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Abstract
Brentanos Psychology constantly refers to mental phenomena as
mental acts, yet there has been surprisingly little effort devoted
to discerning the significance of the term act in this context. A
widespread implicit view is (1) that it is merely a technical term, and
does not literally invoke any connotations of action at all. But since
many regard the Psychology as riddled with Aristotelian assumptions,
some also suggest (2) that Brentanos talk of mental acts is a signifi-
cant holdover from his Aristotelian pedigree. Here I argue, negatively,
that both claims are deeply problematic. First, traditional readings
of Brentano (by, e.g., Oskar Kraus) in terms of (1) are incapable of
supporting some of Brentanos most central commitments regarding
inner perception and the method of psychology. Second, Brentanos
own conception of Aristotelianism is such that if (2) were true, (1)
would be false. Finally, if (2) were true in any significant sense, then
Brentano would simply fail to do what he sets out to do in his em-
pirical psychology. I thus call for renewed attention to Brentanos
conception of mental acts.
Acknowledgments
For helpful comments on earlier work leading up to this paper, I thank the
organizers and audiences of the 2013 meetings of the North American Soci-
ety for Early Phenomenology (NASEP) and the Seminar in Phenomenology
and History of Philosophy (SIPHOP). I also benefited from discussions with
members of the California Phenomenology Circle (CPC), UC San Diegos
History of Philosophy Roundtable (HOPR), and UC San Diegos Phenomenol-
ogy Reading Group. William Bechtel, Monte Johnson, and Clinton Tolley
gave extensive feedback on earlier drafts. Finally, thoughtful comments and
critique from two anonymous referees helped strengthen the paper.
Sheredos Brentanos Act Psychology 2
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1
Citations to PES will be ugly, but useful. Previous scholarship often cited the out-
of-print 1973 edition of McAlisters translation, whereas future scholarship may rely on
the 1995/2009 re-issue. Since their pagination does not match, I provide both, along with
relevant German pagination. Citations thus follow the order: (i ) pagination in the 1973
translation, (ii ) pagination of the 1995/2009 re-issue, then (iii ) usually the pagination of
the first German edition, but sometimes (where I am explicitly discussing Brentanos 1911
revisions) pagination of the 1911 re-issue of Book II, Ch. 5-9, and sometimes (where I
am explicitly discussing Kraus additions in 1924) pagination of Felix Meiners 2-volume
edition in the Philosophische Bibliothek series.
2
This passage is quoted explicitly by: Bechtel (2008, p.179); Byrne (2006, p.406);
Chisholm (1957, p.168); Deacon (2010, p.191) Dennett (1969, p.14); Dummett (1990,
p.192); Kim (1996, p.21); Russell (1921, pp.14-15); Sayre (1976, p.243); Segal (2005,
p.283); Stubenberg (1998, p.222); and Tye (1995, p.95). It is cited more obliquely by:
Searle (1983, p.14); Dennett (1987, p.67); and Dretske (1995, p.28).
Sheredos Brentanos Act Psychology 3
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There is precedent for this method in the fact that Brentano was unmistak-
ably enamored with Aristotles thought throughout his life.3 Moreover, the
strategy appears to pay dividends. Many have looked to Brentanos earlier
works especially The Psychology of Aristotle to locate Aristotelian prece-
dents for his mature views in psychology. Fugali (2009) identifies Brentano
and his teacher, Trendelenburg, as proponents of a broader 19th century
movement to revitalize an Aristotelian approach to psychology. Libardi
(1996, p.35) suggests that Brentanos early work on Aristotle provided him
with a set of premises which constituted the conceptual basis for his mature
psychological work. George & Koehn (2004) locate Aristotelian precursors
to Brentanos later views on a number of topics, including intentionality,
judgment, and the proper method of philosophy. Smith (1995) recognizes all
these same connections in essence (though there is dispute over details).
But there is a striking historical puzzle regarding treatments of Brentanos
doctrine of intentionality. In PES, Brentano defined as synonymous the terms
(i) mental act, (ii ) intentional mental phenomenon and (iii ) conscious
mental phenomenon (1874, p.102/78/132). Many have doubted whether
(ii ) and (iii ) are synonymous: many contemporary philosophers of mind and
3
Brentano published Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles
in 1862, and completed Die Psychologie des Aristoteles in 1867. In PES itself, Brentano
is keen to locate Aristotelian precursors for many of his central claims. At the time of the
second edition of PES, in 1911, Brentano also published an introduction to Aristotelian
thought (Aristotles une seine Weltanschauung), while also re-releasing another text on
Aristotle (Aristotles Lehre vom Ursprung des menschlischen Geistes). And Brentano con-
tinued to write a number of letters and manuscripts on Aristotle thereafter, many of which
have been collected and reprinted in the posthumous volume, Uber Aristoteles, and some
in the posthumous Wahrheit und Evidenz.
Sheredos Brentanos Act Psychology 4
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4
Even some quite recent reference texts in psychology maintain the legacy of treating
intentionality explicity and exclusively as a posit of Act Psychology see Eysenck
et al. (1982); Corsini (2002).
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The suggestion is that when Brentano and Husserl spoke (as they often did)
of intentional phenomena as mental acts, they were genuinely committed
to viewing them as acts, i.e., dynamic doings or performances, as intuitively
opposed to things which just happen, and as opposed to static properties
which a mind simply has. I call this the Act Conception of intentionality.
In recent discussions of the works of AP, one can occasionally find the
term mental act deployed for convenience or continuity, but there is lit-
tle reflection on whether it means anything significant. For example, the
5
Here, and throughout this paper, I replace any Greek orthography with the more
accessible Romanized version. Great thanks go to Monte Johnson for his oversight.
Sheredos Brentanos Act Psychology 6
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works collected in Textor (2006) move freely and comfortably between talk
of mental acts (which connotes a dynamic character) and talk of mental
states (which rather suggests something static). Such ambivalence is long-
running: in his book Mental Acts, Peter Geach treats as interchangeable the
expressions mental acts or mental events or what happened in a persons
mind (1957, p.2). This ambivalence is also still alive. Tim Crane remarks:
...all intentional objects are the objects of intentional states or acts. (By
act I mean a mental phenomenon that has an object and has a place in
a time-series, like an act of judgement, or a decision) (2001, p.342). This
may distinguish mental acts, as datable events, from states, but if we follow
Crane, we implicitly suppose that there is really nothing lost in throwing
overboard an explicitly active connotation. This is a common view today,
but it is at odds with the historians conception of AP.
One can detect two long-running assumptions in the secondary literature
on Brentano, which many readers may have already called to mind:
As I discuss further below, a combination of (1) and (2) was promoted by Os-
kar Kraus, Brentanos editor and former student. (1) can also be detected in
the positivistic (Comtean) reading of Brentano pursued by Hickerson (2007,
see esp. p.27). Similarly (1) might be suggested by Smiths (1995) treatment
of the Brentano school as a forerunner to the Vienna Circle. Biagio Tassone
(2012) is a recent proponent of (2), whose work I discuss below.6
In this essay my aims are entirely negative: I argue that no combination
of the foregoing two claims can provide an adequate reading of PES. I offer
no positive reading of mental act in Brentanos work rather, I underscore
why new work is required to provide any such reading.
In S2, I argue that (1) is incompatible with (2): if Brentano did intend
that we read mental acts in light of his early work on Aristotle, this would
enable a significant construal of mental acts as acts. I distinguish two ways in
which Brentanos early conception of Aristotelian psychology could support
an Act Conception of (at least some) intentionality.
In S3, I outline Krauss claims in support of (1), and I examine Tassones
endorsement of (2). I thus explicate a total of three distinct proposals for
6
It is difficult to find explicit treatments of the locution mental acts, as I have
remarked. I offer three further examples which suggest that (1) and (2) are in the air.
(a) Spiegelberg (1976) is quite clear in maintaining that the Latin intentio, as used by
the Scholastics which inspired Brentano, is to be read in an extra-practical sense which
must be sharply distinguished from any connotation of acts (cf. p.110), even if it did
eventually come to be paired up with the term actus, by Duns Scotus (cf. p. 112).
(b) Marras (1976) is an example of a text in which talk of mental activity comes along
for free (see p. 137 poof!) once we trace intentionality back to the Scholastics.
(c) George & Koehn 2004 suggest rather strongly that the concept of a mental act goes
back to Aristotle, and they move comfortably between that locution and talk of mental
states (cf. pp.29-30).
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how to read mental acts in Brentano two Aristotelian readings, and one
Krausian, dismissive reading.
Lastly, in S4, I argue that none of these options provides an adequate
reading of PES. First, (2) is false: none of the Aristotelian readings of mental
acts can provide an adequate reading of PES, unless Brentano simply fails
to do what he says he aims to do. Moreover, I argue that Krauss proposal
for upholding (1) is inadequate to capture the most central commitments of
Brentanos empirical psychology (namely, the intentional unity of any mental
act which enables the empirical method of inner perception).
In short, I pose an interpretive challenge for future scholarship: we need
novel analyses of Brentanos work to provide an adequate account of what
mental acts are intended to be: some middle-ground between Aristotelian-
ism and a positivism that would proceed without any robust metaphysics of
mental phenomena. Without this, we can have no adequate understanding
of Brentanos synonymous locution, intentional mental phenomenon.
My focus here is on PES, rather than Brentanos broader corpus. As will
become clear, this is because I think that overzealous attempts to supplement
PES by drawing on Brentanos other works face hitherto unnoticed difficul-
ties in providing a coherent reading of PES. If the essay succeeds in clarifying
these difficulties, I shall count it as a success, and will then welcome fresh
attempts at supplementing PES. I cannot simultaneously pursue that task
here.
Sheredos Brentanos Act Psychology 9
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7
Citations to Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristotles provide
pagination from Rolf Georges 1975 English translation, followed by pagination from the
first German edition.
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1 2
3
(t 1 ) (t 2 ) (t 3 )
I have built this claim into Figure 1: the effect of some actuality (energeia
or movement) at 1 is that, at 2 , a subject now has a potentiality. One way
to put the claim is that the Aristotelian does not reify all that is logically
possible in her power ontology. What matters are the real potentialities that
a thing has, which it has by some cause, i.e., as a result of some energeia.
This first component of Brentanos view prioritizes energeia over any real
potentiality, and moreover links energeia to movement (kin^esis; Bewegung).
The second component of Brentanos view is that once any potentiality
is made real (at 2 in Figure 1), then the subject of that potentiality is in a
process of becoming [des Werdens] i.e., becoming that which it now has
a real potential to be (1862, p.44/65). He illustrates this with the example
of locomotion: locomotion [die ortliche Bewegung] (phora) constitutes that
which moves toward a goal in this state of potentiality for a location (1862,
pp.44-45/66-67). In exercising our will and setting a goal, we are becoming
a thing which is on-the-way to the potential location; as we exercise bodily
movement to get there, we are fully-actualizing our potential to be there. A
stone, by contrast, cannot even become a thing-on-the-way to a new place
without external influence, nor can it actually get there on its own. But in
all cases, the process of actualizing a capacity for relocation is to be under-
8
In this and other quoted passages, any insertions in square brackets are mine any
Greek and German text I insert in this way gives Brentanos own usage from the original
text, whereas any English is my addition, for clarification. All insertions in parentheses
are Brentanos own, just as they appear in the original.
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9
Citations to Die Psychologie des Aristotles provide pagination from Rolf Georges
1977 English translation, followed by pagination from the first German edition.
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10
One way to understand this is to imaginatively fold Fig.1s central image, so that
the capacitys telos overlaps with the efficient cause of its actualization.
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With this sketch of capacities (both passive and active) and actualizations
(both natural and enforced) in place, we may follow Brentano in deploying it
to understand Aristotelian psychology. In the Aristotelian scheme, the way
to distinguish any two subjects or substances is to look at their powers or ca-
pacities, and we discover the nature of powers [Krafte] by using knowledge
of their effects [Wirkungen] and activities [Thatigkeiten] (Brentano, 1867,
pp.27/39). The Aristotelian thus distinguishes all living creatures from inan-
imate objects, as follows. (1) Living creatures exhibit natural (un-enforced)
actualizations distinct from those seen in inanimate matter. (2) This dif-
ference of actualizations is held to manifest different underlying capacities.
(3) The difference in capacities is held to manifest different natures. The
distinction is drawn by saying that living things are ensouled (German: be-
seelt), and soul (psuch^e ) is the term of art used to refer to the locus for
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11
George variably translates nous dunamei as receptive intellect and as potential
intellect. Brentano disagrees with other interpreters in treating this as equivalent to the
intellect which becomes all things (1867, cf. p.148/217). I cannot address this here.
Sheredos Brentanos Act Psychology 18
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unconsciously plays this role. The active intellect does not think, since it
does not itself harbor any conscious, intellectual representations. Rather, it
makes thinking possible: it unconsciously acts upon the images of the imagi-
nation, rendering them intelligible through abstraction, and thereby induces
the receptive intellect to receive intelligible forms as representations (1867,
p.151ff/221ff).
The active intellect is essential, in Brentanos reading, to make sense of
the Aristotelian theory of knowledge: it mediates between sensory repre-
sentation and intellectual representation, bringing about the latter in a way
always dependent upon the former (1867, pp.106-108/163-165). The recep-
tive intellect is pure potentiality it is wholly unmixed with any actuality by
whose
belongs to
A(n) power of actualization
soul-part:
is
VEG/SENS INT
Representation Conscious =Sensation =Receptive Int.
Passive
Striving Conscious =Sens. Desire =Int. Desire
Movement Conscious =Locomotion =Rational Action
Active
Movement Unconscious =Vegetative =Active Intellect
its nature, and can thus receive the form (as representation) of any thinkable
thing (1867, p.77/120). Reciprocally, the active intellect is pure actuality
pure activity which is unconstrained and unmixed with all form and as a
result it can act to induce the receptive intellect to have the real potentiality
for, and the actuality (in representation) of, any intelligible form. The active
intellect is by nature actuality [indem er seinem Wesen nach Wirklichkeit
sei ] t^ei ousia ^on energeia [sic] (1867, p.119/178).
With these remarks in place, we can clarify two senses in which the Aris-
totelian may speak significantly of mental acts. In the permissive Aristotelian
conception, we allow the notion of acts to range widely over all instances
of actualization. We likewise allow the notion of mentality (or, of the
psychological) to range widely, over all those features which are unique to
living systems. In this sense, every actualization which is unique to any kind
of living system will count significantly, but permissively as a mental
act. This will include a variety of phenomena which are not at all regarded
as bound up with consciousness, with the intellect, or with representation
for example, the nutritive actualizations of plant life. Nonetheless, some
mental acts, in this sense, will be the locus of intentionality. For example,
a token actualization of a sensory or intellectual capacity for representation
is a representation. It is mental because only living systems exhibit such
activities; it is a genuine act in this permissive sense because it is a being-at-
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ply stop with the claim that they arise from a capacity which is receptive or
passive.12
Still, there is no denying the importance of richer conceptions of activity,
and so we can also frame a more restrictive Aristotelian conception. We
restrict our attention to only those mental capacities which are active in
this way we tighten up the conception of activity. Further, we restrict our
attention to only those phenomena which are intimately involved in conscious
representation in this way we tighten up the conception of the mental. In
this sense, only the activities of the active intellect will be regarded as mental
acts even though they are not themselves conscious, and are not themselves
representational. Mental acts in this sense are (in the Arisotelian scheme)
the origin of any conscious, intellectual representation: the actualizations of
the active intellect are the efficient causes which induce such representations
in the receptive intellect. In this scheme, it can be said only that intellectual
representations arise from a mental act: sensory representations, by contrast,
do not arise through the activity of the active intellect.
12
Thus, while it is true that in his mature metaphysics Brentano treats mental acts (even
thinking) under the category of passive affections (which are not transformations) (1933,
cf. pp.156ff/214ff, pp.172ff/240ff, 195ff/275ff), this alone does not settle the question of
whether or not there is a basic sense of activity in which the affection is an activity, even
if it is one induced by some other active principle.
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Oskar Kraus, editor of the 1924 German edition of PES, seemed to resist any
suggestion that Brentano understood mental phenomena as acts in any sig-
nificant sense. For example, in one passage Brentano says: By presentation
I do not mean that which is presented, but rather the act of presentation [den
Act des Vorstellens] (PES 79/60/103). Kraus dutifully appends a footnote,
asserting that every such [mental] activity [Tatigkeit], at least in men and
animals, is a passio, an affection in the Aristotelian sense [eine passio, eine
Affektion im aristotelischen Sinne ist]. So what we are concerned with is the
sheer having of an object [Es handelt sich also um das schlichte Etwas zum
Objekte haben]... (PES, 79/60/266 fn.1). This re-rendering removes the
key term act from the discussion, treating any explicitly active connotation
as dispensable.
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I shall consider these points more fully in S4 below. At present, I note only
that Kraus serves to illustrate a null hypothesis, and a set of strategies for
evading active connotations, which one must work against in attributing to
Brentano an Act Conception of intentionality.
Sheredos Brentanos Act Psychology 24
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3.2 Tassone
2. Each part of the soul manifests its own distinct form of striving or
actualization of latent power (ibid., p.53).
that psychic phenomena are only made fully actual, i.e., given as full
states or processes by which we are immediately aware of their exis-
tence, when they take or are directed to objects (ibid, p.112).
We now have in place three interpretive options for how we might seek to un-
derstand Brentanos mature conception of mental acts. We have first Krauss
null hypothesis the term is a misnomer, and active connotations can be
evaded. We have next two distinct ways in which we might seek to pursue the
13
Tassone appears to be of several minds about this. On the one hand, many remarks
are consistent with the permissive Aristotelian conception of mental acts. On the other
hand, Tassone repeatedly suggests that a focus on the special features of the intellectual
soul will offer the key to the Aristotelian conception of mental acts in PES (Tassone,
2012, see pp.60, 65, 66). Yet he focuses mainly on the receptive intellect, and thus his
intellectualist conception of mental acts does not cohere with what I have called the
restrictive Aristotelian conception. Before providing any robust treatment of the active
intellect, Tassone declares that he has already outlined the basis for Brentanos empiricism
and traced its Aristotelian origin(2012, pp.62). For brevity and charity, I simply credit
him with the permissive Aristotelian conception.
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Aristotelian psychology is the science of the soul (Wissenschaft von der Seele;
peri psuch^es) and since all living beings are considered ensouled, all are stud-
ied by psychology. In PES, however, Brentano agrees with others in endors-
ing a narrowing (Beschrankung) of the field of psychology: consciousness
(Bewutsein) is to be the key feature of psychological phenomena, and this
means excluding from the domain of psychology not only all vegetative life,
but also many details concerning the nervous system and muscles these
are ceded to the physiologist (PES, pp.4/3/5).
This narrowing-down of psychology causes difficulties in understanding
its nominal promise of being a science of the soul. Brentano remarks that
Sheredos Brentanos Act Psychology 27
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the meaning of the term soul has also been narrowed. For Aristotle, as
we have seen, the soul was the nature, or, as he preferred to express it, the
form [die Form], the first activity [die erste Wirklichkeit], the first actuality
[die erste Vollendung] of a living being (PES, p.4/2/4).14 Brentano remarks
that he will use the word soul in what he thinks is a common meaning at
the time of writing, to refer to:
14
Brentanos own footnote here reads: The Greek expressions are: phusis, morph^e,
pr^
ot^e energeia, pr^
ot^e entelecheia.
15
Translation slightly amended: McAllister switches to using the noun-form the sub-
stance rather than using the adjectival substantial bearer in both places, and also
translates Eigenschaften as activities.
Sheredos Brentanos Act Psychology 28
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16
There is room for significant confusion on this point. What we find in Book I, Part
I of PES is this idea of a substantial soul mentioned (on p.5/4/6), and set aside (on
p.19/14/24). I cannot follow Albertazzi (2006) in supposing that Brentanos empirical
psychology can be read as a science of the substantial soul.
17
Brentano raises one possible complaint against this phenomenalistic view: it might be
taken to close the question of continued existence after death, which he locates in Plato as
the first impetus to psychological research (PES, p.14/11/18). But he quickly dispenses
with this worry, and preserves the possibility of continued existence after death even for
a psychology without a soul, since the continuity [Fortbestand ] of mental life [Lebens]
need not require any soul behind it (PES, p.17/12-13/21).
This must be taken into account in understanding Brentanos aims in the intended 6th
and final book of PES. In his introduction to the most recent English editions of PES, Peter
Simons suggests that Brentano hoped to address the mind-body problem, the soul, and
immortality (PES, p.xiv ). But what Brentano himself said the 6th book would discuss
was the connection of our mental with our physical organism [der Verbindung unseres
psychischen mit unserem physischen Organismus], and... whether a continuity of mental
life after the disintegration of the body is conceivable [ob ein Fortbestand des psychis-
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chen Lebens nach dem Zerfalle des Leibes denkbar sei ]. (PES, p.xv /xxv /v, translation
amended). There need be no presupposition here of a substantial soul behind mental life.
The metaphysical posit of a soul is never clearly made central to Brentanos empirical
psychology. See for example how little is built into the conception of a soul deployed
in his 1901 lectures: a soul is no longer even clearly regarded as the substantial bearer
of conscious presentations, but rather what makes up [was.. ausmacht] the essential
appearance of personal unity and particularity (1911b, Descriptive Psychology Appendix
4: Psychognostic Sketch of September 1901, pp.155-156/146). His view as of 1916 was
that it is impossible to perceive that which individuates me in inner perception, and
thus the soul (even on this yet-thinner conception) would again be excluded from the core
of empirical psychology (Brentano, 1929, p.82).
Sheredos Brentanos Act Psychology 30
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Brentanos
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The Aristotelians
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18
It is worth noting that Brentanos mature conception of substances (1933) makes
notable departures from his earlier exegesis of the Aristotelian conception (1862; 1867).
19
Kraus himself is aware of this, as in borne out in the footnote I have just cited.
20
There may be less support for this view than commonly thought. As George and
Koehn note, 40 years after publication of The Psychology of Aristotle, Brentano maintained
that his reading of Aristotle could [d urfte] be refuted in no point by anyone, or even
improved (Brentano, 1909, p.136). Yet while he maintained that his account was correct
Sheredos Brentanos Act Psychology 33
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succeed in fleshing out the conception of mental acts Brentano intends to of-
fer in PES, unless we suppose that Brentano is incapable of setting aside
metaphysical commitments when he says he will do so. The standard inter-
pretive strategy can thus only offer a reading of PES by turning Brentano
into a kind of dope.
With this interpretive constraint in place, it might appear that the best op-
tion is to pursue Krauss null hypothesis. One might flesh out the null
hypothesis as follows: Brentano deploys the term mental act as a ter-
minological holdover from his own, private commitments to an Aristotelian
ontology of powers, even though these have no legitimate place in PES. The
proper reading of PES, operating under the methodological restrictions it
sets out, should assign no significance to the term mental act.
It is not clear that this is what Kraus himself had in mind. Consider
again Krauss key claims:
as a reading of Aristotle, he did not claim that the view expressed therein was simply
correct. He was far from agreeing unreservedly with what he regarded as Aristotles
doctrines of substantial form and matter crucial concepts, without which the entire
account would collapse (ibid., p.146). Likewise, Brentano concludes Aristotle and His
Worldview by saying: it would not be difficult to show that the system as a whole is
not tenable (1911a, p.125/152). Brentanos Aristotle is perhaps not best viewed as
Brentano himself.
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It appears we must set (K1) aside as unhelpful for understanding the concep-
tion of mental acts in PES, because any properly Aristotelian conception of
affections will invoke a metaphysics of forms, matters, capacities, etc., which
is inconsistent with the methodological restrictions of PES.21 The question
that remains is this: is there support for (K2) and (K3) in Brentanos own
work, such that the null hypothesis is well-motivated? I want to briefly chal-
lenge both (K2) and (K3) in what follows. In doing so, I mean to resist
the null hypothesis, and to suggest that Brentano may yet have in mind a
significant conception of mental acts.
Take first (K2). It is unclear how somethings status as an event should
speak against its status as an act. Acts are quite naturally thought of as
a special class of events intuitively, those which are in some sense done,
performed or executed, rather than events which merely happen. I take it
then that Kraus means to suggest that all mental acts are mere happenings,
or events without any such performative genesis.
Some of Brentanos remarks connect with this point. Consider the fol-
lowing footnote, which Brentano added to the 1911 second edition of PES
to clarify his notion of intentional inexistence:
Consider two of Brentanos claims: (a) that the secondary object of a mental
act (i.e, that act itself) is not a reference at all but rather a mental activity,
and (b) that in apprehending the secondary object (i.e., the act itself) one
does not have to think of any particular one of the references involved. How
shall we understand these claims? I submit that in Brentanos view, if we
are to apprehend one of our own mental phenomena in inner perception (i.e.,
23
Here again we see McAllisters nominalization of a mentally active subject. Here
we need offer no correction on Brentanos behalf to read instead only the mental actor,
since T
atige is capitalized.
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as its own secondary object), then instead of thinking only about any one
of its intentional references to an object, what one must do is to think of
all those references as they are unified in that particular act. In secondary
intentionality, I have the act itself. But of course, an act is nothing but a
way of consciously orienting towards its object(s): no (intentional) object,
no act. When a mental act is presented to us as a secondary object, this
also includes some awareness of its primary object(s), since the act is an
orientation towards its primary object. If I am to be (secondarily) aware of
that act, then I must be aware of it as oriented towards its primary object.
So for example, when I have a mental act of hearing which is primarily
directed at a tone, I am also secondarily conscious, through inner perception,
of that very act of hearing. Here I am not just made aware of the tone,
and also secondarily made aware of some hearing. I am made secondarily
aware of my hearing of that tone. I do not simply have two objects: the
hearing and the tone. If that were so, then I should be able to wonder
whether the hearing I am aware of is a hearing of the tone I am aware
of: I would have to infer that these two objects had any relation to each
other. But this is not Brentanos view. Rather, the hearing I am aware
of already includes a reference to the tone I am hearing. It is evident
there is no question that it is the presented tone which I hear, and that
the hearing I am aware of is a hearing of that presented tone. As Brentano
puts it, Apart from the fact that it presents the physical phenomenon of
sound, the mental act of hearing becomes at the same time its own object
Sheredos Brentanos Act Psychology 39
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24
Note that Brentano resists the suggestion that the relationship between, e.g., hearing
a tone and my consciousness of the hearing, is to be understood causally, specifically on
the Aristotelian model of action and passion (PES, pp.131-132/101/191-192).
Sheredos Brentanos Act Psychology 42
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(K3) does not provide sufficient motivation for resisting a significant Act
Conception, since (a) it obscures what Brentano regards as empirical claims
that are central to PES, and (b) an active construal of mental acts is available
which seems well-suited to accommodate those claims.
5 Conclusion
spite the fact that he follows Mill and others in regarding psychology as
a phenomenalistic science, he maintains that we can discover, a posteriori,
that mental acts are involved in constituting peculiar forms of unity. I
suggested that in discussing the constitution of such unity, Brentano might
plausibly be understood to incur some metaphysical commitment to mental
acts as active.
I have not intended to adequately defend this active construal of mental
acts, but only to underscore that it is a live option that has been underex-
plored. The options at this point are three. (1) We might regard Brentanos
conception of mental acts as ill-formed or inchoate. (2) We might pursue a
new null hypothesis which is better-motivated than Krauss. (3) We might
try to work out a positive Act Conception of intentionality which has a le-
gitimate place in Brentanos empirical psychology. Pursuing any option will
have profound implications for our assessments of Brentanos lasting con-
tributions to the philosophy of mind. For again, Brentano regards mental
act and intentional mental phenomenon as synonyms; we have only an
incomplete understanding of one so long as we do not understand the other.
References
Flugel, J. (1951). 100 Years of Psychology (2nd ed.). London, UK: Gerald
Duckworth.
Geach, P. (1957). Mental Acts: Their Content and their Objects. London,
UK: Routledge Kegan Paul.
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uller-Freienfels, R. (1935). The Evolution of Modern Psychology. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Russell, B. (1921). The Analysis of Mind. New York, NY: The Macmillan
Company.