Hamid Taieb

Carl Stumpf, in his Spinozastudien, presents the Aristotelico-Scholastic thesis of the “parallelism” between mental acts and contents, i.e., the thesis that “the essential differences and divisions of the acts run in parallel to those of the contents, since they are determined in their specificity by the latter.” In his paper, Stumpf also distinguishes between passive and active accounts of intellection in the history of philosophy. Now, Stumpf, in his own theory of intentionality, has rather an active account of intellection: he holds that the contents of abstract presentations and judgments are “products” of these acts. Stumpf does not explicitly give a historical precedent for his position. In this note, I would like to discuss Stumpf’s historical narrative concerning the active accounts of intellection, as well as to complete this narrative with information about some prior philosophical positions resembling Stumpf’s own views on psychic products.

This paper aims to present and evaluate the (unduly neglected) account of the essence of colours developed by the early phenomenologist Adolf Reinach. Reinach claims that colours, as regards their nature or essence, are physical entities. He is opposed to the idea that colours are “subjective” or “psychic”. It might be the case that the colours we see in the world do not exist but are mere appearances. However, their non-existence would not entail any change in their essence: that is, they would not be psychic, but would just be non-existent physical entities. In Reinach’s view, we can be “ontic-neutral essentialists” about colours: we can remain neutral as to the existence of colours but still make claims about their essence. In the first part of the paper, I present Reinach’s take on the essence of colours. In the second part, I address his existential neutrality about colours; in particular, I argue that Reinach’s ontic-neutral essentialism brings to the fore a seldom noted but crucial distinction to be made in the discussion of colours, that between empirical and metaphysical non-realism about colours.

This paper focuses on a crucial question of social ontology addressed by Gerda Walther, namely, whether a social community has its own reality over and above that of its members and its cultural “products”, such as language, religion, infrastructure, and works of art. Walther has a nuanced answer which combines elements of phenomenology and Marxism. She praises Marxists for drawing our attention to the “community as such”, taken as an object distinct from its members and their relations. She maintains the thesis, defended according to her by “certain socialists and Hegelians” (which presumably includes Marxists), that communities have their own reality. However, she develops it one step further, arguing that these social structures are “higher-order” unitary realities that exist over and above their members and cultural products. In addition, she enriches this realist position from a phenomenological point of view by identifying with precision the kinds of mental act on which communities are founded, namely, “unifications” and “we-experiences”. As such, Walther’s theory is an early encounter between phenomenology and Marxism, prior to Trần Đức Thảo and Jean-Paul Sartre, and thus deserves much more attention than it has received in the history of philosophy.

The aim of my article is to present the critique by Brentanians – more precisely, by Brentano himself and his students Stumpf and Marty – of the thesis that colours are properties that are relational to a perceiver. For Brentanians, colours are monadic physical properties. Brentanians, I will show, think that colours do not exhibit a relationality to perception when we experience them, and that the concepts of them do not contain any mark representing a relation to perception; this phenomenological and logical non-relationality, they think, allows them to hold that colours are not relational by nature. Despite arguing that colours are monadic and physical, Brentanians also hold that colours do not exist in reality, and in their opinion these two theses are perfectly compatible. I will further show that although Brentanians (especially Marty) claim that colours are monadic, they nonetheless allow for a loose relationality of colours to perception which is, however, identical to that of any other physical property. I will conclude by discussing some interesting consequences of the Brentanian theory for contemporary debates about colours.

This paper aims to address a problem faced by any philosopher who treats universals as intentional objects: in defending this thesis, aren't they committed to the view that each of us thinks an individuated universal, since each of us, when thinking of a universal, must have our own intentional object? This problem, which is mentioned by Brentano at the turn of the twentieth century, originated in the Middle Ages in debates initiated by Averroes about the nature of the intellect. It shows up in the later Aquinas, due to his theory of the verbum, which might be interpreted as a sort of intentional object, but it is solved without too much difficulty. It is later found in Hervaeus Natalis, who does accept intentional objects; in contrast to Aquinas, it is not clear that Hervaeus has a good solution to the problem. After first presenting the problem, this paper then turns to its medieval origins by analyzing its occurrence in Aquinas's criticism of Averroes. It then explains why Hervaeus has more difficulties than Aquinas in solving the problem. It concludes with a systematic reflection on the various possible solutions to the problem.

This paper aims to present and evaluate Brentano’s account of the individuation of mental acts. In his early works, Brentano assimilated mental acts to tropes; however, he encountered difficulties in explaining their individuation, since the usual solutions for the individuation of tropes were not readily applicable to his theory of mental acts. In a later period, Brentano introduced into his psychology what he called the “soul”, and this allowed him to explain the individuation of mental acts. Finally, after his “reistic” turn, he excluded mental acts from his ontology, for he rejected abstracta of any kind, including abstract particulars, and admitted only things, or res (in Latin), that is, concrete particulars; in his late philosophy, there are no “thinkings”, but only “thinkers”. However, he still needed to explain what individuates different thinkers, and this was again the soul. In the conclusion, the paper critically compares the different theoretical options considered by Brentano.

This paper presents the defense by the medieval philosopher Peter Auriol of the thesis that sounds and odors have no real, mind-independent being, but exist only as mental correlates of acts of hearing and smelling. Auriol does not see this as an idiosyncratic position, as he claims to be following not only Aristotle, but also Averroes on the issue. Since it is often thought that non-realism about sensible qualities was “inconceivable” for medieval authors and was made possible only by the early modern scientific revolution led by Galileo, it is crucial to bring Auriol’s position to the fore. Auriol’s view, and its alleged roots in Arabic philosophy, invites us to reassess our standard narrative in the history of philosophy and science.

Brentano’s account of intentionality has often been traced back to its scholastic sources. This is justified by his claim that objects of thought have a specific mode of being—namely, “intentional inexistence” —and that mental acts have an “intentional relation” to these objects. These technical terms in Brentano do indeed recall the medieval notions of esse intentionale, which is a mode of being, and of intentio, which is a “tending towards” of mental acts. However, within the lexical family of intentio there is another distinction that plays an important role in medieval philosophy—namely, the distinction between first and second intentions, which are, roughly speaking, concepts of things and concepts of concepts respectively. What is less well-known is that Brentano explicitly borrowed this distinction as well, and used it in his account of intentionality. This paper explores this little-known chapter in the scholastic-Austrian history of intentionality by evaluating both the historical accuracy and the philosophical significance of Brentano’s borrowing of the scholastic distinction between first and second intentions.

This paper aims to reassess a notion in the works of the later Husserl that is both historically important and philosophically insightful, but remains understudied, namely, that of type. In opposition to a standard reading which treats Husserl’s type presentations as pre-conceptual habits, this paper argues that these representations are a specific kind of concept. More precisely, it shows that Husserl’s account of type presentations is akin to the contemporary prototype theory of concepts. This is historically important, since the predecessor of the prototype theory is usually said to be Wittgenstein. From a philosophical standpoint, the paper shows that Husserl has an innovative account of the connection between type concepts and their extension. Contrary to the standard view of extensions as sets and thus sharp entities, Husserl develops a correlationalist theory of concepts, according to which, for the specific characteristics in the structure of a concept, there are corresponding characteristics in the arrangement of its members, and vice versa. According to this theory, while sharp concepts lead to sharp extensions, vague concepts such as (proto)type concepts lead to vague extensions. The paper presents this understanding of Husserl in detail and explains its philosophical significance.

Husserl often pays tribute to his teacher Brentano for having opened the path towards phenomenology. However, the praise is systematically followed by a criticism: Brentano failed to draw all the consequences from his ground-breaking rediscovery of intentionality, and remained stuck in inadequate psychological research. For Husserl, there are three ways to study mental acts: empirical, eidetic, and transcendental. What is objected to Brentano is his adherence to empirical psychology. Husserl himself focuses on the second and third levels. It is clear that Brentano never entered into transcendental considerations. However, it seems also clear that he was doing eidetic-like research in psychology in a way similar to Husserl. In the paper, I first present Husserl’s criticism of empirical and, thus, Brentanian psychology. I then turn to Brentano’s and the psychology of his heirs and try to show that Husserl’s criticism is not quite correct. In the course of the discussion, I treat the crucial epistemological question of eidetic vs empirical knowledge, both in Husserl and in Brentano.

This paper presents and evaluates the early Husserl’s account of typicality. In the Logical Investigations, Husserl holds that the meaning of ordinary language (common) names is sensitive to typicality: this meaning depends on typical examples which vary in different contexts and are more or less similar to one another. This seems to entail that meanings, which according to Husserl are concepts, are “fluctuating” (schwankend) and vague. Prima facie, such a claim contravenes his theory of ideal meanings, or concepts, which are “fixed” (fest) and sharp. However, Husserl wants to save this theory. He claims that the fluctuation and vagueness in question are not to be found in the meaning itself, or the concept, but rather derive from the act of meaning. Thus, he apparently manages to make room for typicality in ordinary language while accepting only fixed and sharp meanings. After presenting Husserl’s theory, I evaluate it and ask whether he will still be committed, despite his own claims, to accepting prototype concepts to account for typicality in ordinary language.

This paper addresses the issue of how to best account for the diversity of our (synchronic) mental activities. The discussion starts with Mark Textor’s mental monism. According to mental monism, our mental life is constituted by just one simple mental act, in which different sub-acts can be conceptually distinguished. Textor grounds this view in the work of the early Brentano and contrasts it with the theory of the later Brentano, who introduces a mental substance into his philosophy. According to Textor, Brentano needs a substance because he is unable to explain how mental monism can account for the separability of our mental activities, e.g. the fact that I can stop hearing F while still seeing blue. Textor argues, however, that mental monism can solve this problem. I address two issues regarding Textor’s view. First, I challenge his interpretation of Brentano by arguing that the early Brentano imports ontological complexity into our mental life; I defend Brentano’s view against possible criticisms, and I address some objections to mental monism. Second, I oppose Textor’s narrative about the mental substance. I argue that Brentano needs a substance not to explain separability, but rather to individuate our mental acts. I still argue, however, that Brentano’s earlier view (understood in my sense) is better than the substance account for dividing the mind.

My paper aims at presenting Peter Auriol’s theory of cognition. Auriol holds that cognition is “something which makes an object appear to someone.” This claim, for Auriol, is meant to be indeterminate, as he explicitly says that the “something” in question can refer to any type of being. However, when he states how cognition is “implemented” in cognizers, Auriol specifies what this “something” is: for God, it is simply the deity itself; for creatures, cognition is described as something “absolute,” i.e. non-relational, more precisely a complex entity made up of a cognitive power and a “likeness.” However, one also finds Auriol saying that created cognition, as a “likeness,” is relative. Yet, when Auriol talks of created cognition as something relative, he does not make an ontological claim: he means that one cannot think of cognition without thinking of it as having a relation to an object. In brief, created cognition, for Auriol, is ontologically absolute, but it is always represented together with a relation.

Since the first discussion of Brentano’s relation to (and account of) medieval philosophy by Spiegelberg in 1936, a fair amount of studies have been dedicated to the topic. And if those studies focused on some systematic issue at all, the beloved topic of intentionality clearly occupied a hegemonic position in the scholarly landscape . The following pages consider the question from the point of view of ontology, and in a twofold perspective: What did Brentano know about medieval ontology and what kind of access did he have to that material (section 1)? What kind of use did Brentano make of medieval material in his own philosophy, and with what kind of results (section 2)?

Dans quelle mesure l'outillage conceptuel de Brentano peut rendre compte des processus psychiques dont la découverte est usuellement attribuée à Freud ? Il y a, entre le maître Brentano et l'élève Freud, une opposition fondamentale : le premier rejette l'existence de processus psychiques inconscients, tandis que le second les érige en principe majeur d'explication de la vie psychique. Après le rappel des arguments de Freud en faveur de l'inconscient, deux concepts brentaniens négligés, ceux d'association et de disposition, sont présentés, qui permettent d'expliquer certains phénomènes dont l'étude est traditionnellement réservée à la psychanalyse.

In this paper, I present the way Duns Scotus’ philosophy is used in the contemporary discussions on properties. I point out that both realists about universals and trope theorists invoke Scotus to defend their positions. Moreover, I show that they do it by taking the same concept, formal distinction, to apply it to the same problem: the distinction between the qualitative and the individuating features of properties. After presenting the contemporary uses of Scotus, I turn to his own theory of natures and I ask to what extent he may be a realist about universals or a defender of the trope view. I do not provide a firm answer to this question, but I show that much depends on Scotus’ account of the formal distinction, and on his possible change of mind with respect to this notion.

Cet article porte sur la notion de description (Beschreibung) chez Marty. L’article débute par l’étude de la distinction entre psychologie descriptive et génétique chez Brentano, non seulement dans les cours donnés à Vienne dès 1887, mais également dans la Psychologie du point de vue empirique. L’article se concentre ensuite sur la reprise martyienne de cette distinction. Si Marty, fidèle à la pensée de son maître, en reprend les principales conclusions dans ses propres travaux de psychologie, il étend de manière originale la distinction entre recherches descriptives et génétiques à la philosophie du langage, notamment à la « sémasiologie » (Semasiologie) ou « théorie de la signification » (Bedeutungslehre). L’article se clôt sur une discussion des critiques adressées par Husserl à la philosophie du langage de Marty.

Aristotle, in Chapter 7 of his Categories, classifies habits and dispositions, as well as knowledge, among relatives. However, in Chapter 8 of the Categories, he affirms that habits, including knowledge, and dispositions, including unstable knowledge, are qualities. Thus, habits and dispositions in general, and knowledge in particular, seem to be subject to a ‘dual categorization’. At the end of Chapter 8 of the treatise, the issue of the dual categorization is explicitly raised. How can one and the same thing be a quality and a relative? Aristotle gives two distinct solutions to this problem. Both have been criticized by some modern commentators : these solutions would amount to a rejection of the basic principles of the categorial system and, as such, to a sort of philosophical suicide. However, Aristotle’s early commentators, notably the Greek Neoplatonists and Boethius, made attempts to render both solutions plausible and compatible with the rest of the doctrine. Their attempts are not only of exegetical interest, they also contain some significant philosophical analyses concerning the categories. In what follows, I will present the abovementioned problem of dual categorization in Aristotle and the two solutions offered to it in Categories, 8, 11a20-38. I will then turn to the early reception of this text, and focus on the way the Greek Neoplatonists and Boethius tried to make Aristotle’s solutions more plausible. Throughout, I will try to establish in what sense habits and dispositions in general, and knowledge in particular, are relative. I will conclude with some remarks on the later reception of Categories, 8, 11a20-38 and on the problem of the ontological status of mental acts and states.

This paper aims to contribute to the study of the proximities between phenomenology and analytic philosophy. Starting with some remarks on Husserl’s theory of the Lebenswelt and the echoes it finds among analytic philosophers partisans of the common sense, the paper focuses on some specific constituents of the Lebenswelt, namely «secondary qualities». More precisely, the paper points out the parallels between the theories of secondary qualities of Husserl and of P. F. Strawson, a major defender of the common sense. Both Strawson and Husserl attribute an «objectivity», in the sense of «intersubjectivity», to secondary qualities. Besides, both these authors consider that the perception of primary qualities requires the perception of secondary qualities. This leads Strawson and Husserl to ask to what extent physics itself may epistemologically depend on the perception of secondary qualities.