Thomas Szanto: Bewusstsein, Intentionalität und mentale Repräsentation. Husserl und die analytische Philosophie des Geistes

Abstract

By the time of the Prolegomena (1900), Husserl took phenomenology to be a philosophical method that stands in opposition to naturalism, of which psychologism was supposed to be a particularly pernicious instance. Husserl was not the only philosopher at the turn of the century to oppose psychologism. Among his fellow campaigners one finds Frege, who played a decisive role in the development of socalled analytic philosophy, and Dilthey, who stands at the roots of contemporary hermeneutics. When it comes to issues concerning the origins of phenomenology, as opposed to other traditions, anti-psychologism in particular, and anti-naturalism in general, cannot be used as discriminative criteria. One would need to determine what is specific to the phenomenological brand of anti-naturalism. Consider some of the claims shared by most anti-naturalists in Husserl’s time. Judgments have a specific kind of content, called ‘‘proposition,’’ ‘‘state of affairs’’ or ‘‘thought.’’