States of affairs raise, among others, the following questions: What kind of entity are they (if there are any)? Are they contingent, causally efficacious, spatio-temporal and perceivable entities, or are they abstract objects? What are their constituents and their identity conditions? What are the functions that states of affairs are able to fulfil in a viable theory, and which problems and prima facie counterintuitive consequences arise out of an ontological commitment to them? Are there merely possible (non-actual, non-obtaining) states of (...) affairs? Are there molecular (i.e., negative, conjunctive, disjunctive etc.) states of affairs? Are there modal and tensed states of affairs? (shrink)

In ‘Brentano’s Methodology as a Path through the Divide’, Röck makes two related claims. Röck argues that there exists a philosophical dilemma between description and logical analysis, and that the current divide between continental phenomenology and analytic philosophy may be seen as a consequence of the dilemma. Röck further argues that Brentano’s work integrates description and logical analysis in a way which ‘can provide a suitable starting point for an equally successful integration of these methods in contemporary philosophy’. Without disputing (...) Röck’s claim about the suitability of Brentano’s work for such an integration, this paper questions by examining the influence of Brentano and his school on early analytic philosophy. As recent scholarship in the history of analytic philosophy demonstrates, contrary to Röck’s contention, many prominent analytic philosophers conversed with Brentano and his school’s conceptions of phenomenological description. (shrink)

Summary In this article the ethical systems of Risieri Frondizi and Maurice Mandelbaum, both decisively influenced by Wolfgang Köhler, are investigated for the first time. Each writer took different things from Köhler, Frondizi the idea of value as a Gestalt quality and Mandelbaum the idea of value as a felt demand. Their positions are highly complementary and Frondizi’s axiological approach enlightens the ontology of value whereas Mandelbaum’s phenomenological approach clarifies the nature of “requiredness” (Köhler) or “fittingness.”.

The project behind this and the following1 special issue of Angelaki first assumed concrete form in the shape of a three-day international conference, “Continental Philosophy and the Sciences,” hel...

There are many difficulties with the existing interpretation of Brentano’s works. The problem stems from the fact that Brentano’s works, letters, manuscripts, memoir’s, etc. remain unpublished or undiscovered. Moreover some Brentano’s scholars, namely Kastil and Mayer-Hillebrandt, were incorrect in their method in publishing the philosopher’s works. Namely, they misinterpreted his earlier works by incorporating numerous interpolations from different time periods as being the philosopher’s final thoughts. More importantly, as evidenced by Antonio Russo’s recent discovery, they also failed to realise the (...) fact that Brentano’s own theoretical views or works were mostly based on Aristotle and Thomas thoughts on metaphysics, that Brentano’s main intention was to develop a scientific demonstration on this topic, and that this issue occupied his mind until his death. It is hoped that this paper goes some way in resolving the said errors and coupled with the continue discovery of new material that the jigsaw of Brentano’s works and thinking shall someday be correctly completed. (shrink)

In the well-known intentionality quote of his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, Brentano characterises the mental phenomena through the following features: the intentional inexistence of an object, the relation to a content, and the direction toward an object. The text argues that this characterisation is not general because the direction toward an object does not apply to the mental phenomena of sensation. The second part of the paper analyses the consequences that ensue from here for the Brentanian classification of mental (...) phenomena: in Brentano’s psychology one can distinguish two concepts of mental phenomena—the mental phenomenon in a broad sense and the mental phenomenon in a narrow sense; the former concept allows the separation of the mental from the physical, while the narrow concept allows the distinguishing of the main classes of mental phenomena. The third part of the paper shows that, with respect to sensation, the absence of a direction toward an object is compatible with both Brentano’s early taxonomies of philosophical sciences, and his early program for the establishment of a new, empirical and non-speculative philosophy. For this reason, I hold that intentionality is important for the foundation of both psychology, and empirical philosophy. (shrink)

In On the Content and Object of Presentations, Kasimir Twardowski presents an interesting line of thought concerning the content of a presentation and its relation to the object of that presentation. This way of thinking about content is valuable for understanding phenomenal intentionality, and it should also be important for the project of “naturalizing” the mental (or at least for discovering the neural correlates of the phenomenal). According to this view, content is that by virtue of which a presentation of (...) an object presents a certain object and no other. In the cases in which an object is presented as simple, there is nothing more that can be said about the relation of content and object. It is sui generis: the relation of content to an object by virtue of which it presents that object. Further, the content of a presentation is never itself directly presented. The content can only be gotten at indirectly, as the content by which such and such object is presented. Where the presented object is complex—as is of course the normal case—a lot that is useful can be said about the structure of the content. In this paper, I lay out Twardowski's theory of the content of presentations. Since the business of content is to present its object, I briefly present the basics of Twardowski's mereology of objects. (shrink)

I offer a reconstruction of Brentano's view of inner consciousness and show how Brentano prevented a regress of higher-order mental acts.

In the famous Appendix to paragraphs 11 and 20 of his 5th Logical Investigation, Husserl criticizes the concept of ‘immanent object’ defended by Brentano and his pupils. Husserl holds that intentional objects, even non-existent ones, are ‘transcendent’. Yet long before Husserl’s criticism, Brentano and his pupils, in their theories of intentionality, besides immanent objects also took into account transcendent ones, in a similar way to Husserl, since such transcendent objects were not necessarily objects that exist. The ‘immanent object’ (immanenter Gegenstand) (...) was also called ‘presented-thing as presented’ (Vorgestelltes als Vorgestelltes), whereas the ‘transcendent object’ was called ‘object tout court’ (Gegenstand schlechtweg) or ‘presented-thing tout court’ (Vorgestelltes schlechtweg). Even if it is in Marty that one finds the clearest distinction between these two kinds of objects, other pupils of Brentano, and Brentano himself, made similar distinctions. Despite its importance, this point has been neglected in the Brentanian literature. In the first part of this article, I present the way in which immanent and transcendent objects have been distinguished in the School of Brentano. In the second part of the article, I present some problems linked to the distinction of two objects for every mental act, an immanent and a transcendent one; these problems could explain the abandonment of the notion of ‘immanent object’ by many philosophers of the Brentanian tradition. I conclude with some remarks on the distinction between content and object in the School of Brentano. (shrink)

This book investigates a number of central problems in the philosophy of Charles Peirce grouped around the realism of his semiotics: the issue of how sign systems are developed and used in the investigation of reality. Thus, it deals with the precise character of Peirce's realism; with Peirce's special notion of propositions as signs which, at the same time, denote and describe the same object. It deals with diagrams as signs which depict more or less abstract states-of-affairs, facilitating reasoning about (...) them; with assertions as public claims about the truth of propositions. It deals with iconicity in logic, the issue of self-control in reasoning, dependences between phenomena in their realist descriptions. A number of chapters deal with applied semiotics: with biosemiotic sign use among pre-human organisms: the multimedia combination of pictorial and linguistic information in human semiotic genres like cartoons, posters, poetry, monuments. All in all, the book makes a strong case for the actual relevance of Peirce's realist semiotics. (shrink)

A basic form of iconicity in literature is the correspondence between basic conceptual schemata in literary semantics on the one hand and in factual treatments on the other. The semantics of a subject like espionage is argued to be dependent on the ontology of the field in question, with reference to the English philosopher Barry Smith’s “fallibilistic apriorism”. This article outlines such an ontology, on the basis of A. J. Greimas’s semiotics and Carl Schmitt’s philosophy of state, claiming that the (...) semantics of espionage involves politology and narratology on an equal footing. The spy’s “positional” character is analyzed on this basis. A structural difference between police and military espionage is outlined with reference to Georges Dumézil’s theory of the three functions in Indo-European thought. A number of ontological socalled “insecurities” inherent in espionage and its literary representation are outlined. Finally, some hypotheses are stated concerning the connection between espionage and literature, and some central allegorical objects — love, theology — of the spy novel are sketched, and a conclusion on the iconicity of literature is made. (shrink)

Summary The present article is a partly ontological, partly Gestalt-psychological discussion of the thinkability of structures in which parts and whole are interdependent (MI). In the first section, I show that in the framework of E. Husserl’s formal part–whole ontology, the conceptualization of such an interdependence leads to (mereo)logical problems. The second section turns to and affirms the experience of this interplay between parts and whole, exemplified with B. Pinna’s recent research on meaningful Gestalt perception. In the final section, I (...) take the experienceability of MI as a justification to suggest a way of rethinking it. This entails an implementation of the process of foregrounding and backgrounding displayed by reversible figures and originally described by E. Rubin. This can avoid both an identity relation between parts and whole and their mutual exclusion as well as hierarchization due to their apparent differences. It would also guarantee the inherent dynamics of interdependence. (shrink)

Die Entwicklung der Philosophie in Österreich unterscheidet sich in markanter Weise von der Hauptlinie der philosophischen Entwicklung in Deutschland. Dabei fällt bei der österreichischen Philosophie vor allem die konsequente Orientierung an den Wissenschaften auf. In der philosophiegeschichtlichen Forschung sind für diese Besonderheit der österreichischen Philosophie z. B. von Otto Neurath, Rudolf Haller, Friedrich Stadier und J.C. Nyiri verschiedene Erklärungen vorgeschlagen worden. In diesen spielen in jeweils unterschiedlicher Weise Faktoren der spezifisch österreichischen Entwicklungen in historischer, institutioneller, politischer und religiöser Hinsicht eine (...) Rolle. Der vorliegende Aufsatz kritisiert demgegenüber bereits die diese Erklärungsversuche tragende Fragestellung: Die philosophischen Entwicklungen in Österreich bedürfen - so lautet die neue These - gar nicht einer besonderen Erklärung; denn sie stellen den geistesgeschichtlichen Normalfall dar. Vielmehr ist eine Erklärung dafür notwendig, daß sich die wissenschaftliche Philosophie und die mit ihr verbundenen Charakterzüge stilistischer Klarheit, technischer Kompetenz, systematischer Orientierung, Spezialisierung und Professionalisierung im gleichen Zeitraum nicht auch in Deutschland entwickelt haben. Eine solche Erklärung läßt sich - so eine weitere These des Aufsatzes - ziemlich leicht aus der besonderen Rolle der (traditionellen idealistischen) Philosophie im deutschen Nationalbewußtsein herleiten. (shrink)

The most obvious varieties of mental phenomena directed to non- existent objects occur in our experiences of works of art. The task of applying the Meinongian ontology of the non-existent to the working out of a theory of aesthetic phenomena was however carried out not by Meinong by his disciple Stephan Witasek in his Grundzüge der allgemeinen Ästhetik of 1904. Witasek shows in detail how our feelings undergo certain sorts of structural modifications when they are directed towards what does not (...) exist. He draws a distinction between genuine mental phenomena and what he calls `phantasy-material', asserting that `the job of the aesthetic object, whether it is a work of art or a product of nature, is to excite and support the actualisation of phantasy-material in the experiencing subject'. We might think of such phantasy-material as a matter of Ersatz-emotions or emotional `slop'. We could then see Witasek's aesthetics as an elaborate taxonomy of the various different sorts of Ersatz-emotions which the subject allows to be stimulated within himself in his intercourse with works of art, and see works of art themselves as machines for the production of ever more subtle varieties of such phantasy-material in the perceiving subject. (shrink)

Husserl famously retracted his early portrayal, in Logische Untersuchungen, of phenomenology as empirical psychology. Previous scholarship has typically understood this transcendental turn in light of the Ideen’s revised conception of the ἐποχή, and its distinction between noesa and noemata. This essay thematizes the evolution of the concept of mental acts in Husserl’s work as a way of understanding the shift. I show how the recognition of the pure ego in Ideen I and II enabled Husserl to radically alter his conception (...) of mental acts, coming to understand them all in terms of genuine acts in a way that had been essentially precluded for descriptive psychologists so long as the pure ego was denied. This reading challenges a widespread assumption in the secondary literature that “mental act” is a merely technical term or misnomer. (shrink)

It is widely known that Kasimir Twardowski was a student of Franz Brentano. In view of the fact that Brentano generally had great impact through his lectures, especially during his Vienna period (1874-1895), and consequently became one of the towering figures of Austrian philosophy, it is a matter of no small interest to determine how he influenced Twardowski. I’ll first consider presentations as they are described in Brentano’s psychology and then proceed to discuss Brentano’s account of the latter in his (...) logic. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that it is the explicativecharacter of Tarski's semantic definition of truth given in his study of 1933 that allows forconsideration of a philosophical background of this definition in the proper sense. Given the explicativecharacter of this definition it is argued that the philosophical tradition that should be taken intoaccount with regard to this philosophical background is the tradition of the Lvov-Warsaw Schoolin its connections with the School of Brentano. As an example of (...) the explanatory power ofconsidering this tradition as far as Tarski's philosophical choices are concerned I use here thenotion of sentence-inscription, i.e., the notion of that entity of which truth is predicated inthe definition in question. One of the consequences of these statements is that philosophicaldiscussions concerning the semantic definition of truth can be regarded from two points ofview. On the one hand, they may take the perspective of its explicational function, i.e., theperspective of its philosophical background. On the other hand, they might consider the philosophicalconsequences of the definition with respect to the goal of the explication, i.e., they may considerits philosophical content independently of its historical background. (shrink)

Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, philosophers of various sorts, including Helmholtz, Avenarius, Husserl, Russell, Carnap, Neurath, and Heidegger, were united in promulgating a new, “scientific” philosophy. This article documents some of the varieties of scientific philosophy and argues that the history of scientific philosophy is crucial to the development of analytic philosophy and the division between analytic and continental philosophy. Scientific philosophy defined itself via criticisms of old-fashioned systematic metaphysics and, in the twentieth century, of Lebensphilosophie. It (...) offered a modernist vision of philosophy participating in a progressive, problem-solving, piecemeal, and collaborative scientific ethos. The article argues that the rise of scientific philosophy indicates a change of the conception of science as well as philosophy in the late nineteenth century and notes some tensions in the accounts of science offered by scientific philosophers. The article offers some preliminary lessons for the interpretation of logical empiricism and phenomenology as episodes within a larger history of scientific philosophy. (shrink)

Magda B. Arnold's theory of emotion is examined from three historical viewpoints. First, I look backward from Arnold to precursors of her theory of emotion in 19th century introspectionist psychology and in classical evolutionary psychology. I try to show that Arnold can be regarded as belonging intellectually to the cognitive tradition of emotion theorising that originated in Brentano and his students, and that she was also significantly influenced by McDougall's evolutionary view of emotion. Second, I look forward from Arnold to (...) the influence she had on Richard S. Lazarus, the theorist who deserves the most credit for popularising the appraisal approach to emotion. Here, I try to document that Lazarus’ theory of the stress emotions preserved most assumptions of Arnold's theory. Finally, I look back at Arnold from today's perspective and address points of success of the appraisal paradigm in emotion psychology, as well as some remaining problems. (shrink)

Peter Hanks and Scott Soames both defend pragmatic solutions to the problem of the unity of the proposition. According to them, what ties together Tim and baldness in the singular proposition expressed by ‘Tim is bald’ is an act of the speaker : the act of predicating baldness of Tim. But Soames construes that act as force neutral and noncommittal while, for Hanks, it is inherently assertive and committal. Hanks answers the Frege–Geach challenge by arguing that, in complex sentences, the (...) force inherent in the content of an embedded sentence is cancelled. Indrek Reiland has recently objected to Hanks’s proposal that it faces a dilemma: either force cancellation dissolves the unity of the proposition secured by the cancelled act of assertion, or Hanks’s proposal reduces to Soames’s. In this paper, I respond to Reiland by offering an analysis of force cancellation which gets rid of the alleged dilemma. The proposal is based on a set of distinctions from speech act theory : between two senses of ’force’, two types of act, and two types of context. The role of simulation in force cancellation is emphasized, and connections drawn to broader issues such as the evolution of complex language. (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)

In this paper, I examine a puzzle that emerges from what J. P. Moreland has called the traditional realist view of quality instances. Briefly put, the puzzle is to figure out how quality instances fit into the overall structure of a concrete particular, given that the traditional realist view of quality instances prima facie seems incompatible with what might be called the traditional realist view of concrete particulars. After having discussed the traditional realist views involved and the puzzle that emerges (...) from their juxtaposition, I propose an alternative realist view of quality instances which resolves the puzzle. In short, the puzzle is solved by treating the distinction between a concrete particular and its quality instances as a distinction of reason, and by adopting the view that the individuating element of a concrete particular must also serve as its unifying element – a view which Moreland, one of traditional realism’s most stalwart contemporary defenders, rejects. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to define and investigate an interpretative framework for the philosophy of Leopold Blaustein, a student of Twardowski in Lwów and Husserl in Freiburg im Breisgau. The author defends the thesis that it is justified to refer to Blaustein’s philosophy not as phenomenology sensu stricto, but as a phenomenologically-oriented descriptive psychology related but not equivalent to the project expounded by Husserl in the first edition of Logische Untersuchungen as well as in his project of phenomenological (...) psychology. The article traces Blaustein’s critique of Husserl’s phenomenological methods, putting it in the historical context of the discussion with Ingarden. Next, the author juxtaposes Blaustein’s understanding of psychology with Husserl’s project of 1925, which makes it possible to identify not only the differences between the two projects, but also their similarities. The article also raises questions about the scope of descriptive-psychological analyses. (shrink)

Tadeusz Kotarbiski is widely recognized as a major philosopher of theLvov–Warsaw school. His reism, which is a contribution to semantics andontology, is still discussed and debated, and his most original creation, praxiology,has grown into an entire research field. However, Kotarbiski's philosophy ofscience has not received much attention by later commentators. This paper attemptsto correct this situation by considering the hypothesis that Kotarbiski succeededalready in 1929 in formulating a position that can be regarded as an early version ofscientific realism. Unlike most (...) other ``scientific philosophers'' before the mid-thirties,he was able to combine ontological realism (by defending a form of physicalism andnominalism) and semantical realism (by defending the classical correspondence theoryof truth). He was also a critical epistemological realist. Further, in spite of theinstrumentalist flavour of his reductionist programme in eliminating terms apparentlyreferring to abstract entities, Kotarbiski accepted theories as statements with truth values and theoretical entities as long as they can be understood as physical bodies. (shrink)

El artículo analiza la teoría de todos y partes de Carl Stumpf. Por un lado, se presentan los elementos básicos de su psicología descriptiva de la experiencia. Por otro lado, se analiza el desarrollo de la teoría de todos y partes sobre la base de dicha psicología descriptiva. El trabajo pretende probar dos tesis complementarias: primero, si bien la teoría mereológica de Stumpf es aún incipiente y no del todo explícita, constituye un auténtico punto de partida. Segundo, dicha mereología surge (...) a partir de una atenta descripción de la experiencia dada y no es algo impuesto a ésta. The article focuses on Carl Stumpf's theory of parts and wholes. On the one hand, I present the basic elements of his descriptive psychology of experience. On the other hand, I analyze the development of his theory of parts and wholes, which is based upon his descriptive psychology. The article aims to prove two different, yet complementary theses: firstly, despite the fact that Stumpf's mereological theory is still incipient and not quite explicit, it represents an authentic point of departure; secondly, this mereology arises out of an attentive description of given experience and not as an imposition to it. (shrink)

El artículo analiza ciertos temas centrales de la filosofía del lenguaje de Anton Marty: primero, su teoría genética del origen casual del lenguaje; segundo, su descripción de los componentes mereológicos y semánticos del lenguaje, en particular del concepto de forma inter-na; tercero, su crítica del juicio categórico, basada en sus análisis de las oraciones impersonales y existenciales; cuarto, la importancia del concepto de existencia para aclarar problemas ontológicos. El trabajo hace además hincapié en señalar las conexiones entre su pensamiento y (...) el de Edmund Husserl, ambos discípulos de Franz Brentano.The article addresses some essential issues of Anton Marty’s philosophy of language: first, its genetic theory of the random origin of language; second, his description of the mereological and the semantic components of language, focused on the concept of internal form; third, its criticism of the categorical judgment, based on its analyses of impersonal and existential sentences; fourth, the importance of the concept of existence in order shed light upon ontological problems. The paper also focuses on emphasizing the connections between his thought and that of Edmund Husserl, both disciples of Franz Brentano. (shrink)

Intentionality (‘directedness’, ‘aboutness’) is both a central topic in contemporary philosophy of mind, phenomenology and the cognitive sciences, and one of the themes with which both analytic and Continental philosophers have separately engaged starting from Brentano and Edmund Husserl’s ground-breaking Logical Investigations (1901) through Roderick M. Chisholm, Daniel C. Dennett’s The Intentional Stance, John Searle’s Intentionality, to the recent work of Tim Crane, Robert Brandom, Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi, among many others. In this paper, I shall review recent discussions (...) of intentionality, including some recent explorations of the history of the concept (paying particular attention to Anselm), and suggest some ways the phenomenological approach of Husserl and Heidegger can still offer insights for contemporary philosophy of mind and consciousness. (shrink)

Both Franz Brentano and Edmund Husserl addressed sound while trying to explain the inner consciousness of time and gave to it the status of a supporting example. Although their inquiries were not aimed at clarifying in detail the nature of the auditory experience or sounds themselves, they made some interesting observations that can contribute to the current philosophical discussion on sounds. On the other hand, in analytic philosophy, while inquiring the nature of sounds, their location, auditory experience or the audible (...) qualities and so on, the representatives of that trend of thought have remained silent about the depiction of sound and the auditory phenomena in the phenomenological tradition. The paper’s intention is to relate both endeavours, yet the perspective carried out is that of analytic philosophy and, thus, I pay special attention to conceptual analysis as a methodological framework. In this sense, I first explain what sound ontology is in the context of analytic philosophy and the views that it encompasses— namely, the Property View (PV), the Wave View (WV) and the Event View (EV)—. Secondly, I address the problems it entails, emphasising that of sound individuation. In a third section, I propose the possibly controversial conjunction of a “Brentano-Husserl Analysis of the Consciousness of Time” (for short “Brentano-Husserl analysis”) and outline the commonalities of both authors, without ignoring its discrepancies. My main focus is Husserl’s 1905 Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des Inneren Zeitbewusstseins. While addressing the Brentano-Husserl analysis, I elaborate on the problem of temporal and spatial extension (Raumlichkeit and Zeitlichkeit, respectively) of both consciousness and sound. Such comparison is a key one, since after these two developments, one can notice some theoretical movements concerning the shift of attention from sounds to the unity of consciousness, and how they mirror each other. After examining the controversial claims concerning the temporal and spatial extension of both consciousness and sound, I argue in the concluding paragraphs that while considering the accounts of sound ontology, the Brentano-Husserl analysis would probably endorse a Property View and that this could have interesting consequences for the issue of Sound Individuation. (shrink)

Carl Menger's methodology describes reality as neatly organized, being constructed additively from strictly regular simple elements called pure types. Such a conception of the world's structure seems to invite mathematical treatment. Yet, his economics is not a mathematical one, and he even explicitly rejected mathematical approach to economics. This apparent puzzle is explained by Menger's failure to deliver in his methodological writings a realistic portrayal of what he was actually doing in his economics. His implicit ambition to retain the full (...) meaning of the natural language concepts while using them simultaneously as theoretical concepts makes his economics dependent on the general human knowledge. Because the latter is mostly non-mathematical, so has to remain the former. This makes his economics both richer as well as fuzzier as compared with mathematical economics. This seems to be the result of a deliberate decision to keep his economic theory more realistic. (shrink)

This article examines some of the phenomenological features in Lev Vygotsky’s mature psychological theory, especially in Thinking and Speech and The Current Crisis in Psychology. It traces the complex literary and philosophical influences in 1920s Moscow on Vygotsky’s thought, through Gustav Shpet’s seminars on Husserl and the inner form of the word, Chelpanov’s seminars on phenomenology, Bakhtin’s theory of the production of inner speech, and the theoretical insights of the early Gestalt psychologists. It begins with an exposition of two central (...) Husserlian schemas: part-whole theory and the thesis of the naïve standpoint, both of which Vygotsky was clearly familiar with. This is followed by an account of the reception of phenomenology in early Soviet Russia. The article’s central sections are concerned with a careful unpacking and critique of Vygotsky’s employment of Husserlian method and analysis in his later doctrine of the ‘inner plane of speech’, his use of part-whole theory, and his identification of Husserl’s position with an untenable version of idealism. The article closes with the contention that Vygotsky misrepresents the phenomenological analysis of meaning formation and appropriates basic Husserlian conceptual terms in his elaboration of the ‘inner form of the word’; but Vygotsky does so in such a way that he enriches our descriptive access to the individual development of humans’ dynamic use of language. (shrink)

Due to the famous methodenstreit it is often well argued that Menger’s approach to social sciences can be seen as anti-historical, as according to him pure empirical studies are insufficient to establish a firm economic theory. By suggesting that some theorems have to precede historical studies, Menger may be seen as a representative of the a priori tradition in scientific method. The modern method in the mainstream of economic thinking is also to a large extent anti-historical and a priori, but (...) because of its lack of realism and extensive reliance on very limiting assumptions. The main strength of the Mengerian anti-historical approach is lesser faith in imaginary constructs, implying a higher degree of realism in theorizing. (shrink)

In the course of the last few decades, Bolzano has emerged as an important player in accounts of the history of philosophy. This should be no surprise. Few authors stand at a more central junction in the development of modern thought. Bolzano's contributions to logic and the theory of knowledge alone straddle three of the most important philosophical traditions of the 19th and 20th centuries: the Kantian school, the early phenomenological movement and what has come to be known as analytical (...) philosophy. This paper identifies three Bolzanian theoretical innovations that warrant his inclusion in the analytical tradition: the commitment to ‘logical realism’, the adoption of a substitutional procedure for the purpose of defining logical properties and a new theory of a priori cognition that presents itself as an alternative to Kant's. All three innovations concur to deliver what counts as the most important development of logic and its philosophy between Aristotle and Frege. In the final part of the paper, I defend Bolzano against a common objection and explain that these theoretical innovations are also supported by views on syntax, which though marginal are both workable and philosophically interesting. (shrink)

Brentano famously changed his mind about intentionality between the 1874 and 1911 editions of Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (PES). The 1911 edition repudiates the 1874 view that to think about something is to stand in a relation to something that is within in the mind, and holds instead that intentionality is only like a relation (it is ‘quasi-relational’). Despite this, Brentano still insists that mental activity involves ‘the reference to something as an object’, much as he did in the (...) 1874 edition of PES. The question is what Brentano might have meant by this, given that he rejects a relational account of intentionality. The present paper suggests an answer. It draws on recent work on pretence theory to provide a model of Brentano’s notion of the quasi-relational nature of mental phenomena, as well as of the notion of mental reference to an object, and argues that the model helps to explain why Brentano might have been able discern a clear continuity between the views of the 1874 and 1911 editions of PES, despite the differences. (shrink)

The notion of intentionality is what Franz Brentano is best known for. But disagreements and misunderstandings still surround his account of its nature. In this paper, I argue that Brentano’s mature account of the nature of intentionality construes it, not as a two-place relation between a subject and an object, nor as a three-place relation between a subject’s act, its object, and a ‘content,’ but as an altogether non-relational, intrinsic property of subjects. I will argue that the view is more (...) defensible than might initially appear. (shrink)

From a metaphysical point of view, it is important clearly to see the ontological difference between what is studied in mathematics and mathematical physics, respectively. In this respect, the paper is concerned with the vectors of classical physics. Vectors have both a scalar magnitude and a direction, and it is argued that neither conventionalism nor wholesale anti‐conventionalism holds true of either of these components of classical physical vectors. A quantification of a physical dimension requires the discovery of ontological order relations (...) among all the determinate properties of this dimension, as well as a conventional definition that connects the number one and mathematical unit vectors to determinate spatiotemporal physical entities. One might say that mathematics deals with numbers and vectors, but mathematical physics with scalar quantities and vector quantities, respectively. The International System of Units distinguishes between basic and derived scalar quantities; if a similar distinction should be introduced for the vector quantities of classical physics, then duration in directed time ought to be chosen as the basic vector quantity. The metaphysics of physical vectors is intimately connected with the metaphysics of time. From a philosophical‐historical point of view, the paper revives W. E. Johnson's distinction ‘determinates‐determinables’ and Hans Reichenbach's notion of ‘coordinative definition’. (shrink)

Bickle argues for both a narrow causal reductionism, and a broader ontological-explanatory reductionism. The former is more successful than the latter. I argue that the central and unsolved problem in Bickle's approach to reductionism involves the nature of psychological terms. Investigating why the broader reductionism fails indicates ways in which phenomenology remains more than a handmaiden of neuroscience.

In the well-known intentionality quote of his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, Brentano characterises the mental phenomena through the following features: (i) the intentional inexistence of an object, (ii) the relation to a content, and (iii) the direction toward an object. The text argues that this characterisation is not general because the direction toward an object does not apply to the mental phenomena of sensation. The second part of the paper analyses the consequences that ensue from here for the Brentanian (...) classification of mental phenomena: in Brentano’s psychology one can distinguish two concepts of mental phenomena − the mental phenomenon in a broad sense and the mental phenomenon in a narrow sense; the former concept allows the separation of the mental from the physical, while the narrow concept allows the distinguishing of the main classes of mental phenomena. The third part of the paper shows that, with respect to sensation, the absence of a direction toward an object is compatible with both Brentano’s early taxonomies of philosophical sciences, and his early program for the establishment of a new, empirical and non-speculative philosophy. For this reason, I hold that intentionality is important for the foundation of both psychology, and empirical philosophy. (shrink)

This volume contains an English translation of Edmund Husserl’s first major work, the Philosophie der Arithmetik, (Husserl 1891). As a translation of Husserliana XII (Husserl 1970), it also includes the first chapter of Husserl’s Habilitationsschrift (Über den Begriff der Zahl) (Husserl 1887) and various supplementary texts written between 1887 and 1901. This translation is the crowning achievement of Dallas Willard’s monumental research into Husserl’s early philosophy (Husserl 1984) and should be seen as a companion to volume V of the Husserliana: (...) Collected Works series (Husserl 1994b), which already contained selected translations from Hua XII. As Willard re- marks on the inner cover of the volume, it is “a window on a period of rich and illuminating philosophical activity”, to which I wholeheartedly agree. Willard’s two volumes of translations open this window on the beginnings of Husserl’s philosophy for the English-speaking world. This earliest period of Husserl’s philosophy has often been unjustly ignored and Willard provides the English reader with an excellent starting point. Husserl’s first steps into phenomenology and the philosophy of logic and mathematics contain many promising seeds that will flower later on, in the Logische Untersuchungen and beyond. (shrink)

In this article we present and compare two early attempts to establish psychology as an independent scientific discipline that had considerable influence in central Europe: the theories of Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776—1841) and Franz Brentano (1838—1917). While both of them emphasize that psychology ought to be conceived as an empirical science, their conceptions show revealing differences. Herbart starts with metaphysical principles and aims at mathematizing psychology, whereas Brentano rejects all metaphysics and bases his method on a conception of inner perception (...) (as opposed to inner observation) as a secondary consciousness, by means of which one gets to be aware of all of one’s own conscious phenomena. Brentano’s focus on inner perception brings him to deny the claim that there could be unconscious mental phenomena — a view that stands in sharp contrast to Herbart’s emphasis on unconscious, ‘repressed’ presentations as a core element of his mechanics of mind. Herbart, on the other hand, denies any role for psychological experiments, while Brentano encouraged laboratory work, thus paving the road for the more experimental work of his students like Stumpf and Meinong. By briefly tracing the fate of the schools of Herbart and Brentano, respectively, we aim to illustrate their impact on the development of psychological research, mainly in central Europe. (shrink)

Normal.dotm 0 0 1 50 252 Kansas State University 4 1 352 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} My task in this paper is twofold. On the one hand, I want to provide an account of Twardowski’s treatment of content , as can be found in his book Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und (...) Gegenstand der Vorstellungen (1894). On the other hand, I wish to make a suggestion about the kind of representationalist Twardowski was. Normal.dotm 0 0 1 19 98 Kansas State University 1 1 137 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} I will devote most of my attention to motivating Twardowski's theory. In conclusion I will provide a defense of the theory. (shrink)

Under one understanding of marketing, this discipline focuses on the creation of customer value. Although nobody doubts today that value is subjective and it emerges from consumer judgment, the causality is less clear. Do producers bring about value, or do consumers receive ‘raw’ products that only attain value in their estimation? Or, do producers and consumers co-create value as much of contemporary marketing theory assumes? Recent works on value creation, the building of customer relationships, and the service-dominant logic are related (...) to insights derived from both Austrian schools of value theory. The emphasis on value as a ratio between perceived benefits and perceived costs may be seen as a continuation of Menger’s and Wieser’s work. The focus on relations as a category distinct from goods goes back to Böhm-Bawerk. And the service-dominant logic reflects insights developed both by Menger and by philosophers of the Brentano School. The direct influence of Austrian economics on business studies is small and is restricted to very few scholars. But the potential is great for a fruitful development of current approaches in marketing by drawing on insights from Austrian economics and, perhaps even more so, from Austrian philosophy. This paper defines the relations between the thought from economists and philosophers and presents examples for how cutting-edge marketing thinking may profit from both Austrian schools of value. (shrink)

Although at present analytic philosophy is practiced mainly in the English-speaking world, it is to a considerable part the invention of German speakers. Its emergence owes much to Russell, Moore, and American Pragmatism, but even more to Frege, Wittgenstein, and the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle. No one would think of analytic philosophy as a specifically Anglophone phenomenon, if the Nazis had not driven many of its pioneers out of central Europe.

In this paper, I explore one particular dimension of Brentano’s legacy, namely, his theory of mental analysis. This theory has received much less attention in recent literature than the intentionality thesis or the theory of inner perception. However, I argue that it provides us with substantive resources in order to conceptualize the unity of intentionality and phenomenality. My proposal is to think of the connection between intentionality and phenomenality as a certain combination of part/whole relations rather than as a supervenience (...) or identity relation. To begin, I discuss some reasons for being a (neo-)Brentanian about the mind and briefly introduce the main characteristics of Brentano’s internalist description program. Then, I turn to the current “inseparatist” way of dealing with intentionality and phenomenality, focusing on the demand for unity coming from advocates of phenomenal intentionality. I suggest that the unity of the mind may be put in a new light if we put aside metaphysical–epistemological questions, go back to Brentano’s description program, and endorse his thesis that the mental is something unified in which various parts must be distinguished. In the last section, I draw some lessons from this approach, holding that, for any representational content R, R is (in Brentano’s terms) an abstractive or “distinctional” part of the relevant state and that, for any qualitative aspect Q, Q is an abstractive or “distinctional” part of the relevant representational content R. (shrink)

According to proponents of ‘phenomenal holism’, the intrinsic characteristics of the parts of unified conscious states are dependent to some degree on the characteristics of the wholes to which they belong. Although the doctrine can easily seem obscure or implausible, there are eminent philosophers who have defended it, amongst them Timothy Sprigge. In Stream of Consciousness (2000) I found Sprigge’s case for phenomenal holism problematic on several counts; in this paper I re-assess some of these criticisms. Recent experimental work suggests (...) cross-modal perceptual interference may be far more prevalent than expected. I argue that although these results do lend support to phenomenal holism in one of its guises, they do not support the strong form of holism espoused by Sprigge. I then move on to consider the relevance and impact of certain gestalt-related considerations, and argue that these considerations at best establish that the stronger form of holism applies to some parts of some experiential states, but not to all parts of all states, as Sprigge claims. I then consider a more promising way forward for anyone who wishes to defend an across-the-board holism of the strong variety, arguing that what is required is a form of phenomenal interdependence that is rooted solely in phenomenal unity. I conclude by outlining a case for thinking that an interdependence of this sort is a quite general feature of unified conscious states. (shrink)