This paper argues that the normative character of our unreflective situated behaviour is not factual. We highlight a problematic assumption shared by the two most influential trends in contemporary philosophy of cognitive science, reductionism and enactivism. Our intentional, normative explanations are referential, descriptive or factual. Underneath this assumption lies the idea that only facts can make true or false our attributions of cognitive, mental and agential abilities. We will argue against this view by describing the main features and problems of (...) reductionism and enactivism and then we will offer two arguments against this shared factualist assumption: (1) normative vocabulary is ineliminable if we want a complete explanation of our situated practices; and (2) the factualist assumption is a species of the is-ought fallacy. Finally, we will claim that a folk psychological explanation of our normative practices is fully compatible with ontological naturalism when such descriptivist or factualist assumption is rejected. (shrink)

McDowell’s minimal empiricism holds that experience, understood as providing conceptually articulated contents, plays a role in the justification of our beliefs. We question this idea by contrasting the role of perceptual experience in moral and non-moral judgments and conclude that experience per se is irrelevant in the former case and should also be so in the latter one: only with the help of adequate beliefs experience can provide a connection with the world. We conclude with some remarks concerning the importance (...) of experience. (shrink)

nos últimos anos, John McDowell tem proposto uma concepção de filosofia em que o objetivo da disciplina não é oferecer teses substanciais, mas antes revelar modos de pensar e premissas ocultas que estão na base da filosofia construtiva. Esta visão terapêutica tem sido chamada ‘quietismo’ e deve muito a algumas idéias favoritas de Wittgenstein ao longo de toda a sua vida. No entanto, a obra de Wittgenstein (e, talvez, também a de McDowell) parece oscilar entre duas compreensões de quietismo: pode-se (...) ser quietista por não macular aquilo que é mais importante com discussões explícitas ou pode-se ser quietista por não ter nada a dizer. Argumentaremos que o segundo tipo do quietismo não implica recusar em se ocupar com a filosofia do passado, nem tampouco adotar uma atitude contemplativa. A concentração sobre o particular, em ética tanto quanto em qualquer outra área da filosofia, é suficiente para minar as ambições universalistas da filosofia tradicional e descortinar um aumento na ação filosófica. (shrink)

The distinction between personal level explanations and subpersonal ones has been subject to much debate in philosophy. We understand it as one between explanations that focus on an agent’s interaction with its environment, and explanations that focus on the physical or computational enabling conditions of such an interaction. The distinction, understood this way, is necessary for a complete account of any agent, rational or not, biological or artificial. In particular, we review some recent research in Artificial Life that pretends to (...) do completely without the distinction, while using agent-centred concepts all the way. It is argued that the rejection of agent level explanations in favour of mechanistic ones is due to an unmotivated need to choose among representationalism and eliminativism. The dilemma is a false one if the possibility of a radical form of externalism is considered. (shrink)

The distinction between personal level explanations and subpersonal ones has been subject to much debate in philosophy. We understand it as one between explanations that focus on an agent’s interaction with its environment, and explanations that focus on the physical or computational enabling conditions of such an interaction. The distinction, understood this way, is necessary for a complete account of any agent, rational or not, biological or artificial. In particular, we review some recent research in Artificial Life that pretends to (...) do completely without the distinction, while using agent-centred concepts all the way. It is argued that the rejection of agent level explanations in favour of mechanistic ones is due to an unmotivated need to choose among representationalism and eliminativism. The dilemma is a false one if the possibility of a radical form of externalism is considered. (shrink)

José Luis Moreno argumenta contra lo que considera una variedad de formas de fetichismo político. Lo que tienen en común es depositar una confianza excesiva o monolítica en algún mecanismo democrático en particular. Compartimos su motivación y en esta nota crítica intentamos llevar sus argumentos más lejos preguntándonos si diferentes tipos de conocimiento políticamente relevante pueden distinguirse, si en algunos contextos es necesario dejar las decisiones en manos de expertos y si la propuesta de Moreno cae en un nuevo tipo (...) de fetichismo con respecto al sorteo como mecanismo capaz de eliminar injusticias sociales profundas. (shrink)

It is common to criticize the idea of objectivity by claiming that we cannot make sense of any cognitive contact with the world that is not constituted by the very materials of our thinking, and to conclude that the idea must be abandoned and that the world is ‘well lost’. We resist this conclusion and argue for a notion of objectivity that places its source within the domain of thoughts by proposing a conception of facts, akin to McDowell’s, as thinkable (...) while independent of any act of thinking. However, we do so without any empiricist commitment. (shrink)

John McDowell has defended a position called minimal empiricism, that aims to avoid the oscillation between traditional empiricism’s commitment to a set of contents working as external justifiers for our system of beliefs and a coherentist position where our thought receives no constraint from the world. We share McDowell’s dissatisfaction with both options, but find his minimal empiricism committed to the idea of a tribunal of experience where isolated contents are infused into our network of inferences. This commitment is prone (...) to sceptical attacks and waters down McDowell’s holism. We propose to retain McDowell’s partial re-enchantment of nature—without appealing to McDowell’s Kantian conception of experience—, and argue that it is sufficient to avoid the oscillation and to make sense of the objectivity of thought. (shrink)

Richard Moran has argued, convincingly, in favour of the idea that there must be more than one path to access our own mental contents. The existence of those routes, one first-personal—through avowal—the other third-personal—no different to the one used to ascribe mental states to other people and to interpret their actions—is intimately connected to our capacity to respond to norms. Moran’s account allows for conflicts between first personal and third personal authorities over my own beliefs; this enable some instances of (...) Moore-paradoxical cases to be meaningful. In this paper we reflect on the consequences of this view for the acquisition of beliefs, and argue that, as in the moral case, excessive concentration on a thirdpersonal understanding of thought undermines the very idea of being directed to the world and of being capable to fully own our own beliefs. We suggest that maybe too much attention to epistemic virtues or tojustification is misdirected and could produce beliefs that are themself not first-personal enough. (shrink)

In this paper, we offer a criticism, inspired by Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations, of the enactivist account of perception and action. We start by setting up a non-descriptivist naturalism regarding the mind and continue by defining enactivism and exploring its more attractive theoretical features. We then proceed to analyse its proposal to understand normativity non-socially. We argue that such a thesis is ultimately committed to the problematic idea that normative practices can be understood as private and factual. Finally, we offer a (...) characterization of normativity as an essentially social phenomenon and apply our criticisms to other approaches that share commitments with enactivism. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker distinguishes two senses in which testimonial injustice is epistemic. In the primary sense, it is epistemic because it harms the victim as a giver of knowledge. In the secondary sense, it is epistemic, more narrowly, because it harms the victim as a possessor of knowledge. Her characterization of testimonial injustice has raised the following objection: testimonial injustice is not always an epistemic injustice, in the narrow, secondary sense, as it does not always entail that the victim is harmed (...) as a knowledge-possessor. By adopting a perspective based on Robert Brandom's normative expressivism, we respond to this objection by arguing that there is a close connection, conceptual and constitutive rather than merely causal, between the primary and the secondary epistemic harms of testimonial injustice, such that testimonial injustice always involves both kinds of epistemic harm. We do so by exploring the logic and functioning of belief and knowledge ascriptions in order to highlight three ways in which the secondary epistemic harm caused by testimonial injustice crystallizes: it undermines the epistemic agency of the victim, the epistemic friction necessary for knowledge, and the possibility of occupying particular epistemic nodes. (shrink)

In this paper we challenge the notion of ‘normativity’ used by some enactive approaches to cognition. We define some varieties of enactivism and their assumptions and make explicit the reasoning behind the co-emergence of individuality and normativity. Then we argue that appealing to dispositions for explaining some living processes can be more illuminating than claiming that all such processes are normative. For this purpose, we will present some considerations, inspired by Wittgenstein, regarding norm-establishing and norm-following and show that attributions of (...) normativity to non-social agents are deeply paradoxical. The main conclusions of our discussion are: (1) circular and internal explanations centred on the stability of living systems are insufficient to account for processes where the environment plays an important role, such as adaptation. Enactivism is not an explanatory alternative to evolutionary biology but needs it as a complement to accounts focused on the internal self-assembly of organisms; (2) though we share enactivism’s anti-representational spirit, we argue that ecological psychology can offer a better account of perception. (shrink)

The truth of a statement depends on the world in two ways: what the statement says is true if the world is as the statement says it is; on the other hand, what the expressions in the statement mean depends on what the world is like (for instance, on what conventions are in place). Each of these two kinds of dependence of truth on the world corresponds to one of the dimensions on the two-dimensional semantic framework, developed in the 1970’ (...) in the work of Evans, Kaplan, Kripke and Stalnaker. The introduction provides a systematic overview of the framework, the ideas of its earlier originators, recent developments and criticism. Finally, it gives a brief overview over the contributions to the volume. (shrink)

De re or singular thoughts are, intuitively, those essentially or constitutively about a particular object or objects; any thought about different objects would be a different thought. How should a philosophical articulation or thematization of their nature look like? In spite of extended discussion of the issue since it was brought to the attention of the philosophical community in the late fifties by Quine (1956), we are far from having a plausible response. Discussing the matter in connection with the status (...) of the Kripkean category of the contingent a priori, Donnellan (1979) argued that what can be properly classified as knowable a priori about utterances like those involving ‘one meter’ or ‘Neptune’ famously proposed by Kripke (1980) cannot be the very same singular content that is contingent he distinguished to that end between knowing a true proposition expressed by an utterance, and knowing that an utterance expresses a true proposition. Evans (1979) replied that, for a very specific sort of cases involving “descriptive names”, a related proto-two-dimensionalist account should be preferred, on which it is not the singular contingent content, but rather a general descriptive one which is knowable a priori. In a series of papers, Robin Jeshion (2000, 2001) has recently attacked Donnellan's proposal, arguing in favour of the most straightforward interpretation of Kripke's claim: in the relevant cases, the very same singular content can be both contingent and knowable a priori. This paper appeals to a generalized version of two-dimensional semantics to advance an account of the Kripkean cases along the lines of Evans's, and argues that Jeshion's compelling arguments against Donnellan's view do not apply to this version. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyze the origin of the links between global bioethics (which we differentiate from biomedical bioethics) and human rights. We understand that we are in a global civilizational crisis, whose roots extend to 1492 today, in which the modern-capitalist model used the discourse of human rights to justify its predatory technocracy. There are three theoretical assumptions that support our analysis: 1) The current conditions in which the technique shows its destructive power over nature (Anthropocene) indicate that none (...) of the ethical antecedents are applicable to such circumstances. In this new context, the kantian categorical imperative has been reconverted into a moral and political duty to not instrumentalize either human beings or nature. We call this new ethical consideration bioethics. 2) The current geopolitical composition of the world must be thought in terms of the global North and the global South, as two regions that are forged in the midst of important processes of globalization of the world-system, and whose main consequence lies in the absence of equity in the distribution of wealth and well-being between the two. 3) The current environmental crisis or climate change, the product of an economic model based on extractive technology, has become one of the most serious threats against human rights. (shrink)

De re or singular thoughts are, intuitively, those essentially or constitutively about a particular object or objects; any thought about different objects would be a different thought. How should a philosophical articulation or thematization of their nature look like? In spite of extended discussion of the issue since it was brought to the attention of the philosophical community in the late fifties by Quine (1956), we are far from having a plausible response. This is glaringly revealed by the contrasting recent (...) takes on the issue by writers such as Soames (2005) – who adopts the view by Donnellan (1979) to be outlined presently – and Jeshion (2001), otherwise sharing a similar direct-reference approach to the prototypical expression of those contents. Discussing the matter in connection with the status of the Kripkean category of the contingent a priori in the just mentioned article, Donnellan (1979) argued that what can be properly classified as knowable a priori about utterances like those involving ‘one meter’ or ‘Neptune’ famously proposed by Kripke (1980) cannot be the very same singular content that is contingent; he distinguished to that end between knowing a true proposition expressed by an utterance, and knowing that an utterance expresses a true proposition. (Thus, for instance, if, while listening to an utterance in a language that I do not know, I am told by a reliable person who knows the language and whom I trust that the utterance is true, I come thereby to know that the sentence expresses a truth, without knowing the truth that it expresses.) Evans (1979) replied that, for a very specific sort of cases involving “descriptive names”, a related proto-two-dimensionalist account should be preferred, on which it is not the singular contingent content, but rather a general descriptive one which is knowable a priori. In a series of papers, Robin Jeshion (2000, 2001) has recently attacked Donnellan's proposal, arguing in favour of the most straightforward interpretation of Kripke's claim: in the relevant cases, the very same singular content can be both contingent and knowable a priori. In this paper, I will appeal to a generalized version of two-dimensional semantics to advance an account of the Kripkean cases along the lines of Evans's, and I will argue that Jeshion's compelling arguments against Donnellan's view do not apply to this version. (shrink)

In this paper we explore in what sense we can claim that affordances, the objects of perception for ecological psychology, are related to normativity. First, we offer an account of normativity and provide some examples of how it is understood in the specialized literature. Affordances, we claim, lack correctness criteria and, hence, the possibility of error is not among their necessary conditions. For this reason we will oppose Chemero’s normative theory of affordances. Finally, we will show that there is a (...) way in which taking advantage of affordances could be considered as possessing a normative character, but only when they are evaluated within the framework of social normative standards in particular situations. This reinforces our claim that affordances, per se, lack normativity and can only be taken to be rule-governed in relation to established normative practices. (shrink)

A proposal to account for the objectivity of thought and language in terms of identity between facts, meanings and contents is offered. Furthermore, their normativity is related to their world involving character. Both proposals are jointly quietist: they avoid philosophical theorizing that explains thought in terms of world or viceversa.

A proposal to account for the objectivity of thought and language in terms of identity between facts, meanings and contents is offered. Furthermore, their normativity is related to their world involving character. Both proposals are jointly quietist: they avoid philosophical theorizing that explains thought in terms of world or viceversa.

ABSTRACTPrior research has found a relationship between perceived facial attractiveness and perceived personal trustworthiness. We examined the time course of attractiveness relative to trustworthiness evaluation of emotional and neutral faces. This served to explore whether attractiveness might be used as an easily accessible cue and a quick shortcut for judging trustworthiness. Detection thresholds and judgment latencies as a function of expressive intensity were measured. Significant correlations between attractiveness and trustworthiness consistently held for six emotional expressions at four intensities, and neutral (...) faces. Importantly, perceived attractiveness preceded perceived trustworthiness, with lower detection thresholds and shorter decision latencies. This reveals a time course advantage for attractiveness, and suggests that earlier attractiveness impressions could bias trustworthiness inferences. A heuristic cognitive mechanism is hypothesised to ease processing demands by relying on simple a... (shrink)

Wittgenstein distinguished between two uses of “I”, one “as object” and the other “as subject”, a distinction that Shoemaker elucidated in terms of a notion of immunity to error through misidentification (“IEM”); first-personal claims are IEM in the use “as subject”, but not in the other use. Shoemaker argued that memory judgments based on “personal”, episodic memory are not strictly speaking IEM; Gareth Evans disputed this. Similar issues have been debated regarding self-ascriptions of conscious thoughts based on first-personal awareness, in (...) the light of claims of “thought insertion” in schizophrenic patients. The paper aims to defend a Shoemaker-like line by critically engaging with some compelling recent contributions. Methodologically, the paper argues that to properly address these issues the all-inclusive term “thought” should be avoided, and specific types of thoughts countenanced. (shrink)

In this paper we explore in what sense we can claim that affordances, the objects of perception for ecological psychology, are related to normativity. First, we offer an account of normativity and provide some examples of how it is understood in the specialized literature. Affordances, we claim, lack correctness criteria and, hence, the possibility of error is not among their necessary conditions. For this reason we will oppose Chemero’s normative theory of affordances. Finally, we will show that there is a (...) way in which taking advantage of affordances could be considered as possessing a normative character, but only when they are evaluated within the framework of social normative standards in particular situations. This reinforces our claim that affordances, per se, lack normativity and can only be taken to be rule-governed in relation to established normative practices. (shrink)

The distinction between personal level explanations and subpersonal ones has been subject to much debate in philosophy. We understand it as one between explanations that focus on an agent’s interaction with its environment, and explanations that focus on the physical or computational enabling conditions of such an interaction. The distinction, understood this way, is necessary for a complete account of any agent, rational or not, biological or artificial. In particular, we review some recent research in Artificial Life that pretends to (...) do completely without the distinction, while using agent-centered concepts all the way. It is argued that the rejection of agent level explanations in favour of mechanistic ones is due to an unmotivated need to choose among representationalism and eliminativism. The dilemma is a false one if the possibility of a radical form of externalism is considered. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWe investigated the time course of selective attention to face regions during judgment of dis/approval by low and high social anxiety undergraduates (with clinical levels on que...

Richard Moran has argued, convincingly, in favour of the idea that there must be more than one path to access our own mental contents. The existence of those routes, one first-personal —through avowal— the other third-personal —no different to the one used to ascribe mental states to other people and to interpret their actions— is intimately connected to our capacity to respond to norms. Moran’s account allows for conflicts between first personal and third personal authorities over my own beliefs; this (...) enable some instances of Moore-paradoxical cases to be meaningful. In this paper we reflect on the consequences of this view for the acquisition of beliefs, and argue that, as in the moral case, excessive concentration on a third-personal understanding of thought undermines the very idea of being directed to the world and of being capable to fully own our own beliefs. We suggest that maybe too much attention to epistemic virtues or to justification is misdirected and could produce beliefs that are themselves not first-personal enough. (shrink)

I defend a Deferred Ostension view of quotation, on which quotation-marks are the linguistic bearers of reference, functioning like a demonstrative; the quoted material merely plays the role of a demonstratum. On this view, the quoted material works like Nunberg’s indexes in his account of deferred ostensión in general. The referent is obtained through some contextually suggested relation; in the default case the relation will be … instantiates the linguistic type __, but there are other possibilities. In this way, the (...) deferred ostension view deals with a problem I pointed out for the identity proposal in my earlier work, that we do not merely refer with quotations to expression-types, but also to other entities related in some way to the relevant token we use: features exhibited by the token distinct from those constituting its linguistic type, features exhibited by other tokens of the same type but not by the one actually used (as when, by using a graphic token, we refer to its phonetic type), or even other related tokens (see the examples on p. 261 of García-Carpintero 1994). (shrink)