind?" and, "What is the structure of consciousness?" From the outset, Textor explicitly states that his intent is not to provide a historically plausible exegesis of "Brentano's often dense and difficult texts", but to take his "bold, suggestive, and influential" answers to these questions as an inspiration for new systematic (...) analyses. The book is then divided in two parts, corresponding to the two questions.The central concept at stake in the first part is intentionality, or rather "Brentano's thesis" that "all... (shrink)

Brentano's theory of consciousness has garnered a surprising amount of attention in recent philosophy of mind. Here I argue for a novel interpretation of Brentano's theory that casts it as more original than previously appreciated and yet quite plausible upon inspection. According to Brentano's theory, as interpreted here, a conscious experience of a tree is a mental state that can be simultaneously thought of, or framed, equally accurately as an awareness of a tree or an awareness of an awareness of (...) a tree. (shrink)

In contemporary analytic philosophy of mind, Franz Brentano is known mostly for his thesis that intentionality is ‘the mark of the mental.’ Among Brentano scholars, there are also lively debates on his theory of consciousness and his theory of judgment. Brentano’s theory of will and emotion is less widely discussed, even within the circles of Brentano scholarship. In this paper, I want to show that this is a missed opportunity, certainly for Brentano scholars but also for contemporary philosophy of mind. (...) Brentano’s accounts of the will and of emotion are, I will argue, both insightful, creative, and surprising, on the one hand, and strikingly plausible, upon reflection, on the other. (shrink)

Uriah Kriegel presents a rich exploration of the philosophy of the great nineteenth-century thinker Franz Brentano. He locates Brentano at the crossroads where the Anglo-American and continental European philosophical traditions diverged. At the centre of this account of Brentano's philosophy is the connection between mind and reality. Kriegel aims to develop Brentano's central ideas where they are overly programmatic or do not take into account philosophical developments that have taken place since Brentano's death a century ago; and to offer a (...) partial defense of Brentano's system as quite plausible and in any case extraordinarily creative and thought-provoking. Brentano's system grounds a complete metaphysics and value theory in a well-developed philosophy of mind, and accordingly the book is divided into three parts, devoted to Brentano's philosophy of mind, his metaphysics, and his moral philosophy. The book's fundamental ambition is to show how Brentano combines the clarity and precision of the analytic philosopher with the sweeping vision of the continental philosopher. Brentano pays careful attention to important distinctions, conscientiously defines key notions, presents precise arguments for his claims, judiciously considers potential objections, and in general proceeds very methodically - yet he does so not as an end in itself, but as a means only. His end is the crafting of a grand philosophical system in the classical sense, attempting to produce nothing less than a unified theory of the true, the good, and the beautiful. (shrink)

My paper is divided into three parts. The first examines the different versions of phenomenology that Husserl used during the Freiburg period, including genetic phenomenology, which is considered, in Experience and Judgment, as the basis for his genealogy of logic. I also examine the doxa-episteme opposition, which is one of the central topics of this book, and I claim that Brentano's epistemic asymmetry between internal and external perception can be considered as a special case of this opposition, which Husserl seeks (...) to overcome. The second part consists in an account of the genesis of the concept of primary content, such as it was first introduced in his Habilitationsschrift in order to replace Brentano's notion of physical phenomenon, to Ideas I where Husserl seems to have abandoned this notion, and replaced it with that of hyle which he conceived in a way similar to that of traditional atomism. The third part shows that the lectures and the working manuscripts of the Freiburg period, including Experience and Judgment, dispel the impression left by Ideas I by providing an original analysis of the dimension of sensory experience. Our starting point is an analysis of the cases of misperception that serve as arguments against Brentano's theory of external perception and whose function here is to uncover several distinctions relating to the modes of consciousness which are directly related to primary contents and to the qualitative dimension of experience. I conclude on the subject of passive syntheses and argue that they refer to a multiplicity of relations that structure phenomenal experience. (shrink)

Il s'agit d'une version courte, en portugais, de mon étude "Deux thèses de Brentano sur la conscience". Je propose une relecture des textes principaux de Franz Brentano sur la conscience. Mon point de départ est la formulation de deux thèses sur la conscience que Brentano avance au tout début du deuxième chapitre du deuxième livre de sa Psychologie et qui constituent le fondement de sa théorie des objets primaires et des objets secondaires. Mon hypothèse de travail s’appuie sur le principe (...) de l’unité de la conscience qui représente la clé à la plupart des problèmes que l’on associe généralement à la théorie de la conscience de Brentano. J’examine trois de ces problèmes dans la deuxième partie de cette étude, à savoir les problèmes de la duplication, de la régression et de la complexité. Dans la dernière partie de cette étude, je propose une analyse du principe de l’unité de la conscience qui tient compte des écrits de Brentano après la publication de sa Psychologie en 1874 et j’évalue, en conclusion, la portée des changements que Brentano apporte à sa théorie de la conscience dans ses écrits publiés à titre posthume. (shrink)

Cette étude a pour double objectif de retracer quelques éléments cartésiens dans la philosophie de Brentano et d'évaluer sa théorie de la conscience à la lumière des débats actuels dans la philosophie de l'esprit contemporaine. Les deux premières parties de cette étude évaluent la dette de Brentano à l'endroit de la philosophie de Descartes. Dans la première, je montre que Descartes est associé à plusieurs principes fondamentaux de la psychologie de Brentano, tandis que dans la deuxième, je propose une interprétation (...) de l'inexistence intentionnelle de Brentano à l'aide de la distinction cartésienne entre ens formale et ens objectivum. La troisième partie est un commentaire critique de l'évaluation par D. Rosenthal de la théorie de la conscience de Brentano dans sa Psychologie. Je m'intéresse plus particulièrement à la distinction que fait Rosenthal entre une conception aristotélicienne et une conception cartésienne de la conscience et me demande sous laquelle de ces deux catégories se range la théorie de Brentano. Dans la dernière partie, j'évalue la portée de quelques-unes des modifications importantes que Brentano fait subir à sa psychologie et à sa théorie de la conscience dans ses derniers travaux et j'avance l'hypothèse que ses positions sur la substance pensante et la conscience de soi le rapprochent encore davantage de Descartes. (shrink)

Reply to eight critical reviews of my paper "Franz Brentano and Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness" in the same issue of the journal Argumentos.

This article addresses the recent reception of Franz Brentano's writings on consciousness. I am particularly interested in the connection established between Brentano's theory of consciousness and higher-order theories of consciousness and, more specifically, the theory proposed by David Rosenthal. My working hypothesis is that despite the many similarities that can be established with Rosenthal's philosophy of mind, Brentano's theory of consciousness differs in many respects from higher-order theories of consciousness and avoids most of the criticisms generally directed to them. This (...) article is divided into eight parts. The first two sections expound the basic outline of Rosenthal's theory, and the third summarizes the principal objections that Rosenthal addresses to Brentano, which I, then, examine in sections 4 and 5. In sections 6 and 7, I discuss Brentano's principle of the unity of consciousness, and in section 8, I consider the scope of the changes that Brentano brings to his theory of consciousness in his later writings, which follow the 1874 publication of Psychology. I then draw the conclusion that Brentano's theory rests on a view of intransitive and intrinsic self-consciousness. (shrink)

Dans sa Psychologie du point de vue empirique Brentano fonde le caractère scientifique de la psychologie sur le geste qui délimite le domaine particulier de cette science aux seuls phénomènes psychiques, en excluant les phénomènes physiques. La distinction entre ces deux types de phénomènes devient ainsi essentielle pour le projet brentanien d’une psychologie scientifique. L’objectif de ce travail est de montrer d’une part que la critique que Husserl fait à la fin de ses Recherches logiques de la distinction brentanienne entre (...) phénomènes psychiques et phénomènes physiques ne tient pas compte entièrement de la finesse de la théorie brentanienne des phénomènes physiques. Il s’agira cependant, par la suite de montrer les difficultés qui découlent précisément de cette conception brentanienne complexe des phénomènes physiques, en particulier ceux qui se présentent sous la forme des sensations. Nous montrerons que la théorie brentanienne des sensations à l’époque de sa Psychologie donne à ces phénomènes un caractère double, à la fois physique et psychique, et met ainsi en danger le projet même de délimiter définitivement le domaine de la psychologie aux seuls phénomènes psychiques. (shrink)

Brentano’s views on psychology influenced the way philosophy was made at the beginning of the 20th century. But did this influence spread as far as to give place to Freud’s revolutionary discovery of the psychoanalytical unconscious? There are reasons to believe that Brentano had a profound influence on Freud. An attentive analysis of Freud’s vocabulary as well as his arguments against “philosophical” objections supports this point rather convincingly. However, Freud was not a philosopher and Brentano’s historical influence does not suffice (...) to transform the Freudian unconscious in a philosophical concept. It is the purpose of this paper to sketch a way to make a philosophical use of Freud’s unconscious by reconstructing the dialogue between Brentano and Freud on a conceptual level. Despite the explicit critique of the unconscious that we find in Brentano’s Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, I show that Freud never truly opposed Brentano. He rather took Brentano’s descriptive psychology a step further: he introduced a dynamic component to the analysis of the psyche that is complementary to Brentano’s descriptive psychology and could be considered a type of genetic psychology. (shrink)

In this paper, I will describe how Brentano was able to integrate descriptive philosophy and logical analysis fruitfully by pointing out Brentano’s concept of philosophy as a rigorous science. First I will clarify how Brentano attempted to turn philosophy into a rigorous descriptive science by applying scientific methods to philosophical questions. After spelling out the implications of such a descriptive understanding of philosophy, I will contrast this descriptive view of philosophy with a semantic-analytic understanding of philosophy as proposed by Frege. (...) After having thus set the stage I will argue that the current separation of philosophy into the seemingly antithetical strands of phenomenology and analytic philosophy may be seen as a consequence of how the term ‘rigorous science’ in ‘philosophy as a rigorous science’ is interpreted: Does a rigorous science grasp its object with as much exactitude as possible? Or is a science rigorous when its theories are expressed unambiguously, and their implications are drawn with precision? In the course of this investigation I will also point out how Brentano’s integrative use of descriptive philosophy and analysis can provide a suitable starting point for an equally successful integration of these methods in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Overview of the complex relationship between Brentano and Stumpf.

_ Source: _Volume 94, Issue 3, pp 359 - 380 In this paper the author discusses and defends a theory of consciousness inspired by Franz Brentano, according to which every conscious experience involves a certain kind of immediate awareness of itself. All conscious experience is in a certain fundamental sense ‘self-intimating’—it constitutively involves awareness of that very awareness. The author calls this ‘the awareness of awareness thesis’, and she calls the phenomenon that it concerns ‘awareness of awareness’. The author attempts (...) to give a substantive description of what AOA consists in in two ways, first, by listing some of its positive features, and second, by comparing it and contrasting it with introspection. The idea is that there are many different ways we can be aware of our experiences, introspection being one way, AOA being another, distinct way. By clarifying the distinction between AOA and introspection, we can get a better grasp of both phenomena. (shrink)