Intentionality, Brentano and Bain's Psychology

Intentionality, Brentano, and Bain’s Psychology Federico Boccaccini (FNRS/University of Liege) Franz Brentano (1838–1917), in his influential book Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874), famously resurrected the notion of intentionality. Commentators have paid great attention to this concept’s historical sources, i.e. Aristotle and medieval philosophy of mind, in order to analyse it and justify its restoration. Unfortunately, they often ignore the fact that Book Two of the text—devoted to the concept of mental phenomena in general and within which Brentano enunciates his theory of intentional reference as a mark of the mental—is, first and foremost, a sophisticated and brilliant response to the philosophical psychology of its time, particularly to Alexander Bain’s psychological work and his theory of psychophysical parallelism. There are many undervalued references to the work of Bain in Brentano’s book, and also to other Scottish philosophers like Reid, Brown, and Hamilton. My paper aims to highlight the direct connection between Bain and the renewal of the doctrine of intentionality of thought by Brentano. My claim is that the puzzle of intentionality should be approached and studied in its real historical context, noting the impact of Scottish philosophy of mind on 19th-century German psychology. I argue that 1) Brentano’s theory of intentionality and his strong anti-naturalism in psychology is a straight reaction to Bain’s seminal work The Senses and the Intellect (1855) and its companion volume Emotions and the Will (1859); and that 2) Brentano’s concepts of empiricism and scientific method in psychology are elaborated as a variation of Bain’s.