Massin, Olivier

2025, Koslicki, Kathrin, Massin, Olivier

The question “What is it to be an artifact?” must be distinguished from the question “What is it to be an artifact of kind K?”. Failure to distinguish between these two questions leads to an exaggeration of the role of intentions in the philosophy of artifacts. We accept that intentions are necessary to define the category of artifacts, but we reject the view that intentions are constitutive of what makes something a specific kind of artifact. In the first part of this paper, we discuss a series of cases involving what we call “faith-based artifacts” which often exhibit a social dimension. These cases, we argue, constitute counterexamples to the thesis that something is an artifact of a specific kind if it was produced with the intention that it be an object of that kind. In the second part of the paper, we explain how a capacity-based approach to artifacts, by contrast, can accommodate faith-based artifacts. In the last section, we address an objection to the capacity-based approach.

2024, Fumiaki Toyoshima, Adrien Barton, Koslicki, Kathrin, Massin, Olivier

Artifacts remain nebulous entities, notwithstanding their relevance to various domains such as engineering, art and archeology. In this paper we investigate the interconnection between artifacts and realizable entities, as illustrated by dispositions, functions, and roles within the framework of the upper ontology Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). More concretely, we propose the notions of canonical artifact (something that is intentionally produced for some purpose) and usefact (something that is intended to be used for some non-original purpose) which can correspond to various usages of the term “artifact”. We also characterize them in terms of intentional realizable entities and novel realizable entities: material canonical artifacts and material usefacts can be analyzed in terms of novel intentional realizable entities and a special kind of non-novel intentional realizable entities, respectively.

2021-12-21, Massin, Olivier

Evaluative theories of emotions purport to shed light on the nature of emotions by appealing to values. Three kinds of evaluative theories of emotions dominate the recent literature: the judgment theory equates emotions with value judgments; the perceptual theory equates emotions with perceptions of values, and the attitudinal theory equates emotions with evaluative attitudes. This paper defends a fourth kind of evaluative theory of emotions, mostly neglected so far: the reactive theory. Reactive theories claim that emotions are attitudes which arise in reaction to perceptions of value.

2020, Massin, Olivier

The 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.

2025, Gauchot, Bastien, Massin, Olivier

L’effort est une expérience et un concept de tous les jours. Tout le monde fait des efforts, tout le monde parle des efforts qu’il ou elle fait. En dépit de cette quotidienneté, la nature exacte de l’effort demeure obscure. Le but de ce travail est de parvenir à une définition claire et distincte des efforts afin de mieux comprendre cette réalité, quotidienne quoiqu’élusive, et permettre ainsi d’ordonner et d’unifier les différents aspects de la recherche scientifique à ce sujet. Pour ce faire, je m’appuis sur une méthode aristotélicienne. Celle-ci nous invite à répondre à trois questions successives. La première concerne le genus de l’effort : de quelle genre de chose s’agit-il, dans quelle catégorie faut-il ranger l’effort ? La deuxième concerne le differentia de l’effort : quelle est la différence spécifique de l’effort, par contraste d’avec les autres membres de sa catégorie ? La troisième est une question d’espèce : y a-t-il différentes espèces d’effort ? Je défends respectivement les trois thèses suivantes : premièrement, l’effort appartient à la catégorie des actes que nous faisons (et non des sensations que nous éprouvons, quoique nous pouvons éprouver nos efforts) – ce que j’appelle l’agentivisme à propos du genre de l’effort ; deuxièmement, la différence spécifique des efforts par contraste d’avec les actions qui n’en sont pas est d’être une action agonistique : une action de lutte dont le but spécifique est de surmonter une résistance ; troisièmement, il y a deux espèces d’efforts qui sont l’effort corporel et l’effort conatif (ou effort « de volonté »). L’effort corporel est l’exercice de la puissance de son corps dans le but de surmonter la résistance mécanique d’une force newtonienne opposée. L’effort conatif est l’exercice de la puissance de l’esprit dans le but de surmonter la résistance motivationnelle d’un désir contraire.

2023-08-18, Koslicki, Kathrin, Massin, Olivier

Abstract Social phenomena—quite like mental states in the philosophy of mind—are often regarded as potential troublemakers from the start, particularly if they are approached with certain explanatory commitments, such as naturalism or social individualism, already in place. In this paper, we argue that such explanatory constraints should be at least initially bracketed if we are to arrive at an adequate non-biased description of social phenomena. Legitimate explanatory projects, or so we maintain, such as those of making the social world fit within the natural world with the help of, e.g., collective intentionality, social individualism, and the like, should neither exclude nor influence the prior description of social phenomena. Just as we need a description of the mental that is not biased, for example, by (anti)physicalist constraints, we need a description of the social that is not biased, for example, by (anti)individualist or (anti)naturalist commitments. Descriptive social ontology, as we shall conceive of it, is not incompatible with the adoption of explanatory frameworks in social ontology; rather, the descriptive task, according to our conception, ought to be recognized as prior to the explanatory project in the order of inquiry. If social phenomena are, for example, to be reduced to nonsocial (e.g., psychological or physical) phenomena, we need first to understand clearly what the social candidates for the reduction in question are. While such descriptive or naïve approaches have been influential in general metaphysics (see Fine 2017), they have so far not been prominent in analytic social ontology (though things are different outside of analytic philosophy, see esp. Reinach (1913). In what follows, we shall outline the contours of a descriptive approach by arguing, first, that description and explanation need to be distinguished as two distinct ways of engaging with social phenomena. Secondly, we defend the claim that the descriptive project ought to be regarded as prior to the explanatory project in the order of inquiry. We begin, in Section 2, by considering two different ways of engaging with mental phenomena: a descriptive approach taken by descriptive psychology and an explanatory approach utilized in analytic philosophy of mind. We take these two ways of approaching the study of the mind to be analogous to the distinction we want to draw in social ontology between a descriptive and an explanatory approach to the study of social phenomena. We consider next, in Section 3, how our approach compares to neighboring perspectives that are familiar to us from general metaphysics and philosophy more broadly, such as Aristotle’s emphasis on “saving the appearances”, Strawson’s distinction between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics, as well as Fine’s contrast between naïve and foundational metaphysics. In Section 4, we apply the proposed descriptive/explanatory distinction to the domain of social ontology and argue that descriptive social ontology ought to take precedence in the order of inquiry over explanatory social ontology. Finally, in Section 5, we consider and respond to several objections to which our account might seem to be susceptible.

2021-4-26, Massin, Olivier

Ainslie argues there are two main kinds of willpower: suppression, which is necessarily effortful, and resolve, which is not. We agree with the distinction but argue that all resolve is effortful. Alleged cases of effortless resolve are indeed cases of what Ainslie calls habits, namely stable results of prior uses of resolve.

2024-09-19, Taillard, Antoine, Massin, Olivier

Dans la philosophie occidentale contemporaine, il est presque incontesté que certaines choses pourraient être au moins quelque peu différentes de ce qu'elles sont. Je remets en question ce point de vue standard. Je prétends que rien ne peut être autrement, c'est-à-dire que tout est nécessairement ce qu'il est. Within contemporary western philosophy, it is an almost uncontroversial view that at least some things could be at least somewhat different from what they are. I challenge this standard view. I claim that nothing could be otherwise, i.e. everything is necessarily what it is.

2023-04-28, Kathrin Koslicki, Olivier Massin

In this paper, we argue that, in order to account for the apparently substantive nature of definitional disputes, a commitment to what we call ‘Socratic essentialism’ is needed. We defend Socratic essentialism against a prominent neo-Carnapian challenge according to which apparently substantive definitional disputes always in some way trace back to disagreements over how expressions belonging to a particular language or concepts belonging to a certain conceptual scheme are properly used. Socratic essentialism, we argue, is not threatened by the possibility that some apparently substantive definitional disputes may turn out to be verbal or conceptual, since this pluralist strategy, in our view, requires a commitment to more, rather than fewer, essences. What is more, a deflationary, metaphysically ‘light-weight’ construal of the essence-ascriptions in question leads to a peculiar conception of the pursuit of metaphysicians as behaving like deceptive (or self-deceived) grammarians pretending to be scientists. Moreover, this deflationary attitude, we argue, spreads beyond metaphysics and philosophy more broadly to apparently substantive definitional disputes in the sciences as well as other in other disciplines, such as art criticism.

2021, Massin, Olivier, Mulligan, Kevin

Penser, entendre, juger, sentir, savoir, préférer, aimer, souhaiter, observer, remarquer, être conscient, prendre plaisir, vouloir, se souvenir... Pour atteindre une connaissance scienti􏰁que de ces actes mentaux, nous devons pratiquer ce qui, aux yeux Brentano, constitue l’activité philo- sophique par excellence : décrire. Le point de départ de toute psychologie scientique, maintient-il, est la description des phénomènes mentaux, de ce qu’ils ont en commun, de leurs espèces, de leurs relations. Ce n’est que sur la base de telles descriptions que nous pourrons ensuite nous atteler à la tâche qui consiste à expliquer les actes mentaux, en déterminant leurs causes et les conditions physiologiques de leur genèse. Brentano appelle la partie de la psychologie qui cherche à décrire les actes mentaux « psychologie descriptive » (il parle aussi de « psychognosie »), et appelle psychologie « explicative » ou « génétique » celle qui cherche à établir des lois empiriques rapportant des relations de succession entre ces phénomènes. De Brentano, la philosophie contemporaine de l’esprit retient en général la thèse selon laquelle les phénomènes mentaux sont par nature intentionnels – dirigés vers des objets distincts d’eux-mêmes. S’il ne fait aucun doute que cette thèse de l’intentionnalité est au cœur de la psychologie descriptive de Brentano, il est non moins certain que celle- ci ne se résume pas à celle-là. La psychologie de Brentano fourmille de descriptions détaillées de maints actes mentaux et de leurs relations. L’objet de ce livre est de rendre justice à ces descriptions, qui, en dépit de leur influence déterminante sur les héritiers de Brentano et de leur pertinence contemporaine, demeurent largement négligées au sein des débats actuels en philosophie de l’esprit. Qu’est-ce qu’être conscient? sentir ? connaître ? juger ? préférer ? prendre plaisir ? Comment ces phénomènes mentaux sont-ils reliés? Outre leur intérêt intrinsèque, les réponses circonstanciées que Brentano apporte à chacune de ces questions illustrent, chacune à leur manière, la fécondité de la méthode qui consiste à prendre au sérieux la tâche de la description.