Brentano's Empiricism and the Philosophy of Intentionality

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 98 (1):50-68 (2017)
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Abstract

Brentano's Thesis that intentionality is the mark of the mental is central to analytic philosophy of mind as well as phenomenology. The contemporary discussion assumes that it is a formulation of an analytic definition of the mental. I argue that this assumption is mistaken. According to Brentano, many philosophical concepts can only be elucidated by perceiving their instances because these concepts are abstracted from perception. The concept of the mental is one of these concepts. We need to understand Brentano's Thesis accordingly: It is a piece of advice on how to become introspectively aware of the distinctive feature of mental phenomena. On this understanding of Brentano's Thesis standard objections to it no longer arise.

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Mark Textor
King's College London

Citations of this work

Crane and the mark of the mental.Andrea Raimondi - 2022 - Analysis 81 (4):683-693.
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How to speak of the colors.Mark Johnston - 1992 - Philosophical Studies 68 (3):221-263.
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Critique of Pure Reason.Wolfgang Schwarz - 1966 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 26 (3):449-451.

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