Though the divide between reason-based and causal-explanatory approaches in psychiatry and psychopathology is old and deeply rooted, current trends involving multi-factorial explanatory models and evidence-based approaches to interpersonal psychotherapy, show that it has already been implicitly bridged. These trends require a philosophical reconsideration of how reasons can be causes. This paper contributes to that trajectory by arguing that Donald Davidson’s classic paradigm of 1963 is still a valid option.

Historians of philosophy commonly regard as antipodal Bertrand Russell and Edmund Husserl, the founding fathers of analytic philosophy and phenomenology. This paper, however, establishes that during a formative phase in both of their careers Russell and Husserl shared a range of seminal ideas. In particular, the essay adduces clear cases of family resemblance between Husserl’s and Russell’s philosophy during their middle period, which spanned the years 1905 through 1918. The paper thus challenges the received view of Husserl’s relation to early (...) analytic philosophy and this by pursuing two strategies of exposition. One involves comparing Husserl with Russell, and not, as has been the usual practice, with Frege. The other, which follows the first, foregrounds Husserl’s thinking vis-à-vis Russell’s from 1905 onward, a move that constitutes a break with what has become the standard approach of emphasising the relatedness of Husserl of the Logical Investigations (1900/1) to analytic philosophy. Moreover, this approach discloses two chief grounds of relatedness between the middle Husserl and the middle Russell. One is their shared interest in exploring philosophical “fundamentals”. The second consists of common elements shared by their epistemologies and philosophies of mind. (shrink)

Does (affirmative) judgement have a logical dual, negative judgement? Whether there is such a logical dualism was hotly debated at the beginning of the twentieth century. Frege argued in ?Negation? (1918/9) that logic can dispense with negative judgement. Frege's arguments shaped the views of later generations of analytic philosophers, but they will not have convinced such opponents as Brentano or Windelband. These philosophers believed in negative judgement for psychological, not logical, reasons. Reinach's ?On the Theory of Negative Judgement? (1911) spoke (...) to the concerns of these philosophers. While Frege took the distinction between affirmative and negative judgement to be logically redundant, Reinach argued that it is the result of confusing judgement with a different mental act. In this article, I present Reinach's arguments against the ?old logical dualism? in context, analyse them and discuss Reinach's innovative use of the notion of focus in the theory of judgement. Recently, there has been a revival of the view that sentential negation is grounded in a prior mental act of rejection. In the final section, I argue that Reinach's analysis of rejection poses a challenge for the revivalists. (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)

This paper offers a reconstruction of Külpe’s theory of cognitive attitudes from the perspective of contemporary debates about cognitive phenomenology. I argue that Külpe’s view contrasts with analytic mainstream approaches to the same phenomena in at least two respects. First, Külpe claims, cognitive experiences are best described in terms of occurrent cognitive acts or attitudes toward sensory, imagistic or intellectual contents. Second, occurrent cognitive attitudes are intransitively conscious in the sense that they are experienced by, or phenomenally manifest to, the (...) subject. I call the combination of those two claims the conscious cognitive attitudes theory. I suggest that, despite some difficulties, this theory offers a worth-considering alternative to contentual and/or nonphenomenological theories of cognitive phenomena. (shrink)

Ce numéro thématique de la revue Philosophiques est consacré aux Conférences Hugues Leblanc qui ont eu lieu du 1er au 3 avril 2010 au Département de philosophie de l'Université du Québec à Montréal. À cette occasion, le conférencier invité était Kevin Mulligan, titulaire de la chaire de philosophie analytique au Département de philosophie de l'Université de Genève, qui a prononcé trois conférences sous le titre " Wittgenstein vs ses prédécesseurs austro-allemands ", publiées dans ce numéro. Mulligan y développe un de (...) ses thèmes historiques de prédilection, à savoir la dette de Wittgenstein, dans ses travaux sur l'esprit et le langage, à l'endroit de ses prédécesseurs austro-allemands. Comme le veut la formule des conférences Hugues Leblanc, nous avons réuni quelques collègues afin de discuter de quelques-uns des aspects des travaux du conférencier invité et nous avons ajouté, pour compléter ce numéro de Philosophiques, quelques articles originaux portant également sur d'autres aspects des travaux de Mulligan. On peut regrouper l'ensemble de ces contributions sous quatre des grands thèmes exploités par Mulligan en philosophie : le domaine de l'ontologie (incluant les relations, les tropes, les états de choses et les vérifacteurs), le domaine de la philosophie de l'esprit, celui des émotions et des valeurs, et enfin le thème historique de la philosophie austro-allemande, de Bolzano à Wittgenstein en passant par M. Scheler et la phénoménologie de Munich. Faute de pouvoir rendre compte dans cette préface de l'ensemble de ces riches contributions à ce numéro de Philosophiques, je me contenterai de renvoyer le lecteur aux résumés, préparés par les auteurs de ces contributions, qui précèdent chacun des articles. (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)