Michel Seymour Explained

Michel Seymour
Occupation:Philosopher

Michel Seymour (born 1954) is a Canadian philosopher from Quebec and a professor at the Université de Montréal, where he has been teaching analytical philosophy (philosophy of language and philosophy of mind) since 1990.

Biography

After having obtained a Ph.D. in philosophy from the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières in 1986, he continued to study in the same field for several years at the Oxford University under the direction of John McDowell and at the University of California, Los Angeles under the direction of Tyler Burge. He was president of the Société de philosophie du Québec from 1994 to 1996.

He published in various English language philosophy journals including the Journal of Philosophy and Philosophical Studies as well as many more in French. He is also the author of several books and director of collective works.

Main ideas

In the domain of philosophy of language, Michel Seymour holds an institutional and communitarian conception of language inspired in part from the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein which he opposes to the idealism of Gottlob Frege, to the inneism of Noam Chomsky and to the psychologism of John Searle.[1] According to Seymour, speaking a language is a rule-governed activity, where the rules express the social conditions of expression-use. The rules are specified by social conventions. The meaning of expressions is indeterminate, because the rules cannot anticipate all cases.[2] Accordingly, Seymour endorses a semantics based on assertability conditions inspired from Saul Kripke which ties the meaning of expressions to their conventional usage.[3]

In the domain of political philosophy, Seymour starts from John Rawls's Political Liberalism to defend a conception of collective rights equal in validity and importance to individual rights, a position which notably runs counter to that of Will Kymlicka on the subject. According to Seymour, liberalism cannot rest content with an attitude of toleration based on mere respect, but must rather foster an attitude of recognition based on mutual appreciation. This should be borne out in public policy aiming to the appreciation of peoples.[4]

Seymour builds on this political liberalism to defend an inclusive conception of laïcité, which asks that institutions remain neutral and that individuals remain free. This would allow state employees to wear religious symbols, unless they occupy high-authority positions (President, Supreme Court Justice, etc).[5]

Seymour is also well-known for supporting the independence of Quebec.[6]

Works

English

French

External links

Notes and References

  1. Michel Seymour, l'Institution du langage. Revue Philosophique de Louvain. 2006. 104. 2. 447–452. Dubreuil. Benoît.
  2. Pascal Engel, Recension de L'institution du langage, Philosophiques, 2007
  3. Michel Seymour, L'institution du langage, Presses de l'université de Montréal, 2005, pp. 21-25
  4. Michel Seymour, de la tolérance à la reconnaissance. Une théorie libérale des droits collectifs, Montréal, Boréal, 2008, 704 P. 10.7202/045199ar. 2010. Tavaglione. Nicolas. Philosophiques. 37. 2. 527. free.
  5. Web site: Pour une interdiction des signes religieux au sommet de l'État.
  6. Web site: Michel Seymour.

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