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Thanks to some more great feedback last week, I prepared a new draft of my research project. This has a more programmatic nature. It is much shorter and aimed at a broader audience, not at specialists in the history of philosophy or the School of Brentano. The idea is to condense this down to 300 words (it is ~600 now) for the abstract that precedes the formal presentation of the project and, conversely, expand it into the 2000 words for the presentation and detailed background of the project proposal itself. In the abstract I need to capture the committee’s interest, present my fundamental research area and questions, and justify why this is interesting and relevant.
Philosophy as Science
What makes science science? What would make philosophy science? These may appear perennial questions, but, in fact, can be given a precise localization: they became mainstream issues at first in 19th century philosophy in Germany. Here, important forcefields overlap, such as the extraordinary progress and increasing specialization of the natural sciences as well as the increasing growth and progressive professionalization of universities. This resulted in a large number of works being written between Hegel’s death and the first world war in order to answer these questions, mostly bearing “Logik” in the title. Assessing their role requires a profound change in attitude, since the current mainstream interpretation generally does not acknowledge any progress in logic from Aristotle to Frege. These works are generally ignored and set aside under the label “psychologism”, but at the time this label was used by everyone against everyone and is hence completely useless. Only if we get rid of it, we can acknowledge the value of the rich and nuanced discussions of the time, which still determine our thinking about these issues today.
In particular, the School of Brentano emerges as a highly original contribution to the 19th century concern with the idea of philosophy as science. Brentano himself appears as a veritable platypus in any taxonomy of 19th century philosophy. While he was highly influential, it is impossible to pigeonhole him in any other tradition than his own. Brentano held that the true method of philosophy is that of natural science and re-introduced the concept of intentionality in philosophy to distinguish natural and mental phenomena. While philosophy would use the method of natural science, its main domain was not nature, but consciousness: a full-blooded science of the mind that does not require a reduction to the physical in order to be scientific. Brentano defined his psychology as a descriptive science: empirical, but not experimental; subjective, but not introspective. At the same time, amidst the revolution of formal, mathematical logic, Brentano pursued a reform of Aristotelian syllogistics and developed a decidedly un-aristotelian and anti-kantian theory of judgement. His students, while certainly not all orthodox followers, occupied important chairs in philosophy throughout Europe and adapted and spread his theories far and wide: Carl Stumpf, Anton Marty, Alexius Meinong, Christian von Ehrenfels, Edmund Husserl, Kasimierz Twardowski, who gave birth, made possible or influenced (in no particular order) Gestalt psychology, prague linguistics, polish logic, and phenomenology. Moreover, the School of Brentano did not limit itself to navel gazing and worshipping the master. Brentano furthered the 19th century Aristotelian renaissance, introduced Bolzano to his students, made them work on the British empiricists, was in dialog with Mill and up-to-date with the developments of British logic. Brentano’s students were also among the first to read and engage with Frege’s works.
Given the breadth of the above, it is telling to see that Brentano’s claim that the true method of philosophy is that of natural science is one of the core tenets of his school: it is what bound his first students to him and remained a central and lasting project. How are we to understand the relation between logic, psychology and philosophy in the School of Brentano in the context of the 19th century? How are logic and psychology related to the other core disciplines and methods in the School of Brentano, e.g. i.a. descriptive psychology, object-theory, and phenomenology? What is their conception of the natural sciences, the formal sciences and their relation to philosophy? What was the lasting legacy of their ideal of philosophy as science?
Carlo Ierna's Blog 
Hi Carlo, i’m an undergraduated philosophy student from México city, and I concentrate in phenomenology and logic, therefore, It was a matter of time to find your Blog and became interested on your work. I know you aim here at a broader audience, but I can consider myself not an specialist, nor a diletant, so I would try to give you some “in the middle feedback”.
The most relevant thing I found on a first lecture, is that you treat a lot of subjects. I’ve some knowledge on this period of history of philosophy, but, still, I feel an overwhelming use of concepts, in the sense that I fail to relate them precisely one to another. For example, the relation between psychology, logic, philosophy and the project of philosophy as science. I can guess what is the relation, for I’ve some knowledge on the subject, but, trying to limit myself to your text, that relation seems rather unclear. Maybe It will be nice if you can make more explicit those implicit relations on the text.
On the other hand, I think that is unnecesary to expose all the historical relevant relations of Brentano, like if you were trying to convince someone of his relevance. I think this is valid for a broad and an “engeren” audience. You can save space by eliminating all that and better focusing on the reasons of philosophy been directed to psychology or logic. It would be good too an emphasis on what makes your project different from the traditional approach, because I get lost with all the subjects you treat parallelin the text: the relevance of Brentano and all the concepts. What I’m tryng to say is that you have too much richnessonyour text, and that it would be nice if you focuse more on one or two subjects only.
Grüsse aus Mexico, Jethro.
Hi Jethro and thank you for your comments! You probably are right, this second draft of my project is very “dense”. I hope to be able to work out the precise relations between psychology and logic in the longer, more technical background part which is aimed at the specialist referees. However, in the more programmatic abstract and introduction of my project, which is aimed at the general committee which covers all the humanities, I think that I do need to properly present Brentano and his school to those who do not know anything about it at all. I need to justify and explain what I am going to do in my project and why this is relevant (i.e. why it should be funded). You are certainly right that I need to focus and show that it can be done in the few years that I have, but I also need to convince the committee that it is important and interesting enough to do in the first place. Some historical detail is necessary to show how Brentano and his school are situated in the 19th century context: what makes them typical and what makes them exceptional against this background? Their preoccupation with the question about the scientific status of philosophy makes them typical, their method and answer make them exceptional. Still, they could have been nothing more than a historical curiosity, were it not for the broad and lasting influence they had. Therefore it is a worthwhile area of inquiry. Once I have established this and convinced the committee, then, in the more specialist part, I can worry about focusing on the precise relation between logic, and psychology and their relevance to the question of philosophy as science.
Hi there again Carlo. I’ve been re-reading your abstract. Now I get it better, and don’t think that is too dense as if it were too complicated. What I think is that that “density” remains on all the information on the historical part. I believe that the connection is lost between the first paragraph and the third one. I was expecting something related to the works of “Logik” and their necessary reassessment, all that, of course, now related to the Brentano school. At least, is something one could expect after reading the first paragraph. What I don’t see clearly, is like a conclusion grabbing or returning to the initial idea.
I must confess that I was too reckless and started cutting your text on the first paragraph, but then I could not continue, due to the connection which I didn’t found between the introduction and the conclusion. Please forgive that rudeness.
Saludos,
Jethro.