Franz Brentano’s rejection of unconscious mental phenomena

Abstract

In the present article, I address the third of Brentano’s four arguments against the existence of unconscious mental phenomena, namely his reply to the claim that some mental phenomena are too weak to be conscious. After a brief discussion of Brentano’s notion of unconsciousness (section 2) and an overview of his four arguments against the existence of unconscious mental phenomena (section 3), I discuss the argument based on an – alleged – functional relation between (a) our consciousness of our own mental phenomena and (b) their intensity. My conclusion is that the argument is not convincing, since it makes a questionable inference from (A) how our own mental phenomena appear to us in our conscious experiences to (B) that these phenomena really are (section 4). The truth is that Brentano’s account of consciousness already contains the foundations of the view he wants to refuse (section 5).