Brentano’s psychology and Kazimierz Twardowski School: implications for the empirical study of psychological phenomena today

This also applies to psychology in Twardowski's writings.

Phenomenological psychology is still present in psychology, both in Europe and the USA; suffice it to mention The Utrecht School of phenomenologists, The Journal of Phenomenological Psychology (founded in 1970 ), the works of Gurwitsch (1966), Giorgi (2009), etc.

During the Second World War, many of Twardowski`s disciples emigrated abroad to other universities: Łukasiewicz moved to Royal Academy of Sciences in Dublin, Tarski became a professor of logic at Berkeley University, Hiż became a professor of linguistics at Pennsylvania State University, Mehlberg (moved to University of Chicago, Bocheński moved to the University of Freiburg, Poznański moved to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Sobociński moved to Notre Dame, Wundheiler moved to New York, Kalicki moved to Berkeley, and Lejewski moved to Manchester (Woleński, 2019).

Twardowski knew the works of Husserl, and Husserl knew at least some of Twardowski's works (he reviewed his Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen from 1894). The extent of their mutual influence remains under discussion in the literature (Cavallin, 1997).

Chrudzimski distinguishes two attitudes towards intentionality at Brentano's. The first view from 1874 expresses the principle: “Das Subjekt S stellt das Objekt O vor = Df. das Subjekt S steht in einer intentionalen Relation zum irrealen, immanent inexistierenden Objekt O”. The second stance since 1904 states: “Das Subjekt S stellt das Objekt O vor = Df. das Subjekt S steht in einer intentionalen Relation zum realen Objekt O, wobei das Objekt O existiert oder nicht” (Chrudzimski, 1999, pp. 45. 48). The first viewpoint „für die ganze Schule Brentanos den Ausgangspunkt bildet” (p. 46). I think that, from the point of view of the topic at hand, the differences between these approaches is not important, as they do not change the main thesis of the existence of an intentional relationship.

“In the early decades of the twentieth century, American social psychologists (…) held a distinctive conception of the social dimensions of cognition, emotion and behaviour (…) conceived as psychological states and behaviour engaged socially (…) However, during the 1920s and 1930s American social psychologists began to abandon the original conception of the social”. They “defined social forms of cognition, emotion and behaviour as cognition, emotion and behaviour directed towards social objects, such as other persons or groups” (Greenwood, 2004, p. 19.21).

As expressed by G. Miller: “Fundamentally psychological concepts (…) require fundamentally (though perhaps not exclusively) psychological explanations. Stories about biological phenomena can richly inform, but not replace, those explanations” (Miller, 2010, p. 736).

The authors eventually propose a developed procedure for the use of introspection that seems to correspond well with the use of introspection in the Lvov-Warsaw School (see Citlak, 2016; Rzepa & Stachowski, 1993).

“Scales are possible in the first place only because there is a certain isomorphism between what we can do with the aspects of objects and the properties of the numerical series” (Stevens, 1946, p. 677).

Representational measurement theory in psychology was supposed to explain “how to modify in substantial ways the classical models of physical measurement to be better suited to psychological issues” (Luce, Suppes, 2002, p. 1).

Or simply turned the social dimension of mental processes into the sum of the processes/behaviours of different individuals (alternatively, as stated by J. Searle: “collective intentionality that is not the product of some mysterious group mind and at the same time is not reducible to individual intentions” [Searle, 1990, p. 406]).