The Brentano Inference

London Ed writes,

Early on I commented on the following ‘Brentano’ inference, with the question of whether it is valid or not.

(1) Jake is thinking of something, therefore Jake’s thinking contains something as object.

I think you said it was valid.

It is not a question easy to answer properly, and my impression is that Ed does not appreciate the depth of the issue or the complexity of its ramifications. You cannot just return a 'valid' or 'invalid' answer; the question has to be explicated.  The explication may be expected to turn up points of disagreement. We might, however,  be able to agree on some of the following. Perhaps only the first.

a) If Jake is thinking of something, it does not follow that there exists (in reality) something such that Jake is thinking of it.  I am sure that we will agree on this most basic point. 

b) If Jake is thinking of something, a distinction must be made between the occurrent episode of Jake's thinking (a datable event or process in Jake's mental life) and what the thinking purports to be of or about.  Typically, this will be something of a non-mental nature. And given (a), what the episode purports to be of or about may or may not exist without prejudice to the episode's being the very episode it is.  

c) That the episode is occurrent as opposed to dispositional Ed will surely grant. Jake may be disposed to think of London when he is not thinking of it, but if he is thinking of the city, then his thinking is a mental act -- 'act' connoting actuality, not activity -- and thus a particular occurrence.

d) Now if Jake is thinking about London, his act of  thinking purports to be about London which, of course, cannot be internal to anyone's mind or mental state.  London with all its buildings and monuments is and remains in the external world whether or not anyone thinks about it.  'Cannot be internal' means that London herself cannot be a constituent of anyone's thinking about London. It cannot be 'in Jake's head,' not even if that phrase is taken figuratively to mean: in Jake's mind. London cannot be a part of Jake's psychic state when he thinks about London.  And yet Jake and the rest of us can think about London and many of our thoughts are veridical.

e) Although London is not a constituent of anyone's thinking about London, there must be some factor internal to the mental state, a factor  epistemically accessible to the subject of the state, that somehow represents or perhaps presents London to the subject of the state.  This factor is a feature of the mental state whether or not the external thing (the city of London in our example) exists. This internal factor does not depend on the existence of the external thing. If Jake in Arizona is thinking about London, and the city goes the the way of  Sodom and Gomorrah, i.e., ceases to exist, and if this event occurs while Jake is thinking about the English city, nothing changes in Jake's mental state: the thinking remains and so does its particular outer-directedness, its directedness to London and to nothing else.  In other words, if Jake is thinking about London and, unbeknownst to Jake, the city ceases to exist while he is thinking about it, Jake remains thinking and his thinking retains the same specific aboutness that it had  before the city ceased to exist.  Thus neither the thinking nor its aboutness, depend on the existence of London.   This aboutness or outer-directedness to a particular external thing -- I am studiously avoiding for the moment the polyvalent term 'intentional object' -- is or is closely related to the internal factor I mentioned above. What should we call it? If the act is the noesis, the internal factor responsible for the particular outer-directedness can be called the noema.

f) Much more can be said, but enough has been said to answer Ed's question. He wants to know whether the inference encapsulated in the following sentence is valid or invalid:

(1) Jake is thinking of something, therefore Jake’s thinking contains something as object. 

The question cannot be answered as it stands. (1) needs disambiguation. 

(1a) Jake is thinking of something in the external world; therefore, this thing, if it exists, is contained in Jake's thinking of it.

INVALID.  

(1b) Jake is thinking of something in the external world; therefore, there is something internal to Jake's thinking in virtue of which his act of thinking has the precise directedness that it has, and this item -- the noema -- is 'contained in' in the sense of dependent upon Jake's act of thinking.

VALID.

Further questions arise at this point. How are we to understand the 'relation' of this noema to the external thing that it presents or represents?  And what exactly is the status of the noema?  

 

Comments

[OZ]

Thanks. I sent an extended reply by email, which you can use as you will.

[ozzie]

A further thought.

(1) Revelation 12:3 says “another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon (δράκων μέγας πυρρός) with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads”.

(2) Revelation 12:3 mentions a dragon.

I think (given the meaning of the term ‘mention’ and other terms) that the move from (1) to (2) is valid. I.e. (1) cannot be true with (2) false.

However, (1) is true even if there never ever appeared such a dragon, in which case (2) is still true. But (a) there is no question of (2) expressing some relation between the text and some dragon. (2) is simply true because the text expresses a proposition using the word ‘dragon’. And (b) where does the ‘noema’, i.e. an ‘the internal factor’ responsible for some particular ‘outer-directedness’, come into it? If (1) above has no outer-directedness, whatever that is, (2) cannot either.

Note, as an aside, that δράκων simply means a serpent of any kind, whereas the English ‘dragon’ signifies a supernatural or fictional or legendary creature of some kind.