Denis Seron

According to a standard narrative, the philosophy of mind officially started in the 1950s with the decline of analytic behaviourism, the emergence of the mind–brain identity theory, and its subsequent critique by functionalism. Yet, a closer look at the history of analytic philosophy reveals this narrative to be oversimplistic and fraught with problems. Many early British analytic philosophers—starting with philosophers of what may be termed the ‘Cambridge family,’ such as G.F. Stout, G.E. Moore, B. Russell and C.D. Broad—were already engaged in extensive debates about the knowledge, structure and nature of the mind. Interestingly, their writings also contain many influential intuitions which later came to be regarded as central for contemporary philosophy of mind—such as the transparency intuition, the zombie intuition or the intuition underlying the knowledge argument. The aim of this book is twofold. First, it seeks to challenge the standard narrative by investigating, reconstructing, and assessing the contribution of early British analytic philosophers to philosophical debates on the mind, with a special focus on philosophers of the Cambridge family. Second, it explores the extent to which the views and groundbreaking intuitions of these authors can contribute to current-day discussions in philosophy of mind and closely related issues.

My talk is about Brentano's presentism. Brentano's presentism is sometimes regarded as a radical, counterintuitive, and very original view. I would like to challenge that interpretation by providing an alternative reading. In my estimation, Brentano's presentism is just a variant of a widespread view about time, upheld by David Hume and many of his followers, including Kant - a view that I shall call the "ideality of time view." I will first explain what I think should be meant by "presentism." Secondly I will contrast Brentano's with Hume's versions of presentism. And finally I will suggest that the former, despite significant differences, can nonetheless be construed as basically Humean.