Mark Textor

Common sense takes the physical world to be populated by mind-independent particulars. Why and with what right do we hold this view? Early phenomenologists argue that the common sense view is our natural starting point because we experience objects as mind-independent. While it seems unsurprising that one can perceive an object being red or square, the claim that one can experience an object as mind-independent is controversial. In this paper I will articulate and defend the claim that we can experience mind-independence by mainly drawing on the work of the Gestalt psychologist Karl Duncker who, in turn, built on Husserl’s work. In the development of this claim the notion of a limit – either a maximum or minimum – of perception will play an important role.

Moritz Schlick’s work shaped Logical Empiricism and thereby an important part of philosophy in the first half of the 20th century. A continuous thread that runs through his work is a philosophical diagnosis of the ‘great errors in philosophy’: philosophers assume that there is intuitive knowledge/knowledge by acquaintance. Yet acquaintance, it is not knowledge, but an evaluative attitude. In this paper I will reconstruct Schlick’s arguments for this conclusion in the light of his early practical philosophy and his reading of Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Idea. Having the historical roots of Schlick’s position in view will put us in a position to explore and question its presuppositions.

Current work on first-person thought takes its distinctive feature to be epistemological. First-person thinking is non-observational and immune to errors to which other varieties of thought about us are open. In contrast, the nineteenth century philosopher Hermann Lotze (1817-81) put the distinctive concern we have for the object of first-person thought at the center of his account. His arguments suggest that first-person thought is essentially evaluative. In this paper I will reconstruct and defend the core of Lotze’s view of self-consciousness.

We argue against the dominant view in the literature that concepts are modulated in lexical modulation. We also argue against the alternative view that ‘grab bags’ of information that don’t determine extensions are the starting point for lexical modulation. In response to the problems with these views we outline a new model for lexical modulation that dispenses with the assumption that there is a standing meaning of a general term that is modified in the cases under consideration. In applying general terms we intend to conform with our linguistic ancestors and in doing so we take facts about the referents of these terms for granted. In cases of lexical modulation we become aware of facts we took for granted and we need to change the facts we take for granted in order to see ourselves as continuing in a practice. These changes result in utterances of the general term referring to different properties. In general, concepts are neither the starting point for lexical modulation nor the standing meanings of words.

Although an important part of the origins of analytic philosophy can be traced back to philosophy in Austria in the first part of the twentieth century, remarkably little is known about the specific contribution made by Austrian philosophy and philosophers. In The Austrian Contribution to Analytic Philosophy , prominent analytic philosophers take a fresh look at the roots of analytic philosophy in the thought of influential but often overlooked Austrian philosophers including Brentano, Meinong, Bolzano, Husserl, and Witasek. The contributors to this volume investigate central topics in theoretical philosophy such as intentionality, consciousness, memory, attributes, and truth as well as political philosophy and aesthetics. This original collection will be of interest to anyone studying the origins of analytic philosophy as well as contemporary debates in philosophy of language, metaphysics and mind

Mark Textor presents a critical study of the work of Franz Brentano, one of the most important thinkers of the nineteenth century. His work has influenced analytic philosophers like Russell as well as phenomenologists like Husserl and Sartre, and continues to shape debates in the philosophy of mind. Brentano made intentionality a central topic in the philosophy of mind by proposing that 'directedness' is the distinctive feature of the mental. The first part of the book investigates Brentano's intentionalism as well as attempts to improve or develop it. Textor argues that there is no plausible version of this doctrine, and rejects it in favour of a mark of the mental proposed by Brentano's student Husserl: mental phenomena have no appearances. The second part of the book develops and defends Brentano's view about the structure of perceptual awareness. Awareness of a mental activity and this mental activity are not distinct mental acts, the first representing the second. They are one and the same activity that has several objects. Textor shows that Brentano held that intentionality is plural - directedness is directedness on some objects - and shows how the plural conception solves thorny problems. The third part of the book is devoted to Brentano's view of pleasure and pain. Textor draws out parallels between enjoying an activity and awareness of it and argues that enjoying an activity and the activity enjoyed are not distinct. The final part of the book extends the plural view to the conscious mental life of a thinker at a time (the unity of synchronic consciousness): it is one mental act with many objects.

Brentano's Thesis that intentionality is the mark of the mental is central to analytic philosophy of mind as well as phenomenology. The contemporary discussion assumes that it is a formulation of an analytic definition of the mental. I argue that this assumption is mistaken. According to Brentano, many philosophical concepts can only be elucidated by perceiving their instances because these concepts are abstracted from perception. The concept of the mental is one of these concepts. We need to understand Brentano's Thesis accordingly: It is a piece of advice on how to become introspectively aware of the distinctive feature of mental phenomena. On this understanding of Brentano's Thesis standard objections to it no longer arise.

According to Horwich’s use theory of meaning, the meaning of a word W is engendered by the underived acceptance of certain sentences containing W. Horwich applies this theory to provide an account of semantic stipulation: Semantic stipulation proceeds by deciding to accept sentences containing an as yet meaningless word W. Thereby one brings it about that W gets an underived acceptance property. Since a word’s meaning is constituted by its (basic) underived acceptance property, this decision endows the word with a meaning. The use-theoretic account of semantic stipulation contrasts with the standard view that semantic stipulation proceeds by assigning the meaning (reference) to W that makes a certain set of sentences express true propositions. In this paper I will argue that the use-theoretic account does not work. I take Frege to have already made the crucial point: "a definition does not assert anything but lays down something ["etwas festsetzt"]” (Frege 1899, 36). A semantic stipulation for W cannot be the decision to accept a sentence containing W or be explained in terms of such an acceptance. Semantic stipulation constitutes a problem for Horwich's use theory of meaning, especially his basic notion of acceptance.

According to Frege, judgement is the ‘logically primitive activity’. So what is judgement? In his mature work, he characterizes judging as ‘acknowledging the truth’ (‘Anerkennen der Wahrheit’). Frege’s remarks about judging as acknowledging the truth of a thought require further elaboration and development. I will argue that the development that best suits his argumentative purposes takes acknowledging the truth of a thought to be a non-propositional attitude like seeing an object; it is a mental relation between a thinker, a thought, and an object, namely a truth-value

Michael Devitt has argued that a satisfactory explanation of the authority of linguistic intuitions need not assume that they are derived from tacit knowledge of principles of grammar. Devitt’s Modest Explanation is based on a controversial construal of linguistic intuitions as meta-linguistic central-processor judgements. I will argue that there are non-judgemental responses to linguistic strings, linguistic seemings, which are evidence for linguistic theories. Devitt cannot account for their epistemic authority. This spoils his ‘modest explanation’. Devitt’s opponent, the Voice of Competence View, is back in business.

According to Frege, neither demonstratives nor indexicals are singular terms; only a demonstrative together with ‘circumstances accompanying its utterance’ has sense and singular reference. While this view seems defensible for demonstratives, where demonstrations serve as non-verbal signs, indexicals, especially pure indexicals like ‘I’, ‘here’, and ‘now’, seem not to be in need of completion by circumstances of utterance. In this paper I argue on the basis of independent reasons that indexicals are in fact in need of completion; I identify the completers as uses of circumstances of utterance by the speaker; and I show how these uses together with the utterance of indexical sentences express thoughts. The starting point of the paper is a criticism of Kripke’s and Künne’s alternative treatment of indexicals in Frege’s framework

Frege held that singular terms can refer only to objects, not to concepts. I argue that the counter-intuitive consequences of this claim ('the concept paradox') arise from Frege's mirroring principle that an incomplete expression can only express an incomplete sense and stand for an incomplete reference. This is not, as is sometimes thought, merely because predicates and singular terms cannot be intersubstituted salva veritate ( congruitate ). The concept paradox, properly understood, poses therefore a different, harder, challenge. An investigation of the foundations of the mirroring principle also sheds light on the role which language plays in Frege's epistemology of logic.

Most discussions of Kripke's Naming and Necessity focus either on Kripke's so-called "historical theory of reference" or his thesis that names are rigid designators. But in response to problems of the rigidity thesis Kripke later points out that his thesis about proper names is a stronger one: proper names are de jure rigid. This sets the agenda for my paper. Certain problems raised for Kripke's view show that the notion of de jure rigidity is in need of clarification. I will try to clarify the notion of de jure rigidity by analyzing characterizations of it given in the literature. I will argue in particular that Kripke can count descriptive names as de jure rigid and that the concept of de jure rigidity should not be explained with recourse to the concept of a semantical rule. The second part of the paper is a critical discussion of arguments intended to show that proper names are not de jure rigid. I will show that these arguments are unconvincing by using Dummett's distinction between assertoric content and ingredient sense

Keith Hossack argues in his The Metaphysics of Knowledge(2007) that knowledge is a simple and metaphysically fundamental relation between a thinker and a fact: knowledge is uptake of fact. Facts are conceived as combinations of particulars and universals, distinct from true propositions. Hossacks's general argument is, roughly, that one can define central philosophical concepts (belief, content, justification, etc.) if one assumes that knowledge is primitive, but that knowledge cannot be defined in terms of such concepts. In this paper, I will question Hossack's view of knowledge and his use of knowledge in the theory of content. To anticipate one of the main points: there is knowledge that cannot be uptake of a fact, because there is no fact to be taken up. The conclusion is that Hossack needs either to revise his theory of facts or his metaphysics of knowledge. Something has to give

L'auteur expose la tentative faite par Bolzano de définir le concept de proposition en soi analytique à l'aide du concept de variation de représentation. Puis, il discute les difficultés qui résultent de ce modèle quant à la définition bolzanienne du concept étroit de vérité logiquement analytique ou de vérité logique. En conclusion, il compare la définition bolzanienne du concept de proposition en soi analytique et la définition husserlienne: celle-ci se découvre être une application de l'idée fondamentale de Bolzano — employer la variation de représentation pour définir les concepts logiques fondamentaux. The author tries to outline Bolzano's proposal to define the concept of an analytic proposition by using the concept of idea variation. He discusses the problems that arise for Bolzano's attempt to define the concept of a logical truth on the same lines. He ends by comparing Bolzano's and Husserl's definition of the concept of an analytical proposition: Husserl's definition can be seen as an original application of Bolzano's basic idea to define basic logical notions with recourse to the concept of idea variation