Guillaume Fréchette

The Handbook of Experimental Economic Methodology, edited by Guillaume R. Fréchette and Andrew Schotter, aims to confront and debate the issues faced by the growing field of experimental economics. For example, as experimental work attempts to test theory, it raises questions about the proper relationship between theory and experiments. As experimental results are used to inform policy, the utility of these results outside the lab is questioned, and finally, as experimental economics tries to integrate ideas from other disciplines like psychology and neuroscience, the question of their proper place in the discipline of economics becomes less clear.This book contains papers written by some of the most accomplished scholars working at the intersection of experimental, behavioral, and theoretical economics talking about methodology. It is divided into four sections, each of which features a set of papers and a set of comments on those papers. The intention of the volume is to offer a place where ideas about methodology could be discussed and even argued. Some of the papers are contentious---a healthy sign of a dynamic discipline---while others lay out a vision for how the authors think experimental economics should be pursued. This exciting and illuminating collection of papers brings light to a topic at the core of experimental economics. Researchers from a broad range of fields will benefit from the exploration of these important questions.

Le livre introduit, traduit et annoté par P. Limido-Heulot s’ajoute aux rares traductions françaises des œuvres d’Ingarden: à l’exception d’articles isolés, notons que les traductions de Philibert Secretan et celle de la musicologue montréalaise Dujka Smoje étaient jusqu’à ce jour les seules à reprendre en français sous la forme de livres des ouvrages publiés par le phénoménologue polonais. Bien qu’elle ne nous offre pas un ouvrage intégral d’Ingarden, la traduction de Limido-Heulot regroupe toutefois des textes qui, pour trois d’entre eux, avaient déjà été réunis par l’auteur dans son recueil d’articles Z badan nad filozofia wspolczesna en 1963.

The development of phenomenology in nineteenth‐century German philosophy is that of a particular stream within the larger historical‐philosophical complex of Austro‐German philosophy. As the “grandfather of phenomenology” resp. the “disgusted grandfather of phenomenology,” but also as the key figure on the “Anglo‐Austrian Analytic Axis”, Brentano is at the source of the two main philosophical traditions in twentieth‐century philosophy. This chapter focuses mainly on his place in nineteenth‐century European philosophy and on the central themes and concepts in his philosophy that were determinant in the development of the philosophy of his most gifted student: Edmund Husserl. Despite the variety of stances which Brentano expressed on ontology, metaphysics, and psychology over the course of his career, the five general principles remain central to his whole philosophy throughout: they have an important place in what could be called Brentano's philosophical worldview or system. By extension, they also are essential to his conception of phenomenology.

In this article, I shed some light on Meinong’s motivations for the theory of objects. I argue that one of its basic principles, the principle of indifference, is driven by an intuition common to many Austrian philosophers, which is that something must first be somehow pre-given in order to simply address the issue of its being or non-being. Meinong’s way of spelling out this intuition, I suggest, is to show that there are homeless objects, that is, objects that are not dealt with by any of the existing sciences. Therefore, the indispensability of the theory of objects lies in the plausibility of the thesis that there are such homeless objects. I analyse and evaluate two Meinongian arguments supporting this thesis, I explain how Meinong came to believe that they support the indispensability of the theory of objects, and I stress some advantages of this account over Brentano’s intentionality thesis.

Although Wilhelm Dilthey and Franz Brentano apparently were pursuing roughly the same objective—to offer a description of our mental functions and of their relations to objects—and both called their respective research programs ‘descriptive psychology’, they seem to have used the term to refer to two different methods of psychological research. In this article, I compare analyses of these differences. Against the reading of Orth but also against a possible application of recent relativist accounts of the epistemology of peer disagreement to this case, I argue that their apparent shared objective is not enough to support an understanding of their views as two alternatives within a given historical or scientific context, or as a mutual peer disagreement. I show that the impression of a shared objective can be explained away as stemming from the influence of their teacher Adolf Trendelenburg, and I stress that the case of introspection strongly suggests that an account in terms of peer disagreement is not plausible. Finally, I conclude that the opposition between two traditions, Austrian philosophy and historicism, might be better suited to account for the dispute and its apparent common historical context.

Phenomenological accounts of intuition are often considered as significantly different from, or even incommensurable with most of the conception of intuitions defended in analytical philosophy. In this paper, I reject this view. Starting with what I consider to be a relatively neutral phenomenological account of intuition, I first present the main features of Husserl’s and Brentano’s accounts of intuition, showing the structural similarities and differences between these two views. After confronting them, I finally come back to what unites the two views in order to outline a map of the problem of intuition in which both traditions, the analytical and the phenomenological, appear as two complementary takes on one and the same problem

Guillaume Fréchette | : Il est généralement admis dans la littérature analytique sur l’intuition que celle-ci est principalement, ou même fondamentalement, une attitude propositionnelle. Partant de là, elle est aussi souvent caractérisée comme une croyance que P, comme la formation d’une croyance sans inférence que P, comme une impression que P, comme une impression intellectuelle que P, comme l’attitude consistant à être poussé, mu par P. Dans tous les cas, la spécificité de l’intuition reposerait au moins en partie sur les propriétés doxastiques qui la distingue d’autres attitudes propositionnelles, comme savoir que P ou douter que P.Cette caractérisation de l’intuition semble à première vue incommensurable avec le concept d’intuition discuté dans la tradition phénoménologique, où l’intuition est caractérisée comme ce type d’expérience qui rend les objets présents, et peut certes être caractérisée en termes d’attitude propositionnelle, mais ne l’est pas essentiellement.Dans ce qui suit, je soulève quelques problèmes auxquels fait face la conception de l’intuition comme attitude propositionnelle. Partant de là, j’aimerais suggérer qu’en amendant cette idée, on peut développer une théorie de l’intuition qui peut employer de manière fructueuse les ressources de la phénoménologie et de la philosophie analytique. Cette suggestion montre que l’incommensurabilité des conceptions analytiques et phénoménologiques de l’intuition est superficielle, plus superficielle que ne le laissent entendre ses défenseurs respectifs. | : It is generally acknowledged in the analytic literature on intuitions that these are generally, or even fundamentally, propositional attitudes. For this reason, intuitions are often characterized as beliefs that P, as seeming that P, as the intellectual seeming that P, or as the attitude of being pushed by P. In all cases, the specificity of intuitions would consist at least in part in the doxastic properties that distinguishes them from other propositional attitudes, such as knowing that P or doubting that P.At first glance, this characterization of intuitions seems incommensurable with the concept of intuition discussed in the phenomenological tradition, where intuition is characterized as the type of experience that make objects present to us. While intuitions in this sense may be characterized as propositional attitudes, it doesn’t imply that they fundamentally are propositional.In the following paper, I raise some problems which faces the conception of intuitions as propositional attitudes. I would suggest that amending this idea allows to develop a theory of intuition which can use fruitfully both the resources of phenomenology and analytic philosophy. As a consequence, the alleged incommensurability of analytical and phenomenological conceptions of intuitions appears to be more superficial than it is usually taken to be defenders of intuitions as propositional attitudes.

Lotze’s influence on the development of the XIXth and XXth century philosophy and psychology remains largely neglected still today. In this paper, I examine some Lotzean elements in Husserl’s early conception of intentionality, and more specifically in his rejection of the Brentanian concept of intentionality. I argue that Husserl and Lotze, pace Brentano, share a qualitative conception of experiences, what they both call the Zumutesein of experiences. Furthermore, I discuss other issues upon which Husserl and Lotze share common intuitions: the perception of space, the theory of local signs, the realisations of thinking (Leistungen des Denkens) and phenomenology.

In many respects, Mach’s arrival in Vienna in 1895 marks the beginning of a new era in Austrian philosophy, paving the way for young philosophers and scientists like Hahn and Neurath and preparing the soil for the Vienna Circle. While this understanding of Mach’s contribution to the development of Viennese philosophy seems correct to an important extent, it leaves aside the role of Brentano and his school in this development. I argue that the Brentanian and Machian moments of Austrian philosophy are jointed. I propose a description of the nature of these joints based on institutional, methodological, and philosophical aspects of these phases, and suggest a diagnosis that supports what I take to be the right carving between these two moments.

Anton Marty (Schwyz, 1847–Prague, 1914) contributed significantly to some of the central themes of Austrian philosophy. This collection contributes to assessing the specificity of his theses in relation with other Austrian philosophers. Although strongly inspired by his master, Franz Brentano, Marty developed his own theory of intentionality, understood as a sui generis relation of similarity. Moreover, he established a comprehensive philosophy of language, or "semasiology", based on descriptive psychology, and in which the utterer’s meaning plays a central role, anticipating Grice’s pragmatic semantics. The present volume, including sixteen articles by scholars in the field of the history of Austrian philosophy and in contemporary philosophy, aims at exposing some of Marty’s most important contributions in philosophy of mind and language, but also in other fields of research such as ontology and metaphysics. As archive material, the volume contains the edition of a correspondence between Marty and Hans Cornelius on similarity. This book will interest scholars in the fields of the history of philosophy in the 19th and 20th centuries, historians of phenomenology, and, more broadly, contemporary theoretical philosophers.

As a Swiss-born Austro-German philosopher who taught in Czernowitz and in Prague, Marty was not only a cosmopolitan thinker; he had also an exceptional knowledge of the history of philosophy and well-informed inclinations towards specific branches of the discipline. He was influenced by Aristotle, the Scholastics, and early modern philosophers (both rationalists and empiricists), and was unsympathetic towards Kant and German Idealism. Yet his main intellectual inspiration came from his master Franz Brentano, whose conception of philosophy as a science—especially his fourth habilitation thesis—made a lasting impression on many of his students, most prominently on Marty and Stumpf. By way of presenting the contributions to this volume, we offer here a general outline of Marty’s life and works, of his Brentanian upbringing, and we sketch some of his central ideas in philosophy—more precisely on mind, language, and their ontology, with regards to the themes discussed in the contributions.

In this study, I discuss two main accounts of character traits within the phenomenological tradition: the so-called Austrian and Bavarian accounts. I present the first account with Franz Brentano’s views on character traits as dispositions (Sects. 9.2 and 9.3) and the second account with Else Voigtländer’s characterology, in which character traits are states of one’s person accessible through self-feelings (Selbstgefühle) (Sect. 9.4). I conclude with an evaluation of these views (Sect. 9.5), stressing their respective problems.

How do we individuate the senses, what exactly do we do when we do so, and why does it matter? In the following article, I propose a general answer to these related questions based on Franz Brentano's views on the senses. After a short survey of various answers offered in the recent literature on the senses, I distinguish between two major ways of answering this question, causally and descriptively, arguing that only answers giving priority to description and to the classification involved in it are on the right track for a general answer to the related questions. In the second part of the article, I argue that Brentano's descriptive psychology is an attractive candidate for such an answer. His descriptive psychology provides a plausible account of the classification involved in description, in particular regarding the classification of sensory qualities. I close the article by briefly explaining how Brentano spells out the priority of descriptive answers over causal ones.

The book discusses Franz Brentano’s impact on Austrian philosophy. It contains both a critical reassessment of Brentano’s place in the development of Austrian philosophy at the turn of the 20th century and a reevaluation of the impact and significance of his philosophy of mind or ‘descriptive psychology’ which was Brentano's most important contribution to contemporary philosophy and to the philosophy in Vienna. In addition, the relation between Brentano, phenomenology, and the Vienna Circle is investigated, together with a related documentation of Brentano's disciple Alfred Kastil. The general part deals with the ongoing discussion of Carnap's "Aufbau" and the philosophy of mind, with a focus on physicalism as discussed by Carnap and Wittgenstein. As usual, two reviews of recent publications in the philosophy of mathematics and research on Otto Neurath's lifework are included as related research contributions. This book is of interest to students, historians, and philosophers dealing with the history of Austrian and German philosophy in the 19th and 20th century.

This volume brings together contributions that explore the philosophy of Franz Brentano. It looks at his work both critically and in the context of contemporary philosophy. For instance, Brentano influenced the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, the theory of objects of Alexius Meinong, the early development of the Gestalt theory, the philosophy of language of Anton Marty, the works of Carl Stumpf in the psychology of tone, and many others. Readers will also learn the contributions of Brentano's work to much debated contemporary issues in philosophy of mind, ontology, and the theory of emotions. The first section deals with Brentano’s conception of the history of philosophy. The next approaches his conception of empirical psychology from an empirical standpoint and in relation with competing views on psychology from the period. The third section discusses Brentano’s later programme of a descriptive psychology or “descriptive phenomenology” and some of his most innovative developments, for instance in the theory of emotions. The final section examines metaphysical issues and applications of his mereology. His reism takes here an important place. The intended readership of this book comprises phenomenologists, analytic philosophers, philosophers of mind and value, as well as metaphysicians. It will appeal to both graduate and undergraduate students, professors, and researchers in philosophy and psychology.

This volume brings together contributions that explore the philosophy of Franz Brentano. It looks at his work both critically and in the context of contemporary philosophy. For instance, Brentano influenced the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, the theory of objects of Alexius Meinong, the early development of the Gestalt theory, the philosophy of language of Anton Marty, the works of Carl Stumpf in the psychology of tone, and many others. Readers will also learn the contributions of Brentano's work to much debated contemporary issues in philosophy of mind, ontology, and the theory of emotions. The first section deals with Brentano’s conception of the history of philosophy. The next approaches his conception of empirical psychology from an empirical standpoint and in relation with competing views on psychology from the period. The third section discusses Brentano’s later programme of a descriptive psychology or “descriptive phenomenology” and some of his most innovative developments, for instance in the theory of emotions. The final section examines metaphysical issues and applications of his mereology. His reism takes here an important place. The intended readership of this book comprises phenomenologists, analytic philosophers, philosophers of mind and value, as well as metaphysicians. It will appeal to both graduate and undergraduate students, professors, and researchers in philosophy and psychology.

Brentano’s philosophy of perception has often been understood as a special chapter of his theory of intentionality. If all and only mental phenomena are constitutively intentional, and if perceptual experience is mental by definition, then all perceptual experiences are intentional experiences. I refer to this conception as the “standard view” of Brentano’s account of perception. Different options are available to support the standard view: a sense-data theory of perception; an adverbialist account; representationalism. I argue that none of them are real options for the standard view. I suggest that Brentano’s conception of optical illusions introduces a presupposition that not only challenges the standard view - the distinction between the subjectively and objectively given - but that also makes his account more palatable for a naive understanding of perception as openness to and awareness of the world.

Sont réunies dans cet ouvrage six études des principaux représentants de ce qu’il est convenu d’appeler « l’école de Brentano ». Les « Souvenirs de Franz Brentano » de Carl Stumpf et Edmund Husserl, décrivent sa vie et son activité philosophique de ses débuts à Würzburg jusqu’à son couronnement à Vienne. Les quatre autres études sont des contributions importantes des étudiants de Brentano à la philosophie. L’étude d’Ehrenfels, « Sur les “qualités de forme” », fondatrice de la psychologie de la forme, est aussi une référence incontournable pour Meinong, dont nous traduisons ici « Sur les objets d’ordre supérieur et leur rapport à la perception interne », où il met en place les idées à la base de sa théorie de l’objet. La cinquième étude, « Fonctions et formations » de Twardowski, propose une analyse originale de la relation entre les actes (fonctions) et leurs contenus (formations). Enfin, « Sur le rapport entre la grammaire et la logique » d’Anton Marty, emblématique de la philosophie du langage brentanienne, vient clore cet ouvrage que nous avons introduit par « Le legs de Brentano », une étude présentant les grandes lignes du programme philosophique de Brentano, la généalogie de son « école » ainsi que quelques-uns des débats suscités par les textes reproduits ici.