Brentano: Metaphysics

Here is a rather difficult two-part question: How may we grasp (a) the nature of reality and (b) the nature of value? As I understand the man, answering this question was the principal, overarching aim of Franz Brentano’s philosophical work. More specifically, he wanted to provide an answer that respected a self-imposed theoretical constraint, namely, that our grasp of a thing’s status as real or as valuable be ultimately grounded in direct encounter with certain aspects of our conscious experience. The (...) purpose of my book Brentano’s Philosophical System: Mind, Being, Value (henceforth, BPS) is to reconstruct Brentano’s attempt to answer his question, present a partial defense of the answer, offer some potential improvements on it, and also point to persistent difficulties it faces. Here I (a) speed-explain Brentano’s self-imposed constraint and its motivation, (b) reconstruct Brentano’s account of the real in light of it, and (c) reconstruct Brentano’s corresponding account of the valuable. These three tasks correspond roughly to BPS’s three parts: ‘Mind,’ ‘Being,’ and ‘Value.’ . (shrink)

How is it possible to have present memory experiences of things that, being past, are no longer presently experienced? A possible answer to this long-standing philosophical question is what I call the “ideality of time view,” namely the view that temporal succession is unreal. In this paper I outline the basic idea behind Brentano’s version of the ideality of time view. Additionally, I contrast it with Hume’s version, suggesting that, despite significant differences, it can nonetheless be construed as broadly Humean.

Brentano as well as many of his followers — with notable exceptions, especially Husserl — assigned to psychology a foundational role in the edifice of science, including philosophy. My suggestion in the present paper is that this view is a consequence of Brentano’s theory of intentionality. Brentano’s thesis of the intentionality of the mental, I argue, first and foremost expresses a strong epistemological position about what knowledge in general is: all knowledge, whether inner or outer, has its source in “inner (...) perception” and hence has somehow to do with psychology. Given this, I discuss Brentano’s accounts of a priori knowledge and of the distinction between psychology and physics — which are certainly among the most original and fruitful aspects of his epistemology and his philosophy as a whole. (shrink)

This book is a short presentation of the life, thought and work of Franz Brentano. The first part of the book is a biography of Brentano, the second is a description of the ramifications of Brentano's philosophical program, and the third section offers a succinct description of his main works and of his Nachlaß. Résumé: Cet opuscule est une présentation sommaire de la vie, de la pensée et de l'œuvre de Franz Brentano. L'ouvrage est divisé en trois parties. La première (...) partie est une courte présentation de la vie intellectuelle de Brentano, la deuxième est une description des ramifications et de l'unité de son programme philosophique original et très diversifié, et la troisième propose une description succincte de ses principaux ouvrages et de son Nachlaß. L'ouvrage contient également une bibliographie thématique. (shrink)

Ce deuxième tome des Essais et conférences de Franz Brentano comporte dix-neuf études qui, pour la plupart, paraissent pour la première fois en traduction française. Ces textes sont regroupés en quatre sections représentant les deux grands domaines de la philosophie pour Brentano - la métaphysique et la psychologie - ainsi que les disciplines pratiques de la psychologie - la logique, l'éthique et l'esthétique et concluent le projet, inauguré avec le tome 1, de regrouper l'ensemble des essais et conférences de Brentano. (...) Il fait suite au premier tome portant sur l'histoire de la philosophie, dans lequel nous avions regroupé les textes de Brentano sur sa philosophie de l'histoire de la philosophie, ses textes portant sur les philosophes, ainsi que ceux qui défendent son interprétation d'Aristote. (shrink)

This volume brings together contributions that explore the philosophy of Franz Brentano. It looks at his work both critically and in the context of contemporary philosophy. For instance, Brentano influenced the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, the theory of objects of Alexius Meinong, the early development of the Gestalt theory, the philosophy of language of Anton Marty, the works of Carl Stumpf in the psychology of tone, and many others. Readers will also learn the contributions of Brentano's work to much debated (...) contemporary issues in philosophy of mind, ontology, and the theory of emotions. The first section deals with Brentano’s conception of the history of philosophy. The next approaches his conception of empirical psychology from an empirical standpoint and in relation with competing views on psychology from the period. The third section discusses Brentano’s later programme of a descriptive psychology or “descriptive phenomenology” and some of his most innovative developments, for instance in the theory of emotions. The final section examines metaphysical issues and applications of his mereology. His reism takes here an important place. The intended readership of this book comprises phenomenologists, analytic philosophers, philosophers of mind and value, as well as metaphysicians. It will appeal to both graduate and undergraduate students, professors, and researchers in philosophy and psychology. (shrink)

Just hearing the names of Brentano and Plato put together is enough to highlight the queerness of a matching which finds almost no evidence in critical literature. The study of the texts in which Brentano explicitly deals with Plato, in particular in his lectures on the history of Greek philosophy, does not change much of the negative impression that emerges from a general overview: the place of Plato in the history of philosophy depends, for Brentano, on Aristotle or, better, on (...) the accomplishment of Greek philosophy occurs in Aristotle’s work. We shall turn our attention towards the of certain relevant problems in order to open up, if possible, a less negative prospect for the relationship of Brentano to Plato: not so much directly by examining Platonic philosophy from a Brentanian point of view as by considering the concrete solution that Brentano provides to some Aristotelian questions. To put it differently, we shall take into account not so much what Brentano says of Plato, as what Brentano does with Aristotle, by tracking the Platonizing traces that can be found in the Brentanian commentary to Aristotle’s categories, the philosophical consequences of which seem to be reflected in Brentano’s overall philosophical project. (shrink)

Brentanians defend the view that there are distinct types of object, but that this does not entail the admission of different modes of being. The most general distinction among objects is the one between realia, which are causally efficacious, and irrealia, which are causally inert. As for being, which is equated with existence, it is understood in terms of “correct acknowledgeability.” This view was defended for some time by Brentano himself and then by his student Anton Marty. Their position is (...) opposed to Bolzanian, Husserlian, and Meinongian ontologies, in which a distinction in the (higher) types of object implies a distinction in their mode of being. These Austro-German discussions anticipate much of the contemporary debate between Quineans, who accept only differences in objects, and neo-Meinongians or other ontological pluralists, who accept different modes of being. My paper first presents the Brentanian view in detail and then evaluates its philosophical significance. (shrink)

This article is a review of Franz Brenatno’s material ontology. We support the thesis that Brentano defends an original type of monism. This monism can be seen as the conjunction of three theories: reism (the thesis that there are only concrete individual things), priority monism (the thesis that there is only one substance), and supersubstantivalism (the thesis that this substance is space).

The fact that boundaries are ontologically dependent entities is agreed by Franz Brentano and Roderick Chisholm. This article studies both authors as a single metaphysical account about boundaries. The Brentano-Chisholm theory understands that boundaries and the objects to which they belong hold a mutual relationship of ontological dependence: the existence of a boundary depends upon a continuum of higher spatial dimensionality, but also is a conditio sine qua non for the existence of a continuum. Although the view that ordinary material (...) objects and their boundaries (or surfaces) ontologically depend on each other is correct, it does not grasp their asymmetric relationship: while the existence of a surface rigidly depends upon the existence of the very object it belongs to, the existence of a physical object generically depends upon having some surface. In modal terms, both are two kinds of de re ontological dependence that this article tries to distinguish. (shrink)

By “Brentanian inner consciousness” I mean the conception of inner consciousness developed by Franz Brentano. The aim of this paper is threefold: first, to present Brentano’s account of inner consciousness; second, to discuss this account in light of the mereology outlined by Brentano himself; and third, to decide whether this account incurs an infinite regress. In this regard, I distinguish two kinds of infinite regress: external infinite regress and internal infinite regress. I contend that the most plausible reading of Brentano’s (...) account is the so-called fusion thesis, and I argue that internal infinite regress turns out to be inherent to Brentanian inner consciousness. (shrink)

The fact that boundaries are ontologically dependent entities is agreed by Franz Brentano and Roderick Chisholm. This article studies both authors as a single metaphysical account about boundaries. The Brentano-Chisholm theory understands that boundaries and the objects to which they belong hold a mutual relationship of ontological dependence: the existence of a boundary depends upon a continuum of higher spatial dimensionality, but also is a conditio sine qua non for the existence of a continuum. Although the view that ordinary material (...) objects and their boundaries (or surfaces) ontologically depend on each other is correct, it does not grasp their asymmetric relationship: while the existence of a surface rigidly depends upon the existence of the very object it belongs to, the existence of a physical object generically depends upon having some surface. In modal terms, both are two kinds of de re ontological dependence that this article tries to distinguish. (shrink)

Uriah Kriegel presents a rich exploration of the philosophy of the great nineteenth-century thinker Franz Brentano. He locates Brentano at the crossroads where the Anglo-American and continental European philosophical traditions diverged. At the centre of this account of Brentano's philosophy is the connection between mind and reality. Kriegel aims to develop Brentano's central ideas where they are overly programmatic or do not take into account philosophical developments that have taken place since Brentano's death a century ago; and to offer a (...) partial defense of Brentano's system as quite plausible and in any case extraordinarily creative and thought-provoking. Brentano's system grounds a complete metaphysics and value theory in a well-developed philosophy of mind, and accordingly the book is divided into three parts, devoted to Brentano's philosophy of mind, his metaphysics, and his moral philosophy. The book's fundamental ambition is to show how Brentano combines the clarity and precision of the analytic philosopher with the sweeping vision of the continental philosopher. Brentano pays careful attention to important distinctions, conscientiously defines key notions, presents precise arguments for his claims, judiciously considers potential objections, and in general proceeds very methodically - yet he does so not as an end in itself, but as a means only. His end is the crafting of a grand philosophical system in the classical sense, attempting to produce nothing less than a unified theory of the true, the good, and the beautiful. (shrink)

Brentano’s theory of continuity is based on his account of boundaries. The core idea of the theory is that boundaries and coincidences thereof belong to the essence of continua. Brentano is confident that he developed a full-fledged, boundary-based, theory of continuity1; and scholars often concur: whether or not they accept Brentano’s take on continua they consider it a clear contender. My impression, on the contrary, is that, although it is infused with invaluable insights, several aspects of Brentano’s account of continuity (...) remain inchoate. To be clear, the theory of boundaries on which it relies, as well as the account of ontological dependence that Brentano develops alongside his theory of boundaries, constitute splendid achievements. However, the passage from the theory of boundaries to the account of continuity is rather sketchy. This paper pinpoints some chief problems raised by this transition, and proposes some solutions to them which, if not always faithful to the letter of Brentano’s account of continua, are I believe faithful to its spirit. §1 presents Brentano’s critique of the mathematical account of the continuous. §2 introduces Brentano’s positive account of continua. §3 raises three worries about Brentano’s account of continuity. §4 proposes a Neo-Brentanian approach to continua that handles these worries. (shrink)

Par opposition à son maître Trendelenburg, qui ramenait les catégories aristotéliciennes à leur "origine grammaticale", Brentano, dans sa dissertation de 1862 sur l’ontologie d’Aristote, les qualifie de concepts d’étants. De ses premiers cours de métaphysique, donnés à Wurtzbourg en 1867, jusqu’à ses derniers textes sur la question de l’être, datés de 1917, Brentano consacrera une part importante de ses réflexions aux catégories. Il reviendra non seulement sur la question du nombre des catégories, augmentant ou diminuant celui-ci, mais aussi sur la (...) place à leur accorder dans une ontologie bien pensée. Durant ses années de maturité, Brentano proposera de distinguer, parmi les étants, les realia et les irrealia. Tandis que les realia sont des entités causalement actives, les irrealia sont causalement inertes et incluent ainsi les abstracta : l’humanité, la rougeur, etc. Se pose dès lors la question de savoir si les catégories sont concrètes ou abstraites, réelles ou irréelles. De la réponse à cette question dépendra en outre le sort des catégories chez le dernier Brentano, "réiste", dont l’ontologie se restreint au réel : puisque le réisme implique l’abandon des abstracta, les catégories ne survivraient pas à être abstraites. (shrink)

Since the first discussion of Brentano’s relation to (and account of) medieval philosophy by Spiegelberg in 1936, a fair amount of studies have been dedicated to the topic. And if those studies focused on some systematic issue at all, the beloved topic of intentionality clearly occupied a hegemonic position in the scholarly landscape . The following pages consider the question from the point of view of ontology, and in a twofold perspective: What did Brentano know about medieval ontology and what (...) kind of access did he have to that material (section 1)? What kind of use did Brentano make of medieval material in his own philosophy, and with what kind of results (section 2)? (shrink)

L’objectif du présent travail est de montrer que la reprise de la question catégoriale et de la dé nition du sens de l’être opérée par brentano manifeste la volonté de revenir sur les fondements de la métaphysique classique pour dé nir à nouveau le concept de réalité.

The Swiss philosopher Anton Marty (Schwyz, 1847 - Prague, 1914) belongs, with Carl Stumpf, to the first circle of Brentano’s pupils. Within Brentano’s school (and, to some extent, in the secondary literature), Marty has often been considered (in particular by Meinong) a kind of would-be epigone of his master (Fisette & Fréchette 2007: 61-2). There is no doubt that Brentano’s doctrine often provides Marty with his philosophical starting points. But Marty often arrives at original conclusions which are diametrically opposed to (...) Brentano’s views. This is true of his views about space and time and about judgment, emotions and intentionality. In the latter case, for example, Marty develops Brentano’s view and its implications in great detail (Mulligan 1989; Rollinger 2004), but uses them to formulate a very unBrentanian account of intentionality as a relation of ideal assimilation (Chrudzimski 1999; Cesalli & Taieb 2013). Marty’s philosophy of language, on the other hand, is one of the first philosophies worthy of the name. In what follows, we contrast briefly their accounts of (i) judgment and states of affairs and of (ii) emotings and value (two topics of foremost significance, for Brentano and Marty’s theoretical and practical philosophies respectively) (§1), and their philosophies of language (§2). Brentano’s view of language is based on his philosophy of mind. Marty takes over the latter and turns a couple of claims by Brentano about language into a sophisticated philosophy of language of a kind made familiar much later by Grice. Marty’s philosophy of states of affairs and value and of the mind’s relations to these also takes off from views sketched by the early Brentano, views forcefully rejected by the later Brentano. (shrink)

Brentanova teorie času a časového vědomí patří mezi základní témata celé Brentanovy filosofie. Nabízí celou řadu spjatých témat, které určují dvě hlavní otázky. Jak bychom měli ontologicky popsat čas jako takový? A jak vlastně vnímáme čas? Na tyto otázky poskytl Brentano různé odpovědi v celé řadě různých pozic, které vypracovával od počátku své filosofické práce během své Würzburgské profesury až do posledních okamžiků před smrtí. Cílem této studie je představit souhru těchto problémů v Brentanově analýze času a ukázat, že je (...) bohatým zdrojem filosofických hádanek, jejichž řešení je stále otevřenou otázkou. (shrink)

Both through his own work and that of his students, Franz Clemens Brentano had an often underappreciated influence on the course of 20 th - and 21 st -century philosophy. _The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School_ offers full coverage of Brentano’s philosophy and his influence. It contains 38 brand-new essays from an international team of experts that offer a comprehensive view of Brentano’s central research areas—philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and value theory—as well as of the principal (...) figures shaped by Brentano’s school of thought. A General Introduction serves as an overview of Brentano and the contents of the volume and three separate bibliographies point students and researchers on to further avenues of inquiry. Systematic and detailed, _The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School_ provides readers with a valuable reference to Brentano’s work, and to his lasting importance in the history of philosophy and in contemporary debates. (shrink)

Franz Brentano was not a systematic writer, but he was very much a systematic thinker. Through his manuscripts, lecture notes, letters, dictations, and occasional published writings, one can discern a systematic, unified approach to the true, the good, and the beautiful. My goal here is to articulate explicitly this approach, and the philosophical program it reflects. The exercise requires going over big stretches of terrain with some efficiency; I will go just as deep into Brentano’s approaches to the true, the (...) good, and the beautiful as is required to make explicit their structural unity. (shrink)

Diese Studie der Deskription bei Franz Brentano lässt dessen Philosophie als ein «Programm der Deskription» erscheinen, das einen spezifischen Beitrag zur Gottesfrage leistet. Im Gegensatz zur scholastischen Tradition stellt er diese Frage auf sprachlicher Ebene und sucht dadurch erkenntnistheoretisch-metaphysische Engführungen zu überwinden. Er betont die deskriptive (nicht physikalische oder metaphysische) Bedeutung der Kausalität in ihrer Zeitgebundenheit und zeigt, dass die Existenz Gottes zeitlich bestimmt werden muss: Nur so ist eine sinnvolle Rede von Gott möglich. Brentanos Denken wurde in der Theologie (...) kaum wahrgenommen, aber die deskriptive Lösung des Problems von «esse et essentia», die Arten der Zeitlichkeit, die Betrachtung von Analogielehre und Univozität sind richtungsweisend. (shrink)

This chapter has three sections. The first introduces Brentano’s view of sensations by presenting the intentional features of sensations irreducible to features of the sensory objects. The second presents Brentano’s view of sensory objects —which include sensory qualities— and the features of sensations that such objects allow to explain, such as their intensity. The third section presents Brentano’s approach to sensory pleasures and pains, which combines both appeal to specific modes of reference and to specific sensory qualities.

We introduce the category of mereotopology Mtop as an alternative category to that of topology Top, stating ontological consequences throughout. We consider entities such as boundaries utilizing Brentano’s thesis and holes utilizing homotopy theory with a rigorous proof of Hausdorff Spaces satisfying [GEM]TC axioms. Lastly, we mention further areas of study in this category.

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)

The paper presents an account of the concept of existence that is based on Brentano’s work. In contrast to Frege and Russell, Brentano took ‘exists’ to express a that subsumes objects and explained it with recourse to the non-propositional attitude of acknowledgment. I argue that the core of Brentano’s view can be developed to a defensible alternative to the Frege-Russell view of existence.

On 7 January 1903, Brentano wrote to Anton Marty that by now he thinks it to be “impossible that factuality (Tatsächlichkeit) should belong to an irreale except in dependence on something real” as “concomitantly” occurring (Brentano 1966a: 106). For instance, when someone is thinking of a reale, or thing (Ding) A, say the sun or a centaur, there exists concomitantly to the A-thinker (who is a thing) also an irreale, viz., a thought-of-thing (Gedankending) which is the thought-of-A (Brentano 1930: 31, (...) 48). Thus, when writing this letter Brentano still held the view that the realm of beings comprises besides entia realia or things also entia irrealia. But then on 10 September 1903 he tells Marty that now he “is making a new attempt to understand all entia rationis [i.e. irrealia] as fictions, viz., to deny that they are” (1966a: 108). So it was in the time between these two letters that there occurred what has been dubbed the “reistic turn” in Brentano’s ontological thinking. In the following, we will, first, give a rough outline of the scope of the entia realia; secondly, what we may call Brentano’s master argument for reism will be discussed; and thirdly, we will attempt to sketch a way out Brentano might have taken in the face of the difficulties inherent in his brand of reism. (shrink)

This article presents an edited excerpt from a hitherto unknown fragmentary treatise by Rush Rhees. In the treatise, Rhees gives his account of the problem of continuity that he had started elaborating before he became acquainted with Wittgenstein. The excerpt, which contains Rhees' original distinction between outer and inner surfaces of bodies, builds on Brentano's theory of the continuum and his doctrine of plerosis. This treatment of continuity sheds light on Rhees' early philosophical development and confirms that even though he (...) and Wittgenstein discussed the problem of continuity, Rhees' own approach remained distinct from that of Wittgenstein. (shrink)

I discuss three well-known interpretations of Aristotle’s doctrine of categories: the linguistic interpretation put forth by Gilbert Ryle, the logical interpretation to be found in Kant, and the ontological interpretation by Franz Brentano. As it turns out, only Brentano provides us with an accurate understanding of this Aristotelian doctrine, which also allows us to locate and assess it within the context of Aristotle’s metaphysics.

According to “existence monism,” there is only one concrete particular, the cosmos as a whole (Horgan and Potrč 2000, 2008). According to “priority monism,” there are many concrete particulars, but all are ontologically dependent upon the cosmos as a whole, which accordingly is the only fundamental concrete particular (Schaffer 2010a, 2010b). In essence, the difference between them is that existence monism does not recognize any parts of the cosmos, whereas priority monism does – it just insists that the parts are (...) ontologically dependent upon the whole in this case. Brentano never maintained either of these views. But in the last two years of his life, he seems to have held the following approximation: there is only one physical substance, namely, the material universe as a whole. This is twice removed from existence or priority monism: first, it allows for a plurality of mental substances (souls); secondly, it allows for a plurality of physical accidents, which in Brentano’s reistic ontology are also concrete particulars. Still, the view that the only physical substance is the universe as a whole is quite radical and finds little precedent in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

In this article I will begin by discussing recent criticism, by Mauro Antonelli and Werner Sauer, of the ontological interpretation of Franz Brentano’s concept of intentionality, as formulated by i.a. Roderick Chisholm. I will then outline some apparent inconsistencies of the positions advocated by Antonelli and Sauer with Brentano’s formulations of his theory in several works and lectures. This new evaluation of (unpublished) sources will then lead to a sketch of a new approach to Brentano’s theory of intentionality. Specifically, it (...) will be argued that the notion of “intentional object” is inherently and un- avoidably ambiguous in every act of external perception, due to the fact that we can only have improper intentions directed at the external world. (shrink)

To a first approximation, ontology is concerned with what exists, metaontology with what it means to say that something exists. So understood, metaontology has been dominated by three views: (i) existence as a substantive first-order property that some things have and some do not, (ii) existence as a formal first-order property that everything has, and (iii) existence as a second-order property of existents’ distinctive properties. Each of these faces well-documented difficulties. In this chapter, I want to expound a fourth theoretical (...) option, which unfortunately has remained ‘under the radar.’ This is Franz Brentano’s view, according to which to say that X exists is not to attribute a property at all (first- or second-order), but to say that the correct attitude to take toward X is that of accepting or believing in it. (shrink)

The ontological theory of the later Franz Brentano is often referred to as ‘reism.’ But what exactly is reism, and how is it related to modern-day nominalism? In this paper, I offer an interpretation of Brentano’s reism as a specific variety of nominalism. This variety, although motivated by distinctly modern concerns about truthmakers, adopts a strategy for providing such truthmakers that is completely foreign to modern nominalism. The strategy rests on proliferation of coincident concrete particulars. For example, ‘Socrates is wise’ (...) and ‘Socrates is Greek’ are made true, respectively, by wise-Socrates and Greek-Socrates, where wise-Socrates and Greek-Socrates are two coinciding but numerically distinct concrete particulars (which also coincide with Socrates). (shrink)

Which entities should be accepted as part of the furniture of the world, and which not? What are pseudo-objects, if they are not properly objects? This collection explores the answers given to these questions by some key philosophers throughout the 20th century. It brings together essays by leading scholars on a subject of central importance to both metaphysics and the history of philosophy.".

Time is a pervasive notion of high impact in information systems and computer science altogether. Respective understandings of the domain of time are fundamental for numerous areas, frequently in combination with closely related entities such as events, changes and processes. The conception and representation of time entities and reasoning about temporal data and knowledge are thus significant research areas. Each representation of temporal knowledge bears ontological commitments concerning time. Thus it is important to base temporal representations on a foundational ontology (...) that covers general categories of time entities. In this article we introduce and discuss two consecutive ontologies of time that have been developed for the top-level ontology General Formal Ontology. The first covers intervals, named chronoids, and time boundaries of chronoids, as a kind of time points. One important specialty of time boundaries is their ability to coincide with other time boundaries. The second theory extends the first one by additionally addressing time regions, i.e., mereological sums of chronoids. Both ontologies are partially inspired by ideas of Franz Brentano, especially from his writings about the continuum. In particular, we view continuous time intervals as a genuine phenomenon which should not be identified with intervals of real numbers. On these grounds the resulting ontologies allow for proposing novel contributions to several problematic issues in temporal representation and reasoning, among others, the Dividing Instant Problem and the problem of persistence and change. Following our general approach to ontology development, both ontologies are axiomatized as formal theories in first-order logic and are analyzed metalogically. We prove the consistency of both ontologies, and completeness and decidability for one. Moreover, standard time theories with points and intervals are covered by both theories. (shrink)

Franz Brentano’s 1874 Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint presents us with a framework and methodology for performing scientific research in psychology. Moreover, this project provides the foundation for the more ambitious ideal of the renewal of philosophy as a science, which had been Brentano’s aim ever since defending his habilitation thesis that “the true method of philosophy is none other than that of the natural sciences”. Brentano therefore needs to carefully articulate the precise position and role of his scientific psychology (...) among the Geisteswissenschaften and the Naturwissenschaften. What does his ideal of philosophy as science consist in? What is the relation between his scientific psychology and philosophy? How is psychology related to the natural sciences, in particular psycho-physics and physiology? (shrink)

Brentano’s metaphysical position in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint is usually assumed to be metaphysical realism. I propose an alternative interpretation, according to which Brentano was at that time, as well as later, a full-fledged phenomenalist. However, his phenomenalism is markedly different from standard phenomenalism in that it does not deny that the physicist’s judgments are really about the objective world. The aim of the theory of intentionality, I argue, is to allow for extra-phenomenal aboutness within a phenomenalist framework.