Two chief problems of the theory of knowledge are the question of meaning and the question of verification. The first question asks under what conditions a sentence has meaning, in the sense of cognitive, factual meaning. The second one asks how we get to know something, how we can find out whether a given sentence is true or false. The second question presupposes the first one. Obviously we must understand a sentence, i.e. we must know its meaning, before we can (...) try to find out whether it is true or not. But, from the point of view of empiricism, there is a still closer connection between the two problems. In a certain sense, there is only one answer to the two questions. If we knew what it would be for a given sentence to be found true then we would know what its meaning is. And if for two sentences the conditions under which we would have to take them as true are the same, then they have the same meaning. Thus the meaning of a sentence is in a certain sense identical with the way we determine its truth or falsehood; and a sentence has meaning only if such a determination is possible. (shrink)

It is not the aim of the present essay to defend the principle of empiricism against apriorism or anti-empiricist metaphysics. Taking empirism for granted, we wish to discuss, the question what is meaningful. The word ‘meaning’ will here be taken in its empiricist sense; an expression of language has meaning in this sense if we know how to use it in speaking about empirical facts, either actual or possible ones. Now our problem is what expressions are meaningful in this sense. (...) We may restrict this question to sentences because expressions other than sentences are meaningful if and only if they can occur in a meaningful sentence. (shrink)

Moving beyond the dialogical approaches found in much of contemporary hermeneutics, this book focuses instead on the diagnostic use of reflective judgment, not only to discern the differentiating features of the phenomena to be understood, but also to the various meaning contexts that can frame their interpretation. It assesses what such thinkers as Kant, Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Habermas and others can contribute to the problems of multicultural understanding, and reconceives hermeneutics as a critical inquiry into the appropriate contextual conditions (...) of understanding and interpretation. (shrink)

Philosophers have ever declared that their problems lie at a different level from the problems of the empirical sciences. Perhaps one may agree with this assertion; the question is, however, where should one seek this level. The metaphysicians wish to seek their object behind the objects of empirical science; they wish to enquire after the essence, the ultimate cause of things. But the logical analysis of the pretended propositions of metaphysics has shown that they are not propositions at all, but (...) empty word arrays, which on account of notional and emotional connections arouse the false appearance of being propositions. This conception that the “propositions” of metaphysics, including those of ethics, have no theoretical content, is to be sure still disputed. We shall not, however, enter here on its demonstration, but, under its guidance, will limit ourselves to non-metaphysical and non-ethical philosophical problems. (shrink)

Cette édition numérique a été réalisée à partir d'un support physique, parfois ancien, conservé au sein du dépôt légal de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, conformément à la loi n° 2012-287 du 1er mars 2012 relative à l'exploitation des Livres indisponibles du XXe siècle. Pages de début Avant-propos La réduction phénoménologique et la double vie du sujet I - Intentionnalité et intersubjectivité 1. Intentionnalité et transcendance (Husserl et Heidegger) 2. Le concept de noème (Husserl) 3. Le monde (Husserl) II - (...) Perception 1. Finitude et téléologie de la perception (Husserl) 2. Perception et herméneutique (Husserl, Cassirer et Heidegger) 3. Perception et vie naturelle (Husserl et Merleau-Ponty) III - Temporalité, historicité, langage 1. Origine du temps et temps originaire (Husserl et Heidegger) 2. La présence du passé (Husserl) 3. L'encadrement du souvenir (Husserl, Proust et Barthes) 4. La voix de son maître (Husserl et Derrida) Conclusion Pages de fin. (shrink)

Peter Achinstein gives in his papers [1] and [2] interesting analyses of some problems of inductive logic and of some approaches I have proposed. I shall discuss here some of these problems in order to clarify my present position. My comments will mainly concern the variety of instances, and only briefly the analogy influence, and the inductive methods for a coordinate language.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) is the founder of the phenomenological movement which has profoundly influenced twentieth‐century Continental philosophy. The historical setting in which his thought took shape was marked by the emergence of a new psychology (Herbart, von Helmholtz, James, Brentano, Stumpf, Lipps), by research into the foundation of mathematics (Gauss, Rieman, Cantor, Kronecker, Weierstrass), by a revival of logic and theory of knowledge (Bolzano, Mill, Boole, Lotze, Mach, Frege, Sigwart, Meinong, Erdmann, Schröder), as well as by the appearance of a (...) new theory of language (Peirce, Marty). This context is thus very like that which gave birth to the Vienna Circle. Though Husserl's study of classical thinkers began with the British empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, and in particular Hume), he later turned almost exclusively to the writings of Kant, Descartes, and Leibniz. As for his contemporaries outside the phenomenological movement, Husserl's closest – though always critical – engagement was with the neo‐Kantians (Rickert and, above all, Natorp). (shrink)

The article traces out the history of the evolution in meaning of the phenomenological reduction in husserl's writings. The starting point is husserl's conviction that what is lacking most to philosophy as well as to science is a truly rigorous scientific method. Already in the "logical investigations" (1901) the phenomenological reduction is presented as the core of this method. But here this reduction is understood as a deliberate restriction or limitation of the mind to what is adequately perceived in an (...) "adequately fulfilling intuition" within the immanence of consciousness, Excluding any transcendence. In his lectures on "the idea of phenomenology" a significant expansion of the notion of reduction begins to appear. There is still the insistence on the absolutely given, But this now begins to include a certain "real transcendence" extending beyond the sphere of "real immanence to consciousness." this change appears first in his published works in the "ideas" of 1913. (shrink)

Qu'est-ce qui, chez l'homme, retient ou empeche la fuite en avant d'une pulsion specifique? Une autre pulsion complementaire ou antagoniste? L'instance subjective d'un moi se pliant aux commandements du surmoi? L'ordre du corps vivant, de la raison ou du signifiant? Ou est-il pensable qu'une pulsion humaine se gouverne elle-meme en canalisant son energie excessive et en veillant a sa transformation ou a sa sublimation plutot que de se livrer a l'ivresse d'une repetition sterile?Ce livre aborde ces questions en envisageant les (...) pulsions humaines, en amont, depuis leur ancrage dans les forces de la nature ou les instincts animaux et, en aval, en vue de leur prolongement en desirs symboliquement structures. Dans une telle perspective, le questionnement psychanalytique de Freud et de Lacan rencontre tout naturellement les interrogations d'une philosophie de la nature, de la vie et de la culture. Inversement, une rehabilitation de l'energetique psychanalytique favorise la redecouverte d'une pensee philosophique, pour laquelle la dynamique des forces virtuelles prime sur la presence de substances statiques, et pour laquelle aucun acte effectif n'efface sa dette vis-a-vis d'un pouvoir-etre retenu ou d'un manque d'etre. De cette metaphysique dont le livre suit le cheminement d'Aristote a Husserl en passant par Leibniz et Schopenhauer, Nietzsche et la psychanalyse marquent aussi les limites, en projetant sur elle l'ombre du nihilisme des pulsions de mort. Au croisement des deux approches de la pulsion se dresse, a nouveau mais autrement, la question de la subjectivite. (shrink)

In der 1970 gegr ndeten Reihe erscheinen Arbeiten, die philosophiehistorische Studien mit einem systematischen Ansatz oder systematische Studien mit philosophiehistorischen Rekonstruktionen verbinden. Neben deutschsprachigen werden auch englischsprachige Monographien ver ffentlicht. Gr ndungsherausgeber sind: Erhard Scheibe (Herausgeber bis 1991), G nther Patzig (bis 1999) und Wolfgang Wieland (bis 2003). Von 1990 bis 2007 wurde die Reihe von J rgen Mittelstra mitherausgegeben.