General Presentation

Indexicality, Perception: Using Language and Knowing Reality

These four conferences will take place in 2008-2009 at the Université Paris 1
(EXeCO Research Center, “Philosophies Contemporaines”)

Coordination: Valérie Aucouturier, Charlotte Gauvry, Perrine Marthelot, Marc Pavlopoulos et Sabine Plaud

Far from being a merely speculative approach to the world, philosophy involves a concrete reflection upon reality. Philosophical issues include an investigation of our perceptive access to the world, of the nature of perceptions and of sensations. Also, philosophy tries to elucidate the structure of reality such as it emerges by the way we use it: the meaning of reality depends on its inscription in a given context. Philosophical topics thus bring together many different approaches: for instance, the scientific attitude to be detected in physics or in psychology is correlated with a pragmatic investigation of reality. All of these attitudes share one and the same concern: how does the perceiving and acting subject relate to his surrounding world?

Such a concern for the rooting of perception and action in reality immediately raises a second fundamental issue: namely, an issue as to the meaning networks that are correlated to our behavior towards the world, and that include linguistic meaning itself. What are, exactly, the relations between perception, use and sense? Up to what extent does sense depend upon some particular use of the world? Should we say that language makes sense if, and only if it is fitted in a given world, in a given situation? Making sense of these questions requires two things. First, it requires an analysis of the role of the perceiving, acting and speaking subject, as well as of the conditions of his inscription within reality. Second, it requires an investigation of the interconnection between the world and our senses.

For these reasons, we will have to articulate two lines of thought. If language makes sense only insofar as it is fitted in the world, then its meaning depends on a given situation, on a given context. And if the world is as such a context, then the world is meaningful in itself: or at least, as a condition of sense. This very interdependence of meaning and reality will serve us as a guideline for this cycle of conferences.

Each one of these conferences will address some particular aspect of this general issue, focusing on the way it has been dealt with in modern German philosophy (19th/20th centuries). The first conference will question the concept of indexicality, thus opening a reflection on the necessity of an inscription of language in a given situation. The second conference will be concerned with the notion of use for Heidegger and Wittgenstein, and will try to identify the conditions the conditions for a production of sense by means of use. The third conference will examine the work of a leading figure of German science, namely Hermann von Helmholtz, whose theory of perception and of knowledge will be scrutinized. The fourth conference will examine in depth the work of the philosopher G.E.M. Anscombe.