Sylvain Bromberger

Sylvain Bromberger (July 7, 1924 – September 16, 2018) was a Belgian-born American philosopher of science and language. After fleeing the German occupation of Belgium, he became a philosophy professor in the United States.

His philosophical work focused on the philosophy of science and language, especially the nature of questions and explanations.

Bromberger worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, helping establish their Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. He remained active at MIT until his death.

Biography

Early life Bromberger was born on July 7, 1924, in Antwerp, Belgium, to French-speaking Polish Jewish parents. He spoke French and Flemish.

Following Germany's invasion of Belgium, Bromberger, his parents, and his two brothers, fled to France in May 1940. They survived due to the actions of Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a Portuguese consul general.

Bromberger thought of himself as a refugee, but not as a Holocaust survivor, preferring to reserve the latter term for survivors of concentration camps.

He was a professor emeritus, and remained active at MIT until his death. They had two sons, and three grandchildren. He also worked on linguistic philosophy, especially phonology and morphology, and worked with Morris Halle.

In the 1960s, Bromberger began work on the nature of "why?" questions. His early work critiqued the Deductive-nomological model, using "flagpole"-type counter examples. His 1966 article "Why-questions" discussed the concept of a p-predicament (the p referring to puzzle), a state in which, although a question has a correct answer, all actual answers to it are known to be false. This article influenced Bas van Fraassen's work on contrastivism.

Later in his career, Bromberger worked on generative linguistics.

Bromberger's 1992 book On What We Know We Don't Know is considered his most important work. It includes his essays on theories, explanations, and questions.

Works