We argue for an intimate relation between semantic externalism and semantic deference and propose a typology of speakers’ metasemantic views as revealed by their deferential attitudes. Building on this typology, we then offer a classification of metasemantic disagreements understood as verbal disputes between speakers who (consciously or unconsciously) hold divergent metasemantic views about the same word. In particular, we distinguish lower-order metasemantic disagreements between speakers who disagree on the exact source of meaning determination for a word yet agree on the (...) kind of deferential attitude this word is liable to, from higher-order metasemantic disagreements between speakers who do not even agree on the suitable kind of deferential attitude. We demonstrate the fruitfulness of our classification through the concrete implications it has for conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Which entities should be accepted as part of the furniture of the world, and which not? What are pseudo-objects, if they are not properly objects? This collection explores the answers given to these questions by some key philosophers throughout the 20th century. It brings together essays by leading scholars on a subject of central importance to both metaphysics and the history of philosophy.".

In Intuition et idéalités: Phénoménologie des objets mathématiques (2020), Dominique Pradelle questioned the nature of mathematical knowledge–the status of math.

We offer a new outlook on the vexed question of the reference of natural-kind terms. Since Kripke and Putnam, there is a widespread assumption that natural-kind terms function just like proper names: they designate their referents directly and they are rigid designators: their reference is unchanged even in worlds in which the referent lacks some or all the properties associated with it in the actual world, and which are useful to us in identifying that referent. There have, however, been heated (...) debates about what should be taken as a natural-kind term. Some challenge the very existence of a separate category of natural-kind terms ; some their being directly referential ; some raise the possibility that direct reference extends to terms beyond those usually assumed to fall under the category, e.g. to ‘polemical’ terms. When these debates turn on the question of what natural kinds are, they take on a strong epistemological or metaphysical dimension. We think the issues can be clarified within the limits of the philosophy of language: by looking into what ranges of general terms are perceived by speakers as rigid designators of natural kinds. The first step to take is to ground the various kinds of semantic externalism in distinct brands of semantic deference. This we define as speakers’ being disposed to use words in line with the norms of their linguistic community and as consenting to being corrected when it is manifest that their use and understanding of a word does not match common practice. When those dispositions are present, speakers defer semantically to something beyond themselves. Here, our focus is on spotting the words for which speakers would defer not to the current usage of the word in the linguistic community, nor to the current experts of the field to which the word pertains, but ultimately to the very nature of the referent of the term. When speakers’ deference conforms to that pattern, we argue, that is evidence that indexical externalism provides the right metasemantic account of how the meaning of the word is determined. In other words, one can say that the word is treated like a natural-kind term. But how can patterns of deference be measured? In an ongoing survey, participants are confronted with conditions that may prompt them to revise certain classificatory statements, e.g. An emu is a bird. Each condition makes salient one of the targets we have identified for deference: the community usage, the experts, the ‘world as it is’. In the condition that seeks to tap into the latter kind of deference, participants are presented with a scenario in which future scientific discoveries result in excluding from the extension of a term certain members currently thought to fall under that extension, e.g. discoveries that require excluding certain species now thought to be birds from the Aves class. The scenario is such that it is clear that the ‘discoveries’ bring us closer to the actual essence, if there is one, of birds. Our reasoning is that, if participants significantly modify their statements in the light of that scenario, they can be taken to ‘defer’ to the nature of the referent, thus vindicating indexical externalism. We test if words not normally assumed to be natural-kind terms – for instance summer, contract or rape – exhibit patterns of deference similar to those for bird. If so, then there’s a case for an extension of indexical externalism beyond the usual set of terms. What would be shown in this way is that speakers have something like realist intuitions with respect to words whose meaning is usually taken to be purely conventional or polemical. We are at the pre-test stage for the survey. We cannot yet report on our results. We should, however, have initial results by March, which, we believe, will enrich the observations made by previous empirical studies. References: Braisby, N., Franks, B. & Hampton, J. 1996. Essentialism, word use, and concepts. Cognition 59, 247-74./Genone, J. & Lombrozo, T. 2012. Concept possession, experimental semantics, and hybrid theories of reference. Philosophical Psychology 25, 717-742./Häggqvist, S. & Wikforss, Å. 2015. Experimental semantics: the case of natural kind terms, in J. Haukioja, Experimental Philosophy of Language, London, Bloomsbury./Jylkkä, J., Railo, H. & Haukioja, J. 2009. Psychological essentialism and semantic externalism: Evidence for externalism in lay speakers’ language use. Philosophical Psychology 22, 37-60./Mallon, R., Machery, E., Nichols, S. & Stich, S. 2009. Against arguments from reference, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 79, 332-356./ Marconi, D. 1997. Language, Speech, and Communication. Lexical Competence. Cambridge : MIT Press./Moravcsik, J. 2016. Meaning, Creativity, and the Partial Inscrutability of the Human Mind, 2nd ed. Stanford: CSLI./Schroeter, L. & Schroeter, F. 2014. Normative concepts: a connectedness model, Philosophers’ Imprint 14, 1-26./ Wikforss, Å. 2010. Are natural kind terms special?, in H. Beebee and N. Sabbarton-Leary, The Semantics and Metaphysics of Natural Kinds, New York, Routledge, 64-83. (shrink)

Are there “social kinds” the way there are “natural kinds”? Are social sciences likely to hit upon “essences” the way natural sciences do? Or are all social phenomena purely theoretical constructs? Questions about whether there are natural kinds, what exactly they are and which kinds of phenomena they cover have been the object of heated epistemological and metaphysical debates. We think the issues can be clarified within the limits of the philosophy of language: by looking into what ranges of general (...) terms are perceived by speakers as rigid designators of natural kinds. The first step to take is to ground the various kinds of semantic externalism in distinct brands of semantic deference. Our focus is on spotting the words for which speakers would defer not to the current usage of the word in the linguistic community, nor to the current experts of the field to which the word pertains, but ultimately to the very nature of the referent of the term. When speakers’ deference conforms to that pattern, we argue, that is evidence that indexical externalism provides the right metasemantic account of how the meaning of the word is determined; the word is treated like a natural-kind term. But how can patterns of deference be measured? In an ongoing survey, which shows a kinship with work by Braisby et al., Jylkkä et al., and Genone & Lombrozo, we confront participants with conditions that may prompt them to revise certain classificatory statements. Each condition makes salient one of the targets we have identified for deference: the community usage, the experts, the ‘world as it is’. In the condition that seeks to tap into the latter kind of deference, participants are presented with a scenario in which future scientific discoveries result in excluding from the extension of a term certain members currently thought to fall under that extension. Our reasoning is that, if participants significantly modify their statements in the light of that scenario, they can be taken to ‘defer’ to the nature of the referent, thus vindicating indexical externalism. We test if words not normally assumed to be natural-kind terms, including terms for social phenomena, exhibit patterns of deference similar to those for natural-kind terms. If so, speakers have something like realist intuitions with respect to words whose meaning is usually taken to be purely conventional or polemical, and there’s therefore a case for an extension of indexical externalism beyond its usual boundaries. Braisby, N., Franks, B. & Hampton, J. 1996. Essentialism, word use, and concepts. Cognition 59, 247-74./Genone, J. & Lombrozo, T. 2012. Concept possession, experimental semantics, and hybrid theories of reference. Philosophical Psychology 25, 717-742./Jylkkä, J., Railo, H. & Haukioja, J. 2009. Psychological essentialism and semantic externalism: Evidence for externalism in lay speakers’ language use. Philosophical Psychology 22, 37-60./Schwarz, S. 1983. Reply to Kornblith and Nelson. The Southern Journal of Philosophy 21, 475-481. (shrink)

Even though mathematics is deductive reasoning all along, it does not depend on logic. On the contrary, formal logic is mathematical. Despite what is often claimed, mathematics is not the science of quantity, but the science of necessary conclusions. It reasons from pure hypotheses, explores their possibilities in imagination and draws apodictic conclusions. Obtaining new theoretical results—as opposed to mere “corollaries” of previous results—asks for more than mere deduction of analytical consequences by analysis of the general concepts involved. It requires (...) representing these general concepts into singular diagrams and operating transformations on them in order to reveal necessary properties or relations which had not yet been perceived. By making these properties or relations the objects of new judgments, mathematics practices “abstraction” in a sense that does not reduce to the psychic operation of reserving one's attention to certain features of a percept at the expense of others. (shrink)

Des recherches menées ces quinze dernières années sur les différentes inflexions qu?a subies la philosophie de Husserl au cours de l?élaboration progressive de la pensée phénoménologique, je tire aujourd?hui la conviction suivante : entre les recherches psychogénétiques de la thèse d?habilitation, le tournant antipsychologiste des Prolégomènes à la logique pure , le virage transcendantaliste amorcé dans les Idées directrices et le retour en force des considérations génétiques ? psycho-génétiques, mais aussi anthropologiques et pragmatistes ? des derniers travaux husserliens, il faut (...) moins voir une série de ruptures doctrinaires dues aux influences successives de l?empirisme de Hume, Brentano et Stumpf 1 , du platonisme de Bolzano, Lotze et Frege, de l?idéalisme subjectif de Descartes, Kant et Natorp, puis de nouveau de la tradition empiriste, que l?élaboration progressive d?un nouvel empirisme , lequel, pour ne pas sombrer dans le psychologisme et le scepticisme, se devait toutefois de passer par l?affirmation de l?objectivisme sémantique autant que par la fondation transcendantale de ce dernier. Pour le dire bien trop brièvement ? mais j?ai eu l?occasion de suggé­rer cette lecture dans des textes antérieurs 2 ? , on peut penser que la distinc­tion nette des lois qui caractérisent les actes psychiques et de celles qui caractérisent leurs contenus , puis ensuite l?affirmation d?une certaine. (shrink)

Les textes rassemblés ici constituent les « Actes » du cinquième séminaire annuel de l?Unité de recherches Phénoménologie s , qui s?est tenu à l?Université de Liège du 2 au 6 mai 2011 et avait pour intitulé Entre phéno­ménologie et psychologie. Le problème de la passivité . Sans doute le thème de la passivité n?est-il pas neuf en phénoméno­logie. Très souvent, notamment dans le monde francophone, il a été brandi pour nuancer, voire contrecarrer, une certaine conception de la phénoméno­logie qui (...) se revendique de l?idéalisme transcendantal et insiste fortement sur l?activité rationnelle du sujet connaissant. On le sait ; les « actes » psychiques qui faisaient l?intentionalité de la conscience dans la tradition brentanienne (dont héritent encore les Recherches logiques ) ont, après le tournant transcendantal, été réinterprétés par Husserl dans le cadre de l? activité noétique de l? ego , laquelle « informe » la matière sensorielle du vécu et la constitue en véritable connaissance d?objets. Or, à l?encontre de ce modèle résolument inspiré de Kant et des néo-kantiens, on a souvent fait valoir que ce qui faisait la spécificité de la phénoménologie, c?était au contraire d?avoir pu penser, dans les textes postérieurs aux Idées directrices et sous la problématique générale de la passivité, une subjectivité incarnée, ancrée dans son Lebenswelt , influencée par ses habitus. (shrink)

We sketch several variants of so-called “semantic externalism”, which we take to be prototypically embodied by Wittgenstein, Kripke and Burge respectively. Then, drawing inspiration from Putnam, we show how aspects of these different kinds of semantic externalism can be articulated with each other in the case of natural kind terms, and we suggest that this analysis could be extended to a larger set of words. When that is done, we turn to the core part of the paper, which consists in (...) a thorough discussion of the forms of “semantic deference” that can plausibly be associated with each brand of externalism. We suggest that the debates over the kinds of semantic externalism characteristic of different kinds of words can be clarified by investigating the kind of semantic deference they call for. (shrink)

A la fin du XVIIIe siècle, Emmanuel Kant pouvait encore voir dans les mathématiques le modèle même des jugements synthétiques a priori, c'est-à-dire dotés d'un contenu intuitif propre quoique non dérivé de l'expérience sensible. Des géométries non-euclidiennes à la théorie des transfinis de Cantor, les mathématiques du XIXe siècle vont cependant faire triompher des systèmes mathématiques résolument déductifs et non plus intuitifs. Sur fond d'interrogations quant à la légitimité de ces développements récents, interrogations renforcées par la découverte de paradoxes, d'âpres (...) débats vont alors opposer différentes écoles quant aux méthodes de preuve acceptables ainsi que quant à ce qui constitue le fondement même du savoir mathématique. Logicisme, formalisme et intuitionnisme ; ce sont, à l'époque, pas moins de trois conceptions des mathématiques (et trois programmes pour les mathématiques) qui s'affrontent, conceptions auxquelles il faut ajouter le psychologisme, qui se nourrit de l'essor des sciences humaines et de leurs prétentions épistémologiques. En collant au plus près des textes des principaux protagonistes, l'ouvrage présente de manière tout à la fois synthétique et précise les différentes positions en présence, en soulignant autant que possible leurs divergences, mais en montrant aussi les variations et inflexions qui ont marqué leur développement durant la période 1870-1930. (shrink)

The aim of this paper will be to show how significant the logical theories of judgement which were worked out at the end of the nineteenth century have been for the ontological thought during the twentieth century. Against the classical - Aristotelian and Scholastic - analysis of predicative judgement, Franz Brentano on one hand and Gottlob Frege on the other hand have leveled two different criticisms, which then generated two radically divergent ontological paradigms. On one side, despite Brentano’s own nominalistic (...) stands, there was a tremendous extension of the general category of “object” as well as of the notion of “being” with, as a consequence, the exceptionnally luxuriant ontologies of Brentano’s heirs. On the other side, notwithstanding Frege’s own Platonistic affinities, there was a drastic deflation of the realm of objects to the benefit of the realm of concepts taken as classifying functions, and therefore a strong nominalistic trend among Frege’s heirs. The development of quantified modal logics at the middle of twentieth century however forced contemporary ontology to reconsider this simple alternative in order to give place to some hybrid entities such as individual concepts or other kinds of “intensional objects”. (shrink)

L’intérêt durable porté par Edmund Husserl aux travaux de William James en dépit de la divergence de leurs projets philosophiques s’explique sans doute par deux traits saillants de la psychologie de James qui l’inscrivent dans le prolongement de celle de Franz Brentano et lui confèrent même une certaine supériorité par rapport à cette dernière. Ces deux traits sont d’une part la capacité de James à articuler de manière particulièrement convaincante les analyses de psychologie descriptive aux explications en termes neurophysiologiques et (...) d’autre part sa capacité à penser le caractère dynamique du flux de conscience et la genèse en lui de la structure intentionnelle. Bien plus, loin de la condamner au psychologisme, ces deux traits de la pensée de James s’inscrivent sur fond d’une critique très sévère de la « psychologist’s fallacy » commise notamment dans l’école associationniste, critique qui marqua profondément Husserl.The long lasting interest which Edmund Husserl has taken in William James’ work in spite of their very different philosophical projects can be explained by two significant features which place James’ psychology in the continuation of Franz Brentano’s and even confer it some superiority compared to the latter. These features are on the one hand James’s ability to combine analyses of descriptive psychology with explanations of neurophysiology and on the other hand James’ ability to study the dynamic nature of the stream of consciousness as well as the intentional structure arising from this stream. Furthermore, far from condemning him to psychologism, both these features of James’ thought take their roots in a very strong criticism of the « psychologist’s fallacy » made in the associationist school, criticism which impressed Husserl deeply. (shrink)

Read in December 1905 at the Royal Society of London, Alfred North Whitehead’s memoir “On mathematical concepts of the material world” is not only, according to Whitehead’s own retrospective assessment, “the most original thing that he had done”; it also provides very interesting clues to understand Whitehead’s contemporary collaboration with Bertrand Russell, as well as his later philosophical – epistemological and metaphysical – work.

La question de la spécificité du noème perceptuel et de sa relative autonomie à l?égard du noème conceptuel, question qui a occupé tout un pan des réflexions husserliennes depuis ses premiers travaux dans la proximité de Carl Stumpf jusqu?à ses ultimes recherches sur les synthèses perceptives du monde de la vie, mais qui a aussi retenu l?attention principale de certains héritiers de Husserl comme Aron Gurwitsch ou Maurice Merleau-Ponty, pourrait bien constituer aujourd?hui la clé d?une préoccupation qui fut quant à (...) elle centrale dans la philosophie analytique du xx e siècle, celle des rôles respectifs de la référence directe et de la description dans l?identification des objets du discours et du monde. Des objets qui meublent le monde actuel et les mondes possibles 1 À l?analyse frégéenne, qui accordait aux termes singuliers aussi bien qu?aux termes conceptuels tout à la fois un sens ( Sinn ) et une signification ( Bedeutung ) ? les expressions « l?astre brillant du matin » et « l?astre brillant du soir » ont la même signification puisqu?elles désignent le même objet (Vénus), mais pas le même sens puisqu?elles ne le visent pas de la même façon 2 ?, Russell avait répondu en affirmant précisément le caractère conceptuel de ces termes singuliers « descriptifs » qui ont un sens et qui identifient leur objet à travers lui, et en les opposant aux authentiques noms propres comme « Vénus ». (shrink)

SOMMAIRE La critique du pragmatisme comme psychologisme La phénoménologie malgré l?antipsychologisme La théorie des actes de conscience Le retour de la praxis.

Like Frege and unlike Kant, Peirce claims that mathematics is essentially deductive. And like Frege (as well as the algebraists following Boole), Peirce develops formal languages which express the formal content of statements so as to make it possible to carefully check deductive inferences between them. However, like Kant and unlike Frege, Peirce intends to account for the “synthetic”, i. e. informative and non-trivial, character of most mathematical statements as well as of the inferential links between them. Even more, Peirce, (...) like Kant, pays great attention to the semiotic role played by the construction and transformation of diagrams in the justification of these inferences and of these statements. On this point, Peirce clearly intends to extend and develop the Kantian theory of schematism. (shrink)

Ce sont, on le sait, globalement les mêmes questions philosophiques qui sont à l?origine, d?une part, de la thèse de l?intentionalité des phénomènes psychiques formulée dans l?école de Franz Brentano et, d?autre part, de la thèse de l?inten s ionalité de certaines expressions linguistiques développée dans l?école de Gottlob Frege. Dans les deux cas, il s?agit de rendre compte de la capacité qu?ont les actes mentaux et les signes linguistiques de « se rapporter à » ou de « viser » (...) ( meinen ) des contenus sémantiques, lesquels doivent par ailleurs être distingués des objets réels qui peuvent éventuelle­ment les exemplifier. C?est notamment contre le psychologisme des théories modernes ? singulièrement empiristes ? de la représentation et de la signification que s?est manifesté de manière très nette au xix e siècle le souci de démêler, dans le phénomène de la représentation comme dans celui de la signification, ce qui relève du vécu ou de l?acte psychique subjectif et ce qui relève de son contenu « objectif » ou du moins intersubjectif, partageable. Là où les empi­ristes britanniques concevaient l?idée de Socrate, l?idée de Dieu, l?idée du triangle ou l?idée de la causalité comme autant d?objets mentaux régulière­ment présents dans l?esprit humain et soumis à ses mécanismes naturels, il s?agit désormais de distinguer les éventuels véhicules psychique s de ces idées de. (shrink)

En posant la question de la nature vivante à partir des travaux hétérophénoménologiques de Daniel Dennett, il s?agira pour nous ici d?aborder deux problèmes philosophiques majeurs, à savoir, d?une part, celui de la naturalisation de propriétés émergentes de la matière comme la vie ou la conscience, et, d?autre part, celui des éventuels partages entre l?homme, l?animal et la machine et de la spécificité anthropologique. Le premier problème, qui est celui des philosophies de la vie puis des philosophies de l?esprit, concerne (...) donc la possibilité d?expliquer dans les termes des sciences de la nature certaines propriétés comme la vie ou la conscience, lesquelles « surviennent » dans certaines circonstances sur les propriétés universelles de la matière. Or, à cet égard, si les développements extraordinaires qu?a connus la biologie ces cent cinquante dernières années semblent aujourd?hui affaiblir l?affirmation antinaturaliste de l?irréductibilité de la « force vitale » aux propriétés physico-chimiques, le débat reste par contre très vif en ce qui concerne la réductibilité de la conscience, c?est-à-dire la possibilité pour les sciences cognitives et la neurophysiologie de rendre compte de la conscience dans ses aspects phénoménaux autant qu?intentionnels par des lois naturelles. Dans la mesure où certains de ceux qui s?opposent le plus radicalement à ce programme naturaliste au nom du caractère. (shrink)