Article ID: CBB957672505

Descriptive Psychology: Brentano and Dilthey (2020)

unapi

Although Wilhelm Dilthey and Franz Brentano apparently were pursuing roughly the same objective—to offer a description of our mental functions and of their relations to objects—and both called their respective research programs ‘descriptive psychology’, they seem to have used the term to refer to two different methods of psychological research. In this article, I compare analyses of these differences. Against the reading of Orth but also against a possible application of recent relativist accounts of the epistemology of peer disagreement to this case, I argue that their apparent shared objective is not enough to support an understanding of their views as two alternatives within a given historical or scientific context, or as a mutual peer disagreement. I show that the impression of a shared objective can be explained away as stemming from the influence of their teacher Adolf Trendelenburg, and I stress that the case of introspection strongly suggests that an account in terms of peer disagreement is not plausible. Finally, I conclude that the opposition between two traditions, Austrian philosophy and historicism, might be better suited to account for the dispute and its apparent common historical context.

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Authors & Contributors
Green, Christopher D.
Feest, Uljana
Chiacchia, Daniel
Reiners, Stefan
Lethen, Tim
Martin, Shane M.
Concepts
Psychology
Philosophy
Scientific communities; interprofessional relations
Human sciences
Controversies and disputes
Historical method
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
20th century
18th century
Places
Germany
United States
Italy
Chicago (Illinois, U.S.)
Vienna (Austria)
Institutions
Western Philosophical Association
American Philosophical Association
Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology
Vienna Circle
Uniwersytet Jagielloński (Cracow)
University of Chicago
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