Le présent ouvrage collectif contient les Actes d'un colloque international bilingue sur l'action, les attitudes et la décision que nous avons organisé en hommage à notre regretté collègue J.-Nicolas Kaufmann à Trois-Rivières du 3 au 5 octobre 2002. L'ouvrage présente et discute d'hypothèses, d'enjeux et de théories contemporaines sur l'action, les attitudes, la rationalité et la décision. La première partie intitulée Pensées, actions et engagements contient des contributions de John Searle, Daniel Vanderveken, Candida Jaci de Sousa Melo et (...) Raimo Tuomela traitant de problèmes généraux de la philosophie de l'esprit et de l'action. Dans la deuxième partie de l'ouvrage intitulée Phénoménologie, ontologie et philosophie de l'esprit, nous avons regroupé, autour d'un texte de Nicolas Kaufmann, quatre études qui traitent diversement de la contribution de la phénoménologie classique, principalement de la phénoménologie de Husserl, à des questions centrales de la philosophie contemporaine dans les domaines de la philosophie de l'esprit, de la théorie de l'action et de l'ontologie formelle. La troisième partie de l'ouvrage, Causalité et naturalisme, réunit trois contributions qui portent sur des questions centrales de la philosophie contemporaine. Daniel Laurier se penche sur la question de savoir si le normativisme sémantique est compatible avec le naturalisme sémantique, alors qu'André Leclerc et Wilson Mendonça s'intéressent à la notion de causalité mentale et examinent différents arguments qui contestent le bien-fondé de cette notion. La dernière partie de l'ouvrage intitulée Rationalité et décision réunit trois contributions logico philosophiques de Storrs McCall, Mathieu Marion et Michel Paquette qui traitent de la rationalité des agents lors de leurs prises de décision et délibérations. (shrink)

Special issue of the journal Revue philosophique in homage to the centenary of Franz Brentano's death. Contains a substantial introduction and contributions from Alain de Libera, Kevin Mulligan, Barry Dainton, and Uriah Kriegel.

This is a formal and systematic study of the logical foundations of speech act theory. The study of speech acts has been a flourishing branch of the philosophy of language and linguistics over the last two decades, and John Searle has of course himself made some of the most notable contributions to that study in the sequence of books Speech Acts, Expression and Meaning and Intentionality. In collaboration with Daniel Vanderveken he now presents the first formalised logic of (...) a general theory of speech acts, dealing with such things as the nature of an illocutionary force, the logical form of its components, and the conditions of success of elementary illocutionary acts. The central chapters present a systematic exposition of the axioms and general laws of illocutionary logic. (shrink)

The primary units of meaning in the use and comprehension of language are speech acts of the type called illocutionary acts. In Foundations of Illocutionary Logic John Searle and Daniel Vanderveken presented the first formalized logic of a general theory of speech acts. In Meaning and Speech Acts Daniel Vanderveken further develops the logic of speech acts and the logic of propositions to construct a general semantic theory of natural languages. Volume I, Principles of Language Use, (...) explains the general principles that connect meaning, reason, thought and speech acts in the semantic structure of language. It presupposes no detailed knowledge of logical formalism, and will be accessible to a large readership of students and scholars from philosophy, lingustics, cognitive psychology and computer science. Volume II, Formal Semantics of Success and Satisfaction uses the resources of philosophical and mathematical logics to develop a formalization of the laws of the semantic theory advanced in Volume I. It will be of interest to theoretical linguists and those involved in mathematical logic and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

This book is a short presentation of the life, thought and work of Franz Brentano. The first part of the book is a biography of Brentano, the second is a description of the ramifications of Brentano's philosophical program, and the third section offers a succinct description of his main works and of his Nachlaß. Résumé: Cet opuscule est une présentation sommaire de la vie, de la pensée et de l'œuvre de Franz Brentano. L'ouvrage est divisé en trois parties. La première (...) partie est une courte présentation de la vie intellectuelle de Brentano, la deuxième est une description des ramifications et de l'unité de son programme philosophique original et très diversifié, et la troisième propose une description succincte de ses principaux ouvrages et de son Nachlaß. L'ouvrage contient également une bibliographie thématique. (shrink)

The primary units of meaning in the use and comprehension of language are speech acts of the type called illocutionary acts. In Foundations of Illocutionary Logic John Searle and Daniel Vanderveken presented the first formalized logic of a general theory of speech acts. In Meaning and Speech Acts Daniel Vanderveken further develops the logic of speech acts and the logic of propositions to construct a general semantic theory of natural languages. Volume I, Principles of Language Use, (...) explains the general principles that connect meaning, reason, thought and speech acts in the semantic structure of language. It presupposes no detailed knowledge of logical formalism, and will be accessible to a large readership of students and scholars from philosophy, lingustics, cognitive psychology and computer science. Volume II, Formal Semantics of Success and Satisfaction uses the resources of philosophical and mathematical logics to develop a formalization of the laws of the semantic theory advanced in Volume I. It will be of interest to theoretical linguists and those involved in mathematical logic and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

This study is about Brentano’s criticism of a version of phenomenalism that he calls “mental monism” and which he attributes to positivist philosophers such as Ernst Mach and John Stuart Mill. I am interested in Brentano’s criticism of Mill’s version of mental monism based on the idea of “permanent possibilities of sensation.” Brentano claims that this form of monism is characterized by the identification of the class of physical phenomena with that of mental phenomena, and it commits itself to a (...) form of idealism. Brentano argues instead for a form of indirect or hypothetical realism based on intentional correlations. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine the meaning and value of the criticism that Stumpf address to Husserl's phenomenology in Ideas I. My presentation is divided into four parts: I briefly describe the relationship between Stumpf and the young Husserl during his stay in Halle (1886-1901); then I will comment Stumpf's remarks on the definition of Husserl's phenomenology as descriptive psychology in his Logical Investigations; in the third part, I examine Husserl's notice in section 86 of Ideas I (...) where he compares his own terminology to that of Stumpf; finally I comment on Stumpf's criticism of Husserl's phenomenology in his last book Erkenntnislehre. (shrink)

This paper is about the topic of psychologism in the work of Kazimierz Twardowski and my aim is to revisit this important issue in light of recent publications from, and on Twardowski’s works. I will first examine the genesis of psychologism in the young Twardowski’s work; secondly, I will examine Twardowski’s picture theory of meaning and Husserl’s criticism in Logical Investigations; the third part is about Twardowski’s recognition and criticism of his psychologism in his lectures on the psychology of thinking; (...) the fourth and fifth parts provide an overview of Twardowski’s paper “Actions and Products” while the sixth part addresses the psychologism issue in the last part of this paper through the delineation of psychology and the humanities. I shall conclude this study with a brief assessment of Twardowski’s solution to psychologism. (shrink)

The purpose of this book is to highlight Carl Stumpf's contributions to philosophy and to assess some of the aspects of his work. This book brings together several specialists of Stumpf and the school of Franz Brentano, and includes fourteen original studies (in English and German) on the various aspects of Stumpf's philosophy, and some of his unpublished writings. This book is divided into four sections, and also includes a general introduction on the reception and actuality of Stumpf's philosophy. The (...) first section examines the historical sources of his philosophy, the second examines some of the central themes of his work and the third examines his relationship to other philosophers. The fourth section consists of notes taken by Husserl during Stumpf's lectures on metaphysics in Halle, Stumpf's introduction to the edition of his correspondence with Brentano, which he prepared in 1929, and some important letters pertaining to this correspondence. This book also provides a comprehensive bibliography of Stumpf's works. (shrink)

Contemporary logic is confined to a few paradigmatic attitudes such as belief, knowledge, desire and intention. My purpose is to present a general modeltheoretical semantics of propositional attitudes of any cognitive or volitive mode. In my view, one can recursively define the set of all psychological modes of attitudes. As Descartes anticipated, the two primitive modes are those of belief and desire. Complex modes are obtained by adding to primitive modes special cognitive and volitive ways or special propositional content or (...) preparatory conditions. According to standard logic of attitudes , human agents are either perfectly rational or totally irrational. I will proceed to a finer analysis of propositional attitudes that accounts for our imperfect but minimal rationality. For that purpose I will use a non standard predicative logic according to which propositions with the same truth conditions can have different cognitive values and I will explicate subjective in addition to objective possibilities. Next I will enumerate valid laws of my general logic of propositional attitudes. At the end I will state principles according to which minimally rational agents dynamically revise attitudes of any mode. (shrink)

My aim in this study is to show that the philosophical program elaborated by Brentano in his Psychology is largely indebted to the research conducted by Brentano on British empiricism and Comte's positive philosophy at Würzburg. This research represents the starting point of, and backdrop to, the project for philosophy as science, which is at the heart of his Psychology, and sheds new light on the philosophical stakes of many debates he leads in that work. Furthermore, Brentano's research informs us (...) about his philosophical preoccupations during the Würzburg period, and simultaneously provide us with a new perspective on the evolution of his thought from his habilitation at Würzburg in 1866 to his arrival in Vienna in 1874. In this study, I propose to examine some of the factors that motivated Brentano's interest in Comte's philosophy and to evaluate the influence that the latter exerted on Brentano's thought during the Würzburg period and beyond. (shrink)

How do we reconcile Husserl’s repeated criticism of Mach’s phenomenalism almost everywhere in his work with the leading role that Husserl seems to attribute to Mach in the genesis of his own phenomenology? To answer this question, we shall examine, first, the narrow relation that Husserl establishes between his phenomenological method and Mach’s descriptivism. Second, we shall examine two aspects of Husserl’s criticism of Mach: the first concerns phenomenalism and Mach’s doctrine of elements, while the second concerns the principle of (...) economy of thought, which Husserl closely associates with a form of psychologism in his Logical Investigations . Our working hypothesis is that the apparent contradictory comments of Husserl regarding Mach’s positivism can be partially explained by the double status he confers to his own phenomenology—as a philosophical program radically opposed to positivism, and as a method akin to Mach’s descriptivism. (shrink)

The primary units of meaning in the use and comprehension of language are speech acts of the type called illocutionary acts. In Foundations of Illocutionary Logic John Searle and Daniel Vanderveken presented the first formalised logic of a general theory of speech acts. In Meaning and Speech Acts Daniel Vanderveken further develops the logic of speech acts and the logic of propositions to construct a general semantic theory of natural languages. Volume I, Principles of Language Use, (...) explains the general principles that connect meaning, reason, thought and speech acts in the semantic structure of language. It presupposes no detailed knowledge of logical formalism, and will be accessible to a large readership of students and scholars from philosophy, linguistics, cognitive psychology and computer science. Volume II, Formal Semantics of Success and Satisfaction, uses the resources of philosophical and mathematical logics to develop a formalisation of the laws of the semantic theory advanced in Volume I. It will be of interest to theoretical linguists and those involved in mathematical logic and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

Study of the controversy between Franz Brentano and his student Carl Stumpf on emotions and sense-feelings. The issue is whether the pleasure that provides an object such as a work of art is intentional, as it is the case in Brentano's theory in which it is closely related to the class of emotions (love and hate), or merely phenomenal as Stumpf wants it. The paper is divided into two parts : I first examine several aspects of the relationship between Stumpf (...) and Brentano and I evaluate in the second part whether Stumpf's deviations from several theses of Brentano's descriptive psychology, namely on emotions and sense-feelings, challenge his commitment to Brentano's program in philosophy. (shrink)

This article addresses the recent reception of Franz Brentano's writings on consciousness. I am particularly interested in the connection established between Brentano's theory of consciousness and higher-order theories of consciousness and, more specifically, the theory proposed by David Rosenthal. My working hypothesis is that despite the many similarities that can be established with Rosenthal's philosophy of mind, Brentano's theory of consciousness differs in many respects from higher-order theories of consciousness and avoids most of the criticisms generally directed to them. This (...) article is divided into eight parts. The first two sections expound the basic outline of Rosenthal's theory, and the third summarizes the principal objections that Rosenthal addresses to Brentano, which I, then, examine in sections 4 and 5. In sections 6 and 7, I discuss Brentano's principle of the unity of consciousness, and in section 8, I consider the scope of the changes that Brentano brings to his theory of consciousness in his later writings, which follow the 1874 publication of Psychology. I then draw the conclusion that Brentano's theory rests on a view of intransitive and intrinsic self-consciousness. (shrink)

Franz Brentano’s impact on the philosophy of his time and on 20th-century philosophy is considerable. The “sharp dialectician” (Freud) and “genial master” (Husserl) influenced philosophers of various allegiances, being acknowledged not only as the “grandfather of phenomenology” (Ryle) but also as an analytic philosopher “in the best sense of this term” (Chisholm). The fourteen new essays gathered together in this volume give an insight in three core issues of Brentano’s philosophy: consciousness (sect.1), intentionality (sect. 2) and ontology and metaphysics (sect. (...) 3). Two further sections of the volume deal with the posterity of his philoso¬phy: in section 4, the legacy of his account of sense perception and feeling is discussed, while the history of Brentano’s unpublished manuscripts is discussed in section 5. This section also presents an edition of a manuscript from 1899 on relations, along with the letters from Brentano to Marty which discuss this manuscript. The last part of section 5 contains the text of a public lecture given by Brentano on the laws of inference. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to assess Husserl’s debt to Lotze’s philosophy during the Halle period (1886-1901). I shall first track the sources of Husserl’s knowledge of Lotze’s philosophy during his studies with Brentano in Vienna and then with Stumpf in Halle. I shall then briefly comment on Husserl’s references to Lotze in his early work and research manuscripts for the second volume of his Philosophy of Arithmetic. In the third section, I examine Lotze’s influence on Husserl’s antipsychologistic turn (...) in the mid-1890s. The fourth section is a commentary on Husserl’s manuscript entitled “Microcosmus,” to which he explicitly refers in his Prolegomena, and which he planned to publish as an annex of his Logical Investigations. This work contains a detailed analysis of the third book of Lotze’s 1874 Logic. The last section examines Husserl’s arguments against logical psychologism in his Prolegomena, which I discuss through the lens of Stumpf’s critique of psychologism in his paper “Psychology and theory of knowledge”. I argue that Stumpf’s early works on this topic make it possible to establish a connection between Lotze’s interpretation of Plato’s theory of Ideas and Husserl’s antipsychologism. My hypothesis is that Stumpf’s analyses represent the background of Husserl's critique of logical psychologism in his Logical Investigations. I shall conclude this study by showing that Husserl’s position with respect to Lotze’s philosophy remains basically unchanged after the publication of his Logical Investigations, and that Husserl’s main criticism of Lotze pertains, in the final analysis, to the absence of a theory of intentionality in Lotze’s philosophy. (shrink)

In this study, I will first introduce Husserl’s analysis in Studien zur Struktur des Bewußtseins by emphasizing the reasons that motivate these analyses on descriptive psychology and their status in Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology in the late Freiburg period. I will then focus on the structure of acts, with particular emphasis on three aspects stressed by Husserl in Studien: intentionality, the taxonomy of acts, and Brentano’s principle of the Vorstellungsgrundlage. The last three parts of this study outline the characteristic features of (...) three fundamental aspects of affective life in Husserl’s phenomenology: emotions, sense feelings, and moods. I will conclude with some general remarks on the status of affects and values in Husserl’s phenomenology. (shrink)

Entry on the influence of Stumpf et Brentano on Husserl's early phenomenology during the Halle period.

Contemporary philosophers have overall studied intentional actions that agents attempt to perform in the world. However, logicians of action have tended to neglect the intentionality proper to human action. I will present here the basic principles and laws of a logic of action where intentional actions are primary as in contemporary philosophy of action. In my view, any action that an agent performs unintentionally could in principle have been attempted. Moreover any unintentional action of an agent is an effect of (...) intentional actions of that agent. So my logic of action contains a theory of attempts. As Belnap pointed out, action, branching time and historic modalities are logically related. There is the liberty of voluntary action. I will then work out a logic of action that is compatible with indeterminism. In classical philosophical logic, propositions with the same truth-conditions are identified. However it is clear that strictly equivalent propositions are not the contents of the same attitudes of human agents. For that reason I will first present a non-classical propositional logic capable of distinguishing the contents of intentional actions which are different. Next I will enrich earlier logics of action so as to characterize adequately intentional actions, attempts and purposes of agents and the different kinds of generation of action. I will state the basic laws of agentive commitment and action generation. (shrink)

Are there universal transcendent features that any natural language must possess in order to provide for its human speakers adequate means of expression and of communication of their conceptual thoughts? As Frege, Austin and Searle pointed out, complete speech acts of the type called illocutionary acts, and not isolated propositions, are the primary units of meaning in the use and comprehension of language. Thus it is in the very performance of illocutionary acts that speakers express and communicate their thoughts. For (...) this reason, speech act theory contributes to the theory of linguistic universals in formulating the necessary and universal laws governing the successful performance and satisfaction of illocutionary acts in language use and comprehension. I will argue that the logical form of illocutionary acts imposes certain formal constraints on the logical structure of a possible natural language as well as on the mind of competent speakers. In particular, certain syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features are universal because they are indispensable. Moreover, in order to perform and understand illocutionary acts, competent speakers and hearers must have certain mental states and abilities which are in general traditionally related to the faculty of reason.Há características transcendentes universais que qualquer linguagem natural tem que possuir para fornecer meios adequados de expressão e de comunicação de pensamentos conceituais aos seus falantes humanos? Como Frege, Austin e Searle mostraram, atos de fala completos do tipo denominado atos ilocucionários, e não proposições isoladas, são as unidades primárias de significado no uso e compreensão da linguagem. Assim, é no exato desempenho dos atos ilocucionários que os falantes expressam e comunicam os seus pensamentos. Por esta razão, a teoria dos atos de fala contribui para a teoria dos universais lingüísticos, formulando as leis necessárias e universais que governam o desempenho bem-sucedido e a satisfação dos atos ilocucionários no uso e compreensão da linguagem. Eu argumentarei que a forma lógica dos atos ilocucionários impõe certas restrições formais na estrutura lógica de uma possível linguagem natural como também na mente de falantes competentes. Em particular, certos aspectos sintáticos, semânticos e pragmáticos são universais porque eles são indispensáveis. Além disso, a fim de desempenhar e entender os atos ilocucionários, os falantes e ouvintes competentes têm que ter certos estados mentais e habilidades que estão, em geral, tradicionalmente relacionadas à faculdade de razão. (shrink)

I will argue that the logical form of illocutionary acts imposes certain formal constraints on the logical structure of a possible natural language as well as on the mind of competent speakers. In particular, certain syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features are universal because they are indispensable. Moreover, in order to perform and understand illocutionary acts, competent speakers and hearers must have certain mental states and abilities which are in general traditionally related to the faculty of reason. (edited).

My working hypothesis is based on the project of a theory of science (Wissenschaftslehre) at the very beginning of the Prolegomena and it consists in conceiving this theory of science as the program which insures their cohesion to the whole of the Investigations in this work. In order to test this hypothesis, I will first examine the different steps which led to the project of a theory of science in the pre-phenomenological period. I will secondly expound the guidelines of the (...) theory of science, insisting in particular on its relation to pure logic. In the third section, I will attempt to define the function of the theory of knowledge and of phenomenology in such a programme. I will conclude with some remarks on the fate of this theory of science after the Logical Investigations. Most of Husserl’s allusions to the theory of science, be it in his lecture notes, the manuscripts that were written after 1901 or other works published during Husserl’s lifetime, seem to suggest that the theory of science kept on assuming the very role it was playing in Husserl’s seminal work: the theory of science provides its basis to Husserl’s philosophical agenda. (shrink)

This study attempts to situate Carl Stumpf's theory of emotions with regard to that of his teacher, Franz Brentano, and to the sensualist theory of William James. We will argue that Stumpf's theory can be considered an attempt to reconcile James's sensualism, which emphasizes the role of bodily feelings, with what we will call, for the purposes of this study, Brentano's intentionalism, which conceives of emotions as intentional states. Stumpf claims that James's sensory feelings and Brentano's affective intentional states are (...) two sides of the same coin in that they constitute two essential ingredients of a full-fledged theory of emotions. The question is whether Stumpf's ecumenism avoids the objections that he himself raises against James's and Brentano's theories. The paper is divided into four parts: the first part presents Stumpf's classification of psychical functions; the second part presents his criticism of James's theory of emotions; the third part is a summary of Stumpf's complex debate with Brentano on emotions and sensory feelings; the last part examines Stumpf's attempt to incorporate into his theory of affects the phenomenological and intentional aspects of emotions. I conclude with a note on the unity of consciousness. (shrink)

This study focuses on the influence of the work of Carl Stumpf on the thought of Karl Bühler. Our working hypothesis is based on the philosophical program that Bühler attributes to Stumpf and to which several of his works are largely indebted. It is divided into five parts. The first is intended to establish a relationship between Bühler and the School of Brentano to which Stumpf belongs. In the second, I show that Bühler became aware of Brentano's ideas and of (...) Stumpf's program during a stay at the Institute of Psychology of Berlin during the winter semester 1904-1905, and I briefly comment, in the third part, Bühler's references to the work of Stumpf and two of his books in which he defends Stumpf's program against his critics. After having established the solid knowledge that Bühler had of Stumpf's work, I outline, in the fourth part, the main aspects of this program and evaluate, in the fifth, how Bühler uses it in the field of sensory phenomena (gestalt). I conclude this study with several remarks on Stumpf's positive evaluation of the work of Bühler. (shrink)

This paper is the general introduction to a collection of essays entitled Franz Brentano and Austrian Philosophy (forthcoming). In this substantial introduction, I comment several aspects of the recent reception of Brentano’s philosophical programme in contemporary philosophy, and the actual debates on topics such as emotions, values, and intentionality, for example. It is divided in four parts corresponding to the four sections of the book. The first three sections contain 11 original contributions on Brentano’s philosophy and its place in the (...) history of philosophy in Austria, and the last section contains three unpublished manuscripts from Alfred Kastil et Moritz Schlick. I. Descriptive psychology and phenomenology: Brentano and Husserl II. Brentano and the Vienna Circle III. Brentano and the history of philosophy IV. Documentation: Alfred Kastil and the Vienna Circle . (shrink)

ABSTRACT: In the search for a more fine-grained criterion of propositional identity in order to provide an adequate analysis of sense and thought, I propose a revision of the ontology of the Frege and Church theory of types of sense and denotation, and I set up a natural predicative propositional logic that explains their logical form in terms of acts of predication. I also define a more subjective notion of truth according to an agent and a new strong propositional implication. (...) The intensional logic thus set forth explains why human agents possess a minimal rationality. I conclude by proposing a new axiomatisation of a minimal epistemic logic. (shrink)

Pourrait-on enrichir la théorie des actes de langage pour traiter du discours? Wittgenstein et Searle ont signalé des difficultés. Beaucoup de discours n’ont pas de but conversationnel, leur arrière-plan est indéfiniment ouvert, ils contiennent des énonciations dépourvues de pertinence et de félicité, et ainsi de suite. À mes yeux, l’objectif principal de la pragmatique du discours est d’analyser la structure et la dynamique des jeux de langage à but conversationnel. Pareils jeux de langage sont indispensables à tout genre de discours. (...) La logique peut analyser leurs conditions de félicité car leur poursuite obéit à des règles constitutives. Beaucoup d’énonciations ne sont pas littérales ou sérieuses. Les unités de la conversation sont les actes illocutoires tentés, qu’ils soient littéraux, sérieux ou non. Comme Montague, je préconise l’usage de formalismes logiques en pragmatique. J’expliquerai comment il convient de réviser et développer les logiques intensionnelle et illocutoire, la logique des attitudes et de l’action afin de modéliser notre capacité de dialoguer. Je comparerai mon approche à d’autres sur le plan de la méthodologie, des hypothèses et des enjeux.Could we enrich speech-act theory to deal with discourse? Wittgenstein and Searle pointed out difficulties. Most dialogues lack a conversational purpose, their background is indefinitely open, they contain irrelevant and infelicitous utterances, etc. In my view, the primary aim of discourse pragmatics is to analyze the structure and dynamics of language-games whose type is provided with an internal conversational goal. Such games are indispensable to any kind of discourse. Logic can analyze their felicity-conditions because they are conducted according to systems of constitutive rules. Speakers often speak non-literally or non-seriously. The units of conversation are attempted illocutions whether literal, serious or not. I will show how to construct speaker-meaning from sentence-meaning, conversational background and maxims. Like Montague, I believe that we need the resources of formalisms and of logic in pragmatics. I will explain how to further develop intensional and illocutionary logics, the logic of attitudes and of action in order to characterize our ability to converse. I will compare my approach to others as regards hypotheses, methodology and issues. (shrink)

This study aims to account for the reception of the philosophy of Carl Stumpf since the turn of the twenty-first century and to emphasize the actuality of some of the aspects of his philosophy. The present text is subdivided into several sections, each corresponding to one of the main topics discussed in the recent literature on the work of Stumpf. In the first section, I try to show, using his classification of sciences, that Stumpf's empirical work is driven by a (...) unitary philosophical program. I then examine the ramifications of this program in several areas of philosophy that have been the subject of recent commentaries and publications. I begin with the commentaries on the recent publication of Stumpf's thesis on mathematical axioms, which stress Stumpf's contribution to the philosophy of mathematics and to theory of knowledge, and more specifically to the debate on logical psychologism that Frege and Husserl will address a few years later. I conclude this section by examining the second of two major themes in the work of Stumpf that have been the subject of several recent studies, namely, on the one hand, logic and the nature of states of affairs and, on the other hand, Stumpf's contribution to the mind-body problem and to the topic of relations. The third section is divided into two parts. In the first one, I try to briefly account for the vast literature on Stumpf's contribution to psychology understood broadly enough as to include his work on the psychology of sound, Gestalt psychology, animal psychology and the psychology of child development. I provide, in the second part of this section, a summary of his studies in the area of aesthetics and musicology in general, i.e. his contribution to the history of music and its origins, to ethnomusicology, and to acoustics. Although this study does not aim at being exhaustive, it provides an overview of the important aspects of Stumpf's contribution to philosophy. (shrink)

This study is a commentary on Carl Stumpf's evaluation of Husserl's phenomenology as presented in the Logical Investigations and the first book of Ideas. I first examine Stumpf's reception of the version of phenomenology that Husserl presented in the Logical Investigations and I then look at §§ 85-86 of Ideas I, in which Husserl seeks to demarcate his "pure" phenomenology from that of Stumpf. In the third section, I analyze the criticism that Stumpf, in § 13 of his book Erkenntnislehre, (...) directs toward to the new version of phenomenology that Husserl develops in Ideas I, and in the fourth, I summarize the Spinozist interpretation of the noetico-noematical correlations that Stumpf proposes in his two studies on Spinoza. The last section addresses Husserl's self-criticism regarding the Cartesian aproach to the reduction in Ideas I and the parallelism that the late Husserl establishes between intentional psychology and transcendental phenomenology. I try to show that the version of phenomenology that Husserl develops during the Freiburg period anticipates in many respects Stumpf's criticism and partly confirms the latter's diagnosis of the version of phenomenology advocated in Ideas I. (shrink)

This study examines the place of the Philosophical Society of the University of Vienna (1888-1938) in the evolution of the history of philosophy in Austria up to the establishment of the Vienna Circle in 1929. I will examine three aspects of the relationship between the Austrian members of the Vienna Circle and the Philosophical Society which has been emphasized by several historians of the Vienna Circle: the first aspect concerns the theory of a first Vienna Circle formed mainly by H. (...) Hahn, P. Frank and O. Neurath; the second aspect is the contention that the missing link between the Vienna Circle and the Bolzano tradition in Austria is Alois Höfler, a student of Brentano and Meinong; I will finally examine the link they established between the annexation of the Philosophical Society to the Kant-Gesellschaft in 1927 and the founding of the Vienna Circle in 1929. I will argue that this institution played a key role in the history of philosophy in Austria and is partly responsible for the formation of the Vienna Circle. (shrink)

This paper is about the reception of Ernst Mach by Brentano and his students in Austria. I shall outline the main elements of this reception, starting with Brentano’s evaluation, in his lectures on positivism, of Mach’s theory of sensations. Secondly, I shall comment the early reception of Mach by Brentano’s pupils in Prague. The third part bears on the close relationship that Husserl established between his phenomenology and Mach’s descriptivism. I will then briefly examine Mach’s contribution to the controversy on (...) gestalt qualities. The fifth part bears on Stumpf’s debate with Mach on psychophysical relations and I shall conclude on Husserl’s criticism of Mach’s alleged logical psychologism. (shrink)

A substantial introduction to Stumpf's work in philosophy and science.

This study is about an aspect of the reception of Herbatianism in Austria which has not been thoroughly investigated so far. It pertains to a controversy opposing Robert Zimmermann and Franz Brentano in the context of discussions which took place in the Philosophical Society of the University of Vienna. This study looks more specifically at three important episodes involving the Philosophical Society, first, the controversy over Herbartianism, second that over the evaluation of Schelling’s philosophy, and finally the reception of Bolzano (...) in Austria. I will first describe the circumstances that led Zimmermann to get involved in the Philosophical Society and the source of his controversy with Brentano and his followers. I will then comment Zimmermann’s address as chairman of the Philosophical Society and Brentano’s reaction to Zimmermann’s remarks on Schelling and the historical period to which he belongs. I will complete my analysis of Brentano’s reaction with a summary of his evaluation of Herbart’s philosophical program to which Zimmermann adhered. The last part focuses on Zimmermann’s decisive role in the reception of Bolzano in Vienna in connection with the Bolzano Commission established by the Philosophical Society. I will conclude with brief remarks on Zimmermann’s legacy in Vienna. (shrink)

Abstract: In this study, I propose to examine Marty’s reconstruction of the general framework in which Brentano develops his theory of consciousness. My starting point is the formulation, at the very beginning of the second chapter of the second book of Brentano’s Psychology, of two theses on mental phenomena, which constitute the basis of Brentano’s theory of primary and secondary objects. In the second part, I examine the objection of infinite regress raised against Brentano’s theory of primary and secondary objects (...) and Marty’s interpretation of Brentano’s theory of the unity of consciousness. The third part bears on the important distinction between implicit and explicit consciousness, which Brentano introduces in his lectures on descriptive psychology. Here, I analyse Marty’s principle of individuation in light of the modifications which Brentano made to his theory of consciousness after the publication of his Psychology in 1874. The last section is an examination of Marty’s conception of consciousness as self-consciousness with respect to his principle of individuation. (shrink)

In defining his phenomenology as descriptive psychology in the introduction to the first edition of his Logical Investigations 1, Husserl suggests that the field study of his phenomenology as his methodology are very close to that of Brentano’s psychology, and that the research in the book somehow contributes to Brentano’s philosophical program, one of whose main axes is psychology or philosophy of mind.

Introduction to a series of unpublished letters from Brentano and Stumpf.

Reply to eight critical reviews of my paper "Franz Brentano and Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness" in the same issue of the journal Argumentos.

This study seeks to trace the boundaries of the sign in the phenomenological tradition of Edmund Husserl. The approach adopted here is largely historical and has no other ambition that to identify those questions that pertain to the sign and have been of interest for phenomenology. The article is divided in four parts : the first examines an essay from 1890 entitled Semiotik and situates it in the context of the young Husserl's work in the philosophy of mathematics ; the (...) second part concerns the first section of the Logical Investigations ; the third one seeks to account for the changes that testify to the evolution of Husserl's thinking regarding the sign between the Logical Investigations (1900-01) and "Origins of Geometry" (1936) ; the last part considers the contribution of post-Husserlian phenomenology, from Martin Heidegger to Merleau-Ponty and beyond, to semiotics. -/- Résumé. Notre étude vise à délimiter l'espace dans lequel la question du signe s'est posée à la tradition phénoménologique depuis Edmund Husserl. Cette étude est largement historique et elle n'a d'autres ambitions que d'identifier certains aspects de la question du signe qui ont suscité l'intérêt de la phénoménologie. Elle se divise en quatre parties : dans la première, nous examinons le texte de 1890 intitulé Semiotik en le situant dans le contexte des recherches du jeune Husserl sur la philosophie des mathématiques ; la deuxième section est principalement consacrée à l'étude de la première des Recherches logiques ; la troisième partie vise à rendre compte des chan-gements qui ont marqué l'évolution de la pensée de Husserl sur le signe, des Recher-ches logiques (1900/1) à "Origine de la géométrie" (1936) ; finalement, nous esquis-serons à grands traits la contribution de la phénoménologie post-husserlienne à la sémiotique, de Martin Heidegger à Maurice Merleau-Ponty, et au-delà. (shrink)

One of the questions raised by the conference’s topic, in particular the relationship between the self and the other, a matter much discussed since Merleau-Ponty’s death, is the question of husserlian phenomenology’s cartesianism. Some believe that despite his reservations towards cartesianism, Husserl never disavowed his commitment to the Cartesian program of a first philosophy.

This paper is mainly about Brentano’s commentaries on Ernst Mach in his lectures “Contemporary philosophical questions” which he held one year before he left Austria. I will first identify the main sources of Brentano’s interests in Comte’s and J. S. Mill’s positivism during his Würzburg period. The second section provides a short overview of Brentano’s 1893-1894 lectures and his criticism of Comte, Kirchhoff, and Mill. The next sections bear on Brentano’s criticism of Mach’s monism and Brentano’s argument against the reduction (...) of the mental based on his theory of intentionality. The last section is about Brentano’s proposal to replace the identity relation in Mach’s theory of elements by that of intentional correlation. I conclude with a remark on the history of philosophy in Austria. (shrink)