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The Rise of the Brentano SchoolIn Uriah Kriegel (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School, Routledge. pp. 225-235. 2017.In this chapter, I give a bird’s eye view of the Brentano School from a rather historical perspective. My leading hypothesis is that one crucial factor explaining the rise of the school is Brentano’s unique strategy, within the academic context of the time, to promote the revival of philosophy as a rigorous science. After a brief introduction, I reconstruct the three main phases in the school’s development, namely Brentano’s teaching in Würzburg, his teaching in Vienna, and Anton Marty’s teachin…Read more
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23This paper explores an adverbial account of introspection that contrasts with both acquaintance and rationality theories of introspection. The bulk of the account consists of the following claim: for any subject S, mental state M, and object O, S introspects M if S is aware of O through M with a view to determining the character of M. This claim is fleshed out by drawing on considerations offered by early analytic British philosophers (namely: Alexander, Stout, Hicks).
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131On Noticing Transparent States: A Compatibilist Approach to TransparencyEuropean Journal of Philosophy 31 (2): 398-412. 2022.According to the transparency thesis, some conscious states are transparent or “diaphanous”. This thesis is often believed to be incompatible with an inner‐awareness account of phenomenal consciousness. In this article, I reject this incompatibility. Instead, I defend a compatibilist approach to transparency. To date, most attempts to do so require a rejection of strong transparency in favor of weak transparency. In this view, transparent states can be attended to by attending (in the right way)…Read more
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68The Occamization of 'Meaning': Ryle and BrentanoLogique & Analyse 256 511-532. 2021.To Occamize a nominal expression N is to show that, despite grammatical appearances, N does not name, or denote, an entity. This article argues that the Occamization of ‘meaning,’ which was central to Gilbert Ryle’s meta-philosophy, had already been advanced by Franz Brentano. The core thesis of the article is that Brentano’s notion of ‘content,’ albeit different from that of linguistic rules, does a similar job of eliminating expendable entities. If the meaning of a linguistic expression is not…Read more
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266Misleading Expressions: The Brentano-Ryle ConnectionIn Arnaud Dewalque, Charlotte Gauvry & Sébastien Richard (eds.), Philosophy of Language in the Brentano School: Reassessing the Brentanian Legacy, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 95-118. 2021.This chapter argues that Gilbert Ryle’s account of misleading expressions, which is rightly considered a milestone in the history of analytic philosophy, is continuous with Brentano’s. Not only did they identify roughly the same classes of misleading expressions, but their analyses are driven by a form of ontological parsimony which sharply contrasts with rival views in the Brentano School, like those of Meinong and Husserl. Section 1 suggests that Ryle and Brentano share a similar notion of ana…Read more
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16IntroductionIn Arnaud Dewalque & Venanzio Raspa (eds.), Psychological Themes in the School of Alexius Meinong, De Gruyter. pp. 1-10. 2019.
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185The Reception of Positivism in Whewell, Mill and BrentanoIn Ion Tanasescu, Alexandru Bejinariu, Susan Krantz Gabriel & Constantin Stoenescu (eds.), Brentano and the Positive Philosophy of Comte and Mill: With Translations of Original Writings on Philosophy as Science by Franz Brentano, De Gruyter. 2022.This article compares and contrasts the reception of Comte’s positivism in the works of William Whewell, John Stuart Mill and Franz Brentano. It is argued that Whewell’s rejection of positivism derives from his endorsement of a constructivist account of the inductive sciences, while Mill and Brentano’s sympathies for positivism are connected to their endorsement of an empiricist account. The mandate of the article is to spell out the chief differences between these two rival accounts. In the las…Read more
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13Psychological Themes in the School of Alexius Meinong (edited book)De Gruyter. 2019.This volume addresses key aspects of the philosophical psychology elaborated by Alexius Meinong and some of his students. It covers a wide range of topics, from the place of psychological investigations in Meinong's unique philosophical program to his thought-provoking views on perception, colors, "Vorstellungsproduktion," assumptions, values, truth, and emotions.
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165The Phenomenology of MentalityIn Denis Fisette, Guillaume Fréchette & Hynek Janoušek (eds.), Franz Brentano’s Philosophy After One Hundred Years: From History of Philosophy to Reism, Springer. pp. 23-40. 2021.This chapter offers a phenomenological interpretation of Brentano’s view of mentality. The key idea is that mental phenomena are not only characterized by intentionality; they also exhibit a distinctive way of appearing or being experienced. In short, they also have a distinctive phenomenology. I argue this view may be traced back to Brentano’s theory of inner perception. Challenging the self-representational reading of IP, I maintain the latter is best understood as a way of appearing, that is,…Read more
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162A Critique of Meinongian AssumptionsIn Arnaud Dewalque & Venanzio Raspa (eds.), Psychological Themes in the School of Alexius Meinong, De Gruyter. pp. 85-108. 2019.This article argues that Meinong’s analysis of assumption, while exploring the variety of phenomenological primitives in a more promising way than Brentano did, nevertheless fails to adequately account for the noncommittal character of assumptive attitudes and the difference between assumptive and other neighbouring attitudes. Section 1 outlines an overall framework for the philosophical analysis of assumptions and cognitive attitudes. Section 2 gives an overview of Brentano’s analysis of cognit…Read more
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125Brentano's Case for OptimismRivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica 111 (4): 835-847. 2019.Call metaphysical optimism the view that this world is the best of all possible worlds. This article addresses Franz Brentano’s case for metaphysical optimism. I argue that, although Brentano does not offer any conclusive argument in favour of the latter, he disentangles many related issues which are interesting in their own right. The article has five sections corresponding to five claims, which I argue are central to Brentano’s view, namely: metaphysical optimism is best spelled out as the vie…Read more
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119Natural Classes in Brentano's PsychologyBrentano‐Studien: Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung 16 111-142. 2018.This article argues that Brentano’s classification of mental phenomena is best understood against the background of the theories of natural classification held by Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill. Section 1 offers a reconstruction of Brentano’s two-premise argument for his tripartite classification. Section 2 gives a brief overview of the reception and historical background of the classification project. Section 3 addresses the question as to why a classification of mental phenomena is needed …Read more
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17Philosophy of Language in the Brentano School: Reassessing the Brentanian Legacy (edited book)Palgrave-Macmillan. 2021.This collection of fourteen original essays addresses the seminal contribution of Franz Brentano and his heirs, to philosophy of language. Despite the great interest provoked by the Brentanian tradition and its multiple connections with early analytic philosophy, precious little is known about the Brentanian contribution to philosophy of language. The aim of this new collection is to fill this gap by providing the reader with a more thorough understanding of the legacy of Brentano and his school…Read more
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24Du nombre des sensPhilosophie 124 (1): 6-11. 2014.§ 1. Selon la tradition, les sens sont au nombre de cinq. Ce nombre semble toutefois insuffisant à certains. Aristote déjà avait soulevé la question de savoir si ce qu’on appelle le sens du toucher ne devait pas être divisé en un sens du chaud et du froid et en un sens de l’aqueux et du sec. D’autres ont voulu distinguer un sens musculaire, et l’on a aussi parlé d’un sens temporel et d’un sens spatial...
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110Brentano's Mind: Unity Without SimplicityRivista di Filosofia 108 (3): 349-64. 2017.This paper offers a reconstruction of Franz Brentano’s mereological solution to the problem of the unity of consciousness and explores some implications of this solution for the ontology of the mind. In section 1 I sketch Brentano’s ontological distinctions between things, collectives, and divisives. In section 2 I present Brentano’s mereological solution and in section 3 I review his main pro-arguments. Eventually, in section 4 I consider some Jamesian objections to the mereological approach. I…Read more
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169Emotional Phenomenology: Toward a Nonreductive AnalysisMidwest Studies in Philosophy 41 (1): 27-40. 2017.In this article I want to create a presumption in favor of a nonreductive analysis of emotional phenomenology. The presumption relies on the claim that none of the nonemotional elements which are usually regarded as constitutive of emotional phenomenology may reasonably be considered responsible for the evaluative character of the latter. In section 1 I suggest this is true of cognitive elements, arguing that so-called ‘evaluative’ judgments usually result from emotional, evaluative attitudes, a…Read more
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19Külpe on Cognitive AttitudesDiscipline filosofiche. 27 (2): 157-176. 2017.This paper offers a reconstruction of Külpe’s theory of cognitive attitudes from the perspective of contemporary debates about cognitive phenomenology. I argue that Külpe’s view contrasts with analytic mainstream approaches to the same phenomena in at least two respects. First, Külpe claims, cognitive experiences are best described in terms of occurrent cognitive acts or attitudes toward sensory, imagistic or intellectual contents. Second, occurrent cognitive attitudes are intransitively cons…Read more
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141The Unity of the Brentano SchoolIn Uriah Kriegel (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School, Routledge. pp. 236-248. 2017.Franz Brentano’s works are not just full of deep and innovative insights into mind, world and values. His views also turned out to be highly influential upon several generations of students, who made them the basis of their own philosophical investigations, giving rise to what is known as the Brentano School (Albertazzi et al. 1996; Fisette & Fréchette 2007). In this chapter, I give a bird’s eye view of the Brentano School from a rather historical perspective. My leading hypothesis is that one c…Read more
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13La critique de la théorie des valeurs dans 'l'origine de l'uvre d'art'Revue Philosophique De Louvain 103 (3): 390-414. 2005.
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11When you are in a joyful mood, how do you know that it is so? On a Cartesian picture, the answer is that you’ve got some immediate, noninferential apprehension of your being joyful, such as this noninferential apprehension is analogous to sense perception, and unlike sense perception, it makes it unquestionable or evident to you that you presently are in a joyful mood. In this paper, I defend this view against some classical objections, arguing that pre-reflective self-consciousness actually is …Read more
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9Que signifie le « primat de la raison pratique » en théorie de la connaissance?Bulletin d'Analyse Phénoménologique 4 124-168. 2008.Partant du constat que la majeure partie des débats concernant un éventuel « primat de la raison pratique » se jouent pour ainsi dire en amont de la phénoménologie husserlienne, j’entreprends d’abord de retracer les deux sources de la thèse du « primat de la raison pratique », telle qu’elle est défendue dans l’école néokantienne de Bade, à savoir la source kantienne-fichtéenne, qui concerne le caractère « normatif » du critère de validité de la connaissance, et la source brentanienne-bergmannien…Read more
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12La critique néokantienne de Kant et l’instauration d’une théorie conceptualiste de la perceptionDialogue 49 (3): 413-433. 2010.ABSTRACT : This paper contributes to explor the historical background of contemporary conceptualism. It suggests that a step forward toward a more promising understanding of this historical background can be made if we focus, not on the much-discussed, controversial position of Kant, but rather on the straightforward position of some main representatives of classical neo-Kantianism. My main hypothesis is that criticisms of Kant’s transcendantal aesthetics coming from Paul Natorp and Bruno Bauch …Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Phenomenology and Consciousness |
19th Century Austrian Philosophy |
Theories of Consciousness |
Intentionality |
Areas of Interest
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