Absolute identity seems at first sight to be presupposed in the branch of formal logic called identity theory. Classical identity theory may be obtained by adjoining a single schema to ordinary quantification theory.

When I offered this title, I was engaging myself to investigate an apparent difference between two kinds of intentionality, in the hope that I should be able to find some firm logical criterion to distinguish them. I was less successful in this than I had hoped. I think I have gained a certain amount of insight into the logic and semantics of one kind of intentional context, largely due to the work I was doing while visiting the University of Pennsylvania (...) on Frege and on Michael Dummett’s monumental commentary on Frege. But as regards the other variety of intentionality I am still very much in the dark; so I am giving you thus far merely a progress report on that. (shrink)

The work of Brentano's English contemporary J. E. McTaggart is in several ways profitable for Brentano scholars to study: I here cosider his views on the nature and classification of mental states. In McTaggart's account the characteristic of being a 'cognition', one that some but not all 'cogitations' have, corresponds to Brentano's notion of Anerkennen; quite unlike Brentano, he holds that contrariety obtains only between the contents of judgments, not between contrary acts of affirming and denying; like Brentano however he (...) recognizes contrariety in the realm of emotion and feeling, e.g. between love and hate, pleasure and pain. He regards feelings and emotions as mere colourings of cogitations, and thinks that their relation to an object (intentionality, as Brentano would say) comes about merely from their cogitative aspect. This view is attractively simple; but by considering McTaggart's own view of emotions' being in respect of characteristics of their objects, we can find serious ground to reject it. (shrink)

Co-authored letter to the APA to take a lead role in the recognition of teaching in the classroom, based on the participation in an interdisciplinary Conference on the Role of Advocacy in the Classroom back in 1995. At the time of this writing, the late Myles Brand was the President of Indiana University and a member of the IU Department of Philosophy.