Intentionality and the stream of thought: Brentano and James

Abstract

Philosophers have not done much research on the connection between philosophical and psychological views of Franz Brentano and William James. This connection is of particular historical interest because their views influenced Edmund Husserl, but it also bears philosophical importance as one can show why in James' philosophy of mind there is no correlate to Brentano's notion of intentionality which designates the relationship between mental and physical phenomena. Given this, intentionality, if there is room for it in James' psychology, would be the relation which holds between the correlates of these phenomena in his analysis of consciousness. I am trying to show that there is such a correlation between mental phenomena and James' notion of transitive segments, as well as between physical phenomena and James' notion of substantive segments of consciousness. The question is whether the segments of consciousness stand in the relationship of intentionality and I argue that this is not the case.