Received: 21 December 2019 Accepted: 29 June 2021

DOI: 10.1111/ejop.12723

SPECIAL SYMPOSIUM: NEW WORK

ON BRENTANO

The purposes of descriptive psychology

Johannes L. Brandl

Department of Philosophy, University of

Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria
Abstract
In this paper, I discuss the different views of the founders
Correspondence
of descriptive psychology in the 19th century about the
Johannes L. Brandl, Department of
Philosophy, University of Salzburg, meaning and purpose of this discipline and sketch a new
Franziskanergasse 1, A-5020 Salzburg, plan for connecting descriptive psychology with the lan-
Austria.
guage-critical tradition of analytic philosophy. I will show
Email: [email protected]
that the goals Hermann Lotze, Franz Brentano, and Wilhelm
Dilthey set for descriptive psychology were too lofty for dif-
ferent reasons. The common problem they faced was how
to reconcile the ideal of autonomous philosophical knowl-
edge with the empirical relevance that descriptive psychol-
ogy should have. Faced with this dilemma, I outline a new
plan to conceive of descriptive psychology as a critical pro-
ject aimed at overcoming the obstacles that language places
in the way of our knowledge of mental phenomena.

1 | I N T RO DU CT I O N

The question of the meaning and purpose of descriptive psychology is like a historical burning mirror in which the
whole problem of the separation of philosophy and psychology in the 19th century is reflected. One sees in it the
intention to free psychology from an empirical burden that philosophy had traditionally placed on it. But one also
recognizes the effort to strengthen the scientific reputation of philosophy by introducing the descriptive-
psychological method. Both concerns led to high expectations that the founders of descriptive psychology, first and
foremost Hermann Lotze, Franz Brentano, and Wilhelm Dilthey, placed in this new discipline. How these expecta-
tions are to be judged from today's point of view is the subject of this essay.1
The basis of my considerations is the insight that an analysis or exact description of mental phenomena cannot
be an end in itself and was never seen that way by the founders of this discipline. My thesis is that quite different
goals led to the high expectations, which Lotze, Brentano, and Dilthey placed in a descriptive psychology. These

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© 2021 The Authors. European Journal of Philosophy published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

358 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ejop Eur J Philos. 2023;31:358–370.

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BRANDL 359

expectations remained largely unfulfilled. I will argue, however, that one should not conclude from this that the pro-
ject of a descriptive psychology failed as a whole. Descriptive psychology was founded at a time when the question
of the relationship between philosophy and psychology was still largely unresolved. In the meantime, this question
has been resolved, so that we can make a new attempt to determine the purposes of a descriptive psychology in
such a way that they also appear realistic.
The essay is divided into six sections plus a brief conclusion. I begin with Lotze's plan for a division of psy-
chology and a related clarification of the relationship between philosophy and psychology, which I will call the
“Solomonic solution” (Section 2). Then I move to Brentano and his plan to separate descriptive psychology as
an exact science from genetic psychology (Section 3). I will call the conflict resulting from the implementation
of Brentano's plan “Brentano's Dilemma” (Section 4). A look at Dilthey will show how descriptive psychology
can mutate into an anti-empiricist discipline (Section 5). In the last two sections, I will show how a new plan
emerges from a combination of descriptive psychology and language critique that promises to overcome the
historically conditioned rivalry between philosophy and psychology. I illustrate this plan through the language-
critical reflections of the social psychologist Fritz Heider (Section 6) and through two recent examples from phi-
losophy of mind (Section 7).

2 | T H E H I S T O R I C A L D I V I S I O N OF P S Y C H O L O G Y

Descriptive psychology owes its existence to a broad interest in the classification of the sciences according to their
methods and objects, which William Whewell, Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill, and other historians of science and
philosophers generated in the 19th century.2 The fact that psychology attracted special attention in this process is
partly because it first had to find its place in the edifice of science, but also because it was not a completely new sci-
ence. Psychology existed as a subfield of philosophy, so the question of its scientific status was at the same time a
question of the scientific status of philosophy.3
In this situation, it was common to propose a division of psychology as a way out. Hermann Lotze was among
the influential thinkers in the German-speaking world who put forward a plan for this. In his Outlines of Psychology
(Lotze, 1881/1886), Lotze divides psychology into three areas to which he assigns different tasks, and for which he
also proposes appropriate names:

First, Lotze says, there must be a descriptive or empirical psychology. Its task is to fully grasp the ele-
ments of our mental life, or, as he puts it, to describe “the life of the soul.” (Lotze 1881/86, 5)

Second, there needs to be an explanatory, mechanical, or metaphysical psychology. Since the soul is a
product of the body, psychology would have to find out what the “efficient forces [are] and [the] con-
ditions by which it is produced.” (ibid.)

Third, according to Lotze, there should also be an ideal or speculative psychology. Its task is the mean-
ingful interpretation of the life of the soul by answering the question: “what is the rational meaning
for which all this exists, or of the vocation which the life of the soul in general has to fulfil in the total-
ity of the world.” (ibid.)

Lotze does not speak here of an existing, but of a future science, whose requirements “would be perfectly satis-
fied” by implementing his plan (ibid.). Such far-reaching promises were made by other philosophers before Lotze, but
I will not dwell on them here.4 Instead, let us consider the question of how Lotze's plan might help to reorganize the
relationship between philosophy and psychology. This is not at all clear at first, since one can certainly interpret his
plan in different ways.
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360 BRANDL

On the one hand, it is striking that Lotze bases his plan on a metaphysical assumption when he regards the exis-
tence of the soul as an indispensable precondition of psychology. Though he rejects speculations about the immor-
tality of the soul and considers it a scientific hypothesis that the soul and its activities are dependent on bodily
processes, he insists that without the existence of a soul there is no satisfactory explanation for the unity of con-
sciousness. The line of evidence he offers for this is a purely philosophical one, based on the experience of an ego
identity. One could, therefore, say that psychology ultimately remains a philosophical discipline for Lotze because it
owes its primary object—the soul—to philosophical reflection.
Second, there is the question of why Lotze names descriptive psychology first among the fields of psychology,
and why he also calls it “empirical psychology.” The latter could derive from the fact that philosophical reflection
starts from experience and to that extent has an empirical starting point. The experience of the unity of conscious-
ness would be such a starting point. Is this the only reason Lotze gives for descriptive psychology's claim to be a kind
of foundational discipline, or could there be other reasons as well?
Lotze's plan seems sufficiently indeterminate on this question that it may be taken to support what I want to call
the “Solomonic solution” for clarifying the relationship between philosophy and psychology, because it takes equal
account of the interests of both disciplines:

The Solomonic solution: Let descriptive psychology be the foundations of explanatory psychology,
both of which then together, in turn, form a basis for fully capturing the nature of the human soul and
the meaning of its existence.

Of course, it is premature to speak of a solution here already, because we are at the beginning of a com-
plex debate. We do not yet know what is meant by securing the foundations of explanatory psychology
through a description of mental phenomena; nor is it clear how descriptive and empirical psychology is to com-
bine to serve as a basis for addressing metaphysical and speculative questions. Thus, the question of the mean-
ing and purpose of descriptive psychology remains obscure for the time being. To shed more light on this
matter, we turn to Brentano.

3 | B R E N T A N O O N T H E T A S K S O F D E S CR I P T I V E P S Y C H O L O G Y

Brentano began lecturing on descriptive psychology in the winter semester of 1887/88, which he also referred to as
“psychognosy.” Whether Brentano intended to distinguish himself from other proponents of this idea by this choice
of words is unclear. It is also possible that Brentano preferred the term “psychognosy” only because it hinted at his
epistemological interests (see Kamitz, 1988; Marek, 1989).
Part one of Brentano's lecture course, entitled “The Task of Psychognosy,” starts likewise with a division of psy-
chology, though Brentano is content with a dichotomy:

Psychology is the science of people's inner life [Seelenleben], that is, the part of life which is captured
in inner perception [innere Wahrnehmung]. It aims at exhaustively determining (if possible) the ele-
ments of human consciousness and the ways in which they are connected, and at describing the
causal conditions which the particular phenomena are subjected to. The first is the subject matter of
psychognosy, the second that of genetic psychology. (Brentano, 2002, 3)

The dichotomy seems to correspond to the first two fields in Lotze's tripartite division. Speculative psychology
is thus omitted by Brentano, unless one were to declare it a subfield of genetic psychology. However, I see no plausi-
ble reason for this and equate explanatory and genetic psychology. I thus leave aside for the moment the possible
tasks of speculative psychology and return to them only in Section 7.
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BRANDL 361

Having divorced descriptive and genetic psychology, Brentano adds that this is a fundamental and profound dif-
ference. For, according to Brentano, descriptive psychology is a “pure psychology” and thus also an “exact science.”
(ibid.) Neither the one nor the other could be said of genetic psychology. This does not mean, however, that explana-
tory psychology is deficient for Brentano in methodological terms. For Brentano, it is a fully-fledged empirical sci-
ence, even if it does not have the special position that he attributes to descriptive psychology. So, let us look more
closely at what Brentano means by these attributions.
Brentano calls psychognosy “pure” because it tells us nothing about the causes that produce human
consciousness:

[Psychognosy's] aim is nothing other than to provide us with a general conception of the entire realm
of human consciousness. It does this by listing fully the basic components out of which everything
internally perceived by humans is composed, and by enumerating the ways in which these compo-
nents can be connected. Psychognosy will therefore, even in its highest state of perfection, never
mention a physico-chemical process in any of its doctrines. (Brentano, 2002, 4)

One can understand this determination in different ways. According to one reading, Brentano would thus claim
that only purely phenomenal descriptions are permissible in descriptive psychology, with no implicit or explicit refer-
ence to the causes of these phenomena. This would be a rather severe restriction, since such references are ubiqui-
tous in our everyday language. For example, how would one describe what it feels like to burn one's fingers without
talking about a “burning” sensation and thus referring to the heat that causes the sensation?
It seems more plausible, therefore, to take Brentano's explanation to mean that descriptive psychology teaches
us nothing new about the causes of mental phenomena. The knowledge that a certain kind of pain is caused by burn-
ing can be taken for granted. This generally available knowledge is sufficient not only to grasp all the contents of
human consciousness, but also to put them in an order and to describe them systematically. Even this is still a quite
demanding task.
There is a third way of understanding the attribute “pure” in this context. The purity of descriptive psychology
can also refer to a certain abstractness that does not seek to describe concrete experiences, but only a totality of
possible experiences. It provides only the tools for describing mental phenomena, a kind of set of rules for using psy-
chological terms. In fact, Brentano compares descriptive psychology to Leibniz's project of developing a
characteristica universalis (see Brentano, 1895, 84). This, too, is a formidable undertaking and would undoubtedly give
descriptive psychology a special position.
Let us now turn to the second feature, which is to explain the profound difference between descriptive and
genetic psychology. What is it to say that psychognosy is an “exact” science? Brentano relies here on his distinction
between inner and outer perception, for which he gives an epistemological justification in the first book of his Psy-
chology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874):

We have no right [...] to believe that the objects of so-called external perception really exist as they
appear to us. [...] What has been said about the objects of external perception does not, however,
apply in the same way to objects of inner perception. [...] Of their existence we have that clear knowl-
edge and complete certainty which is provided by immediate insight. Consequently, no one can really
doubt that a mental state which he perceives in himself exists, and that it exists just as he perceives
it. (Brentano 1874/1995, 10)

Here, too, we can distinguish between a stronger and a weaker interpretation. According to the stronger read-
ing, a science is exact if its results are not only provisional but definitely indubitable. For Brentano, mathematics and
logic are such sciences. Once we have recognized a proof as correct, there is no possibility of doubting the truth of
the conclusion. Even the axioms that every proof presupposes are self-evident and not only cannot be doubted at
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362 BRANDL

the present time, but never. They are timelessly valid truths. Could descriptive psychology also lead us to such
insights? That is what Brentano seems to mean when he says, “the doctrines of psychognosy are sharp and precise”
(Brentano, 2002, 5).
A weaker reading of Brentano's notion of “exact science” would allow that one can doubt any law or axiom. This is
because it is never self-evident whether it is a self-evident truth. This takes much of the edge off the claim that there are
self-evident truths in the first place. One can then still claim that there is a difference in principle between exact and inex-
act sciences because only the former allows for self-evident statements, but for practical purposes the difference would
be minor. Whether a claim is merely true, or whether it is self-evident, might be difficult to decide in this case.5
We can draw a first conclusion at this point. Brentano not only had a plan for the division of psychology, but
more importantly also a specific plan for descriptive psychology, which gives it a special epistemological position:

Brentano's plan: descriptive psychology aims at descriptions of mental phenomena that enable us to
formulate basic psychological laws and to know them as self-evident truths.

There is some room for interpretation here, which must be kept in mind. It is also important to emphasize that
this plan in no way means that descriptive psychology ceases to be an auxiliary discipline of empirical psychology.
Brentano leaves no doubt about this when he says: “The perfection of psychognosy will hence be one of the most
essential steps in preparation for a genuinely scientific genetic psychology.” (Brentano, 2002, 11).
Brentano's view could be summarized even more briefly in the form of an analogy. One could compare descrip-
tive psychology to a scaffolding erected to construct a building. The scaffolding should be stable, and therefore, built
of self-evident truths. The building to be erected would be genetic psychology, which can only consist of hypotheses
that have no such evidence. The question, of course, is how to realize Brentano's plan. Figuratively speaking: How
does one erect a scaffolding that forms a stable support for the construction of empirical psychology?

4 | BRENTANO'S DILEMMA

Descriptive psychology was not a project for Brentano to start from scratch. His plan is about a “perfection” of psy-
chognosy, as he says in the previous quote. That is, there are already a lot of self-evident truths from which we can
start. Undoubtedly, Brentano is thinking of the central theses of his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint: the the-
sis of the intentional nature of mental phenomena, the thesis of inner perception as secondary consciousness, the
thesis of the three basic classes of mental phenomena, his analysis of the nature of judgment, and so on. These are
the theses, which are to carry the framework of descriptive psychology.
Now how does Brentano attempt to “perfect” this basic framework? The lectures contain innumerable examples
by which Brentano demonstrates how formidable a task he has undertaken here. The following selected example
shows the dilemma Brentano gets into. It is about the question whether every sensory perception contains a “blind
assertoric acknowledgement.” In Brentano's way of speaking, to acknowledge something assertorically means to
make a judgment of the content “x exists,” and to acknowledge something blindly means that the judging subject
has no other reasons for her judgment, except perhaps “it seems to me that x exists.”
Brentano now tries to show that such blind confidence in appearances can still be present even when, from the
point of view of the judging subject, it is no longer justified to assert it. To make this point, he uses a comparison
with opposite affective attitudes that we know are possible:

The contrast between accepting and rejecting is not stronger than the one between loving and hating.
If it is thus possible to simultaneously love and hate the same thing, then it does not seem to be
excluded from the outset that one simultaneously accepts and rejects the same thing.
(Brentano, 2002, 93)
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BRANDL 363

This comparison raises at least two questions. It is indisputable that we can have opposing attitudes toward the
same object when different aspects are involved. It may be that I find an object good in one respect and bad in
another. What would such a relativization look like in the case of a judgment of the form “x exists”? Can the same
object be judged as existing in one respect and non-existing in another? That is the first question.
The second question is what it means to reject the existence of a supposedly perceived object despite a sensory
perception to the contrary. Brentano gives two examples of this. On the one hand, he refers to findings of modern
physics, which are supposed to show that colors are not real. Second, he cites perceptual illusions, such as the
impression that a straight stick in water looks curved. In this case, Brentano says, experience tells us to deny the cur-
vature. The question now is what exactly is denied in these examples. In the case of the perceptual illusion, the
answer is simpler. Here we can say that the existence of the curvature is denied, which also means that the reality of
the curvature is denied. In the first case, the matter is not so clear. Is it the existence of the perceived colors or their
reality that we deny, or do both amount to the same thing? Or, to put it another way, does modern physics show us,
as Brentano suggests, that we succumb to a form of perceptual illusion when we perceive colored things as if their
colors were real?
As one can see from this example, it is hardly possible to separate the descriptive and empirical aspects in these
questions. The first question, on the one hand, is about clarifying what it means to recognize the existence of an
object in this or that respect. This is a conceptual problem within the framework of Brentano's theory of judgment.
On the other hand, it is also an empirical problem, namely, under which conditions one can speak of a cognitive dis-
sonance. When does the case arise in which one simultaneously believes that something exists and does not exist?
Descriptive and empirical aspects also flow into each other in the second question. We can, of course, compare
the knowledge that colors are nothing real with the knowledge that a stick does not bend in water, even if it appears
crooked. But this only means that we can choose a description that supports this comparison. Whether the compari-
son is actually justified is also an empirical question, whose answer depends on the purposes for which our percep-
tual apparatus is naturally set up. Only because it is indeed set up to distinguish crooked from straight rods is it a
deception to see straight rods as crooked. Whether our perceptual apparatus is likewise set up to distinguish colored
from colorless objects is not a priori clear.
This brings me to the problem I call Brentano's dilemma. Brentano claims that within the framework of descrip-
tive psychology it is possible to discover self-evident truths. However, this possibility exists only if we succeed in
separating descriptive from empirical issues. Only then can descriptive psychology achieve a high degree of auton-
omy from empirical psychology. However, the examples Brentano discusses suggest that this autonomy does not in
fact exist, and that every question he discusses also has an empirical impact. Brentano does not seem to have seen
this conflict between autonomy and empirical relevance. He assumes that descriptive psychology can somehow
combine the two: It can secure a high degree of autonomy from empirical science, while also making empirically valid
claims. However, one necessarily comes at the expense of the other.
This dilemma arises for Brentano regardless of whether one accepts his concept of self-evident truths. So, we
might well grant Brentano that the principle stated in the above example is in some sense self-evident:

(P) There is no stronger opposition between acknowledging and rejecting than between loving and
hating.

Self-evident, of course, is this principle only as long as it only says that the opposition in both cases is of the
same kind. As soon as we specify in what respects the two dissonances are alike, we get into empirical waters. We
can then only hypothesize what seems prima facie plausible, such as:

(H) It is possible that affective and cognitive dissonances have the same strength.
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364 BRANDL

The dilemma is that descriptive psychology cannot be required to provide both: Findings that are self-evident
truths and theses that are sharp and precise. As we see from the example, the principles on which Brentano relies
become sharp and precise precisely by interpreting them as empirical hypotheses. This means that we have to make
a choice: We can either understand descriptive psychology as a basic philosophical science with high autonomy, or
as a basic psychological science with high empirical relevance. Since the two cannot be combined, Brentano's plan is
unrealizable.
In fact, Brentano was able to convince few students of his plan. Most philosophers and psychologists, unlike
Brentano, chose one of the two options. As befits a dilemma, both options seem quite attractive, as I will show
below. I will begin with Wilhelm Dilthey, who opts for autonomy and against the empirical relevance of descriptive
psychology. His counterpart will be Fritz Heider, who defends the empirical relevance of descriptive psychology
without caring about its autonomy.

5 | D I L T H E Y A N D T HE A U T O N O M Y OF D E S C R I P T I V E P S Y C H O L O G Y

Besides Lotze and Brentano, Dilthey was the third important philosopher in the 19th century who took the crisis
caused by the separation of psychology and philosophy as an opportunity to propagate the idea of a descriptive psy-
chology. There were noteworthy similarities between their views (see Orth, 1984), but there was no consensus on
what the sense and meaning of descriptive psychology should be. As we have seen with Brentano, this idea could
also be associated with a plan that was perceived as unorthodox.6
The situation was different with Dilthey. His plan for a descriptive psychology quickly met with a great response
in the German-speaking world:

Dilthey's plan: descriptive psychology aims to describe human experience as a product of historical
processes that are fundamental to all the humanities.7

The two points that make Dilthey's plan so attractive jump out. Unlike Lotze and Brentano, Dilthey does not ask
about the elements of consciousness; rather, he speaks of human experience in a broader sense. In addition, he
emphasizes the fundamental role of historical processes that shape human experience. Instead of presenting itself as
the basic science of empirical psychology, descriptive psychology mutates in Dilthey's work into a discipline that has
a completely different thrust: it makes the separation of the natural sciences and the humanities seem compelling.
This consequence, however, follows from Dilthey's plan only if one grants descriptive psychology a high degree of
autonomy vis-à-vis empirical psychology.
Without going into further detail, I would like to briefly explain the key points of this plan, which makes the
autonomy of descriptive psychology a high good for Dilthey. Let us begin with the concept of experience, as we use
it in everyday language. To have an experience, in ordinary parlance, is a complex process that cannot be conceived
as a mere sum of individual mental acts. While it is common to speak of “elements of consciousness,” it seems
strange to speak of “elements of experience.” If one follows this linguistically supported intuition, it is plausible that
the concept of experience is holistically understood as something both mental and physical. This was also an essen-
tial point for Dilthey: every experience contains cognitive, affective, and motivational qualities, but it forms a com-
plex whole that is more than the sum of its parts (see Owensby, 1987 and Throop, 2002).8
Let us now turn to historical processes, without which there may be consciousness, but certainly not experience
in Dilthey's sense. Here the views of Brentano and Dilthey diverge particularly sharply. Brentano, as we have seen,
defends the ideal of self-evident knowledge and, connected with it, the ideal of timeless truths on the model of
mathematical laws. Dilthey fundamentally rejects both this concept of knowledge and the idea of a timeless truth as
components of an outmoded conception of a-historical reason. For him, reality, as experience shows it to us, is also
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BRANDL 365

the product of a historical process. There is no a-historical reality against which the truth of a proposition can be
measured (see Makkreel, 1977).
It is, therefore, only consistent when Dilthey also refuses to accept inner perception as a method of cognition distin-
guished by self-evidence. For Dilthey, inner and outer perception cannot be clearly separated. They are interwoven pro-
cesses through which we gain experience. Here, then, we come full circle to Dilthey's holistic concept of experience.
Dilthey's plan is not only attractive, but it also seems coherent. Still, it may not be a good plan for settling the
relationship between philosophy and psychology. As Dilthey recognized, this separation created a gap, so to speak,
within philosophy that needed to be filled. But could that gap really be filled by descriptive psychology, as Dilthey
conceived it? The relationship of autonomy between two disciplines can be either one-sided or two-sided.
When Dilthey tries to establish the autonomy of the humanities vis-à-vis the natural sciences, he is concerned with a
reciprocal autonomy. His concern was not that psychology might still need philosophical support, but rather why phi-
losophy would still need support from psychology. Therefore, he regarded descriptive psychology as autonomous
vis-à-vis empirical psychology as much as the latter is supposed to be autonomous vis-à-vis philosophy.
Historically, one can well understand the demand for an autonomous descriptive psychology. Dilthey rightly crit-
icizes theories such as psycho-physical parallelism, which in his view is nothing more than a futile attempt to replace
Cartesian dualism with a spiritualistic monism. These metaphysical attempts remind Dilthey of the medieval effort
“to unite Aristotle and the theology of Christianity” (Dilthey, 1884-94/2005, 157). Such an endeavor does not
deserve the support of descriptive psychology.
However, the fact that a claim is understandable in its particular historical context does not mean that it has any
validity beyond that. It is not necessary to invoke the problematic notion of a completely a-historical truth in order
to avoid this conclusion. The misgivings that Dilthey had about contemporary developments such as spiritualistic
monism now seem outdated. This is due in no small part to the fact that philosophy has again turned increasingly to
empirical psychology. The metaphysical concerns that formed an important motive for Dilthey's plan seem, from
today's perspective, rather a motive for understanding descriptive psychology not as an autonomous discipline, but
as a discipline that thrives on having empirical relevance.

6 | T H E L A N G U A G E - C R I T I C A L P L A N O F D E S CR I P T I V E P S Y C H O L O G Y

What is the alternative if the motives behind Dilthey's plan for an autonomous descriptive psychology are no longer
convincing? Must we then continue to try, as Brentano did, to reconcile autonomy and empirical relevance? Rather
than following this road, there is another path that seems to me more promising. One can combine descriptive psy-
chology with the tradition of philosophical language critique, and in this way show that the description of mental
phenomena need not be an end in itself and can even have empirical relevance.
The basic idea of a philosophical critique of language is that language can be a cognitive obstacle. Certain fea-
tures of language can prevent us from gaining new knowledge. This can happen in several ways. Language can, first,
be an inhibitor because it imposes thought templates that limit our horizons. Language can, second, also be a cogni-
tive obstacle because it obscures knowledge that we de facto possess but that it is incapable of expressing. In this
case, language would be like a veil that covers our thinking and makes it difficult for us to access our own knowledge.
A third possibility would be that language seduces us into accepting simple solutions instead of going deeper into a
problem. In this case, language would be like a drug that deludes us into cognitive satisfaction and prevents us from
making the best possible use of our cognitive abilities.
With this, we can now formulate another plan for descriptive psychology that links it to an epistemic goal:

The language-critical plan: descriptive psychology aims to remove linguistic obstacles that interfere
with our ability to acquire or use psychological knowledge.
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366 BRANDL

Since there are different obstacles that language can put in our way, there is no simple recipe for how to achieve
this goal. Seen in this light, one could say that the language-critical plan is no less demanding than were the plans we
encountered in Brentano and Dilthey. Nevertheless, I consider this new plan to be more realistic compared to the
others. For, although the obstacles to be removed are manifold, they are concrete and tangible. We can, therefore,
examine each individual case to see which measures seem sensible in order to eliminate this or that obstacle.
I would like to support this assessment by an example from social psychology, namely the critical reflections of Fritz
Heider. They come from the appendix to his major work The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations (Heider, 1958), his note-
books, and from his autobiography.9 Heider's reflections concern all three types of obstacles I mentioned above.
When we think about interpersonal relations, Heider argues, we tend to take a naive view of our social lives.
This naiveté stems from the fact that although everyday language provides us with a rich vocabulary to describe
interpersonal relationships, it thereby captures only the surface of these relationships. In my view, this suggests that
Heider is criticizing the effect of thought templates here. To overcome this, one must break down the terms of
everyday language into their component parts, especially terms such as “affection” or “aversion” that we use to
describe interpersonal relationships. The goal here is to reveal a network of relationships that otherwise remains hid-
den from us. Language analysis thus gains empirical relevance for social psychology. It becomes, as Heider predicts,
“a wonderful tool for representing the subtle meanings of human conditions and what happens between people.”
(Heider, 2004, 155, my translation).
Another of Heider's remarks concerns the tacit knowledge we possess by virtue of our linguistic competence,
but which we cannot use in our theoretical considerations as long as it is only implicit. In his notebooks, Heider
recalls how, through a process of mental experimentation, he tried to bring to light his implicit understanding of the
expressions “one ought to do” and “something is valuable.”

I make some mental experiments, I ask myself what consequences does it have if I think “he ought to
do x,” how about third persons involved, how will I react to his doing or failing to do it, etc.? And then
I may come to some further formulations [...] which appear more as parts of some general framework,
they carry their implications in a more visible way on the outside of their coats and not always in their
pockets. (Heider, 1987, 379)

Thus, Heider concludes that familiar linguistic formulations should not prevent us from searching for new cate-
gorizations. Following the formal languages of symbolic logic, Heider considers a notational system in which new
labels for relation types can be generated by simple combinatorial means. For instance, from the two basic terms

pCx p causes x
pWx p wants x

the following relation types can be generated:

pC:oCx p causes that o causes x.

pC:oWx p induces a wish for x in o

Specific examples for the first type would be: p asks o to do x, or he forces, commands, or induces him in some
way to do x. Specific examples of the second type are: luring, tempting. The value of this notation does not seem to
be great at first. We do not learn anything new about what it means to give someone a command or to exert pres-
sure on someone. We also do not learn how commanding differs from exerting force or pressure. However, this is
not the intention of this notation system at all. It is not about clarifying existing concepts, but about forming new
concepts in order to make new connections visible. Thus, by means of the new categories, we could recognize that
all relations within one type change together in a certain way, while relations of the other type remain unaffected.
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BRANDL 367

Above all, however, Heider is concerned with removing linguistic obstacles. Therefore, I place his reflections in
the tradition of philosophical language critique and do not see in them an attempt to plan a “psycho-logic” generat-
ing principles and theorems.10 Such a logic would quickly run into a dilemma similar to Brentano's notion that
descriptive psychology could provide self-evident truths. The point of Heider's critique of language seems to me to
be precisely that descriptive psychology need not increase our knowledge at all in order to have empirical relevance.
An instrument that is able to remove cognitive obstacles possesses empirical relevance by that fact alone.
That descriptive psychology can serve this goal seems to me a realistic prospect. If there is a concern that mili-
tates against this plan, it is probably the concern that this goal is too modest. Why should descriptive psychology be
limited to being an instrument of language critique? In the final section, I hope to dispel this concern as well.

7 | T H E I N D I S P E N S A B I L I T Y O F D E S C R I P TI V E P S Y C H O L O G Y

Let us recall the main points in my version of the short history of descriptive psychology. At the beginning, starting
from Lotze, I sketched a plan how to regulate the relation between philosophy and psychology in a Solomonic way.
This plan faltered as soon as we encountered the problem I called Brentano's Dilemma: How can descriptive psychol-
ogy enjoy the benefits of self-evident knowledge if it must also have empirical relevance? Dilthey's solution to the
problem was to guarantee autonomy from natural science while denying the empirical relevance of descriptive psy-
chology. Dilthey's way thus confirmed the assumption that this is a real dilemma and Brentano's attempt to reconcile
autonomy and empirical relevance seems to be an illusion.
The question now is whether the plan of a language-critical descriptive psychology offers a better way out of
the dilemma. If one determines the purpose of descriptive psychology by removing cognitive obstacles, one assures
it empirical relevance, as Heider's example should show. The idea that the descriptive-psychological method leads to
autonomous findings is irrelevant. This irrelevance, however, could be precisely the undoing of that conception.
Those who hold the autonomy of descriptive psychology to be its highest good might object that a descriptive psy-
chology that merely removes obstacles lacks philosophical depth.
This objection, however, is not justified. It is true that the language-critical plan no longer follows those traces,
which gave philosophical depth to the views of Lotze, Brentano, or Dilthey. However, this does not exclude the pos-
sibility that there are other sources from which the language-critical plan can gain philosophical relevance. Why
should there not be philosophical depth without an autonomy from empirical psychology?
Another look at what I called “the Solomonic solution” may help to dispel this prejudice.11 We can update this solu-
tion and use it to describe the current relationship between philosophy and psychology as follows: There exists an empiri-
cal psychology and there exist two disciplines, which, as it were, frame this empirical psychology. This frame is formed on
the one hand by descriptive psychology and on the other hand by philosophy of mind. Philosophy of mind thus occupies
today the place, which Lotze intended for speculative psychology. Descriptive psychology, on the other hand, can best be
understood as an interdisciplinary project in which the original connection between philosophy and psychology lives on.
There is obviously a special connection between descriptive psychology and philosophy of mind. In the picture
just drawn, this connection is given by the fact that together, both form a “frame” around empirical psychology. This
idea can now be substantiated by recourse to the language-critical tradition in philosophy. Just as descriptive psy-
chology was never an end in itself, as I have emphasized, so too is this tradition. Criticism of language was not
always, but frequently, linked to a critique of metaphysics whose aim was to draw as clear a line as possible between
metaphysics and science. This project of language critique, originating from the Vienna Circle, has since fallen into
disuse. It can be revitalized by linking it to descriptive psychology. This is my suggestion.
How might descriptive psychology undertake this task? Broadly speaking, by playing that dual role that is typical
of an interdisciplinary project. It can be the basis of empirical psychology, but it can also, together with the latter, be
the basis for philosophy of mind. This was an important idea that I already mentioned in Section 2 in connection with
the Solomonic solution. Descriptive psychology cannot alone, but only together with empirical psychology, form a
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368 BRANDL

basis for speculative psychology, or as we can now better say, for philosophy of mind. Why this is a perfectly realistic
task will be shown in conclusion by two current examples.
The first example concerns the term “mindreading,” which is now used by philosophers and psychologists to
refer to social skills, which are also called “theory of mind” skills. The term “mindreading” comes from a completely
different tradition, in which supernatural or magical abilities are associated with this expression. How could a super-
natural process suddenly become a cognitive faculty that is supposed to be completely natural? This transformation
could not have taken place without an accompanying debate in which descriptive questions played a central role.
While psychologists were primarily interested in how best to explain the development of mindreading abilities, phi-
losophers were interested in how to adequately describe them. In this way, the term “mindreading” was “purified”
of its speculative content and transformed into a concept that has high empirical relevance. The need for such lin-
guistic transformations is great in philosophy of mind, as can be seen when one thinks, for example, of debates about
zombies or about panpsychism.
The second example brings me back to Brentano again and concerns the seemingly endless debate about how to
understand talk of intentional relations to objects. Much like the notion of “mindreading,” the notion of “intentional rela-
tion” seems to denote a quasi-magical ability. The example of colors I mentioned in Section 4 illustrates the problem. For
some, the ontological status of colors is unclear; for others, it is clear that colors are nothing real. Yet colors are supposed
to be a primary object of our visual acts, and both sides in this dispute seem to be talking about the same thing when
they talk about colors. Apparently, something can be an intentional object although its ontological status is unclear or
even if its existence is in doubt. Brentano himself was so disturbed by this confusion that he felt compelled to propose a
linguistic regimentation. We should make a clear distinction in our language between real things and mere objects of
thought, and consider only the former as possible objects of our intentional acts. Even if Brentano's proposal did not
bring the desired success, he made it clear that the ambiguous talk about intentional objects is a major obstacle for devel-
oping a theory of intentionality and that work needs to be done to overcome this obstacle.

8 | C O N CL U S I O N

The founders of descriptive psychology had a far-sighted idea, as I hope to have shown in this essay. Descriptive
psychology has proved indispensable not only for empirical psychology but also for the philosophy of mind. If, never-
theless, the impression is given that it is a failed project, it is because the goals that Lotze, Brentano, and Dilthey
pursued were too lofty. The ideas of the soul that Lotze had were just as unrealistic as Brentano's goal of finding
self-evident truths that have empirical relevance. Descriptive psychology has also failed as a foundation for the
humanities. It is, however, suitable as a language-critical tool for identifying questionable descriptions of mental
phenomena that exist in any language and transforming them into useful descriptions. Thus, it serves a good
purpose, even if it loses its autonomy in the process.

ORCID
Johannes L. Brandl https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3842-7814

ENDNOTES
1
I leave Edmund Husserl unmentioned here because his contribution and the influence Lotze, Brentano, and Dilthey had
on Husserl's phenomenology is beyond the scope of this essay. See Frechette 2012b, Moran, 2008, Moran, 2020, and
Fisette, forthcoming.
2
Lesser-known authors in this tradition today include Jakob Friedrich Fries, Franz Xaver Biunde, Friedrich Adolf
Trendelenburg, William Hamilton, Alois Riehl, and Eduard Hering. See the references in Orth, 1995/96, 22, Seron, 2017,
40, fn. 1, Frechette, 2012a, 98 f., Frechette, 2020, fn. 10, Utitz, 1921, 251, and Baumgartner, 1989.
3
On the older prehistory of descriptive psychology, see Hedwig, 1988.
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BRANDL 369

4
A possible source for Lotze is Trendelenburg, who formulated an even more far-reaching plan: “The soul stands between
nature and the spiritual world; the flower of the former is the seed of the latter. Psychology, therefore, has a double task:
1. the understanding of nature in its purpose; 2. the understanding of the spiritual world in its impulse. Psychology
appears to us as the apex of natural science and as the foundation of ethics; it establishes the transition from physics to
ethics.” Trendelenburg 1858/59, quoted in Frechette, 2020. See also Orth, 1995/96 and Orth, 1997.
5
For a more positive evaluation of Brentano’s conception of descriptive psychology as an exact science, see Röck, 2017.
6
Despite the strong competition between Brentano and Dilthey, there may also have been mutual influences (see
Damböck, 2017, 111 f.). That Brentano considers it a characteristic of “his school” to distinguish between descriptive
and genetic psychology could have been a side blow to the followers of Dilthey. See Brentano, 1895, 34.
7
This was the original plan that Dilthey conceived in his Introduction to the Humanities (Dilthey, 1883/1914) and in Ideen
über eine beschreibende und zergliedernde Psychologie (Dilthey, 1894/1924). Later, under the influence of Husserl's critique
of psychologism, Dilthey changed at least his terminology and no longer considered descriptive psychology but herme-
neutics as the basis of the humanities.
8
It should be added that Dilthey does not rely so much on everyday language than on the tradition of German-language
philosophy, with Schleiermacher, Herbart, Waitz, and Drobisch having a formative influence on his thinking. In contrast,
Dilthey was little impressed by the writings of John Stuart Mill and other Anglo-Saxon psychologists and philosophers,
who played a formative role for Brentano. See Baumgartner 1997, Lessing, 2016.
9
Heider owes the philosophical tools he draws on here to his studies with Alexius Meinong, who in turn was a student of
Brentano. See Reisenzein & Mchitarjan, 2008. I thank Kevin Mulligan for this reference.
10
The idea of a “psycho-logic” comes from a different source. See Abelson & Rosenberg, 1958 and Jan Smedslund, 1988.
For a critique see Giese, 1967 and Wilkes, 1984.
11
The prejudice that autonomy and philosophical relevance are mutually dependent seems to be a unifying element in the
various debates that have been fought out under the catchword “psychologism”. My guess is that exposing this prejudice
as such can largely resolve these debates.

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How to cite this article: Brandl, J. L. (2023). The purposes of descriptive psychology. European Journal of
Philosophy, 31(2), 358–370. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12723