Carl Stumpf

ABSTRACT This essay reconstructs the history of Gestalt psychology taking as its starting points the early 20th century surge in psychology-of-music research. Leaving behind established tradition, authors such as Stumpf, Ehrenfels, Meinong, Krueger, and Witasek developed a new model of psychic development based on musical experience. The melodic and harmonic combination of sounds – with all its sentimental effects – became the new, fascinating dominant paradigm in theories of perception and cognitive flow in general, with important consequences with regard to musical aesthetics.The Gestalt theory properly speaking, formulated by Wertheimer, Koffka and Köhler, arose in this context, its defining characteristic being the tendency to salvage some of the perspectives of romantic philosophy with regard to nature which stemmed from an innovative use of the concept of ‘sense’. This approach is best exemplified by musical applications such as those of Hornbostel, the famous ethnomusicologist who was also an important Gestalt theorist.

La percezione musicale ha avuto un ruolo significativo nella storia della psicologia della Gestalt. Muovendo dalle critiche di Mach ed Ehrenfels alla dottrina elaborata da Helmholtz e dall’elaborazione teorica di Stumpf, destinata a fungere da ponte concettuale, il lavoro analizza la riflessione svoltasi in seno alla psicologia della Gestalt. Sorprendentemente, Köhler non si concentra sulle Gestalten musicali complesse, ma sulle qualità tonali più elementari, mostrandone la totale irriducibilità a fattori fisico-fisiologici. Sulla stessa linea è anche Hornbostel, il quale amplia tuttavia il discorso mediante il richiamo al complesso antropologico dei vissuti umani, musicali ed extramusicali, che rimandano a un determinato contesto culturale, saldando così il nesso tra psicologia della Gestalt e ricerca nel campo etnomusicologico.

Si se descuenta el tiempo que nos fue robado a las generaciones que sufrimos los años oscuros y si se me disculpa que considere que poco más de cuarenta años parecen casi una eternidad, me permito decir que yo todavía era joven cuando pergeñé estas ideas. Acometí la empresa solo, además; ninguno de mis contemporáneos en la carrera de antropología me acompañó en la empresa de leer más Husserl del que había leído Marcelo Bórmida o más Stumpf de lo que los autores que fueron objeto de mi crítica (Irma Ruiz y Jorge Novati, del Instituto Nacional de Musicología) estimaban necesario conocer.

Todavía me llama la atención la insolencia del abstract beligerante que fuera la tarjeta de presentación de mi artículo: "Con el propósito de lograr una fundamentación epistemológica más sólida de la teoría etnomusicológica global y de inaugurar una tradición de elucidación crítica cuya falta es ostensible en nuestro medio, esta monografía revisa, pone en crisis y confuta la validez de los supuestos y los procedimientos de la escuela de musicología llamada ''fenomenológica', tal como se han desarrollado en estudios de reciente aparición."

Los razonamientos expuestos testimonian la falta de consistencia de los axiomas fenomenológicos de base, inspirados en Bórmida, y la confusa oscilación de las exposiciones entre estrategias “emic” mal cumplimentadas y conceptualizaciones “etic” improductivas.

Dos años después de mi presentación original, Irma Ruiz respondió a mis críticas. La más ácida de sus réplicas tiene que ver con su asombrosa puesta en duda de que haya existido alguna relación entre el trabajo seminal de Carl Stumpf y la fenomenología. He decidido incluir en esta página mi respuesta, que el lector podrá consultar en su contexto debido en el primer volumen de mi Antropología de la Música (Reynoso 2006). Mi réplica incluía estos pasajes:

En su contestación a mis críticas, Irma Ruiz dedica largos párrafos a despegarse de la ver­sión venezolana de la fenomenología musicológica, a precisar el momento exacto de su con­ver­sión a la etnología tautegórica y a negar que su modelo tenga que ver con una pos­tu­ra institucional u oficial, nada de lo cual configura un rasgo esen­cial de mis obje­cio­nes. Más grave es que niegue (al señalar yo que una fenomenologización de la etnomu­si­co­lo­gía involucra un retorno a los orígenes) que los trabajos de Stumpf hayan tenido algo que ver con la filosofía de Husserl. Aunque para cualquier modesto conocedor de las his­torias discipli­na­res mi afirmación no requiere demostración alguna, invito a que se con­sidere es­tas aclaraciones del etnomusicólogo alemán Albrecht Schnei­der:

Aunque Stumpf llevó adelante un número de experimentos, muchos basados en la in­tros­pección, es bastante obvio que su Tonpsychologie pertenece ampliamente a las tradi­cio­nes fenomenológicas en filosofía, así como a la Denkpsychologie [psi­co­logía del pensa­miento], la cual, a su vez, se relaciona tanto con la teoría de la Ges­talt y la moderna psi­cología cognitiva. Se puede, por lo tanto, remontar el ras­tro de las ideas de Stumpf hasta Brentano y encontrar paralelos en las escrituras de Ernst Mach, Alexius von Meinong y Os­wald Külpe. El trabajo de Edmund Hu­sserl también contiene paralelismos, espe­cial­mente sus Lecturas sobre la Feno­me­no­logía de la conciencia interna del tiempo y sus investigaciones de “la ex­pe­rien­cia y el juicio” (Husserl 1928, 1939), ambas relacionadas con el pen­samiento de [Franz] Bren­tano y [Carl] Stumpf (Schneider 1991: 294).

Ruiz escribe con ironía apenas contenida que “hasta ahora no hemos podido determinar qué tienen que ver las escalas y las melodías de los Bellakula con la fenomenología de Husserl”, ad­mi­tiendo no haber leído el trabajo de Stumpf (cf. Ruiz 1998: 101). Si aún no consigue el ensayo de Stumpf o no ha tenido acceso a sus obras teóricas, creo que es por el lado de estudios como los de Schneider que de­bería buscar los nexos entre una cosa y la otra. El caso es que Stumpf fue alumno dilecto de Bren­tano y maes­­­tro de Husserl, y co­mo bien ra­ti­fica Dieter Christensen, “su fa­moso ensayo sobre los Be­lla­kula (Stumpf 1886) y su ‘Ton­system und Musik der Sia­me­­sen’ (Stumpf 1901) fue­­­ron dos de sus pro­pios intentos por ampliar la base empírica de sus estudios psico­ló­gi­cos” (Chris­ten­sen 1991: 204). Igual que lo intentara Bórmida ochenta años más tarde, el pro­pó­sito de Stumpf en ese mismo trabajo era sentar las ba­ses de un conoci­mien­to de for­mas y prác­ti­cas “libre de cualquier teoría”; como hoy bien se sabe, Husserl no inventó esta idea “bor­midiana”, sino que la tomó de Stumpf (Stumpf 1886: 405; Smith 1986).

Aun los manuales introductorios de filosofía documen­tan las relaciones es­trechas entre Stumpf y Husserl, que llegaron al punto de que és­te de­di­ca­ra a a­quél su pri­me­ra gran obra “en tes­ti­monio de veneración y amistad” (Urdanoz 1978: 370-371). La propia autobio­gra­fía de Stumpf consigna, para mayor abundamiento, que la visita de un contin­gente Bella­kula a la ciudad de Halle le proporcionó la oportu­ni­dad de ex­pe­rimentar trans­cultu­ral­mente su teoría fenomenológica de la fusión tonal; Hus­serl, re­comendado por Bren­tano a Stumpf algunos meses antes en ese mismo año de 1886, fue testigo de esa experiencia y utilizó el concepto de fusión (Verschmelzung) en su propia Phi­lo­sophie der Arith­metik pu­­­­­blicada un año después que el segundo volumen de Ton­psy­cho­logie de Stumpf. En el documento auto­bio­gráfico de éste, las referencias a Husserl y a los Bellakula están en el mismo párrafo (Ro­llin­ger 1999: 107-109; Mur­chi­son 1930: 389-441).

En mi crítica original yo de­cía que la musicología comparada comenzó sien­do feno­me­noló­gica, y Ruiz reprueba que yo do­cu­mente esa regresión negando que lo haya sido; pero está visto que la prueba de lo que afirmo es a­pa­bu­llante. Si en “Lie­der der Be­llakula Indianer” no hay referencias a quien pa­sa por ser el padre de la fenomenología es por­que tanto esa doctrina como la in­ves­tigación de Stumpf son an­te­riores a las obras funda­men­tales de Husserl. ¿Qué tiene que ver Husserl con los Bellakula? Mucho, por lo visto. Ruiz debió for­mular su pre­­gunta conmutando los actantes; si hubiera hecho un mínimo trabajo de fuentes para conocer mejor la histo­ria de la doctrina en que se inspira su propio maes­tro y la naturaleza del episodio fun­dante de la vergleichende Musikwissenschaft, pienso que no la habría for­mu­lado en absoluto.

Leer completo en Carlos Reynoso. 2006. Antropología de la Música. De los géneros tribales a la globalización. vol. 1. Buenos Aires, Ediciones Sb, pág: 135-145. https://www.academia.edu/54896670/Antropolog%C3%ADa_de_la_M%C3%BAsica_De_los_g%C3%A9neros_tribales_a_la_globalizaci%C3%B3n_Volumen_I_2006_

ABSTRACT: Lungo tutto l’Ottocento il rapporto tra musica e filosofia permane assai stretto. Il problema dei fondamenti della musica rappresenta una questione aperta e una sfida per i filosofi: in primo piano emergono soprattutto problemi come la natura del suono o il decorso della percezione acustica. La concezione di problemi classici come l’origine e il significato dell’armonia, o della consonanza e dissonanza, rinvia allora a problemi filosofici di grande rilievo, spesso affrontati sperimentando metodi e soluzioni inedite. Dopo la crisi dell’estetica musicale settecentesca, sancita nel pensiero di Kant, tocca soprattutto alla filosofia della natura, alla psicologia scientifica e alla fisiologia, alla metafisica post-hegeliana e alla fenomenologia sviluppare approcci innovativi e di notevole interesse alle questioni indicate.

The purpose of this paper is to stress the constancy of the Husserlian conception of sensible contents. I argue that Husserl, despite some significant changes in his philosophical views between 1901 and 1913, always maintained that sensations have a founding role to play in perceptual experience. The proposed interpretation is build against the idea of a scission in Husserl's work as regards the status of sensations—an idea which became widespread due to the so-called (neo-)Fregean readings of phenomenology. Even if the notion of sense (―Noema‖) gains in importance in the Ideas, I argue that this does not discredit the sensuous stuff when it comes to the constitution of perceptual objects.

Il volume analizza il problema del suono nella filosofia tedesca, dalla Critica del Giudizio di Kant alla psicologia della Gestalt. Vengono prese in esame la filosofia della natura del romanticismo e dell’idealismo, la psicologia filosofica della seconda metà del secolo e infine la scuola descrittivo-fenomenologica del primo Novecento. Il quadro che ne risulta è quello di un dibattito molto vivace che tocca fondamentali questioni di fisica acustica, psicologia della percezione ed estetica musicale, mettendo a confronto molti dei massimi autori del secolo. Tra i temi affrontati, il senso dei rapporti numerici insiti nelle relazioni tonali, l’indagine sui processi percettivi e cognitivi legati alle figure armoniche e melodiche, il significato estetico e metafisico del sentimento musicale. Sullo sfondo, le grandi trasformazioni nella prassi musicale del tempo e le notevoli conquiste della scienza acustica, delle quali i filosofi, in diversa misura, furono generalmente consapevoli.

In this interview, Vincenzo Costa reports about his personal way of interpreting and developing
Husserl’s phenomenology, referring to his work as a translator of the Husserlian main writings in Italian as
well as to his examination of other philosophers (such as Stumpf and Derrida), whose thought he takes
into account to propose a profitable lecture of Husserl’s phenomenology today – starting from the
problems of our very current time.

"This thesis introduces and defends the Axiological Theory of Pleasure (ATP), according to which all pleasures are mental episodes which exemplify an hedonic value. According to the version of the ATP defended, hedonic goodness is not a primitive kind of value, but amounts to the final and personal value of mental episodes. Beside, it is argued that all mental episodes –and then all pleasures– are intentional. The definition of pleasures I arrived at is the following :

x is a pleasure of a person P =df x is an intentional episode of P which is finally good for P."

Some Austro-German philosophers considered thoughts to be mind-dependent entities, that is, psychic products. Yet these authors also attributed “objectivity” to thoughts: distinct thinking subjects can have mental acts with “qualitatively” the same content. Moreover, thoughts, once built, can exist beyond the life of their inventor, “embodied” in “documents”. At the beginning of the 20th century, the notion of “psychic product” was at the centre of the debates on psychologism; a hundred years later, it is rather at the margins of the history of philosophy. While Twardowski’s theory of products has been frequently studied, those of Stumpf and the late Husserl have been much less discussed. A presentation of the Austro-German debates about psychic products is all the more important since these discussions might be of direct interest for contemporary philosophy. This paper examines the Austro-German notion of psychic products in Stumpf, Twardowski, and the late Husserl.

The young Edmund Husserl stressed that the success of his philosophy hinged upon his ability to determine the subject and the predicate of impersonal propositions and their expressions, such as 'It is raining'. This essay accordingly investigates the tenability of Husserl's early thought, by executing a first study of his analysis of impersonal propositions from the late 1890s. This examination reshapes our understanding of the inception of phenomenology in two ways. First, Husserl pinpoints the subject by outlining why impersonal expressions are employed during communication. This contravenes interpretations of the early Husserl as uninterested in intersubjectivity. Second, by studying how Husserl determines the predicate by investigating existential propositions, I show that Husserl had, in the late 1890s, come to his final view on the concept of being.

In diesem Aufsatz besprechen wir die Ontologie der Sachverhalte, die Carl Stumpf vorgeschlagen hat. Wie viele Vertreter der Brentano-Schule stützt sich hier Stumpf auf die reiche Ontologie der intentionalen Beziehung, die Brentano in seinen Vorlesungen aus der so genannten „mittleren“ Periode vorgeschlagen hat. Stumpf modifiziert jedoch die übernommene Lehre in einer unerwarteten Weise. Brentano sprach nämlich sowohl von immanenten als auch transzendenten propositionalen Entitäten. Stumpf hingegen führt nur die immanenten, aber keine transzendenten Sachverhalte ein, was alle potentiellen Vorteile einer derartigen Erweiterung der Ontologie zunichte zu machen scheint. Wir zeigen jedoch, dass sich die Position Stumpfs erklären lässt, wenn man zwei wichtige Punkte beachtet. Zum einen sind die Brentanoschen Objekte (der nominalen Form) bereits höchst komplizierte Entitäten, die in vielen Aspekten Sachverhalte ersetzen können. Zum anderen verwendet hier Stumpf, wie es scheint, einen konzeptualistischen Erklärungsmuster, den man auch bei dem frühen Brentano oft findet.

This paper defends hedonic intentionalism, the view that all pleasures, including bodily pleasures, are directed towards objects distinct from themselves. Brentano is the leading proponent of this view. My goal here is to disentangle his significant proposals from the more disputable ones so as to arrive at a hopefully promising version of hedonic intentionalism. I mainly focus on bodily pleasures, which constitute the main troublemakers for hedonic intentionalism. Section 1 introduces the problem raised by bodily pleasures for hedonic intentionalism and some of the main reactions to it. Sections 2 and 3 rebut two main approaches equating bodily pleasures with non- intentional episodes. More precisely, section 2 argues that bodily pleasures cannot be purely non-intentional self-conscious feelings, by relying on Brentano’s objection to Hamilton’s theory of pleasure. Section 3 argues that bodily pleasures cannot be non-intentional sensory qualities by relying on Brentano’s objections to Stumpf’s theory of pleasure. Section 4 develops a brentanian view of the intentionality of bodily pleasures by claiming bodily pleasures are directed at a sui generis class of sensory qualities. Section 5 presents an objection to Brentano’s later theory of pleasure according to which all sensory pleasures are directed at sensing acts.

In his Spinozastudien (1919) Stumpf dismisses the commonplace interpretation of Spinoza’s parallelism in psychophysical terms. Rather, he suggests to read Ethics, II, Prop. 7, as the heritage of the scholastic doctrine of intentionality. Accordingly, things (of any kind: res) are the intentional objects of God’s ideas. On this basis, Stumpf also tries to make sense of the puzzling spinozian doctrine of the infinity of God’s attributes. In support of this exegesis, Stumpf offers an interesting reconstruction of the history of intentionality from Plato and Aristotle to the late Scholastics (XVII century). Besides its intrinsic value, Stumpf’s confrontation with Spinoza is illuminating in explaining his own position concerning a crucial phenomenological question such as intentionality. Actually, Stumpf avoids defining the mental in terms of intentionality and maintains, rather, a moderate but professed dualistic position, thus deeply diverging from both Brentano and Husserl.

The ancient Greeks already used to give ethnic names (Doric, Phrygian, Lydian, etc.) to their different scales, and observations on differences in music of the various nations always raised the interest of musicians and philosophers. Yet, it was only in the late nineteenth century that “comparative musicology” (i.e. ethnomusicology) became an institutional science. An important role in this process was played by Carl Stumpf, a former pupil of Brentano’s who pioneered these researches in Berlin. Stumpf founded the Phonogrammarchiv (1900) to collect recordings of folk and extra-European music and a dedicated journal, the Sammelbände für vergleichende Musikwissenschaft. Musical consonance – he claimed – lays in this level of “tonal fusion”, not in the allegedly “natural” series of the harmonic partials of a vibrating chord, as suggested by the naturalists of all times from Pythagoras to Stumpf’s great contemporary Hermann Helmholtz. Although Stumpf later revised and finally abandoned this theory, its permanent value lays in its opposition to dominant naturalistic approaches. The fundamentally Eurocentric stance of naturalistic theories of music is also fiercely contrasted by Stumpf’s pupil Erich Hornbostel, who suggests that music ought to be considered as culture, rather than as nature, and focuses attention on the eventually melting human cultures.

Il volume ricostruisce la storia di un problema classico, quello del rapporto tra anima e corpo, in seno alla filosofia tedesca dell'Ottocento e del primo Novecento. Il tentativo di applicare alla sfera psichica i procedimenti di misurazione e quantificazione tipici delle scienze naturali, scatenò all’epoca un vivace dibattito intorno alla natura dell’anima e ai limiti di applicabilità del metodo scientifico. Al centro di questo nodo problematico si colloca idealmente la psicofisica, disciplina ideata da G.Th. Fechner sulla base delle ricerche fisiologiche di E.H. Weber, ma anche sotto l'influsso determinante del pensiero di Schelling. A metà strada tra la metafisica del XVII secolo e le novecentesche discussioni sul Mind-Body Problem, l’ampia querelle sulla psicofisica coinvolse le maggiori personalità filosofiche del tempo, impegnandole su questioni che rimangono a tutt'oggi di grande attualità teoretica. Muovendo da una puntuale ricerca delle origini del problema, individuabili nell'opera di Kant, il volume affronta le principali scuole di pensiero dell'Ottocento per concludersi infine con l'esame degli importanti contributi offerti dalla scuola descrittivo-fenomenologica di Brentano e dai massimi esponenti del Circolo di Vienna

This essay addresses the attitude of some leading Neo-Kantian philosophers toward scientific psychology and psychophysics. Early influential figures like Friedrich A. Lange counted Gustav T. Fechner’s psychophysical law among their allies in the rehabilitation of the Kantian standpoint. Later on, however, Neo-Kantian philosophers firmly rejected psychological measurement as a whole (Eduard Zeller) and harshly criticized the methods adopted by several psychologists of their time. For example, the Marburg mathematician and philosopher August Stadler reduced the validity of Fechner’s law to the mere physiological sphere, and Hermann Cohen conceived the application of mathematical integration to human sensations as an inane enterprise.

« Mais de quoi parlions-nous ? » ne cesse de demander à sa fille Mme Armfeldt dans Sourires d'une nuit d'été, soulignant ainsi l'impossibilité de déterminer en toutes circonstances quel est l'objet visé aussi bien par notre discours que par notre pensée. C'est à cette difficulté que répond traditionnellement la théorie des catégories, nous permettant de comprendre comment les formes conceptuelles que nous of fre le langage peuvent articuler une référence à un objet déterminé, et établir un pont entre la pensée et la perception. C'est cette question que reprend à nouveaux frais Husserl dans l'ouvrage fondateur de la phénoménologie, les Recherches Logiques, où l'analyse des catégories se voit intégrée à une théorie originale de l'intentionnalité des actes de conscience de façon à décrire l'articulation du voir et du signifier, de la pensée et de la perception. A nouveaux frais, car la description phénoménologique renouvelle la question des catégories en la détachant des présuppositions métaphysiques qui en ont compromis l'analyse, et en refusant de projeter les structures du langage ou du jugement sur celles de la perception.

Stumpf’s doctrine of the categories is of great importance for our understanding of his philosophy. This theme had been widely discussed among German thinkers after Kant; Brentano himself had repeatedly dealt with it since his early works. However, Stumpf considerably diverges from Brentano on this crucial philosophical topic. Although a systematic discussion can be found only in Stumpf’s posthumous Erkenntnislehre, his core ideas on the categories can be traced to his early work on space of 1873. In fact, Stumpf claims that the peculiar relationship between extension and color is analogous to the relationship that holds between substance and accidents. Thus, like any other category, substance empirically stems from perception. Sensory experience, for Stumpf, is made up of perceptual wholes, whose attributes are typically bound to each other, rather than separately given in bundles, as Hume and other associationists used to assume. Thus, the achievements of Stumpf’s (and others’) holist psychology effectively contributes a solution to this classic metaphysical problem.

Abstract: This essay deals with the relationship between philosophy and ex- perimental sciences in Carl Stumpf’s epistemology. A student of both Brentano and Lotze, Stumpf also gained scientific training with the physicist Wilhelm Weber in Göttingen. His double skill set in the fields of philosophy and ex- perimental sciences made his position within the German thought of his time very unusual. Stumpf’s works range from philosophy and phenomenology to experimental investigations into the field of psychology (especially acoustic and musical phenomena, child psychology, animal psychology, psychology of genius). Moreover, he wrote about mathematics, physical acoustics, phonetics and ethnomusicology. Consistent with his personal inclination towards the ascertainment of factual truths by means of experiments, Stumpf claimed his epistemological writings that philosophy should work hand-in-hand with scientific practice.

La «Enciclopedia Virtual del Pensamiento Fenomenológico» es un proyecto orientado a generar investigación científica básica en torno a la fenomenología. Este proyecto tiene por sede la Universidad La Salle-México. El propósito de la «Enciclopedia» es facilitar el acceso a investigadores, profesores, alumnos e interesados en general en el pensamiento fenomenológico, tanto a nivel científico como a nivel histórico. Dado que es «Virtual» permitirá la actualización permanente de las discusiones, bibliografía, conceptos, corrientes y autores que pertenecen a la cultura fenomenológica; de esa manera pretende servir como una herramienta de acceso rápido a los interesados en iniciarse y/o profundizar en esta tradición filosófica. Es por lo anterior que la «Enciclopedia» será una base de datos selectiva cuyo propósito es ayudar a conocer el estado del arte de la disciplina fenomenológica a nivel nacional, iberoamericano e internacional. Todos los contenidos publicados en la «Enciclopedia Virtual del Pensamiento Fenomenológico» deberán ser originales y serán sometidos a un proceso de revisión por pares expertos, nacionales e internacionales, en el área y en los autores sobre los que cada uno de ellos versa. Introducción: Objetivo: Ofrecer una Enciclopedia especializada en fenomenología donde se expongan los conceptos fundamentales, la vida, la obra, la biografía, influencias, obras publicadas y póstumas, publicaciones generales, análisis de las obras del autor y algunas traducciones inéditas relacionadas con el movimiento Cómo participar: La «Enciclopedia» recibirá constantemente las aportaciones enviadas por los aspirantes siempre que se ajusten a las normas de publicación que en esta convocatoria se publican: • El participante debe considerar los siguientes rubros como temas a abordar en la «Enciclopedia»:

Resumo: Em todas as críticas feitas por Franz Brentano contra a filosofia do século XIX, seja na Psicologia a partir de um ponto de vista empírico, seja em seus últimos escritos, indubitavelmente Kant ocupa o lugar de honra. Na visão de Brentano, Kant não apenas postulou os juízos sintéticos a priori sem qualquer justificação, mas também instigou a fase de decadência que caracterizou a filosofia alemã na primeira metade do século XIX. Além dessas afirmações polêmicas, que frequentemente atraem a atenção, é importante colocar as coisas em perspectiva e investigar como essas críticas são interpretadas e quais são as suas origens. No presente artigo, eu vou me concentrar mais especificamente na recepção da psicologia kantiana por Brentano e seus alunos. Certamente, a rejeição brentaniana da psicologia de Kant acompanha sua total rejeição dos juízos sintéticos a priori. O que eu quero sugerir aqui é que, no caso específico da psicologia, a hostil recepção da filosofia kantiana na escola de Brentano se deve, principalmente, a uma combinação de dois fatores. O primeiro é a rejeição kantiana da psicologia na teoria do conhecimento. O segundo, que é correlativo ao primeiro fator, é a rejeição brentaniana da tese de Kant acerca da impossibilidade da psicologia se tornar uma ciência. No que se segue, eu investigo detalhadamente esses dois fatores, utilizando como estudo de caso a posição defendida por Carl Stumpf na Psicologia e Teoria do Conhecimento. Este trabalho merece ser discutido em sua totalidade: Stumpf (1848-1936) não foi apenas um dos alunos mais brilhantes e influentes de Brentano, mas seu ensaio também desempenhou um importante papel na escola de Brentano, oferecendo uma das raras confrontações impressas com as posições kantianas e neokantianas sobre a psicologia.

The article explores psychological motives in Leopold Blaustein’s philosophy. Blaustein was educated in Lvov, Freiburg im Breisgau and Berlin. In his original explorations, he attempted to connect a phenomenological perspective with descriptive psychology. As trained by Twardowski, he took over some motives of understanding the method of philosophy (psychology), its objectives and aims. The author situates Blaustein also in a dialogue with Stumpf and next to the context of Dilthey’s humanistic psychology is examined. Finally, the article explores the influences of Gestalt psychology on Blaustein. The ultimate thesis of the article is that Blaustein’s method can be grasped as a
phenomenologically oriented descriptive psychology.

Among historians of philosophy it is often taken for granted that the "Brentano school" was one of the influential philosophical movements at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century-but Brentano's own contributions are often eclipsed by that of his direct students. This invites to reflect on the nature of and the unity within the school. Since Brentano's conception of a rigorous, scientific philosophy had a strong impact on his students, it has been argued that this conception constitutes a unifying element in an otherwise heterogeneous group. The scope of this article is to shed light on this thesis and to show its limits. I argue for a differentiated view: the Brentano school is best seen not as a compact movement, but as a heterogeneous group of scholars who approached, in a given historical and geographical period, similar topics in very similar ways.

This book highlights Carl Stumpf’s contributions to philosophy and to assess some of the aspects of his work. The book is divided into four sections, and also includes a general introduction on Stumpf’s philosophy. The first section examines the historical sources of his philosophy, the second examines some of the central themes of his work and the third examines his relationship to other philosophers. The fourth section consists of notes taken by Husserl during Stumpf’s lectures on metaphysics in Halle, Stumpf’s introduction to the edition of his correspondence with Brentano, which he prepared in 1929, and some important letters pertaining to this correspondence. This book also provides a comprehensive bibliography of the works of Stumpf

This essay illustrates the main aspects of the discussion between Brentano and Stumpf about «tonal fusion» (Tonverschmelzung). In his Tonpsychologie, Stumpf essentially moved from a Brentanian standpoint. Yet, he did not adopt Brentano’s subsequently developed new theory of «sensible qualities», so that a polemic eventually arouse between them. Far from representing a marginal issue, the episode is relevant to our understanding of their relationship. The discussion as to the mechanism of tonal fusion reveals a general divergence between Brentano and Stumpf concerning the idea of human sensibility as a whole and of the method of psychology.

What we cannot notice, we cannot be perceptually aware of either: This view, still very popular in contemporary analytic philosophy of mind, has been recently defended by M. Tye and A. Noë. The present paper tries to undermine this idea by referring to some empirical cases showing that we can be perceptually aware of something which our thematic attention fails to grasp. The limits of perception do not coincide with the limits of attention, and this holds not only in the case of so called “primary attention,” but also in the case of “secondary attention.” We therefore reject Arvidson’s hypothesis of the identity between the field of attention and the field of consciousness.

The purpose of this investigation was to vary the load on the patellar tendon bar and to study the subsequent effect this has on the pattern of the pressure distribution at the stump-socket interface. Ten male subjects from the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow, UK participated in this study. Measuring systems utilising strain gauge and electrohydraulic technologies were designed, developed and constructed to enable pressure measurements to be conducted. One transducer, the patellar tendon (PT) transducer, was attached to the patellar tendon bar of the socket such that the patellar tendon bar was capable of being translated by ±10. mm towards or away from the tendon. The results of this study showed that the position of the patellar tendon bar had no significant effect on the pressure distribution around the socket indicating that it is an unnecessary feature, which, we propose, may be eliminated during manufacture of a trans-tibial socket. © 2010 IPEM.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1350453310000949

James and Stumpf first met in Prague in 1882. James soon started corresponding with a “colleague with whose person and whose ideas alike I feel so warm a sympathy.” With this, a lifelong epistolary friendship began. For 28 years until James’s death in 1910, Stumpf became James’s most important European correspondent. Besides psychological themes of great importance, such as the perception of space and of sound, the letters include commentary upon Stumpf’s (Tonpsychologie) and James’s main books (The Principles of Psychology, The Varieties of Religious Experience), and many other works. The two friends also exchange views concerning other scholars, religious faith and metaphysical topics. The different perspectives of the American and the German (European) way of living, philosophizing and doing science are frequently under discussion. The letters also touch upon personal questions of historical interest. The book offers a critical edition and the English translation of hitherto unpublished primary sources. Historians of psychology and historians of philosophy will welcome the volume as a useful tool for their understanding of some crucial developments of the time. Scholars in the history of pragmatism and of phenomenology will also be interested in the volume.
This edition of the letters between William James and Carl Stumpf encompasses 23 unpublished letters of the German philosopher Carl Stumpf to William James, and James’ 34 preserved letters to Stumpf. The volume also includes an extensive introduction and explanatory notes, together with the essay published by Stumpf in Kant-Studien (“William James nach seinen Briefen”, 1927) and additional archive materials.

Moro, N. (2012a). Estetica trascendentale in musica: La psicologia del suono di J.F. Herbart e C. Stumpf [Setting Kant’s ‘Transcendental Aesthetic’ into music: J.F. Herbart’s and C. Stumpf’s Tone Psychology]. Milano/Udine: Mimesis. ISBN 978–88–5751–480–2.

A Summary in English is delivered at pp. 241–249.