The existence of an unaware psychic space that influences the way we think, perceive, and decide has been known for over a century. This space, defined by Freud as the “unconscious,” contains in it...

Creativity is one of the central dimensions of human achievement and social development and has always fascinated scientists and non-scientists alike. But what is the essential nature of creativity? And what is the role of consciousness in the emergence of creativity? If it is true that it has been explored in many aspects in the cognitive and neurobiological field, it is also true that the lore chest—from which the conscious mind through unconscious mechanisms extracts the rough material that is then (...) brought to the surface—has been less investigated. The purpose of this article is to give an account of how the multiplicity of levels of awareness is made possible by a spontaneous order that has nothing to do with a monolithic view of creativity. (shrink)

During the lengthy and complex process of human evolution our ancestors had to adapt to extremely testing situations in which survival depended on making rapid choices that subjected muscles and the body as a whole to extreme tension. In order to seize a prey traveling at speeds that could reach 36 km per hour Homo sapiens had just thousandths of a second in which to anticipate the right moment and position himself before the prey arrived. He also had to prepare (...) the appropriate gesture, tensing his muscles and overcoming the resistance determined by body weight. While we are no longer faced with an environment that is anything so threatening, our brain continues to use these mechanisms day in day out to save time and energy, enabling us to avoid situations of danger, sense in advance the intentions of an interlocutor, and more besides. In this article we set out to show that our brain is not only a reactive mechanism, capable of reacting quickly to the stimuli that arrive from the external environment, but is above all a pro-active mechanism that allows us to make hypotheses, anticipate the consequences of actions, and formulate expectations: in short, to wrong foot an adversary. (shrink)

This article argues the necessity of overcoming the hierarchical and pyramidal conception of the central nervous system that has subordinated the motor function to the higher brain activities for at least the last 150 years. The evolution of some motor modes of behavior?such as the ability to construct and manipulate instruments?has given rise to an ?embodied logic? underpinning not only the development of models of action and prediction but also the production of gestures and sequences of syllables that are at (...) the basis of human communication. Whether it is a matter of shaking someone's hand, writing a letter, or whatever, each executive function?controlled by a series of nervous structures and mental procedures that process the information?requires behaviors that are oriented to a specific end. (shrink)

Musical improvisation is the expressive capacity of a performer fostered by access to their own “productive” or “reproductive” tonal imagery: a field of consciousness that includes experiences, images that are internal, combined, distorted, associated, or in competition between themselves. In the highly original form of life that is jazz, narrating means directing time: a time of epiphanies and introversions, of intuitions and revelations, of syncopated rhythms and aesthetic insights, which appear and disappear on the edges of interference between consciousness and (...) the unconscious. The performing urgency of gestures, voices, and sounds, although arranged in the same scene, highlights the difference in individual time. In this intense activity of opposition and resolution the experience becomes an unstable territory that rests on the capacity of the body to remember, decide, anticipate, and invent. The ego reveals itself to be an emerging representation of our nerve structures and, even if conscious organization continues to be attributed to it, its role is not at all crucial. Unity, if anything, means coordination. The conscious ego is the expression of the body. In its ultimate form its unity is a biological problem. (shrink)

Musical improvisation is a sophisticated activity in which a performer realizes, real-time, melodic, and rhythmic sequences in harmony with those from other musicians. The study of musical improvisation helps one to understand not only the cognition of creativity, but also the complex neuronal basis of executive functions, the relation between conscious and unconscious action, and even more. So far, the prevailing models, founded on the brain imaging method, have focused on the connection between the cortical areas and their cognitive processes. (...) Little attention, on the other hand, has been given to the huge variety of subcortical activities, especially in the basal ganglia. This fundamental subcortical component, through its implicit procedures and the role it plays in memory, is responsible to produce new information all the time, allowing the prefrontal cortex to transform a huge and disordered amount of data in explicit creative acts. The basal ganglia are strongly related to the activation of chemical signals generated by dissonance or lack of symmetry between perception and expectation, participating even in the responses to environmental demands according to the circumstances. Thus, they interact with the frontal cortex and with the limbic system, playing a key role in planning and selecting appropriate actions and in decision making. In this text, we try to explain in which sense improvisation is connected to the processes of executive functions, to creativity and to the integrated activity of cortical–subcortical areas controlling the free flow of ideas and to expressive spontaneity. Eventually, we purpose a model according to which structure and process take part at the centrencephalic space of functional integration, which, through both competing and cooperating dynamics, gives way to spontaneous composition. (shrink)

Up until only a few decades ago, not many scholars recognized scientific dignity in the problem of consciousness. In the last few years this scenario has changed. The rapid development of non-invasive research techniques that explore cerebral functions has not only increased our knowledge on the correlations between mental processes and cerebral structures, but it has fed our hopes for the possibility of facing the ancient and elusive question about the mind-brain relationship with a new way of thinking. The meeting (...) between neurosciences and phenomenology represents one of the most promising frontiers of current research. Neurophenomenology , a paradigm of research inaugurated by the Chilean neuroscientist Francisco Varela, tries to indicate a remedy to the various explicatory philosophical and scientific gaps, establishing a methodological and epistemological bridge between the so-called phenomenological reports in “first person” and the scientific evidence in “third person,” incorporating the experience on neurodynamic levels in an explicit and rigorous way and, above all, avoiding every alternative in the direction of any form of ontological reduction. (shrink)

In this article the theoretic evolution and the empirical-experimental efforts that have led to the affirmation of the bounded/procedural rationality paradigm are discussed. Moreover, the debate on supporters of the "optimization" approach and supporters of the "bounded/procedural rationality" approach is traced, highlighting the irreconcilability of these two approaches and, in retort, a solid defense against a merely "reductionist" attempt of the innovative context of the Simonian theory. Critically going over the debate on decision dynamics, it becomes clear how, due to (...) the uncertain nature of rational processes, it is impossible to establish the decision-making best way. The imperfect character of individual choice is explained by how the decider identifies a solution that appears satisfying in that moment due to cognitive and temporal limits. (shrink)

Ao propor um diálogo entre a tradição do pensamento europeu e as reflexões de artistas e intelectuais brasileiros, este livro permite ao leitor ampliar sua perspectiva a respeito dos efeitos da fragmentação do sujeito no mundo e da necessidade de construção de novos valores para a convivência com as diferenças. Para isso, Mauro Maldonato e Danilo Santos de Miranda abordam assuntos candentes da contemporaneidade como política, cultura, educação, ética, liberdade e alteridade. "Na base do farol não há luz" (...) contribui para uma indagação sobre o presente, a partir de aspectos como os novos papeis da história, do cidadão e do estado democrático; as relações entre a racionalidade, a moral e as emoções; a banalização da educação diante dos excessos da sociedade da informação; a função da intuição na construção do conhecimento e do pensamento científico; a consciência humana, o inconsciente e os processos de criação; o futuro e os riscos para a liberdade. Trata-se de um convite a manter viva a chama do inconformismo, motor a mover o homem, em busca de um porvir que não venha a assombrá-lo. (shrink)

Few dilemmas in the history of human thought have aroused debates so exciting as that on consciousness. In the past, few scholars recognised scientific dignity to the issue, perhaps because of its subjective nature. Conditioned by limitations of the introspective method and by the unnatural opposition between conscious and unconscious, the study of consciousness has been the exclusive prerogative of philosophy, literature and theology, strengthening the prejudice that separates humanistic and scientific culture. Mauro Maldonato sets out to establish (...) a fruitful dialogue between different disciplines, investigating consciousness from points of view that shape awareness of ourselves and of the world. For every one of us, consciousness is a primary, immediate, permanent fact - the core of life itself. Why, then, are we so far from forming any definitive picture of what it is, and what it means for us? The study of the biological bases for consciousness has shown how physics is incapable of providing credible solutions; the lack of means to describe the interactions between neuronal structures and qualitative experiences leads to an investigative dead end. But this explanatory shortfall does not authorise us to postulate the existence of an inaccessible sancta sanctorum. A scientific project to naturalise consciousness - attempting to ground our relational life and human action in biology - has to recognise issues of complexity, and the irreversibility and historical contingency of our individual phenomenalistic experience. The ground-breaking Archipelago of Consciousness: How Biology invents Culture follows the author's well received writings on Natural Logic, Decision Making and the Predictive Brain. (shrink)

From the seventies onward a large quantity of theoretical and empirical studies have investigated the heuristic principles and cognitive strategies that individuals use to deal with risky and uncertain situations. This research has shown how the explicative and predictive shortcomings of normative risk analysis depend in many respects on undervaluing the continuous interaction between the individual and the environment. There are factors that, day by day, represent significant obstacles to decision making.

Nei suoi diversi stadi evolutivi la vita biologica sul nostro pianeta ha mostrato due principali “adattamenti” al tempo: in primo luogo, imprimendo nel codice genetico elementi che facilitassero la variabilità periodica ai cambiamenti ambientali (luce, temperatura, precipitazioni), fenomeni tipici del nostro pianeta e del suo satellite rispetto al sole; in secondo luogo, dotando il sistema nervoso animale di strutture che garantissero, oltre l’equilibrio, le attività sensoriali e motorie rego...

Emerging at the margins of science fiction, the concept of posthuman has become the most potent and pervasive movement of contemporary culture. From science to ethics, from philosophy to art, from politics to communication, posthuman studies transcend analytical-conceptual categories of traditional disciplines. This new anthropology, open to a hetero-referential alterity (bio-techno-IT), requires, on the pathic level, new forms of adaptation and integration. The emancipation of the idea of a presumed human 'essence' brings possibilities as well as risks. This book sets (...) out to show how, beyond epistemological asymmetries and different forms of language, reflection on the posthuman in terms of the complex questions of our time imposes a biotechnopoiesis on multiple levels: from redefining our relationship with the planetary environment to questioning the dimensions of our historical condition. The study thereof revolves around sensorial, perceptual and emotional activity in terms of cognition and neurophysiology. Consciousness is to be regarded not as a workspace demarcated by the brain, but as a unitas multiplex that emerges from co-operation between brain and body. The posthuman defines a new model of existence and leaves an emerging anthropological identity open to dialogue with eteroreferential (otherness) in "bio-techno-informatics." This requires the development of a commensurate adequacy of emotions and affections (the pathic). Man and woman are thus called to 'care' for the posthuman: their passion for the new status of "nomadic subjectivity" will bring with it the ability to engage biotechnopoiesis in multiple ways to the greater good of mankind. [Subject: Psychology, Philosophy]. (shrink)

Human aggression and war are mediated by culture and social evolution. Human beings have a wide range of possible behaviors and possible cultural responses to aggression and the possibility of fear. This article analyzes the psychobiological dimensions of aggression and war, and proposes a way of approaching the complex interrelationship between biology, psychology, and culture.

The decline of classical epistemology on unity-identity-totality shows it becomes more urgent to leave formal conventionalism behind, and to use a new diverging language. Every scientist must feel the emotion of the beginner. Nevertheless, we must not have illusions. Pure observation does not exist. Moreover, there are no laws that can remove the asymmetries of a system. The knowledge and scientific practice free themselves from the obsession of clarity, of linearity and from the idea of evolution that follows and precedes (...) through pre-determined ways and versions. What we need is a multiple, connected intellection that allows us to look at science and at the world without the distorting effect of ingenuous methodologies and classifications that, if on the one hand put us at our ease, on the other hand keep us from the knowledge of things. (shrink)

Starting from the most important conquests of contemporary post-positivistic epistemology and from its authors such as Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, and Edgar Morin and going through Gadamer's hermeneutics or Wittgenstein and de Mandeville's approaches to scientific and social paradigms, this article focuses on the limits of scientific dogmas and on the overbearing rationalism that claims to explain everything, marginalizing many aspects of human life which cannot be rationalized. The scientific approach cannot be just conceptual. It must be opened (...) to images and unusual connections. The scientist must concentrate his or her attention on limit-matters that are often unpredictable and go beyond the logical-philosophical field toward the metaphysical one. "I did not know I did not know" realized von Foerster, and aware of that, the scientist should become the specialist of the unknown, moving along the border-figures of science and philosophy. (shrink)

Since the dawn of time, humankind's singular ability to make decisions has allowed human beings to face innumerable environmental challenges and complex evolutionary dynamics. Environmental pressures are not so urgent anymore, comparing to our ancestors. Nonetheless, the number of decisions that contemporary humans are called to make is very high. During the last three centuries, the change from normative to descriptive theories, from formal to natural logic, from substantive to limited rationality has allowed us to explain how many of the (...) decisional strategies are coherent with the functioning of the cognitive economy of our species, even if they are limited and fallible. (shrink)

Recently the complexity of discursive practices has been widely acknowledged by the humanities and social sciences. In fact, to know anything is to know in terms of one or more discourse. The "discursive turn" in psychology may be considered as a new paradigm oriented to a correct study of (wo)man only if it is able to grasp the semiotical ground of psychic experience both as an "effort after meaning" and as a "struggle over meaning." In this sense the notion of (...) "diatext" has been proposed as a contribution in working out a psychosemiotical approach to understand how the discursive practices assign subject-positions to the agents of each interlocution scenario. (shrink)

The first systematic collaboration between cognitive scientists and sports psychologists considers the mind–body relationship from the perspective of athletic skill and sports practice. This landmark work is the first systematic collaboration between cognitive scientists and sports psychologists that considers the mind–body relationship from the perspective of athletic skill and sports practice. With twenty-six chapters by leading researchers, the book connects and integrates findings from fields that range from philosophy of mind to sociology of sports. The chapters show not only that (...) sports can tell scientists how the human mind works but also that the scientific study of the human mind can help athletes succeed. Sports psychology research has always focused on the themes, notions, and models of embodied cognition; embodied cognition, in turn, has found striking confirmation of its theoretical claims in the psychological accounts of sports performance and athletic skill. Athletic skill is a legitimate form of intelligence, involving cognitive faculties no less sophisticated and complex than those required by mathematical problem solving. After presenting the key concepts necessary for applying embodied cognition to sports psychology, the book discusses skill disruption ; sensorimotor skill acquisition and how training correlates to the development of cognitive faculties; the intersubjective and social dimension of sports skills, seen in team sports; sports practice in cultural and societal contexts; the notion of “affordance” and its significance for ecological psychology and embodied cognition theory; and the mind's predictive capabilities, which enable anticipation, creativity, improvisation, and imagination in sports performance. Contributors Ana Maria Abreu, Kenneth Aggerholm, Salvatore Maria Aglioti, Jesús Ilundáin-Agurruza, Duarte Araújo, Jürgen Beckmann, Kath Bicknell, Geoffrey P. Bingham, Jens E. Birch, Gunnar Breivik, Noel E. Brick, Massimiliano L. Cappuccio, Thomas H. Carr, Alberto Cei, Anthony Chemero, Wayne Christensen, Lincoln J. Colling, Cassie Comley, Keith Davids, Matt Dicks, Caren Diehl, Karl Erickson, Anna Esposito, Pedro Tiago Esteves, Mirko Farina, Giolo Fele, Denis Francesconi, Shaun Gallagher, Gowrishankar Ganesh, Raúl Sánchez-García, Rob Gray, Denise M. Hill, Daniel D. Hutto, Tsuyoshi Ikegami, Geir Jordet, Adam Kiefer, Michael Kirchhoff, Kevin Krein, Kenneth Liberman, Tadhg E. MacIntyre, Nelson Mauro Maldonato, David L. Mann, Richard S. W. Masters, Patrick McGivern, Doris McIlwain, Michele Merritt, Christopher Mesagno, Vegard Fusche Moe, Barbara Gail Montero, Aidan P. Moran, David Moreau, Hiroki Nakamoto, Alberto Oliverio, David Papineau, Gert-Jan Pepping, Miriam Reiner, Ian Renshaw, Michael A. Riley, Zuzanna Rucinska, Lawrence Shapiro, Paula Silva, Shannon Spaulding, John Sutton, Phillip D. Tomporowski, John Toner, Andrew D. Wilson, Audrey Yap, Qin Zhu, Christopher Madan. (shrink)

Summary A provocative examination of the consequences of Levinas’s and Adorno’s thought for contemporary ethics and political philosophy. This book sets up a dialogue between Emmanuel Levinas and Theodor W. Adorno, using their thought to address contemporary environmental and social-political situations. Eric S. Nelson explores the “non-identity thinking” of Adorno and the “ethics of the Other” of Levinas with regard to three areas of concern: the ethical position of nature and “inhuman” material others such as environments and animals; the (...) bonds and tensions between ethics and religion and the formation of the self through the dynamic of violence and liberation expressed in religious discourses; and the problematic uses and limitations of liberal and republican discourses of equality, liberty, tolerance, and their presupposition of the private individual self and autonomous subject. Thinking with and beyond Levinas and Adorno, this work examines the possibility of an anarchic hospitality and solidarity between material others and sensuous embodied life. “This is an extremely impressive, original, and thorough treatment of two key twentieth-century thinkers and their applicability to the most pressing social and political issues of our time.” — Jeffrey A. Bernstein, author of Leo Strauss on the Borders of Judaism, Philosophy, and History “This book is an excellent and timely contribution to political and environmental philosophy, located around a nuanced historical and philosophical approach to Levinas and Adorno. It will be of great interest to anyone concerned with these figures or with the current moment.” — Martin Shuster, author of Autonomy after Auschwitz: Adorno, German Idealism, and Modernity. (shrink)

Daoism and Environmental Philosophy explores ethics and the philosophy of nature in the Daodejing, the Zhuangzi, and related texts to elucidate their potential significance in our contemporary environmental crisis. This book traces early Daoist depictions of practices of embodied emptying and forgetting and communicative strategies of undoing the fixations of words, things, and the embodied self. These are aspects of an ethics of embracing plainness and simplicity, nourishing the asymmetrically differentiated yet shared elemental body of life of the myriad things, (...) and being responsively attuned in encountering and responding to things. These critical and transformative dimensions of early Daoism provide exemplary models and insights for cultivating a more expansive ecological ethos, environmental culture of nature, and progressive political ecology. This work will be of interest to students and scholars interested in philosophy, environmental ethics and philosophy, religious studies, and intellectual history. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging and authoritative volume, leading scholars engage with the philosophy and writings of Wilhelm Dilthey, a key figure in nineteenth-century thought. Their chapters cover his innovative philosophical strategies and explore how they can be understood in relation to their historical situation, as well as presenting incisive interpretations of Dilthey's arguments, including their development, their content, and their influence on later thought. A key focus is on how Dilthey's work remains relevant to current debates around art and literature, the (...) biographical and autobiographical self, knowledge, language, science, culture, history, society, and psychology and the embodied mind. The volume will be important for researchers in hermeneutics, aesthetics, practical philosophy, and the history of German philosophy, providing a valuable introduction to Dilthey's work as well as detailed critical analysis of its ongoing significance. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION Reopening a Discussion The empiricist-derived epistemology that has directed most social and natural scientific inquiry for the last three ...

The paper argues against the growing tendency to interpret Brentano’s conception of inner consciousness in self-representational terms. This trend has received support from the tendency to see Brentano as a forerunner of contemporary same-order theories of consciousness and from the view that Brentano models intransitive consciousness on transitive consciousness, such that a mental state is conscious insofar as it is aware of itself as an object. However, this reading fails to take into account the Brentanian concept of object, which is (...) ultimately derived from ancient and medieval philosophy, as well as the secondary, elusive character that Brentano attributes to inner perception. According to Brentano, we have an aspectual but transparent consciousness of transcendent objects, whereas our awareness of our own mental acts is always complete but incidental, and ultimately opaque. Reversing the relationship between intentionality and consciousness faces difficulties at the textual interpretative level, but also raises theoretical problems, for it risks treating Brentano’s theory of mind as a form of subjectivism and idealism. (shrink)

Psychiatry has witnessed a new wave of approaches to clinical phenotyping and the study of psychopathology, including the National Institute of Mental Health’s Research Domain Criteria, clinical staging, network approaches, the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology, and the general psychopathology factor, as well as a revival of interest in phenomenological psychopathology. The question naturally emerges as to what the relationship between these new approaches is – are they mutually exclusive, competing approaches, or can they be integrated in some way and used (...) to enrich each other? In this opinion piece, we propose a possible integration between clinical staging and phenomenological psychopathology. Domains identified in phenomenological psychopathology, such as selfhood, embodiment, affectivity, etc., can be overlaid on clinical stages in order to enrich and deepen the phenotypes captured in clinical staging (‘high resolution’ clinical phenotypes). This approach may be useful both ideographically and nomothetically, in that it could complement diagnosis, enrich clinical formulation, and inform treatment of individual patients, as well as help guide aetiological, prediction, and treatment research. The overlaying of phenomenological domains on clinical stages may require that these domains are reformulated in dimensional rather than categorial terms. This integrative project requires assessment tools, some of which are already available, that are sensitive and thorough enough to pick up on the range of relevant psychopathology. The proposed approach offers opportunities for mutual enrichment: clinical staging may be enriched by introducing greater depth to phenotypes; phenomenological psychopathology may be enriched by introducing stages of severity and disorder progression to phenomenological analysis. (shrink)

Miller (1956) summarized evidence that people can remember about seven chunks in short-term memory (STM) tasks. However, that number was meant more as a rough estimate and a rhetorical device than as a real capacity limit. Others have since suggested that there is a more precise capacity limit, but that it is only three to five chunks. The present target article brings together a wide variety of data on capacity limits suggesting that the smaller capacity limit is real. Capacity limits (...) will be useful in analyses of information processing only if the boundary conditions for observing them can be carefully described. Four basic conditions in which chunks can be identified and capacity limits can accordingly be observed are: (1) when information overload limits chunks to individual stimulus items, (2) when other steps are taken specifically to block the recoding of stimulus items into larger chunks, (3) in performance discontinuities caused by the capacity limit, and (4) in various indirect effects of the capacity limit. Under these conditions, rehearsal and long-term memory cannot be used to combine stimulus items into chunks of an unknown size; nor can storage mechanisms that are not capacity-limited, such as sensory memory, allow the capacity-limited storage mechanism to be refilled during recall. A single, central capacity limit averaging about four chunks is implicated along with other, noncapacity-limited sources. The pure STM capacity limit expressed in chunks is distinguished from compound STM limits obtained when the number of separately held chunks is unclear. Reasons why pure capacity estimates fall within a narrow range are discussed and a capacity limit for the focus of attention is proposed. Key Words: attention; enumeration; information chunks; memory capacity; processing capacity; processing channels; serial recall; short-term memory; storage capacity; verbal recall; working memory capacity. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the debate between the so-called “presentists” – according to whom only the present is real – and the “eternalists”, according to whom past present and future are equally real, has no ontological significance. In particular, once we carefully distinguish between a tensed and a tenseless sense of existence, it is difficult to find a single ontological claim on which the two parties could disagree. Since the choice of using a tense or a tenseless language (...) is dictated by purely pragmatic reasons, we should abstain from bringing to bear pseudo-debates generated by the “tensed” or the “tenseless theories” of time on the question of understanding the philosophical implications of contemporary spacetime theories, or notions like becoming, change and persistence in time. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the role of dispositional properties in the most frequently discussed interpretations of non-relativistic quantum mechanics. After offering some motivation for this project, I briefly characterize the distinction between non-dispositional and dispositional properties in the context of quantum mechanics by suggesting a necessary condition for dispositionality – namely contextuality – and, consequently, a sufficient condition for non-dispositionality, namely non-contextuality. Having made sure that the distinction is conceptually sound, I then analyze the plausibility of the widespread, monistic (...) ontological thesis about the reducibility of dispositional properties to categorical properties in the context of the philosophy of quantum mechanics. I conclude that with the exception of Bohmian mechanics, the other “minimally realist” views of quantum mechanics require essential dispositions, i.e., dispositions of a non-reducible kind. Interestingly, seen behind the lenses of dispositionalism, Bohr’s and Bohm’s interpretations of quantum mechanics are much closer than it is usually recognized, a fact that could teach us something about the way the quantum world is. (shrink)

La thèse de l’« inexistence intentionnelle » formulée par Brentano a été traditionnellement interprétée comme une théorie de la « relation intentionnelle », autrement dit de la relation entre l’acte mental et son « objet immanent » ou « intentionnel », c’est-à-dire interne à la conscience. Se fondant sur la lecture du fameux passage sur l’intentionnalité de la Psychologie du point de vue empirique , le présent article démontre que l’interprétation ontologique de la théorie de l’intentionnalité du premier Brentano est (...) insoutenable, toute dominante qu’elle est. Pour ce faire, nous partirons des sources de la pensée de Brentano, en particulier de la théorie de la perception et des relatifs d’Aristote, pour rejeter la conception de l’objet immanent ou intentionnel comme entité immanente à la conscience et mettre en évidence la continuité qui existe entre la première conception de Brentano de l’intentionnalité et la seconde, consécutive à ce qu’on définit comme le tournant réiste de sa pensée.Brentano’s thesis of “intentional inexistence” has been traditionally interpreted as a theory of “intentional relationships”, i.e., of the relation between a mental act and its “immanent” or “intentional object”, within consciousness. Starting from the famous passage on intentionality in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint , the present paper shows that the dominant ontological interpretation of Brentano’s former theory of intentionality is untenable. Proceeding from the sources of Brentano’s thought, in particular from Aristotle’s theory of perception and of relatives, the conception of the immanent or intentional object as an immanent entity to consciousness is rejected. Instead, the continuity between Brentano’s former conception of intentionality and the subsequent one, following the so-called reistic turning-point in his thought, is highlighted. (shrink)