Henri Wagner

Dans cet essai, nous voudrions contribuer à offrir une compréhension adéquate de l’usage par Quine du prédicat de vérité dans la formulation des lois logiques. L’enjeu est central : puisque la « logique poursuit la vérité dans l’arbre de la grammaire » en généralisant sur des phrases exemplifiant la même structure logique au moyen du prédicat de vérité, commettre un contresens sur ce point, c’est se rendre incapable de comprendre adéquatement la relation interne entre logique et vérité. La méthode adoptée consiste à corriger certaines confusions répandues au sujet de la relation entre logique, vérité et montée sémantique.

This edited collection explores the philosophy of Clarence Irving Lewis through two major concepts that are integral to his conceptual pragmatism: the a priori and the given. The relation between these two elements of knowledge form the core of Lewis’s masterpiece _Mind and the World-Order_. While Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism is directed against any conception of the _a priori_ as constraining the mind and experience, it also emphasizes the inalterability and the unavoidability of the given that remains the same through any interpretation of it by the mind. The essays in this volume probe Lewis’s new account of the relation between the a priori and the given in dialogue with other notable figures in 20 th -century philosophy, including Carnap, Friedman, Goodman, Putnam, Quine, Russell, Sellars, and Sheffer. _C.I. Lewis’s Conceptual Pragmatism_ __represents a focused treatment of a long-neglected figure in 20 th -century American philosophy.

The aim of this article is to restore the radicality of W. V. O. Quine's argument against deviant logics, as found in Philosophy of Logic. The objective of this argument is to expose the emptiness of the concept of deviant logic, i.e., its nonsense. To give an account of this requires taking the full measure of the anti-psychological dimension of Quine's argument. Thus, I try to show that Quine's most radical challenge does not consist in pointing out to the deviant logician that changing logical laws means changing the meaning of logical constant terms.

This edited collection explores the philosophy of Clarence Irving Lewis through two major concepts that are integral to his conceptual pragmatism: the a priori and the given. The relation between these two elements of knowledge form the core of Lewis's masterpiece Mind and the World-Order. While Lewis's conceptual pragmatism is directed against any conception of the a priori as constraining the mind and experience, it also emphasizes the inalterability and the unavoidability of the given that remains the same through any interpretation of it by the mind. The essays in this volume probe Lewis's new account of the relation between the a priori and the given in dialogue with other notable figures in 20th-century philosophy, including Carnap, Friedman, Goodman, Putnam, Quine, Russell, Sellars, and Sheffer. C.I. Lewis: The A Priori and the Given represents a focused treatment of a long-neglected figure in 20th-century American philosophy.

C. I. Lewis’s distinction between the given and the concept is often exposed as the key element of his treatment of the problem of intentionality in that the given and the concept would be necessary and sufficient conditions for objective purport. Such an account nonetheless offers a truncated picture of Lewis’s treatment of the problem of intentionality. The best way to appreciate this verdict is to state the predicament this account is confronted with: If the distinction between the given and the concept apparently leads to a version of the same problem it was designed to address, how could it be the key element contributing to answering the problem of intentionality? Indeed, according to Lewis, the given and the concept are mutually independent so that prima facie nothing guarantees that concepts are applicable to the given. The difficulty is what Lewis calls “the problem of the a priori”: how to guarantee that our concepts can be imposed upon a content of experience which is independent and not yet given? This is a version of the problem that Kant’s Transcendental Deduction addresses: How can categories, as subjective conditions of experience, be objectively valid? A natural question is then: How does Lewis address the problem of the a priori? The main purpose of this essay is then to investigate how C. I. Lewis’s addresses the problem of the a priori and to contribute to restoring an appropriate understanding of Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism.

We translate, for the first time in French, the seminal article by Clarence Irving Lewis (1883-1964), “A pragmatic conception of the a priori” (1923). This translation is accompanied by an introduction reviewing the two key argumentative moments which underly Lewis’s reconception of the a priori and of the categories : (1) The criticism of the traditional conceptions of the a priori and of the way they understand the two constitutive elements of the concept of the a priori, namely necessity and the independence from experience ; (2) The alternative conception that Lewis elaborates in place of these conceptions and that may be labelled a pragmatic and practical conception of the a priori and of the categories. In this way, the cornerstone of the conceptual pragmatism developed and vindicated in his 1929 masterpiece Mind and the World Order is elucidated.

This essay aims to explore the significance of Hilary Putnam’s reflections on the division of linguistic labor by putting them into contrast with those of Gareth Evans. Whereas Putnam’s reflections purport to uncover neglected aspects of the contribution of social environment to the meaning and the reference-fixing of conceptual terms, Evans’s reinterpretation of the division of linguistic labor results in obliterating its antisubjectivist and instrumentalist dimension. The crux of the disagreement between Putnam and Evans on the significance of the division of linguistic labor lies in Evans endorsing, while Putnam rejects, the principle of discrimination—a generalization of what Evans calls “Russell’s principle.”