The most obvious varieties of mental phenomena directed to non- existent objects occur in our experiences of works of art. The task of applying the Meinongian ontology of the non-existent to the working out of a theory of aesthetic phenomena was however carried out not by Meinong by his disciple Stephan Witasek in his Grundzüge der allgemeinen Ästhetik of 1904. Witasek shows in detail how our feelings undergo certain sorts of structural modifications when they are directed towards what does not (...) exist. He draws a distinction between genuine mental phenomena and what he calls `phantasy-material', asserting that `the job of the aesthetic object, whether it is a work of art or a product of nature, is to excite and support the actualisation of phantasy-material in the experiencing subject'. We might think of such phantasy-material as a matter of Ersatz-emotions or emotional `slop'. We could then see Witasek's aesthetics as an elaborate taxonomy of the various different sorts of Ersatz-emotions which the subject allows to be stimulated within himself in his intercourse with works of art, and see works of art themselves as machines for the production of ever more subtle varieties of such phantasy-material in the perceiving subject. (shrink)

What follows is an investigation of the ontology of Franz Brentano with special reference to Brentano's later and superficially somewhat peculiar doctrine to the effect that the substances of the material world are three dimensional places. Taken as a whole, Brentano's philosophy is marked by three, not obviously compatible, trait. In the first place, his work is rooted in the metaphysics of Aristotle, above all in Aristotle's substance/accident ontology and in the Aristotelian theory of categories. In the second place, Brentano (...) embraced a Cartesian epistemology. He saw the source of all knowledge as residing in our direct awareness of our own mental phenomena and in our capacity to grasp evident incompatibilities in the realm of concepts.) Thirdly, he regarded the existence of an external world as at most probable, and denied outright the existence of a world similar to the world that is given in experience. Finally, and in some sense linking together these opposing strands, he propagated an idea of what he called "descriptive psychology", a discipline which would on the one hand yield exact knowledge of the structures and categories of mental life, and on the other hand provide an epistemologically sure foundation for other branches of philosophy. As we shall see, it is this psychological aspect of Brentano's philosophy which leads him to his conception of the substantiality of place. Surprisingly, however, the psychological considerations which underlie Brentano's thinking will be shown to raise a series of questions strictly ontological in nature, questions which are not without a systematic interest of their own. (shrink)

This compelling reevaluation of the relationship between logic and knowledge affirms the key role that the notion of judgement must play in such a review. The commentary repatriates the concept of judgement in the discussion, banished in recent times by the logical positivism of Wittgenstein, Hilbert and Schlick, and the Platonism of Bolzano. The volume commences with the insights of Swedish philosopher Per Martin-Löf, the father of constructive type theory, for whom logic is a demonstrative science in which judgement is (...) a settled feature of the landscape. His paper opens the first of four sections that examine, in turn, historical philosophical assessments of judgement and reason; their place in early modern philosophy; the notion of judgement and logical theory in Wolff, Kant and Neo-Kantians like Windelband; their development in the Husserlian phenomenological paradigm; and the work of Bolzano, Russell and Frege. The papers, whose authors include Per Martin-Löf, Göran Sundholm, Michael Della Rocca and Robin Rollinger, represent a finely judged editorial selection highlighting work on philosophers exercised by the question of whether or not an epistemic notion of judgement has a role to play in logic. The volume will be of profound interest to students and academicians for its application of historical developments in philosophy to the solution of vexatious contemporary issues in the foundation of logic. ​. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

This paper examines the account of ordinary language semantics developed by Franz Brentano and his pupil Anton Marty. Long before the interest in ordinary language in the analytic tradition, Brentanian philosophers were exploring our everyday use of words, as opposed to the scientific use of language. Brentano and Marty were especially interested in the semantics of (common) names in ordinary language. They claimed that these names are vague, and that this is due to the structure of the concepts that constitute (...) their meaning: concepts expressed by such names are themselves vague, based on typicality, and have more or less similar items within their extension. After presenting the views of Brentano and Marty, this paper compares them to later accounts of meaning and concepts, notably Wittgenstein’s theory of family resemblances and the prototype theory of concepts, and emphasizes the originality of the Brentanian position. (shrink)

Some Austro-German philosophers considered thoughts to be mind-dependent entities, that is, psychic products. Yet these authors also attrib- uted “objectivity” to thoughts: distinct thinking subjects can have mental acts with “qualitatively” the same content. Moreover, thoughts, once built, can exist beyond the life of their inventor, “embodied” in “documents”. At the beginning of the 20th century, the notion of “psychic product” was at the centre of the debates on psychologism; a hundred years later, it is rather at the margins of (...) the history of philosophy. While Twardowski’s theory of products has been fre- quently studied, those of Stumpf and the late Husserl have been much less dis- cussed. A presentation of the Austro-German debates about psychic products is all the more important since these discussions might be of direct interest for contemporary philosophy of mind and epistemology. This paper examines the Austro-German notion of psychic products in Stumpf, Twardowski, and the later Husserl. (shrink)

This study focuses on the influence of the work of Carl Stumpf on the thought of Karl Bühler. Our working hypothesis is based on the philosophical program that Bühler attributes to Stumpf and to which several of his works are largely indebted. It is divided into five parts. The first is intended to establish a relationship between Bühler and the School of Brentano to which Stumpf belongs. In the second, I show that Bühler became aware of Brentano's ideas and of (...) Stumpf's program during a stay at the Institute of Psychology of Berlin during the winter semester 1904-1905, and I briefly comment, in the third part, Bühler's references to the work of Stumpf and two of his books in which he defends Stumpf's program against his critics. After having established the solid knowledge that Bühler had of Stumpf's work, I outline, in the fourth part, the main aspects of this program and evaluate, in the fifth, how Bühler uses it in the field of sensory phenomena (gestalt). I conclude this study with several remarks on Stumpf's positive evaluation of the work of Bühler. (shrink)

Brentano distinguishes between intentionality and reference. According to Brentano, all mental acts are intentionally directed toward something. Some mental acts also refer to something, which is the case when their object exists in reality. For Brentano, such acts, besides their intentionality, have a peculiar relation of similarity to their object. However, there is no mention of Brentano’s distinction between intentionality and reference in the literature. Drawing on some lesser known texts, this paper aims both at showing that Brentano makes such (...) a distinction and at underscoring the philosophical significance of his position. (shrink)

C'est avec la grammaire générative que la discussion sur les rapports entre l'analyse linguistique et le rationalisme est devenue particulièrement abondante, en même temps qu'elle devenait une affaire idéologique concernant un large public. En présentant sa Cartesian Linguistics comme un chapitre dans l'histoire du rationalisme, Chomsky a prétendu avec éclat que: il y aurait une tradition rationaliste ayant des idées précises sur le langage, liée aux thèses cartésiennes et à la grammaire générale de Port-Royal; la grammaire générative reprendrait cette tradition (...) et lui apporterait une confirmation définitive. De manière générale, la validité historique des thèses de Chomsky a été contestée avec succès par les historiens: qu'il s'agisse de l'idée d'une linguistique cartésienne, de la prédominance du rationalisme aux dix-septième et dix-huitième siècles, de l'identité de démarche entre Port-Royal et la grammaire générative, voire même de la définition du rationalisme classique. (shrink)

A number of logicians and philosophers have turned their attention in recent years to the problem of developing a logic of interrogatives. Their work has thrown a great deal of light on the formal properties of questions and question-sentences and has led also to interesting innovations in our understanding of the structures of performatives in general and, for example, in the theory of presuppositions. When, however, we examine the attempts of logicians such as Belnap or Åqvist to specify what, precisely, (...) a question is, or what it is to ask or raise a question, then what we are offered is somewhat less illuminating. Two alternative reductionist accounts seem in particular to have gained most favor: questions are identified either as special sorts of statements, or as special sorts of requests. As we hope will become clear in what follows, neither of these accounts is even nearly adequate; and matters are not improved if questions are identified, by force majeure, as combinations of statements and requests. (shrink)

Eräs 1900-luvun kielifilosofian kiinnostavimmista aloitteista oli ehdotus, joka määritteli merkitykset kommunikaation avulla, puhujien intentioiden kautta. Tämä linja kehittyi aikanaan kuuluisaksi Paul Gricen ansiosta. Osoittautuu, että hyvin samantapaisia ajatuksia oli alustavasti esittänyt jo suomalainen Erik Ahlman useissa teksteissään vuodesta 1926 alkaen. Hänen tärkein innoittajansa oli silloin Anton Martyn kieliteoria. Ahlman tekee myös olennaisen erottelun: toisaalta puhujilla on yksityiset intentionsa, toisaalta kielen yleinen normisto säätelee ”pelin sääntöjen lailla” sitä mitä lauseella voi mielekkäästi ilmaista. Ilmeisesti Ahlman on etappi Martyn ja Gricen välillä ja (...) ehkä myös ensimmäinen, joka Suomessa teki varsinaista kielifilosofiaa. (shrink)

Brentano clearly asserts, in his Vienna lectures of 1887–1888, that his descriptive psychology is an a priori or “exact” science. Since he rejects Kant's idea of a synthetic a priori, this means that the descriptive psychologist's laws are analytic. My aim in this paper is to clarify and discuss this view. I examine Brentano's epistemology in the Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint and then its later developments. I conclude with a difficulty inherent in Brentano's psychological approach to a priori knowledge.

Dans les « Prolégomènes à la logique pure » de ses Recherches logiques , Husserl rend hommage aux deux premiers volumes de la Wissenschaftslehre de 1837 de Bernard Bolzano comme un « ouvrage qui […] surpasse de loin tout ce que la littérature mondiale a à offrir en termes de contributions systématiques à la logique ». Cet article porte sur le jeune Husserl comme lecteur du chef-d’oeuvre de Bolzano, visant ainsi à contribuer à une compréhension adéquate de certains aspects des (...) théories de Bolzano et de Husserl et de ce sur quoi portent ces théories. Je me concentrerai sur la question de savoir comment Bolzano en 1837 et Husserl autour de 1900 ont conçu les contenus des actes et états mentaux.Dans les sections 1 et 2, je fais état de la redécouverte de la WL de Bolzano au sein de l’École de Brentano, et en ce qui concerne le problème des représentations sans objets, j’endosse la défense de Bolzano par Husserl contre Twardowski. Dans les sections 3 et 4, je présente un aperçu de la théorie des propositions et des notions , et montre comment Husserl assimile le cadre conceptuel bolzanien dans ses RL. Tandis que Bolzano considère les propositions et les notions comme étant des objets abstraits sui generis, le jeune Husserl développe une conception des notions et des propositions en termes d’espèces. J’explique cette conception dans la section 5 et je la défends contre le dernier Husserl. La discussion la plus extensive et la plus détaillée d’une seule et unique thèse de la philosophie de la logique de Bolzano qu’on puisse trouver dans les livres et les articles publiés par Husserl de son vivant se trouve dans le dernier chapitre de ses RL. Le sujet de discussion, et la dernière section de cet article, est une affirmation courageuse, pour ne pas dire outrageuse de Bolzano qui, du moins pris au pied de la lettre, contredit tout simplement ce que la plupart des philosophes ont tenu pour acquis depuis Aristote. Les questions, soutient Bolzano, sont une espèce particulière de propositions, et donc leur vérité est susceptible d’être évaluée.In the “Prolegomena to Pure Logic” of his Logical Investigations Husserl praised the first two volumes of Bernard Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre of 1837 as “a work which … far surpasses everything that world-literature has to offer in the way of systematic contributions to logic”. This paper is about the early Husserl as a reader of Bolzano’s masterpiece, hoping thereby to contribute to a proper understanding of certain aspects of Bolzano’s and Husserl’s theories and of what those theories are about. I shall concentrate on the question how Bolzano in 1837 and Husserl around 1900 conceive of the contents of mental acts and states.In sections 1-2 I report on the rediscovery of Bolzano’s WL in the school of Brentano, and as regards the issue of objectless presentations, I endorse Husserl’s defence of Bolzano against Twardowski. In sections 3-4 I present an outline of Bolzano’s theory of propositions and notions and go on to show how Husserl assimilates the Bolzanian framework in his LI. While Bolzano takes propositions and notions to be sui generis abstract objects, the early Husserl develops a species conception of notions and proposition. I explain this view in section 5 and defend it against Husserl’s later self. The most extensive and most thorough discussion of a single contention in Bolzano’s philosophy of logic that can be found in any of Husserl’s books and articles published during his lifetime is contained in the last chapter of his LI. The topic of this discussion, and of the final section of this paper, is a courageous if not outrageous Bolzanian contention : questions, he claims, are a special kind of propositions and hence truth-evaluable. (shrink)

Kotarbiński is one of the leading figures in the Lvov-Warsaw school of Polish philosophy. We summarize the development of Kotarbiński’s thought from his early nominalism and ‘pansomatistic reism’ to the later doctrine of ‘temporal phases’. We show that the surface clarity and simplicity of Kotarbiński’s writings mask a number of profound philosophical difficulties, connected above all with the problem of giving an adequate account of the truth of contingent (tensed) predications. The paper will examine in particular the attempts to resolve (...) these difficulties on the part of Leśniewski. It will continue with an account of the relations of Kotarbińskian reism to the ontology of things or entia realia defended by the later Brentano. Kotarbiński’s identification of Brentano as a precursor of reism is, it will be suggested, at least questionable, and the paper will conclude with a more careful attempt to situate the Brentanian and Kotarbińskian ontologies within the spectrum of competing ontological views. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore one particular dimension of Brentano’s legacy, namely, his theory of mental analysis. This theory has received much less attention in recent literature than the intentionality thesis or the theory of inner perception. However, I argue that it provides us with substantive resources in order to conceptualize the unity of intentionality and phenomenality. My proposal is to think of the connection between intentionality and phenomenality as a certain combination of part/whole relations rather than as a supervenience (...) or identity relation. To begin, I discuss some reasons for being a (neo-)Brentanian about the mind and briefly introduce the main characteristics of Brentano’s internalist description program. Then, I turn to the current “inseparatist” way of dealing with intentionality and phenomenality, focusing on the demand for unity coming from advocates of phenomenal intentionality. I suggest that the unity of the mind may be put in a new light if we put aside metaphysical–epistemological questions, go back to Brentano’s description program, and endorse his thesis that the mental is something unified in which various parts must be distinguished. In the last section, I draw some lessons from this approach, holding that, for any representational content R, R is (in Brentano’s terms) an abstractive or “distinctional” part of the relevant state and that, for any qualitative aspect Q, Q is an abstractive or “distinctional” part of the relevant representational content R. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Les trois conférences qui suivent continuent l’exploration et l’évaluation des rapports complexes entre les descriptions de l’esprit et du langage données par Wittgenstein et celles données par ses prédécesseurs austro-allemands, les héritiers de Brentano et de Bolzano. La première considère le rapport entre quelques distinctions et thèses qui se trouvent dans le Tractatus et quelques distinctions et thèses similaires esquissées auparavant par le phénoménologue réaliste Max Scheler. La deuxième conférence est consacrée à l’examen des descriptions des émotions, du vouloir dire, (...) du vouloir, du vouloir faire et du souvenir données par Wittgenstein et par les premiers phénoménologues — des descriptions dont les sources sont explicitées dans la première conférence. Enfin, dans la troisième conférence, la description du langage et la philosophie de la signification dans la philosophie austro-allemande sont analysées.The three lectures which follow continue the exploration and evaluation of the complex relations between the descriptions of language and the mind given by Wittgenstein and those given by his Austro-German predecessors, the heirs of Bolzano and Brentano. The first lecture considers the relation between some distinctions and theses to be found in the Tractatus and similar distinctions and theses set out earlier by the realist phenomenologist Max Scheler. The second lecture is devoted to an examination of the descriptions of emotions, meaning something, willing, intending and remembering given by Wittgenstein and the first phenomenologists ; the descriptions discussed in this lecture build on ideas set out in the first lecture. The third and last lecture analyses the description of language and the philosophy of meaning in Austro-German philosophy. (shrink)

Summary We move words and words move us. To describe and explain how and why this happens, the present article focuses on Prague traditions, both on the philosophical and linguistic elements. The semantic and syntactic approach is summarized, as developed by Anton Marty, belonging to the Brentano school, and by Vilém Mathesius, founder of the Prague Linguistic Circle, as well as by Jan Firbas, who developed the functional sentence perspective (FSP) into the theory of communicative dynamism (CD). The four Principles (...) of FSP and the four factors of CD are highlighted, together with the related criticism that stems from a systematic work of corpus annotation, a true test procedure for any theory concerned with word order, the interplay between lexicon and morphology, rhythm, intonation and their effects on the addressee’s psychic and emotive processes and life. (shrink)

This paper studies emotional inferencing triggered by emotion terms using Pragma-Dialectics and the Argumentum Model of Topics. The corpus, in French, is an excerpt of a video-recorded testimony in which a middle school teacher evokes her experience of being in class the day after the Charlie Hebdo attack, thus presenting a case of argumentation in context. The analysis focuses on the argumentative structure and on the rhetorical strategies that trigger emotional inferencing. The emotional inferencing derives from a Locus of Ontological (...) Implication, which links a situation and an emotion, while the culture-bound elements tend to be part of the endoxon. (shrink)

Conceptualism, like any other philosophical doctrine of comparable scope, has both ontological and epistemological aspects. Ontologically, however, conceptualism does not differ significantly from certain forms of nominalism. 1 At its root lies an epistemological thesis: All objects of sensory intuition are localized in space and time. 2 In this paper, I wish to explore some of the consequences of this thesis.

This paper compares the theories of Hervaeus Natalis and Franz Brentano on intentionality. It considers three questions: the status of the intentional object, the question of the definition of the intentional relation, and the identification of the mark of the mental. Throughout the study, the analysis of Aristotle’s works serves as a tertium comparationis between the two authors. Although the comparison reveals some similar approaches to the matter, it shows distinct strategies regarding the distinction between what is mental and what (...) is not. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 95, Issue 2, pp 245 - 264 In the last few decades, the interest in Brentano’s philosophical psychology, especially in his theory of judgment, has been steadily growing. What, however, has remained relatively unexplored are the modifications that have been introduced over the years into this theory by Brentano himself and by his student Anton Marty. These amendments constitute the focus of the present paper. As will be argued, only by making such changes can the weaknesses of (...) the first formulation of the theory be overcome. Moreover, as the final section of the paper attempts to show, these modifications may even trigger further steps towards what we might label a new Brentanian theory of judgment. (shrink)

“Austrian” (or “Austro-German”) philosophy of language is characterized, among other things, by the following two features: (1) Problems of language are considered within the broader framework of an intentionality-based philosophy of mind—or, to put it more precisely, questions of meaning are considered as involving a quite articulated theory of intentions; (2) several aspects of such an account are explicitly presented as inspired by or somehow already at work in the Medieval Scholastic tradition. In this study we follow the track indicated (...) by these two features and use some “Austrian” reflections on the articulation between meanings and intentions as a “heuristic filter”, as it were, to shed a new and different light on some Medieval debates in philosophy of language on the relationship between significare and intendere. It will be roughly divided into three parts. We begin by singling out some distinctive tenets of the “Austrian” strategy aimed at describing the relationship between meaning and intentions (section I), and then turn to various Medieval texts from the 13th and 14th century dealing with the two related notions of significatio and intentio (section II). The upshot of our investigation is to show how, for both “Austrian” and Medieval philosophers of language (and beyond their differences), a proper understanding of linguistic meaning—in the twofold sense of words or sentences having a lexical content and utterances having a determinate pragmatic function—presupposes an account of what one could call the “agentive intentionality”, i.e. the complex intentionality proper to practical goal-directed human behaviours. Some final remarks about outcomes, meaning, scope and perspectives opened by the method applied will conclude the study (section III). (shrink)

“Austrian” philosophy of language is characterized, among other things, by the following two features: Problems of language are considered within the broader framework of an intentionality-based philosophy of mind—or, to put it more precisely, questions of meaning are considered as involving a quite articulated theory of intentions; several aspects of such an account are explicitly presented as inspired by or somehow already at work in the Medieval Scholastic tradition. In this study we follow the track indicated by these two features (...) and use some “Austrian” reflections on the articulation between meanings and intentions as a “heuristic filter”, as it were, to shed a new and different light on some Medieval debates in philosophy of language on the relationship between significare and intendere. It will be roughly divided into three parts. We begin by singling out some distinctive tenets of the “Austrian” strategy aimed at describing the relationship between meaning and intentions , and then turn to various Medieval texts from the 13th and 14th century dealing with the two related notions of significatio and intentio . The upshot of our investigation is to show how, for both “Austrian” and Medieval philosophers of language , a proper understanding of linguistic meaning—in the twofold sense of words or sentences having a lexical content and utterances having a determinate pragmatic function—presupposes an account of what one could call the “agentive intentionality”, i.e. the complex intentionality proper to practical goal-directed human behaviours. Some final remarks about outcomes, meaning, scope and perspectives opened by the method applied will conclude the study. (shrink)

Dans la réception de Bolzano, et probablement depuis les Prolégomènes de Husserl, on insiste généralement sur le fait que la Théorie de la science (1837) de Bolzano vise à développer une théorie des représentations et des propositions qui fait de celles-ci des entités logiques de plein droit, indépendantes des actes de pensée, et seules porteuses des propriétés dont traite la logique (vérité, fausseté, objectualité, etc.) L’importance accordée à cette position, souvent appelée réalisme logique (Morscher), tend toutefois à masquer d’autres aspects (...) de l’ouvrage de Bolzano qui, sans contredire ce réalisme logique, montrent toutefois que la perspective développée par le philosophe de Prague visait aussi à rendre compte de la relation intentionnelle entre l’agent et ces entités logiques. Dans le présent article, je me penche sur les moyens mis en branle par Bolzano pour élucider cette relation. Dans un premier temps, j’examine le cas des représentations sans objet en soulignant le caractère intentionnel de certaines de leurs caractérisations. Dans un deuxième temps, je me penche sur le traitement réservé au jugement en relation à la proposition en soi. Dans la dernière partie de l’article, j’expose les grandes lignes de sa conception des intentions de signification sous-jacente à sa sémiotique. Pris comme un tout, ces trois cas montrent que le thème de l’intentionnalité n’est pas un épiphénomène dans la Théorie de la science, comme on pourrait le croire en partant de l’interprétation de Bolzano par Husserl, mais bien une partie constituante de l’entreprise du philosophe de Prague. (shrink)

Logical realism is undoubtedly one of the central features which characterize many of the major works in Austrian philosophy from Bolzano to Husserl. Although this remark is true, as we believe, one must not forget the fact that some of the key concepts of Austrian philosophy are rooted in theories that reject realist principles. As an example, take the concept of state of affairs in Austrian philosophy, and more specifically, Franz Brentano's conception of judgement contents. By showing the motives which (...) led Brentano to introduce these judgement contents and by analyzing the arguments given to support his thesis, the present article aims to contrast the initial remark by illustrating, by means of the case of state of affairs, how the interrelations between realist and nominalist positions have shaped the development of Austrian philosophy. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that it is the explicativecharacter of Tarski's semantic definition of truth given in his study of 1933 that allows forconsideration of a philosophical background of this definition in the proper sense. Given the explicativecharacter of this definition it is argued that the philosophical tradition that should be taken intoaccount with regard to this philosophical background is the tradition of the Lvov-Warsaw Schoolin its connections with the School of Brentano. As an example of (...) the explanatory power ofconsidering this tradition as far as Tarski's philosophical choices are concerned I use here thenotion of sentence-inscription, i.e., the notion of that entity of which truth is predicated inthe definition in question. One of the consequences of these statements is that philosophicaldiscussions concerning the semantic definition of truth can be regarded from two points ofview. On the one hand, they may take the perspective of its explicational function, i.e., theperspective of its philosophical background. On the other hand, they might consider the philosophicalconsequences of the definition with respect to the goal of the explication, i.e., they may considerits philosophical content independently of its historical background. (shrink)

Cet article a pour but de montrer comment le recours au concept de sphère, issu des travaux de la psychologie expérimentale de l’école de Würzburg, révèle une évolution remarquable du traitement de la signification par Karl Bühler dans ses recherches en psychologie puis en théorie du langage. En 1907, le concept de sphère était introduit comme le corrélat de la visée dans le but de remettre en cause la définition de la signification comme association de représentations . Mais, si le (...) concept de visée apparaît alors comme le levier de l’argumentation, il ne constitue pas l’essence de la signification – laquelle se réalise dans les trois fonctions du modèle instrumental du langage. Or, le retour du concept de sphère au rang des « auxiliaires matériels » du champ symbolique de la représentation dans la Théorie du langage, contribue à réévaluer les conditions de compréhension et de réalisation de la signification, en introduisant dans la fonction de représentation même une prise en compte des choses du monde sous la forme d’un savoir factuel. (shrink)

Cet article a pour but de montrer comment le recours au concept de sphère, issu des travaux de la psychologie expérimentale de l’école de Würzburg, révèle une évolution remarquable du traitement de la signification (Bedeutung) par Karl Bühler dans ses recherches en psychologie puis en théorie du langage. En 1907, le concept de sphère était introduit comme le corrélat de la visée (meinen) dans le but de remettre en cause la définition de la signification comme association de représentations (Vorstellungen). Mais, (...) si le concept de visée apparaît alors comme le levier de l’argumentation, il ne constitue pas l’essence de la signification – laquelle se réalise dans les trois fonctions du modèle instrumental du langage. Or, le retour du concept de sphère au rang des « auxiliaires matériels » du champ symbolique de la représentation (Darstellung) dans la Théorie du langage, contribue à réévaluer les conditions de compréhension et de réalisation de la signification, en introduisant dans la fonction de représentation même une prise en compte des choses du monde sous la forme d’un savoir factuel. (shrink)

Since language is the collective focus of this series, the present paper follows both historiographical and theoretical perspectives. The first deals with Prague as a Middle-European town, with a German and Czech University from 1882, where a philosopher, Anton Marty, from the Brentano school, focuses on language and semasiology in the framework of a psychology from an empirical standpoint. He cites Christian von Ehrenfels, and underscores the relational approach to psychic dynamism but, crucially, he emphasises the oscillations between linguistic “sketches” (...) and semantic comprehension. Sprache ist eine Skizze, listeners are lead through suggestions, Nebenvorstellungen, to grasp meanings, Bedeutungen which do not coincide with the mere addition of explicit, variable components. Simultaneously, Vilém Mathesius, forthcoming founder (1926) of the Prague Linguistic Circle, dealing with English language and literature, enquires into the spontaneous ability of listeners to grasp, infer, integrate ellipsis in a sentence, consisting of a missing word, in omissione vocabuli, quod non dictum tamen cogitatur. Language enquiries will then require psychology, will aim to explain inferences, to infer implicit from explicit. The effort to obtain the whole, via super- or even subsummativity processes, has been a special topic for Gestalt psychology. Context being the proper habitat for both language and mind, we follow the fil rouge which leads directly to Gestalt contributions and further developments, e.g., inferential semantics and pragmatics. In conversation, as in architecture, less is more. We strive to prove this. (shrink)