Arnaud Dewalque

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) to the presented world: that is, they are merely translucent. Here, I first argue that this understanding of transparency is too weak to qualify as a compatibilist view. Drawing on insights from Franz Brentano, I then describe a middle road between strong and weak transparency. The crucial idea is that, although transparent states cannot be attended to, they can be noticed (under suitable conditions). This view, I submit, allows supporters of inner awareness to commit themselves to a more interesting understanding of transparency—moderate transparency—that preserves the initial intuition underlying the transparency metaphor.

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 an entity at all, then the question as to what kind of entity it is—what I shall call the Locke-Frege problem—turns out to be a pseudo-problem and is better dispensed with.

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 analysis. Section 2 spells out the notion of misleading expression by means of the surface-grammar/truth-conditions distinction, which I argue is implicit in their accounts. Section 3 zooms in on a specific class of misleading expressions, namely expressions about ficta. Finally, Section 4 draws the consequences of what precedes for a correct understanding of the notion of meaning.

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 last, conclusive section, Whewell’s anti-positivist argument is briefly assessed, and rebutted.

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, in phenomenological terms. Section 1 addresses Brentano’s claim that IP is one mark of the mental alongside intentionality. Sections 2 and 3 present support for a phenomenological interpretation of IP. And Section 4 briefly discusses two objections.

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 cognitive attitudes and some difficulties thereof. Section 3 offers a critical examination of Meinong’s rival analysis. Eventually, Section 4 suggests an alternative route, according to which assumptive attitudes are best analysed in taking as a phenomenological primitive besides.

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 view that this world is the only good among all possible worlds; the notion of “correct”—or “fitting”—love offers a criterion of the good and the test of inverted love offers a means to identify that which is good; pessimism has to be distinguished from pejorism, viz. the view that the non-existence of this world is preferable to its existence; there is something good involved in every “bad” thing, to the effect that pejorism is false; it is wrong to consider the value of something in isolation.

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 at all and traces the answer back to Mill’s view that psychological laws are class-specific. Section 4 and 5 connect the second premise of Brentano’s argument to Comte’s principle of comparative likeness and Mill’s insistance that class membership is determined by the possession of common characteristics. And section 6 briefly discusses the evidence Brentano provides for the first premise.

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, in their pursuit of a unique research programme according to which the analysis of meaning is inseparable from philosophical inquiries into what goes on in the mind and what there is in the world. In three parts, the volume first reconstructs Brentano’s pathbreaking thoughts on meaning and grammatical illusions, exploring their strong connections with the Austro-German tradition and analytic philosophy. It then addresses the multifaceted debates on the objectivity of meaning in the Brentano School and its aftermath. Finally, part three explores Brentano’s wider legacy, namely: Husserl’s theory of modification and typicality, Bühler’s theory of linguistic and non-linguistic expressions, and Wittgenstein’s thoughts on guidance and rule-following. The result is a unique collection of essays which shows the significance, originality and timely character of the Brentanian philosophy of language.

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 argue the notion of ‘mental parts’ can be given a rather innocuous meaning by being conceived of as the expression of conceptual distinctions grounded in similarity and contrast relations between total mental phenomena.

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, and should not be conflated with them. In section 2 I argue the same holds true for conative attitudes. And in section 3 I briefly mention some salient aspects of the version of nonreductive analysis I lean toward.

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 conscious in the sense that they are experienced by, or phenomenally manifest to, the subject. I call the combination of those two claims the conscious cognitive attitudes theory. I suggest that, despite some difficulties, this theory offers a worth-considering alternative to contentual and/or nonphenomenological theories of cognitive phenomena.

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 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 (1866-73), his teaching in Vienna (1874-95), and Anton Marty’s teaching in Prague (1880-1913).

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 may be regarded as a significant historical source for the so-called “content” conceptualism, insofar as they imply that the contents of perception are conceptual contents.

Mon intention est de discuter quelques aspects du débat actuel sur la perception qui oppose les partisans du conceptualisme (essentiellement John McDowell et Bill Brewer) aux partisans du non-conceptualisme (Fred Dretske, Gareth Evans, Christopher Peacocke, Michael Tye, Tim Crane, José Luis Bermúdez, Adina Roskies et d?autres). Je commencerai par fixer le cadre théorique du débat, par clarifier son enjeu et par retracer brièvement son origine. Ensuite, je mettrai en évidence une difficulté majeure de la position conceptualiste. Pour finir, j?examinerai l?une des approches qui me semblent les plus prometteuses pour décrire adéquatement la manière dont fonctionne le mécanisme référentiel de la perception et le rôle des contenus non conceptuels au sein de ce mécanisme. Cette approche se présente comme une variante de la thèse des « contenus multiples » (voir Siegel 2010, section 3.5). Selon cette variante, le contenu total d?une expérience perceptuelle doit être construit comme un contenu complexe, composé de plusieurs couches ou plusieurs strates distinctes. En d?autres termes, l?approche qui m?intéressera ici consiste à admettre l?existence de contenus perceptuels à plusieurs niveaux ou de ce que l?on appellerait, en langue anglaise, multi-levelled perceptual contents . Une telle conception peut être rattachée exemplairement, dans le paysage philosophique des vingt dernières années, à la position de Christopher Peacocke

It seems uncontroversial that perceptual experiences provide us with some “normative support” for beliefs or judgments about our surroundings. Provided that the normative force of perceptual justification is something that manifests itself in consciousness or something we commonly experience, what are its phenomenal features? To put it differently: What is it to experience the normative force of perceptual justification? In the first section I will briefly comment on the demand of a unified theory of perceptual experiences, viz. a theory which is capable of integrating relevant epistemological and phenomenological aspects of perceptual experiences. In section two I will argue for a way of connecting the epistemological problem and the phenomenological problem by appealing to a compare-and-contrast strategy. Eventually, in section three, I will try to draw some lessons for our understanding of the normative force of perceptual justification

Suppose you perceive a cup of wonderful Italian coffee on the table in front of you. Is your visual experience best described as a representation-of a cup of coffee or as a relation-to a cup of coffee? Representationalism and relationalism, I suggest, are two prominent options under discussion in the present-day philosophical investigations on perception. In this paper, I want to argue that both options are on the wrong track. The reason, basically, is that they are at odds with the analytical description of our perceptual experience

RÉSUMÉ: Dans cet article, j’entreprends de clarifier le projet (frégéen) d’une logique de l’arithmétique -- tel qu’il a été discuté par Natorp et Rickert -- en distinguant trois questions directrices. Le nombre est-il un objet logique? L’arithmétique est-elle réductible à la logique? Est-il possible de déduire les opérations arithmétiques de lois purement logiques? Ma thèse est que la distinction rigoureuse de ces trois questions permet de lever une grande partie des obscurités qui affectent en généralle programme d’une logique de l’arithmétique. La contribution néo-kantienne à ce programme se trouve du même coup éclairée d’une lumière nouvelle.ABSTRACT: In this article, I try to shed light on the (Fregean) project of a logic of arithmelic-as discussed by Natorp and Rickert-by outlining three main questions. Is the number a logical object? Is arithmetic reducible to logic? Is it possible to deduce the arithmetical operations from purely logical laws? I argue that rigorous distinction between these three questions makes it possible to elucidate many problems affecting the program of a logic of arithmetic. The Neo-Kantian contribution to this program is at the same time considered in a new light.