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BRENTANO, FRANZ CLEMENS 47

BOOLE, GEORGE (18151864). George Booles great contribution to the

history oflogic was the absorption of syllogis tic logic into formalmathematics, thereby producing a syllogistic algebra. Husserl understood

this development as crucial to the ultimate unification of logic, mathemat-

ics, and formal ontology in a mathesis un iver sali s. Central to the proper

understanding of this development, however, is that one not understand

logic as extensional, that is, as concerned only with the referents of terms,

for that would yield a reduction of logic to forma l ontology. Only an

intensional logic with its recognition of a distinction between meaning and

reference, with a recognition, in other words, of the apophantic domain

can permit an understanding of the relation between meanings and objectssuch that a genuine unificationas opposed to reductionof a formal

apopha ntic analys is and a formal ontology is possible . See a lso

APOPHANSIS.

BRACKETING. Husserl employs the metaphor of bracketing to explain

his notion of the phenomenological reduction. The reduction involves

leading our attention back to a constituting transcendental subjectivity.

In order to do this, Husserl claims, we must suspend our participation in

the general thesis characteristic o f the natural a ttitude, a thesis that

simply posits the existence of the world and the objec ts to which our

conscious attention is directed. Husserl characterizes this suspension as a

bracketing of the question of the existence of the world and its objects.

This metaphor might be grounded in Husserls mathematical background

and the notion of absolute number. Absolute two, for example, is

represented as [2], a symbol that represents two apart from its positive

or negative index. Similarly, the phenomenologist considers the conscious-

ness of objects without an index, that is, apart from the a ffirmation o rdenial of the objects as existing. See also CONSTITUTION.

BRENTANO, FRANZ CLEMENS (18381917). After completing his

doctorate in mathematics at the University of Vienna in 1 882, Husserl

undertook the study of philosophy under the direction of Brentano. From

a phenomenological perspective, Brentano wa s best known fo r his

recovery of the empirical tradition and developm ent of what he called

descriptive psychology (most notably inPsychologie von empirischen

Standpunktand his lectures from 18871891, posthumously published asDeskriptive Psychologie). B rentano claimed that the psychic could be

distinguished from the physical by virtue of the fact that the psychic bore

the mark ofintentionality. Brentano explicated this feature of the psychic

by reviving the medieval notion of the intentional inexistence of the

object of our psychic a cts, tha t is, the doctrine that the object of our