Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

Notes 113
made phenomenognostically—phenomenologically—with reference to the act of thinking. For the
distinction brings up the question whether the thing that I am thinking about exists or not. And this
question can be answered only by considering the acts of judgement which pertain to the thing I am
thinking about. When our concern is only with thinking, then we should not take acts of judgement
into account.
2 The report on the Fifth International Psychological Congress (Rome 1905) contained many
typographical errors, and Brentano’s lecture Von der psychologischen Analyse der Tonqualitäten had
been rather badly garbled. This lecture contains Brentano’s “Zweikomponentenlehre” which he had
formulated long before Revesz. For further details, see Brentano’s Untersuchungen zur Sinnespsychologie
(Leipzig 1907), and Vom sinnlichen und noetischen Bewusstsein (Vol. III of the Psychologie), Part I.
3 The nature of Höfler’s remarks, against which Brentano’s polemic is directed, may be gathered
from the wording of the letter. Evidently he had attributed the following theory to Brentano: that
someone who thinks of A has, as his object or content, “the A which is thought about”, where “object”
and “content” are used synonymously. Compare my edition of the Psychologie, particularly Vol. I,
where Brentano emphasizes (e.g., p. 172) that hearing has a content, or object, different from the
hearing itself—namely, the sound and not the heard sound. But there are passages in the Psychologie
which might be misunderstood (e.g., Vol. I, pp. 31 and 177). It is certain, however, that Brentano
always held that we hear the tone and not the heard tone, we believe in God and not in the believed-in
God, we deny God and not the denied God. But he had held earlier that there is a certain correlation
between the intentional relation and the object of this relation. (See the Introduction to Vol. I of the
Psychologie.)
In Höfler’s Congress lecture (Atti, Rome, 1906, p. 327) we also find Brentano criticized for using
“content” and “intentional object” synonymously. Of course this is a matter only of terminology. But
to avoid ambiguity, it is preferable not to speak of “content” in connection with judgements, where
it is customary to say of two judgements, having the same object, that they may differ in content,
depending upon whether they are affirmative or negative, assertoric or apodictic. Marty spoke of
the contents of judgements in a wholly different sense, using the term synonymously with “state of
affairs” (Sachverhalt) or “objective” (Meinong).
There is no terminological agreement whatever in this area. Unfortunate as this may be, no respectable
psychologist or epistemologist who uses the expression “content of consciousness” would
make the mistake to which the members of the Rehmke school refer (most recently Heyde, in the
Journal Grundwissenschaft, Vol. IX). According to Rehmke and his followers, “content of consciousness”
implies that consciousness must be spatial, like a container or vessel. I may reassure
him that the “inner linguistic form” has not seduced us into taking the word in this way. Strictly
speaking, one could not even use our German word for thinking—i.e., “Vorstellen”—without
giving rise to the suspicion that we intend a kind of spatial confrontation (Vor-sichHinstellen).
Brentano does admit that the term “content” should not be used as a synonym for “object”. In
Von der Klassifikation der psychischen Phänomene (1911), now Vol. II of the Psychologie, Brentano
states that it is advisable not to use “content” for object of thought: “No one could possibly
say that, because the judgements ‘God exists’ and ‘God does not exist’ have the same object, they
also have the same content” (p. 39). Nevertheless it is now customary to speak of the “content”
of a concept (of a conceptual idea) and to distinguish it from its range or extension (Umfange).
Marty discusses the term “content” in considerable detail in his Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung
der allgemeinen Grammatik und Sprachphilosophie (Halle, 1908). This term, which has
been so greatly used and misused, does indeed receive still another meaning from Marty, insofar
as he uses it synonymously with “state of affairs” (Sachverhalt) and in the way in which Meinong
and Russell use “objective”. On this point, there is much critical material in my edition of
Brentano’s Psychologie. In the editions of the Psychologie, and elsewhere, I have made it a rule
never to interpret “content” as synonymous with “object”, despite the fact that even now one often
speaks of the content of visual sensation, meaning thereby the coloured thing which we intuit.