Timur Uçan

How to think a unique and determinative turn in analytic philosophy of mind? To answer this question this article first presents an attempt to render clear that analytic phenomenology, by contrast with conceptions of phenomenology of the XXth century, beneficially dispenses with several methodological and conceptual assumptions that were assumed to be compulsory, as phenomenological reduction, a notion of synthesis, and a philosophical notion of the a priori. It then presents some eventual difficulties to the achievement of a phenomenological turn within analytic philosophy, which are, the neglect of historicity, abstractionism, the acknowledgement of the place of language in our lives, and solipsism. It finally presents several demands that concern the felicity of contemporary analytic phenomenologies, namely, anti-abstractionism, fallibilism, attention to polyadic relations, and the integration of ecological and decolonial concerns of our cultures.

This paper introduces the Special Issue on 'post-truth'. The contributions to this special issue try between them to strike a right balance. To establish how new ‘post-truthism’ really is – or isn’t. To seek a point of reflection on whatever is new in our current socio-political straits. And to consider seriously how philosophy can help. Whether by wondering about the extent to which reason, or truth, may rightly, if one follows Wittgenstein, be viewed in certain respects as a constraint upon thought or opinion. Or indeed by wondering whether we still have a long way to go in approaching truth at all.

This volume of new essays explores the relationship between the thought of Wittgenstein and the key figures of phenomenology: Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre. It is the first book to provide an overview of how Wittgenstein’s philosophy in its different phases, including his own so-called phenomenological phase, relates to the variety of phenomenological approaches developed in continental Europe. In so doing, the volume seeks to throw light on both sides of the comparison, and to clarify more broadly the relations between analytic and phenomenological philosophy. However, rather than treating the interpretation of either phenomenological philosophy or Wittgenstein as an already settled issue, several chapters in the volume examine and question received views regarding them, and develop alternatives to such views. "Wittgenstein and Phenomenology" will be of interest to scholars working in philosophical methodology and meta-philosophy, the philosophy of mind, philosophy of language and logic, and ethics.

This paper consists in a comparative study of the notions of negative fact in the early works of Russell and Wittgenstein. How to account for our ability to think both that it is false that what is not the case is the case and incorrect to think that it is true that what is not the case is the case? Are the truth and the correctness of such thoughts and of their expressions meant to be insured by the existence of negative facts? Or do we need to think of negative facts differently? In his early works, Russell argues not only that negative facts exist, but also that the philosophical problem they suffice to solve is real. While in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein dissolves the philosophical problem by letting the superfluity and misleadingness of the affirmation of the existence of negative facts be seen as such.

This paper proposes an exploration of relationships and exchanges between the philosophies of Cavell and Kuhn by the study of aspects of the philosophy of Wittgenstein. Although the notions of language games and family resemblances used by Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions have been elaborated by Wittgenstein, Cavell’s reading of Wittgenstein inspired that of Kuhn. I will attempt to show that against this background, Cavell’s conception of the relations of arts, works of arts, and artists, can be relevantly compared to Kuhn’s conception of the relations of sciences, scientific successes, and scientific practitioners. Three ways of elucidating the mutual exchanges between Cavell and Kuhn may be distinguished: One consists in clarifying the ways in which Cavell and Kuhn explicitly mutually inspired each other. Another one consists in clarifying that Cavell’s Wittgenstein inspired Kuhn. And a third one consists in clarifying that Wittgenstein inspired both Kuhn and Cavell and the ways in which he inspired them. This third way is not exclusive of the first two and even contributes to these by rendering explicit their stakes. For at stake is not only the restitution of the truth of an exegetical mediation: that Kuhn’s Wittgenstein cannot be truly understood without accounting for Cavell’s Wittgenstein. Rather the transitive character of the mediation implied by interpretation does not substitute for the intransitive character of a thoroughly philosophical inheritance. It is not the case that because Kuhn was inspired by Cavell who was inspired by Wittgenstein, that Kuhn could be inspired only by Cavell’s Wittgenstein, and not by Wittgenstein. Further, the question is not only philological but philosophical if we take into account the methods and the philosophy of Wittgenstein. To use an image: that a path was indicated by someone to someone else could not have implied that what was indicated by a person to another was oneself; this much was already known to us with the old fable of the moon, the finger and the sage. With this paper I will thus first seek to establish the relevance of the comparison of Cavell’s conception of the relations of arts, works of arts, and artists with Kuhn’s conception of the relations of sciences, scientific successes, and scientific practitioners. Then I will attempt to render explicit the unrestrictive limits of this comparison both to account for the mutual exchanges between Cavell and Kuhn and consider or bring out some symmetries and asymmetries concerning the place of paradigms in sciences and arts.