Nous nous attribuons naturellement une vie mentale, au sens minimal où il nous semble intuitivement que quelque chose se passe dans notre esprit. Mais que veut dire « quelque chose se passe dans notre esprit »?La formule est singulièrement obscure, et les philosophes y consacrent depuis toujours de patientes recherches. Au sens le plus naturel et immédiat, elle semble signifier quelque chose de ce...

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Challenging, with several powerful arguments, some of our deepest beliefs about rationality, morality, and personal identity, Parfit claims that we have a false view about our own nature. It is often rational to act against our own best interersts, he argues, and most of us have moral views that are self-defeating. We often act wrongly, although we know there will be no one with serious grounds for complaint, and when we consider future generations it is very hard to avoid conclusions (...) that most of us will find very disturbing. (shrink)

In _On The Soul_ (425a-b), Aristotle drew a distinction between those qualities that are perceptible only via a single sense and those that are perceptible by more than one. The latter qualities he called.

_From one of the most revered scholars of religion, an incisive explanation of how the word “God” functions in the world’s great faiths_ Despite the recent ferocious public debate about belief, the concept most central to the discussion—God—frequently remains vaguely and obscurely described. Are those engaged in these arguments even talking about the same thing? In a wide-ranging response to this confusion, esteemed scholar David Bentley Hart pursues a clarification of how the word “God” functions in the world’s great theistic (...) faiths. Ranging broadly across Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Vedantic and Bhaktic Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism, Hart explores how these great intellectual traditions treat humanity’s knowledge of the divine mysteries. Constructing his argument around three principal metaphysical “moments”—being, consciousness, and bliss—the author demonstrates an essential continuity between our fundamental experience of reality and the ultimate reality to which that experience inevitably points. Thoroughly dismissing such blatant misconceptions as the deists' concept of God, as well as the fundamentalist view of the Bible as an objective historical record, Hart provides a welcome antidote to simplistic manifestoes. In doing so, he plumbs the depths of humanity’s experience of the world as powerful evidence for the reality of God and captures the beauty and poetry of traditional reflection upon the divine. (shrink)

This study is a commentary on Carl Stumpf's evaluation of Husserl's phenomenology as presented in the Logical Investigations and the first book of Ideas. I first examine Stumpf's reception of the version of phenomenology that Husserl presented in the Logical Investigations and I then look at §§ 85-86 of Ideas I, in which Husserl seeks to demarcate his "pure" phenomenology from that of Stumpf. In the third section, I analyze the criticism that Stumpf, in § 13 of his book Erkenntnislehre, (...) directs toward to the new version of phenomenology that Husserl develops in Ideas I, and in the fourth, I summarize the Spinozist interpretation of the noetico-noematical correlations that Stumpf proposes in his two studies on Spinoza. The last section addresses Husserl's self-criticism regarding the Cartesian aproach to the reduction in Ideas I and the parallelism that the late Husserl establishes between intentional psychology and transcendental phenomenology. I try to show that the version of phenomenology that Husserl develops during the Freiburg period anticipates in many respects Stumpf's criticism and partly confirms the latter's diagnosis of the version of phenomenology advocated in Ideas I. (shrink)

This study attempts to situate Carl Stumpf's theory of emotions with regard to that of his teacher, Franz Brentano, and to the sensualist theory of William James. We will argue that Stumpf's theory can be considered an attempt to reconcile James's sensualism, which emphasizes the role of bodily feelings, with what we will call, for the purposes of this study, Brentano's intentionalism, which conceives of emotions as intentional states. Stumpf claims that James's sensory feelings and Brentano's affective intentional states are (...) two sides of the same coin in that they constitute two essential ingredients of a full-fledged theory of emotions. The question is whether Stumpf's ecumenism avoids the objections that he himself raises against James's and Brentano's theories. The paper is divided into four parts: the first part presents Stumpf's classification of psychical functions; the second part presents his criticism of James's theory of emotions; the third part is a summary of Stumpf's complex debate with Brentano on emotions and sensory feelings; the last part examines Stumpf's attempt to incorporate into his theory of affects the phenomenological and intentional aspects of emotions. I conclude with a note on the unity of consciousness. (shrink)

Despite the recent ferocious public debate about belief, the concept most central to the discussion—God—frequently remains vaguely and obscurely described. Are those engaged in these arguments even talking about the same thing? In a wide-ranging response to this confusion, esteemed scholar David Bentley Hart pursues a clarification of how the word “God” functions in the world’s great theistic faiths. Ranging broadly across Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Vedantic and Bhaktic Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism, Hart explores how these great intellectual traditions treat humanity’s (...) knowledge of the divine mysteries. Constructing his argument around three principal metaphysical “moments”—being, consciousness, and bliss—the author demonstrates an essential continuity between our fundamental experience of reality and the ultimate reality to which that experience inevitably points. Thoroughly dismissing such blatant misconceptions as the deists' concept of God, as well as the fundamentalist view of the Bible as an objective historical record, Hart provides a welcome antidote to simplistic manifestoes. In doing so, he plumbs the depths of humanity’s experience of the world as powerful evidence for the reality of God and captures the beauty and poetry of traditional reflection upon the divine. (shrink)

Der Band 'Versuch über die Erkenntnis' wurde von A. Kastil im Jahre 1925 in der Philosophischen Bibliothek herausgegeben. Seinen Inhalt bildet hauptsächlich Franz Brentanos nachgelassene, umfangreiche Schrift: 'Nieder mit den Vorurteilen!' Sie trägt den Untertitel: 'Ein Mahnwort an die Gegenwart, im Geiste von Bacon und Descartes von allem blinden Apriori sich loszusagen'. Die aus dem Jahre 1903 stammende Abhandlung: 'Nieder mit den Vorurteilen!' beschäftigt sich im I. und II. Teil vorwiegend mit Kants synthetischen Urteilen a priori, die mit aller Entschiedenheit (...) abgelehnt werden, weil wir - nach Brentanos Auffassung - in ihnen keine Erkenntnisse, sondern nur blinde Vorurteile gegeben haben. (shrink)

Mit den "Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie" von 1913, von ihm selbst nur als eine "Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie" angezeigt, zog Edmund Husserl die Konsequenz aus seinen Logischen Untersuchungen (PhB 601), die ihn 1900/01 berühmt gemacht hatten: Ausgehend von der dort entwickelten Phänomenologie der intentionalen Erlebnisse sieht er jetzt in der Aufdeckung der Leistungen des "reinen Bewußtseins", dem die uns bekannte natürliche Welt nur als "Bewußtseinskorrelat" gegeben ist, den eigentlichen Gegenstand philosophischer Erkenntnis und in den (...) von ihm eingeführten methodologischen Begriffen der "Reduk tion" und der "Epoché" den Weg, sich über die Beschaffenheit dieses "reinen Bewußtseins", aus dem alle Erkenntnis entspringt, Klarheit zu verschaffen. Die Ausgabe bietet Husserls Schrift text- und seitengleich nach Band III/1 der Husserliana, herausgegeben von Karl Schuhmann; beigegeben sind Husserls Nachwort zu den Ideen von 1930 aus Band V der Husserliana, herausgegeben von Marly Biemel, sowie ein umfangreiches Namen- und Sachregister von Elisabeth Ströker. (shrink)

Äußerliche Argumente für die Behauptung, daß es gar keiner Beweise für das Dasein Gottes bedürfe . . . Leichtigkeit, mit der die Kinder den Glauben an Gott annehmen, und Übereinstimmung aller Völker in ihm deuten darauf, daß er priori ...

Brentanos Reflexionen über das Verhältnis von Wahrheit und Evidenz wurden erst 1930 herausgegeben. Ihre Kenntnis ist unentbehrlich für das Verständnis seines Verhältnisses zu den an ihn anknüpfenden Denkern, insbesondere zu Husserl.

Dem durch Kant verschütteten Verständnis der aristotelischen Kategorienlehre brach schon Brentanos erste Schrift 'Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles' Bahn. Zu ihrem Thema kehrt er in den hier vereinten Diktaten aus seinem letzten Jahrzehnt zurück.

From FRANZ BRENTANO's manuscripts for his Vienna lectures 1888/89. Photo by his son, Dr. John CM Brentano, Highland Park, Illinois...

In this first volume of The Sylvan Jungle, the editors present a scholarly edition of the first chapter, "Exploring Meinong's Jungle," of Richard Routley's 1000-plus page book, Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond. Going against the Quinean orthodoxy, Routley’s aim was to support Meinong’s idea that we can truthfully refer to non-existent and even impossible objects, like Superman, unicorns and the round-square cupola on Berkeley College. The tools of non-classical logic at Routley’s disposal enabled him to update Meinong’s project for a (...) new generation. This volume begins with an Introduction from Dominic Hyde, “The ‘Jungle Book’ in Context,” an essay that situates Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond historically. We provide the original Preface by Routley, followed by Chapter 1: “Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond.” In Chapter 2, Nicholas Griffin argues that Sylvan’s project was insufficiently radical with his essay, “Why the Original Theory of Items Didn’t Go Far Enough.” Sylvan revisits his position from this time in Chapter 3, with his article, “Re-Exploring Item-Theory.” Filippo Casati, who has worked in the Routley Archives then takes up the question of the future of Sylvan’s research program in his essay, “The Future Perfect of Exploring Meinong’s Jungle.” Iconic and iconoclastic Australian philosopher Richard Routley published Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond in 1980. This work has fallen out of print, yet without great fanfare it has influenced two generations of philosophers and logicians. (shrink)

This is the first English translation of Husserliana XXIII, the volume in the critical edition of Edmund Husserl's works that gathers together a rich array of posthumous texts on representational consciousness. The lectures and sketches comprising this work make available the most profound and comprehensive Husserlian account of image consciousness. They explore phantasy in depth, and furnish nuanced accounts of perception and memory.

Brentanos 1904 vollendete Theorie, nur Reales sei vorstellbar und könne existieren, führte auch unter seinen Schülern zu Kontroversen. Dieser Band enthält eine umfangreiche Studie, die Einleitung der Herausgeber zu diesem Problemkreis, Auszüge aus dem Briefwechsel mit A. Marty und O. Kraus sowie die einschlägigen Abhandlungen Brentanos.

Die Neuen Theorien der kategorischen Schlusse - Eine logische Untersuchung ist ein unveranderter, hochwertiger Nachdruck der Originalausgabe aus dem Jahr 1891. Hansebooks ist Herausgeber von Literatur zu unterschiedlichen Themengebieten wie Forschung und Wissenschaft, Reisen und Expeditionen, Kochen und Ernahrung, Medizin und weiteren Genres. Der Schwerpunkt des Verlages liegt auf dem Erhalt historischer Literatur. Viele Werke historischer Schriftsteller und Wissenschaftler sind heute nur noch als Antiquitaten erhaltlich. Hansebooks verlegt diese Bucher neu und tragt damit zum Erhalt selten gewordener Literatur und historischem (...) Wissen auch fur die Zukunft bei.". (shrink)

Die Psychologie des Aristoteles ist ein unveränderter, hochwertiger Nachdruck der Originalausgabe aus dem Jahr 1867. Hansebooks ist Herausgeber von Literatur zu unterschiedlichen Themengebieten wie Forschung und Wissenschaft, Reisen und Expeditionen, Kochen und Ernährung, Medizin und weiteren Genres. Der Schwerpunkt des Verlages liegt auf dem Erhalt historischer Literatur. Viele Werke historischer Schriftsteller und Wissenschaftler sind heute nur noch als Antiquitäten erhältlich. Hansebooks verlegt diese Bücher neu und trägt damit zum Erhalt selten gewordener Literatur und historischem Wissen auch für die Zukunft bei.

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections (...) in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. (shrink)

Physical boundaries and the earliest topologists. Topology has a relatively short history; but its 19th century roots are embedded in philosophical problems about the nature of extended substances and their boundaries which go back to Zeno and Aristotle. Although it seems that there have always been philosophers interested in these matters, questions about the boundaries of three-dimensional objects were closest to center stage during the later medieval and modern periods. Are the boundaries of an object actually existing, less-than-three-dimensional parts of (...) the object—that is, are solids bounded by two-dimensional surfaces, surfaces by one-dimensional “edges” or “physical lines”, edges by dimensionless “simples”? If not, how does a perfectly spherical object manage to touch a perfectly flat object—what part of the sphere is in immediate contact with the plane, if the sphere has no unextended parts? But if such parts be admitted, are we not then saddled with “actual infinities” of simples, lines, and surfaces spread throughout each continuous object—the boundaries of all the object’s internal parts? Does it help to say that these internal boundaries exist only “potentially”? (shrink)

In 1930 Otto Neurath asked Alfred Tarski for information about Polish philosophers of science and their work. Tarski answered on 24 April, 1930, saying in one of the first sentences that.

The full-text of this article is not currently available in ORA, but you may be able to access the article via the publisher copy link on this record page. N.B. Prof Williamson is now based at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford.

A standard criticism of act-utilitarianism is that it is only indirectly concerned with the distribution of welfare between individuals and, therefore, does not take adequate account of the separateness between individuals. In response a number of philosophers have argued that act-utilitarianism is only vulnerable to that objection because it adheres to a theory of the good which ignores non-welfarist sources of intrinsic value such as justice. Fred Feldman, for example, argues that intrinsic value is independently generated by the receipt of (...) welfare and the degree to which receipt accords with the demands of justice, and that an action is right insofar as it maximizes the sum of both those sources of value. In response it is argued that justicized consequentialism only blocks the objection at the expense of presupposing deontological constraints. In addition, it is argued that the value of justice cannot be explained non-deontically and, therefore, that the proposed theory is not consequentialist all the way down. (shrink)

Husserl has undoubtedly considered himself being influenced by Brentano, but his conflicts with the orthodox core of the School of Brentano raise the question whether his adherence to Brentano suffices to adequately grasp the context of his early philosophy. I investigate the biographical details of Husserl’s studies in Vienna to uncover hitherto unknown ties between Husserl and Austrian philosophers outside the School of Brentano. Already during his secondary school studies in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy Husserl was exposed to the philosophy textbooks (...) of Gustav Adolf Lindner; and archival records of the University of Vienna show that he had extensively attended philosophy courses held by other philosophers, especially by Robert Zimmermann. Both Lindner and Zimmermann proposed Herbartian philosophies, and what makes Zimmermann especially interesting is that he had once been a close personal disciple of Bernard Bolzano. I use an unpublished lecture transcript, written by a fellow student of Husserl, to investigate the controversial issue of Zimmermann’s possible transmission of Bolzano’s ideas. While a direct transmission seems improbable, my investigation uncovers a plethora of Herbartian influences, which are interesting on their own terms and have not only furnished Husserl with important parts of his descriptive psychological toolbox but have also helped him navigate the Brentano-School’s debate on intentionality. (shrink)

Our experience of the qualities Locke classified as secondary qualities generates a problem, a version of which Aristotle raised. I call this problem “the problem of common sensibles.” The problem, as I discuss it, concerns cross-modal experienced togetherness or unity. On the view that we undergo distinct sense-specific experiences as we hear, smell, taste, see, and touch things, there seems no room for cross-modal unity at the experiential level. But cross-modal unity is real and it necessitates that we give up (...) the usual separatist view of sense experiences. (shrink)

In the intellectual autobiography that opens this book, Chisholm divides philosophers into “drones” and “commentators,” placing himself in the first group. As a drone, Chisholm proposed solutions to philosophical problems and asked his students and colleagues to try to refute him. He reports that they often did, sending him back to the drawing board. Chisholm’s wry self-description says much about his manner as well as his method. A more pretentious philosopher might have spoken of his dogged search for philosophical truth (...) in an age when many have come to disparage that quest. (shrink)

The article analyses the psychological aspects of “phantasy presentation” in Brentano’s lecture Ausgewählte Fragen aus Psychologie und Ästhetik dated 1885/1886. It focuses primarily on two major aspects of Brentano’s work: (1) the traditional understanding of phantasy presentation as intuitive presentation, and as fundamentally related to the perceptual presentation; (2) Brentano’s conception according to which phantasy presentations are “concepts with intuitive nucleus”. In this context, the text focuses on the following topics: the relation between the inauthentic presentations of the phantasy and (...) perceptual presentations; the relation between presentations with attributive unity and surrogate presentations in logic; and the relation between the intuitive and conceptual element in the constitution of phantasy presentations. The study argues that, despite the title of the lecture—Ausgewählte Fragen aus Psychologie und Ästhetik—Brentano’s analysis of phantasy presentation does not refer to the aesthetic function, but to the psychological function of this presentation. Furthermore, it argues that the psychological aspect of phantasy presentation represents one of the main aspects of Brentano’s work, subsequently used by Husserl in his studies to underline the differences between the perceptual and phantasy presentation. (shrink)

I offer a reconstruction of Brentano's view of inner consciousness and show how Brentano prevented a regress of higher-order mental acts.

Introduction -- A default position -- Experience -- The character of experience -- Understanding-experience -- A note about dispositional mental states -- Purely experiential content -- An account of four seconds of thought -- Questions -- The mental and the nonmental -- The mental and the publicly observable -- The mental and the behavioral -- Neobehaviorism and reductionism -- Naturalism in the philosophy of mind -- Conclusion: The three questions -- Agnostic materialism, part 1 -- Monism -- The linguistic argument (...) -- Materialism and monism -- A comment on reduction -- The impossibility of an objective phenomenology -- Asymmetry and reduction -- Equal-status monism -- Panpsychism -- The inescapability of metaphysics -- Agnostic materialism, part 2 -- Ignorance -- Sensory spaces -- Experience, explanation, and theoretical integration -- The hard part of the mind-body problem -- Neutral monism and agnostic monism -- A comment on eliminativism, instrumentalism, and so on -- Mentalism, idealism, and immaterialism -- Mentalism -- Strict or pure process idealism -- Active-principle idealism -- Stuff idealism -- Immaterialism -- The positions restated -- The dualist options -- Frege's thesis -- Objections to pure process idealism -- The problem of mental dispositions -- Mental -- Shared abilities -- The sorting ability -- The definition of mental being -- Mental phenomena -- The view that all mental phenomena are experiential phenomena -- Natural intentionality -- E/c intentionality -- The experienceless -- Intentionality and abstract and nonexistent objects -- Experience, purely experiential content, and n/c intentionality -- Concepts in nature -- Intentionality and experience -- Summary with problem -- Pain and pain -- The neo-behaviorist view -- A linguistic argument for the necessary connection between pain and behavior -- A challenge -- The Sirians -- N.N. Novel -- An objection to the Sirians -- The Betelgeuzians -- The point of the Sirians -- Functionalism, naturalism, and realism about pain -- Unpleasantness and qualitative character -- The weather watchers -- The rooting story -- What is it like to be a weather watcher? -- The aptitudes of mental states -- The argument from the conditions for possessing the concept of space -- The argument from the conditions for language ability -- The argument from the nature of desire -- Desire and affect -- The argument from the phenomenology of desire -- Behavior -- A hopeless definition -- Difficulties -- Other-observability -- Neo-behaviorism -- The concept of mind. (shrink)