Franz Brentano and the Psychology of Intentionality

This famous researcher was one of the great figures in the history of psychology.

The study of intentionality is relatively recent in the history of philosophy. Although ancient and medieval philosophers such as Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, Avicenna or Thomas Aquinas made specific references to the human will, Franz Brentano, who lived in the 19th century, is generally considered the pioneer in this field of analysis.

In this article we will describe the main approaches of the psychology of intentionality. the psychology of intentionality (or "of the act") of Franz Brentano.. For the German philosopher intentionality is the main feature that distinguishes psychological phenomena from physical ones, which are self-contained rather than directing acts towards another external object.

Biography of Franz Brentano

Franz Clemens Honoratus Honoratus Hermann Brentano (1838-1917) was a priest, philosopher and psychologist who was born in Prussia, in present-day Germany. His interest in scholastic philosophy and in that of Aristotle led him to study this subject at several German universities and, later on, to to train as a theologian and to become a priest of the Catholic religion..

In 1873 he left the Church because of his disagreements with the official theses; in particular, Brentano denied the dogma of papal infallibility, according to which the Pope is incapable of making mistakes. He later married and devoted himself to university teaching. He died in 1917 in Zurich, Switzerland, where he moved after World War I broke out.

Brentano's fundamental work is entitled "Psychology from the empirical point of view", and was published in 1874 and was published in 1874. In it, this author described the key role of intentionality in thought and other psychological processes, and affirmed that it is the main factor that distinguishes them from purely physical phenomena.

The proposals of this pioneer had a great impact on different approaches to psychology and other disciplines: logic, the analytical philosophy of Wittgenstein and Russell, experimental psychology, structuralist and functionalist literary analysis, the Gestalt School and especially phenomenology, based on his psychology of the act.

The concept of intentionality

Brentano recovered the concept of intentionality in modern philosophy. In doing so, he relied mainly on the work of he relied mainly on the work of Aristotle and other classical authors.However, it was the approaches of René Descartes, which focused on knowledge rather than will, that inspired Brentano to highlight the relevance of this construct.

According to this author's definition intentionality is the common characteristic of all psychological phenomena.. It is the property that directs a given act or event towards an object or goal located in the external world. Intentionality has an immanent character, that is, it is always present in the mind of the person.

Physical phenomena are all those that occur in the external world, such as sounds, visual stimuli and objects in the environment in general. Among the psychological phenomena, on the other hand, we find the perceptions of others of a physical type, as well as the mental contents that are directed to these.

Thus, all mental phenomena all mental phenomena contain an objectFor example, in the act of wishing, it is necessary that there is an external entity that fulfills the role of receiver of such an event. The same happens when we remember a past event, a place or a specific information, when we feel love or hatred for another living being, etc.

However, and given that the mental object (the intention or "intentional existence") that accompanies any physical object has different characteristics for each person, it is not possible in any case for more than one person to be directed towards exactly the same object, even if it is equivalent from a physical point of view.

The psychology of the act

Brentano stated that psychology consisted of two branches: the descriptive and the genetic.. The first would focus on the description of mental phenomena in the first person, similar to phenomenological psychology. Genetic psychology, like cognitivism today, would do so in the third person by means of empirical experiments.

This philosopher clearly defended the approach to psychology that he called "descriptive". According to Brentano's thesis and his psychology of the act, we should not analyze the objective experience associated with mental phenomena. associated with mental phenomena, but we should simply focus on describing the way in which we experience it as richly as possible.

Thus, by considering that the mind cannot be studied solely through its physical correlates, Franz Brentano argued against the idea that our discipline could be part of the natural sciences. For this author, as for many others in the founding period and today, psychology would be closer to philosophy.

However, Brentano's psychology of the act has been criticized since its appearance (even by the philosopher's own disciples, much to their regret) for the lack of clarity of its approaches. Moreover, the methods of introspective study are currently highly questioned because it is not possible to systematize them adequately.