Michel Seymour (born 1954) is a

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

from

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirte ...

and a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professo ...

at the

Université de Montréal The Université de Montréal (UdeM; ; translates to University of Montreal) is a French-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university's main campus is located in the Côte-des-Neiges neighborhood of Côte- ...

, where he has been teaching

analytical philosophy Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United Sta ...

(

philosophy of language In analytic philosophy, philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of Meaning (philosophy of language), meanin ...

and

philosophy of mind Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its relationship with the body. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are add ...

) since 1990.

Biography

After having obtained a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

in philosophy from the

Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières The Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR) (''English: University of Quebec in Trois-Rivières''), also known as "l'université du peuple", established in 1969 and mainly located in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, Canada, is a public unive ...

in 1986, he continued to study in the same field for several years at the

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

under the direction of

John McDowell John Henry McDowell, FBA (born 7 March 1942) is a South African philosopher, formerly a fellow of University College, Oxford, and now university professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Although he has written on metaphysics, epistemolo ...

and at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the Californ ...

under the direction of

Tyler Burge Tyler Burge (; born 1946) is an American philosopher who is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at UCLA. Burge has made contributions to many areas of philosophy, including the philosophy of mind, philosophy of logic, epistemology, philoso ...

. 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 ''The Journal of Philosophy'' is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal on philosophy, founded in 1904 at Columbia University. Its stated purpose is "To publish philosophical articles of current interest and encourage the interchange of ideas, e ...

'' 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 Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian- British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is consi ...

which he opposes to the idealism of

Gottlob Frege Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (; ; 8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925) was a German philosopher, logician, and mathematician. He was a mathematics professor at the University of Jena, and is understood by many to be the father of analytic p ...

, to the inneism of

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...

and to the psychologism of

John Searle John Rogers Searle (; born July 31, 1932) is an American philosopher widely noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. He began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1959, and was Willis S. and Mari ...

. 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. Accordingly, Seymour endorses a semantics based on assertability conditions inspired from

Saul Kripke Saul Aaron Kripke (; November 13, 1940 – September 15, 2022) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition. He was a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and e ...

which ties the meaning of expressions to their conventional usage. In the domain of political philosophy, Seymour starts from

John Rawls John Bordley Rawls (; February 21, 1921 – November 24, 2002) was an American moral, legal and political philosopher in the liberal tradition. Rawls received both the Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy and the National Humanities Medal in ...

Political Liberalism Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality and equality before the law."political rationalism, hostility to autocracy, cultural distaste for c ...

to defend a conception of

collective rights Group rights, also known as collective rights, are rights held by a group '' qua'' a group rather than individually by its members; in contrast, individual rights are rights held by individual people; even if they are group-differentiated, which ...

equal in validity and importance to individual rights, a position which notably runs counter to that of

Will Kymlicka William Kymlicka (; born 1962) is a Canadian political philosopher best known for his work on multiculturalism and animal ethics. He is currently Professor of Philosophy and Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy at Queen's Universi ...

on the subject. According to Seymour,

liberalism Liberalism is a Political philosophy, political and moral philosophy based on the Individual rights, rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality and equality before the law."political rationalism, hostilit ...

cannot rest content with an attitude of toleration based on mere respect, but must rather foster an attitude of

recognition Recognition may refer to: *Award, something given in recognition of an achievement Machine learning *Pattern recognition, a branch of machine learning which encompasses the meanings below Biometric * Recognition of human individuals, or biomet ...

based on mutual appreciation. This should be borne out in public policy aiming to the appreciation of peoples. Seymour builds on this political liberalism to defend an inclusive conception of

laïcité (; 'secularism') is the constitutional principle of secularism in France. Article 1 of the French Constitution is commonly interpreted as discouraging religious involvement in government affairs, especially religious influence in the determin ...

, which asks that institutions remain neutral and that individuals remain free. This would allow state employees to wear

religious symbol A religious symbol is an iconic representation intended to represent a specific religion, or a specific concept within a given religion. Religious symbols have been used in the military in many countries, such as the United States military chap ...

s, unless they occupy high-authority positions (President, Supreme Court Justice, etc). Seymour is also well-known for supporting the independence of

Works

English

Québec Nationalism and Canadian Federalism
January 2001

November–December 2000
On Redefining the Nation
(PDF)
Québec and Canada at the Crossroads: A Nation within a Nation
(PDF)

* ttp://www.philo.umontreal.ca/prof/documents/OpenUniversity.pdf Quebec's language laws : The long story of a complete misunderstanding(PDF)
Secession as a Remedial Right
(PDF)
Nation-States, National Minorities and The Draft Treaty
(PDF) * "Introduction : Questioning the Ethnic / Civic Dichotomy", i

Jocelyne Couture, Kai Nielsen et Michel Seymour (dir), Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume XXII, 1996, 1-60. * "Toward a Cosmopolitan Law of Peoples: Asserting the rights and obligations of persons and nations", in Michel Seymour (dir)
''The Fate of the Nation-State''
Montréal/Kingston, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2004, pp. 403–411. * "Collective Rights in Multination States: from Ethical Individualism to the Law of Peoples", dans Michel Seymour (dir), ''The Fate of the Nation-State'', Montréal/Kingston, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2004, pp. 105–129. * "An Inclusive Nation That Does Not Deny Its origins", in Michel Venne, ''Vive Quebec! New Thinking And New Approaches To the Quebec Nation'', Toronto, James and Company, 2001, p. 146-154. * "On Redefining the Nation", in Nenad Miscevic (ed.), ''Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict'', Chicago and La Salle, Open Court, 2000, 25-55.

French

*''Une nation peut-elle se donner la constitution de son choix?'', 1992 *''Pensée, langage et communauté. Une perspective anti-individualiste'', 1994 *''La Nation en question'', 1999 *''Nationalité, citoyenneté et solidarité'', 1999 *''Le Pari de la démesure'', 2001 *''Profession: Philosophe'', 2005 *''L'Institution du langage'', 2005 *''De la tolérance à la reconnaissance'', 2008 *''La nation pluraliste'' (with Jérôme Gosselin-Tapp), 2018

References

External links

Michel Seymour's personal Website

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Seymour, Michel 20th-century Canadian philosophers French Quebecers Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières alumni 1954 births Living people Scholars of nationalism Canadian political philosophers