Descartes and Brentano: On the Classification of Mental Phenemona

Descartes classifies the modes of thinking generally as understanding and willing. He considers desire, aversion and judgement under willing and as such he distinguishes them sharply from understanding. Brentano tries to refute some of his contemporaries’ views which have as basis Descartes’ classification. For this aim, he asserts that these views depend upon a misunderstanding of Descartes’ related texts. He interprets these texts in a way to loosen the relation between judging and willing. The reason behind this attempt is Brentano’s own conception of truth according to which truth, as well as falsehood, is in judgements. His aim in trying to establish his thesis that judging is not to be seen as an act of will is to prevent himself from falling a position which would relate truth and falsehood to will rather than understanding. In this paper, we aim to show that Brentano tries to disregard Descartes’ view which clearly distinguishes understanding and judging, and to explain how he interprets the distinction between judging and other acts of will in a way to make his own position closer to that of Descartes in so far as he can and how this interpretation which spring from his own intentional conception of consciousness is in complete opposition to that of Descartes