Mind, Matter, and Meaning

Brentano

Franz Brentano (1838–1917) was a philosopher and psychologist whose account of mental acts helped shape later phenomenology and analytic philosophy of mind. In Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874), he characterizes mental phenomena through their directedness toward objects. His terminology draws on Aristotle and Scholastic philosophy, while his project seeks a systematic, empirically grounded study of mental life.

Major Works

  • Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874) — mental phenomena, intentionality, inner perception, and their classification.
  • On the Origin of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong (1889) — judgment and evaluative attitudes in moral knowledge.
  • Descriptive Psychology — lectures published posthumously in German in 1982 and in English translation in 1995.

Intentionality as the Mark of the Mental

Brentano proposes that every mental phenomenon involves reference to a content or direction toward an object. Hearing concerns a sound, judging concerns what is affirmed or denied, and loving concerns something loved. “Intentional” does not here mean deliberate: a perception can be intentional without having been chosen.

He contrasts this with physical phenomena as he uses that expression, such as a color or sound presented in experience. It is misleading to substitute a modern contrast between conscious brains and every physical state in the universe without qualification. His classification and his account of what external perception warrants do not coincide with a contemporary scientific ontology.

Later versions of the mark-of-the-mental thesis ask both whether every mental state has intentionality and whether only mental states do. Pains, moods, and undirected anxiety challenge the first claim. Representational accounts of nonconscious information-processing systems raise questions about the second. These are developments of Brentano’s problem, not simple experimental tests of his original vocabulary.

Intentional Inexistence

The phrase intentional inexistence concerns an object’s presence in or involvement with a mental act. It does not mean simply that the object does not exist. Thinking of an imaginary creature and perceiving an actual tree both exhibit directedness, even though only one has an ordinary existing object.

Brentano’s early language of immanence invited interpretations involving an object internal to the act. Scholars disagree about the ontological commitments of this formulation and its relation to his later views. It should not be treated as an uncomplicated claim that every perception is awareness of a miniature object inside the head. Equally, his terminology cannot simply be replaced by contemporary externalist content without acknowledging the interpretive problem.

The difficulty becomes acute for nonexistent objects. If thinking is a relation, what stands at the other end when someone thinks of a golden mountain? Different members of Brentano’s school developed different answers. Meinong’s object theory, Husserl’s analyses of intentional consciousness, and Twardowski’s distinctions among act, content, and object are divergent developments, not doctrines all shared by Brentano.

Presentations, Judgments, and Love or Hate

Brentano divides mental phenomena into three basic classes:

  • Presentations: having something before the mind, whether through perception or imagination.
  • Judgments: accepting or rejecting what is presented.
  • Phenomena of love and hate: positive and negative evaluative attitudes, including forms of desire and emotion.

Judgment is not, on his account, just combining concepts into a sentence. A presented object can be accepted or rejected. Likewise, an evaluative attitude differs from merely presenting its object. The classification focuses on different kinds of act, rather than treating mental life as a container of passive ideas.

Inner Perception and Consciousness

Brentano distinguishes inner perception from deliberate inner observation. A person hearing a sound is primarily directed toward that sound, while the act also involves awareness of itself as a secondary object. This does not require an additional observer or an indefinitely repeated series of monitoring acts.

He takes inner perception to provide immediate evidence unavailable in the same way from external perception. His account has influenced discussions of self-awareness and the unity of consciousness. Critics question its claim to evidential security and its apparent exclusion of unconscious mental phenomena. Later theories of intentionality often retain directedness without accepting Brentano’s account of consciousness or certainty.

Development and Later Reism

Brentano’s ontology changed over his career. In his later reism, he rejects abstract entities and other non-thing objects in favor of individual things, and attempts to reformulate apparently committing expressions. This development complicates readings that project the early language of immanent objects unchanged across his entire philosophy.

His descriptive psychology analyzes the components and structures of mental phenomena, whereas genetic psychology concerns their causal conditions. The distinction separates description of a mental act from an explanation of how it arises. It does not imply that psychological descriptions and causal investigations are mutually exclusive.

Objections and Continuing Questions

Contemporary intentionalists can respond to apparent undirected states by identifying bodily conditions, diffuse situations, or the world more generally as what those states concern. Critics ask whether that stretches directedness beyond explanatory usefulness. Similarly, attributing content to a detector need not attribute beliefs or consciousness to the whole device. The scope of intentionality, the identity of its bearer, and its relation to conscious experience remain distinct questions.

  • Intentionality — the structure and scope of directedness.
  • Transparency — a later question about what introspection reveals.
  • Aristotle — historical sources of Brentano’s psychology.
  • Aquinas — Scholastic cognition and intentional terminology.
  • Crane — contemporary defenses of intentionality as a mental mark.

Further Reading

  • Brentano, Franz. Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. Originally published 1874. Translated by Antos C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell, and Linda L. McAlister; English edition edited by McAlister. Routledge, 1995.
  • Brentano, Franz. Descriptive Psychology. Translated and edited by Benito Müller. Routledge, 1995.
  • Huemer, Wolfgang. “Franz Brentano.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Substantive revision 2019.
  • Mind, Matter, and Meaning — Gordon Swobe’s book-length argument about mind, consciousness, and meaning; an author position, not an endorsement by this reference page or its subjects.