Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

104 Notes
20 Later Brentano declares this to be false. One can refer only to things; for only things can be
objects of thought. There is a detailed and complete account of this topic in Brentano’s Psychologie,
Vol. I, Introduction, Vol. II, Appendix 9, and in the later essays in the present book.
21 Truth is not a real property of judgement unless one understands by “truth” simply the property of
being evident or of being insightful (einsichtig). Since one cannot take “truth” in the latter way (and
it is not so taken in the lecture), it is clear that in speaking of truth one is concerned with an apparent
attribute or characteristic. Such apparent attributes are what the scholastics called denominationes
extrinsecae, marks from the outside, so to speak. In referring to the truth of a judgement that is not
evident, one has in mind either that this blind judgement corresponds with respect to quality to some
other judgement that is evident, or else that an evident judgement could not possibly contradict it.
Compare the Introduction.
Brentano says in the text: “The judgement itself may not undergo any change; but it will become true
if the thing in question comes into being, and it will cease to be true if the thing is destroyed.” Suppose,
for instance, I judge that it is raining. The rain stops, I do not revise my judgement, and the judgement
is thus transformed from one which is true into one which is false. If “true” and “false” were real predicates,
or real properties of the judgement, this would constitute a miracle—indeed a contradiction; something
would change its real properties without itself undergoing any change other than a temporal one.
Thus “true” and “false” cannot signify real predicates or attributes. Therefore, one might argue,
they must signify non-real predicates.
But the great progress of Brentano’s thinking consists in showing that there cannot be determinations
other than things—indeed that nonreal determinations cannot even be imagined. What, then,
does it mean to say “The judgement is deprived of its truth without its being changed in any way”?
I believe the answer is roughly this: “The judgement ‘It is raining’ ceases to be true.” And what this
means, when put clearly and explicitly, is: “From now on a judgement which affirms rain cannot possibly
be evident.” Our statement is an apodictic rejection of evident judgements affirming rain.
22 One must object to the view that analytic judgements, and specifically cognitions a priori, refer
to objects devoid of real content. The principle of contradiction, for instance, no matter how it is
formulated, refers to things.
23 At the time Brentano’s view was as follows: The coming into being or passing away of something
that has “no real content” (Gehalt) and is thus not a thing is always tied to the coming into being and
passing away of that which is a thing. A deprivation, for instance, comes into being when some thing
passes away, and a deprivation passes away when the corresponding thing comes into being. Thus an
empty space comes into being when certain bodies pass away or change their location. And an empty
space passes away if certain bodies come into being or change their location. An object of thought
comes into existence when one thinks, and it passes away when one stops thinking. It is noteworthy
that Brentano had always held that the coming into being and the passing away of the so-called nonthings
is bound up with the coming into being and passing away of things. He did believe, at the
time of the lecture on truth, that “An empty space comes into being” conveys something other than
“Some physical object passes away”, and that “My lack of money begins today” conveys something
other than “Today I am devoid of all money”, or “Today the last of my money is gone”. He took the
statements to be logically equivalent and yet he considered them psychologically and conceptually
different. According to the later doctrine, however, the statements express the same thought but in
different ways; in each case there is a relation to a thing, in the one example a relation to matter that
changes or moves, in the other example a relation to money which changes its owner, and so on. See
additional details below and Brentano’s Vom Dasein Gottes, p. 42.
The germ of Brentano’s later view, which rejects irrealia, even as possible objects of thought, is
contained in this doctrine of the dependence of non-things upon things.
24 What Brentano is doing here is essentially this: he replaces the doctrine of correspondence
between thought and object (rei et intellectus) by that of the adequacy (fittingness, propriety) of
thought to the existent or non-existent. This is what most of his students designate as adequacy to an