Denis Seron

The aim of this talk is to offer a set of guidelines for a reinterpreted history of modern empiricism — one in which the distinct contribution of Austro-German philosophers to it is more thoroughly acknowledged and properly recognized. I start with a paradox raised by Hume, which I argue has played a central role in the history of modern empiricism. My suggestion is that there are essentially two empiricist approaches to addressing this paradox. The first was originally advanced by Hume himself and later adopted by empiricists such as Brentano. The second, advocated by Avenarius, Mach, and the early Carnap, may be regarded as the distinctive contribution of Austro-German philosophers to the development of empiricism.

This chapter discusses some of Helmholtz’s views on noise and their critique by Wilhelm Wundt. The question raised is whether all noises are qualitatively complex and thus subject to psychological analysis, or whether some of them are simple and thus undefinable. This question boils down to asking whether the difference between noise and musical sound is primitive or not. Wundt views it as primitive, while Helmholtz does not. The issue has important implications for the study of sensory experience. Both authors share an analytic conception of psychology, for which the question of the ultimate elements of auditory experience is central and indispensable.

Como é possível ter experiências de memória presente de coisas que, sendo passadas, não são mais experimentadas no presente? Uma resposta possível a esta pergunta filosófica de longa data é o que eu chamo de "visão da idealidade do tempo", ou seja, a visão de que a sucessão temporal é irreal. Neste artigo, esboço a ideia por trás da versão de Brentano da visão da idealidade do tempo. Além disso, eu a contrasto com a versão de Hume, sugerindo que, apesar das diferenças significativas, ela pode, no entanto, ser interpretada como humeana em sentido amplo.

In his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint of 1874, Franz Brentano strongly criticizes Lotze for sticking to the Aristotelian view of psychology as a “theory of the soul”. He also disagrees with him on some key methodological issues. Most significantly, his analytical approach may seem hardly compatible with Lotze’s claim that mental relations, unlike physical ones, are essentially obscure. My suggestion in this paper is that, these differences notwithstanding, the two authors’ views on psychology share important similarities. After outlining some theses underlying Lotze’s psychology (occasionalism, psychophysical mechanism, panpsychism), I discuss a couple of unexpected convergences with Brentano’s views.

Brentano clearly asserts, in his Vienna lectures of 1887–1888, that his descriptive psychology is an a priori or “exact” science. Since he rejects Kant's idea of a synthetic a priori, this means that the descriptive psychologist's laws are analytic. My aim in this paper is to clarify and discuss this view. I examine Brentano's epistemology in the Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint and then its later developments. I conclude with a difficulty inherent in Brentano's psychological approach to a priori knowledge.