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Massin, Olivier
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Massin, Olivier
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- PublicationAccès libre"'Unless I put my hand into his side, I will not believe'. The E"pistemic Privilege of Touch(New York: Oxford University Press, 2020)
; - PublicationAccès libreRealism’s KickSamuel Johnson claimed to have refuted Berkeley by kicking a stone. It is generally thought that Johnson misses the point of Berkeley's immaterialism for a rather obvious reason: Berkeley never denied that the stone feels solid, but only that the stone could exist independently of any mind. I argue that Johnson was on the right track. On my interpretation, Johnson’s idea is that because the stone feels to resist our effort, the stone seems to have causal powers. But if appearances are to be taken at face value, as Berkeley insists, then the stone has causal powers. I argue that such causal powers threaten not only Berkeley’s view that only minds are active, but also, and more fundamentally, his central claim that sensible things depend on perception.
- PublicationAccès libreSuffering PainsThe paper aims at clarifying the distinctions and relations between pain and suffering. Three negative theses are defended: 1. Pain and suffering are not identical. 2. Pain is not a species of suffering, nor is suffering a species of pain, nor are pain and suffering of a common (proximate) genus. 3. Suffering cannot be defined as the perception of a pain’s badness, nor can pain be defined as a suffered bodily sensation. Three positive theses are endorsed: 4. Pain and suffering are categorically distinct: pain is a localised bodily episode, suffering is a non-localised affective attitude. 5. Suffering can be expressed, pains cannot. As a consequence, we can have compassion for the suffering of others, not for their pains. 6. The relation between pain and suffering is akin to the relation between danger and fear, injustice and indignation, wrongdoing and guilt: suffering is the correct reaction to pain. One upshot is that both the influential view that the experience of pain is incorrigible and the influential view that the ordinary conception of pain is paradoxical are false.
- PublicationAccès libreSurvenance et Fondation MoralesOn entend par survenance moral la thèse selon laquelle, nécessairement, si deux entités sont parfaitement similaires en ce qui concerne toutes leurs propriétés non-morales, elles sont parfaitement similaires en ce qui concerne leurs propriétés morales. En dépit de son apparente simplicité, cette définition pose de nombreux problèmes. Ainsi, alors que la survenance morale est souvent présentée comme l’une des rares thèses faisant consensus en philosophie, il s’avère à y regarder de près que son interprétation varie grandement selon les philosophes. Trois questions, en particulier, demandent à être éclaircies, sur lesquelles nous nous concentrerons ici : 1. On fait souvent appel à la survenance dans le but d’expliquer les propriétés morales. Mais à strictement parler, la survenance ne revêt par elle-même aucun caractère explicatif : quelle relation la survenance morale entretient-elle avec la relation de fondation ou d’explication morale ? 2. On tient la survenance morale pour une thèse consensuelle, mais on s’accorde peu sur la base de survenance des valeurs morales6. D’aucuns la restreignent à des propriétés naturelles ; d’autres y incluent des propriétés non-naturelles, pour peu qu’elles ne soient pas normatives ; d’autres encore y incluent des propriétés normatives, pour peu qu’elles ne soient pas morales ; d’autres enfin y incluent les principes moraux eux-mêmes. Que recouvre exactement la base de survenance des propriétés morales ? La survenance est une thèse modale (« nécessairement... »). Mais quelle modalité entre-t-elle ici en jeu ? La nécessité qui sous-tend la survenance morale est-elle métaphysique, conceptuelle, normative...?
- PublicationAccès libreLe plaisirI argue that pleasure is not only necessarily good, but also essentially so. Part of the nature of pleasure is to be (personally, finally) good.
- PublicationAccès libreBitter Joys and Sweet Sorrows(London: Routledge, 2018)
; - PublicationAccès libreDesires, Values and NormsThe thesis defended, the “guise of the ought”, is that the formal objects of desires are norms (oughts to be or oughts to do) rather than values (as the “guise of the good” thesis has it). It is impossible, in virtue of the nature of desire, to desire something without it being presented as something that ought to be or that one ought to do. This view is defended by pointing to a key distinction between values and norms: positive and negative norms (obligation and interdiction) are interdefinable through negation; positive and negative values aren’t. This contrast between the norms and values, it is argued, is mirrored, within the psychological realm, by the contrast between the desires and emotions. Positive and negative desires are interdefinable through negation, but positive and negative emotions aren’t. The overall, Meinongian picture suggested is that norms are to desires what values are to emotions.
- PublicationAccès libreBrentano on Sensations and Sensory QualitiesSensations are mental acts that are intentionally directed at sensory objects. Franz Brentano discusses sensations and sensory qualities abundantly; such discussions are found in his psychological as well as in his metaphysical works, in his earlier as well as later works. Brentano systematically uses "sensation" in the first sense, to denote only sensory acts—hearings, smellings, seeings, and so on. This chapter introduces Brentano's view of sensations by presenting the intentional features of sensations irreducible to features of the sensory objects. It presents Brentano's view of sensory objects—which include sensory qualities—and the features of sensations that such objects allow to explain, such as their intensity. The chapter also presents Brentano's approach to sensory pleasures and pains, which combines both appeals to specific modes of reference and to specific sensory qualities. "The principle of individuation for sensory qualities must consist in some sort of spatial category".
- PublicationAccès libreBad by Nature. An Axiological Theory of PainThis chapter introduces two standard assumptions about pain that the axiological theory constitutively rejects: that pains are essentially tied to consciousness and that pains are not essentially tied to badness. It traces the paradox of pain and argues that since the axiological theory takes the location of pain at face value, it needs to grapple with the privacy, self-intimacy and incorrigibility of pain. The Axiological Theory of Disagreeable Sensation maintains by contrast that disagreeableness is a negative value, so that being bad is part of what it is to be a disagreeable sensation. To get an axiological account of pains from such an axiological account of disagreeable sensations, one simply needs to specify further the way in which bodily episodes are bad. The Axiological Theory of Pain (ATP) is a version of anti-psychologism about pain. Pains, as the ATP understands them, share many features with reflections–e.g., the reflection of the moon on the sea.
- PublicationAccès libreMélanges Chromatiques. La théorie brentanienne des couleurs multiples à la loupe [Chromatic Mixtures. Brentano on Multiple Colors]Some colors are compound colors, in the sense that they look complex: orange, violet, green..., by contrast to elemental colors like yellow or blue. In the chapter 3 of his Unterschungen zur Sinnespsychologie, Brentano purports to reconcile the claim that some colors are indeed intrinsically composed of others, with the claim that colors are impenetrable with respect to each other. His solution: phenomenal green is like a chessboard of blue and yellow squares. Only, such squares are so small that we cannot discriminate between their location in perception. Consequently we get the impression of an homogeneous green extent. After having presented Brentano's solution, we argued that it is hardly compatible with Brentano's own conception of descriptive psychology, to the extent that it introduces in-existent objects (small yellow and blue squares), which cannot be perceived. We propose another solution to Brentano's puzzle, more in tune with his own assumptions, or so we argue. According to it, the yellow and the blue are in the green without being spatially in the green. A green extent has yellow and blue components, but these are not spatial components. This solution reconciles impenetrability (since the component colors are not localized) with the reality of compounds color. Besides, it has the advantage of taking the phenomenology of compounds colors, as Brentano's describes it, to the letter. Compound colors are what they seem: complex but not spatially complex.