Elaboration: Brentano claims that all mental states "contain an object immanently within themselves." But then he defines mental states as states which contain an object immanently within themselves. It seems therefore that Brentano's Thesis is a trivial tautology.
Analogy: Suppose that Newton's thesis was that all planets
move in ellipses, but that it turned out that he simply
defined planets as
"objects which move in ellipses." If that were Newton's position, then
Newtonian mechanics would be a trivial tautology, rather than a substantve
contribution to science.
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In the passage we read Brentano distinguishes between two types of phenomena: mental and physical. He claims that what is special about all mental phenomena is that they contain an object within themselves, an object which has a peculiar sort of property, namely, it is intentionally inexistent. The worry is that in trying to spell out what it means for an object to exhibit this special trait we may find ourselves uttering the apparently empty tautology "all mental phenomena contain, involve, are directed towards an object which is mental"; or, reducing the assertion to its simplest expression, "all mental phenomena are mental."
(Notice,
though, that it is questionable whether this reduction is legitimate. It
seems to me that the claim that all mental phenomena contain a mental
object may be significantly different from the one that states that all
mental phenomena are mental).
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Attempt #1:
In 1874, Franz Brentano published "Psychologie vom empirischen
Standpunkte", in which, among other things, he made the observation that
mental phenomena hold an object within themselves and that physical
phenomena do not. He then proceded to add this attribute to the
definition of mental phenomena.
Rather than creating a trivial tautolog, Brentano observed a
single common and exclusive positive atribute of mental phenomena and
added it to the definition of the same.
Aaron J Blue
As we figured out in class, Brentano's thesis can be reformulated as (roughly):
1) One way to go would be simply to excise the notion of definition from
Brentano's thesis altogether. In effect this is what we have been doing in
discussing Brentano's Thesis in class. Our canonical formulation went
something like this:
Brentano's Thesis: All mental phenomena and no physical phenomena contain
an object immanently within themselves.
Cast in this way, Brentano's Thesis doesn't make a claim about definitional
matters at all. It starts with a distinction that we intuitively
understand (the distinton between the mental and the physical) and it makes
a claim about one way in which these two domains differ.
On this first strategy, then, we simply deny that Brentano is really
offering us definitions at all.
2) A second, and somewhat less stong-armed tactic would be to allow that
Brentano is indeed offering a definition, but insist that it is an
extensional definition. That is, his definition is not telling us what
the concept "mental" means (its intension?); rather he is telling us
something about what all the members of the set of mental phenomena have in
common.
3) (a version of blue's solution?) Yet a third strategy for dealing with
Zamosc's Worry would be to invoke another astronomical analogy. Suppose
that a group of astronomical researchers began to notice a certain pattern
of unusual astronomical phenomena in the vicinity of the star Beetlejuice.
Later, they notice similar patterns in the vicinity of Vogon. They publish
their findings. Since it was Zamosc who had initially drawn attention to
the Beetlejuice case, the phenomena comes to be known as "Zamoscia." At
this stage, however, little is known about the underlying astronomical
mechanisms which produce Zamoscia.
Do any of these solutions work? Has Zamosc's worry been allayed? We all
eagerly await ...
-Nate
In 1609, Johannes Kepler published "Astronomina Nova", in which,
among other things, he stated his so-called "first law of planetary
motion", which states that the planets circle the sun on elliptical
orbits (Microsoft Encarta '95, (c) Microsoft). From that time on an
elliptical orbit has been an integral aspect of the definition of a
planet.
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Attempt #2:
Brentano seems to be trying to get at something when he talks
"tautologically" about mental phenomena. As Prof. Martin said, he was an "idea man," as
well as sloppy. If we can give him the benefit of the doubt and try and see what
he was trying to get across in formulating his thesis in such a way, the
tautology "problem" may become irrelevant.
"All mental states hold in in/out being." Here are somequestions I have:
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The Professor Speaks:
Here are some thoughts about how to allay Zamosc's Worry:
So begins a research project. Studies are made,
findings
published, doctoral dissertations written. Other examples of
Zamoscia are
reported. After a few years of this, the decisive breakthrough is made.
Someone discovers that there is a common physical mechanism at work in all
the known cases of Zamoscia. This claim is debated and comes to be
accepted by the main players in Zamoscia research.
The outcome of this little story is that Zamoscia comes to be
defined in terms of the physical mechanism that has been discovered.
When the textbook writers come to include Zamoscia in their textbooks, for
instance, they define it in terms of the physical mecahnism.
The idea here (blue's idea?) is that extensional discoveries can
come to figure in definitions.
Zamosc's Reply.
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Jai on Stocker:
As Mr. Stocker suggested: What happens if we consider Brentano's
thesis not as a tautology, but rather as a stipulative definition? In
other words, Brentano begins by pointing to a particular aspect of
mental
phenomena, namely that mental phenomena are "directed toward an object," an
aspect which he says is exhibited by mental phenomena but not physical.
So, two paragraphs later, Brentano is simply using this distiguishing
aspect of mental phenomena to state a stipulative definition, i.e. a
meaningful technical definition which he tells us he wants to use in his
paper. Thus rather than being trivial, Brentano's definition is more of
a helpful reformulation of what mental phenomena are.
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Nate's side of the story:
Wayne's most plausible attempt at allaying Zamosc's worry seems to be
the third one. Remember the the title of Brentano's work is "Psychology
from an Empirical Standpoint." The pretense, if not the execution, of
Brentano's work is that he isn't doing "armchair philosophy." Brentano
is supposed to be doing philosophy as science. It is true that in the
short excerpt we read there is little science being done (by this I mean
there is a lack of hard experimental evidence to back up his claims).
But this needn't be fatal to his thesis. We just need to investigate it
some more.
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