Brentano’s One-Term View of Judgement

The view that (atomic) judgements have at least ‘two terms’—predicate something of an object or objects—is a widely held one in philosophy. The chapter introduces the two-term dogma about judgement as the background for Brentano’s view of judgement. Brentano challenged the dogma and argued that an acknowledgement of an object is a judgement but has only one term. The chapter considers Brentano’s argument in favour of the one-term view and connects them to our understanding of non-epistemic perception. Brentano’s one-term view of judgement will be the philosophical contrary to the two-term views of judgement of the positivists that will figure in chapter 11.