The Threefold Essence of Consciousness: Brentano versus Pfänder

Summary

This philosophical paper argues that there are three fundamental kinds of consciousness: object-consciousness, feeling, and striving. It contrasts two historical tripartite classifications—Franz Brentano's (mere presentations, judgments, phenomena of love and hate) and Alexander Pfänder's (object-consciousness, feeling, striving). The author criticizes Brentano's separation of neutral presentations from judgments and his grouping of all emotions and volitions into one class. Pfänder's view, supplemented with Husserlian ideas, is preferred. The disagreement stems from differing views on the mark of the mental and the active/passive distinction.

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Abstract

Building on Uriah Kriegel's recent work on the varieties of consciousness, I consider the question of how many irreducible and fundamental kinds of consciousness there are. This is the project of a fundamental classification of consciousness (C‐taxonomy), which will be approached with reference to two figures from the (early) phenomenological tradition, i.e., Franz Brentano and Alexander Pfänder. Both philosophers advocate tripartite taxonomies, thereby opposing the still widely held view that only algedonic and sensory phenomenology exist. After explaining the project of C‐taxonomy, I discuss Brentano's and Pfänder's trialisms. My main aim is to show that Pfänder's view, according to which consciousness is exhausted by “object‐consciousness”, feeling, and striving, when supplemented by Husserlian ideas, is to be preferred to Brentano's classification, according to which the basic mental kinds are mere presentations, judgments, and “phenomena of love and hate”. I criticize Brentano's separation of doxastically neutral presentations from “positing” judgments, as well as his unification of feelings, emotions, desires, strivings, decisions, and volitions into one basic class. Finally, I reflect on the deeper reasons for Brentano's and Pfänder's divergent taxonomies, which are rooted in their different views of the “mark of the mental” and their different approaches to the active/passive distinction within the mental realm.

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