Introduction
The introduction outlines and motivates the main questions of the book. I will engage with two philosophical questions—‘What is the nature of mind?’ and ‘What is the structure of consciousness’—through Brentano’s work. My interest is not so much to find a plausible reading of Brentano’s often dense and difficult texts, but to evaluate the arguments and views that can be distilled from them for truth. I will argue that Brentano’s answer to the first question is in interesting ways wrong. Intentionality is not the mark of the mental. I will argue that Brentano’s student Husserl succeeded where Brentano failed: he developed a mark of the mental. Brentano’s answer to the second question is defensible and illuminating. The relation between a mental act and awareness of the mental act is identity. There is one metaphysically simple event or process that can be brought under different partial concepts because it is directed on several objects, among them itself.