Brentano's Intentionality Thesis: Beyond the Analytic and Phenomenological Readings

Philosophers in the analytic and phenomenological traditions have interpreted Brentano's intentionality thesis, and his empirical psychology more generally, in significantly different ways. Disregarding Brentano's distinctive psychological method, analytic philosophers have typically read him as a philosopher of mind, and his intentionality thesis as a contribution to the Cartesian project of clarifying the distinction between the mental and the physical. Phenomenologists, while more attentive to his method, tended to read Brentano as merely Òon the wayÓ to a truly phenomenological approach. I offer a third reading of Brentano thesis, one that attends to both the motivating concerns and the distinctive methodological features of his psychological project.