The place of description natural method in the psychology of Franz Brentano

• Autor(a) principal: Riscali, Guilherme Costa
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/56016
• topic: Domínio/Área Científica::Humanidades::Filosofia, Ética e Religião

This work intends to examine the way in which Brentano makes a proper philosophical concept out of description. More specifically, the idea will be defended that description is the natural method of psychology as Brentano understands it; a method relying upon natural means of knowledge, as well as specifically suited for the investigation of psychological phenomena. In the first part, an examination will be carried out regarding the motives that led Brentano to his original conception of psychology and that, as a consequence, would determine the development of the method of descriptive psychology. In the second part, the development itself of this method will be analysed, and the many layers of its mechanism will be singled out: from inner perception as the source of its knowledge; through its methodical procedures such as noticing and fixating in language; up to its methodical core, which will be shown to consist in a very special sort of intuitive inductive generalization towards exact, apodictic laws. At the end, we will have a better grasp of the theoretical import of Brentano’s concept of description, as well as of this unique methodological configuration that he devises, whose broader philosophical – and historico-philosophical – implications remain to be assessed in all its significance.