In Part VIII of Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, after criticizing one of the forms that the Myth of the Given adopts, Sellars presents his own conception of epistemic justification. This conception, along with his criticism of the framework of the Given, has had a great impact on the analytic philosophy of the second half of twentieth century, an impact that still persists today.1 In this article, I aim to examine Sellars's theory of epistemic justification in order to highlight (...) two important problems with it. The first concerns the justification of observation reports; the second concerns the understanding of those reports. Certainly, the problems I refer to have already been discussed by... (shrink)

According to Brandom, perceptual knowledge is the product of two distinguishable capacities: the capacity to reliably discriminate behaviorally between different sorts of stimuli, and the capacity to take up a position in the game of giving and asking for reasons. However, in focusing exclusively on the entitlements and commitments of observation reports, rather than on perception itself, Brandom passes over a conception of perceptual experience as a sort of contentful mental state. In this article, I argue that this is a (...) blind spot, which makes Brandom’s account of perceptual knowledge unable to properly accommodate the phenomenon of seeing aspects. (shrink)

It is widely held that the content of perceptual experience is propositional in nature. However, in a well-known article, “Is Perception a Propositional Attitude?”, Crane has argued against this thesis. He therein assumes that experience has intentional content and indirectly argues that experience has non-propositional content by showing that from what he considers to be the main reasons in favour of “the propositional-attitude thesis”, it does not really follow that experience has propositional content. In this paper I shall discuss Crane’s (...) arguments against the propositional-attitude thesis and will try to show, in contrast, that they are unconvincing. My conclusion will be that, despite all that Crane claims, perceptual content could after all be propositional in nature. (shrink)

This paper discusses two dogmas attributed to Davidson’s coherentism. The first dogma says that perceptual experience is only a causal link between the world and beliefs. The second one says that only beliefs can justify other beliefs. Against these two statements it is argued that the conception of perceptual experience as a mere causal link between the world and our beliefs makes the world unknowable. Moreover, the article presents some additional reasons against that conception: it misses the phenomenological and perspectival (...) character of perception, and its independence from belief. Finally, Davidsonian externalism is considered. It is shown here that Davidson’s conception of experience makes it impossible to individuate the contents of beliefs. The article concludes rehabilitating the empiricist idea according to which perceptual experience can be used to justify beliefs. (shrink)

Recently, some philosophers of mind have called the attention to the idea according to which we can perceive, in many cases, some mental states of others. In this paper we consider two recent proposals: the co-presence thesis and the hybrid model. We will examine the aforementioned alternatives and present some objections against both of them. Then, we will propose a way of integrating both accounts that allows us to avoid these objections. In a nutshell, our idea is that by perceiving (...) other people’s behaviors we perceive their mental states because behaviors co-present some features of the latter that go beyond the former, and this perception of others’ minds is direct an immediate because behavior is a constitutive part of mental states. (shrink)

order to defend Putnam’s conceptual pluralism. Finally, the paper defends the compatibility between conceptual pluralism and the idea of convergence in a final opinion. Consequently, I conclude that objectivity depends on the particular vocabularies employed. This paper examines the concept of objectivity as a point of view without perspective. This sense of objectivity is present (among others) in Williams’ works (particularly in its notion of absolute conception of reality). The structure of the paper is the following: first, Williams’ physicalist program (...) is described. Secondly, the article presents some objections to Williams’ physicalism. Thirdly, some reasons are given against the notion of objectivity as a point of view without perspective in. (shrink)

El empirismo puede ser caracterizado, por un lado, como una teoría acerca de los orígenes del conocimiento empírico; por otro, como una concepción epistémica acerca de la justificación de las creencias empíricas. Actualmente, esta última dimensión del empirismo ha sido criticada por diversos filósofos. Paradigmáticamente, Rorty ha sostenido que la experiencia es únicamente la causa de las creencias, pero no su justificación. La tesis de Rorty es que las creencias se relacionan con el mundo sólo causalmente. Este artículo posee dos (...) partes. En la primera, se argumenta, en contra de Rorty, que la experiencia debe ser una instancia de justificación si las creencias han de tener algún contenido. En la segunda, se propone una concepción pragmatista alternativa, que i) atribuye un papel epistémico a la experiencia sin recaer en "el mito de lo dado"; y ii) reintroduce el concepto de "representación" sin comprometerse con el representacionismo. Empiricism can be characterized, on the one hand, as a theory about the sources of empirical knowledge; on the other hand, as an epistemic outlook about justification of empirical beliefs. This last dimension of empiricism has been criticized by many philosophers nowadays. Paradigmatically, Rorty has said that experience is only the cause of beliefs, but not its justification. Rorty's thesis is that beliefs relate to the world only causally. This paper has two parts. In the first it is argued, against Rorty, that experience must be an epistemic instance of justification if beliefs are to have any objective content at all. In the second, it is proposed an alternative pragmatist conception of knowledge which i) attributes an epistemic role to experience without falling into "the myth of the given" and ii) reintroduces the concept of "representation" without compromising with representationalism. (shrink)

“Peirce, Wittgenstein and Davidson: Anti-skeptic Coincidences”. This paper shows some similarities among Peirce’s, Wittgenstein’s and Davidson’s answers to skepticism. In each case, the response to Cartesian skepticism consist in pointing out the contradictory character of the skeptical doubt in itself. More specifically, those philosophers agree on the following points: (i) in order to face the challenge of skepticism we have to examine its bases without conceding the terms of the challenge; (ii) the skeptic cannot doubt without assuming some propositional contents (...) as true. In this sense, the skeptic commits performative contradiction; (iii) in his challenge, the skeptic omits the practical dimension of language and knowledge. That is the source of his difficulties. (shrink)

El presente artículo responde algunas objeciones que Damiani, en su trabajo “Comunidad, realidad y pragmatismo”, efectúa a un artículo anterior mío sobre lo incognoscible en Peirce: “Lo incognoscible y los límites del sentido”. Señalo que nuestros desacuerdos conciernen principalmente a dos puntos: si tiene sentido sostener que no podemos saber si hay incognoscibles, y si cabe defender la tesis de Peirce sin comprometerse con el idealismo. Al argumentar por una respuesta afirmativa al primer punto y por una negativa al segundo, (...) intento justificar una actitud agnóstica respecto de lo incognoscible: la de que no podemos saber si hay incognoscibles. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza la discusión entre Taylor y Rorty sobre los resultados de la superación de la epistemología. Primeramente, este artículo resume la crítica de Taylor a Rorty. En segundo lugar, considera la respuesta rortyana a Taylor y sus propios argumentos contra el realismo de Taylor. Los desacuerdos principales entre Rorty y Taylor son los siguientes: 1) Rorty dice que el pragmatismo supera la epistemología, mientras que Taylor dice que el realismo no-comprometido es el que supera la tradición epistemológica popular; (...) 2) ellos están en desacuerdo sobre cómo entender cierto vocabulario: Taylor afirma que siempre es posible conocer qué vocabulario describe mejor al mundo, pero Rorty parece sostener que los vocabularios son inconmensurables; 3) Taylor piensa a la verdad como una relación de correspondencia con el mundo; Rorty, sin embargo, rechaza esta concepción. En tercer lugar, se hace aquí una evaluación de los argumentos ofrecidos por cada lado, especialmente la sección que argumenta contra la concepción rortyana de los juegos del lenguaje y sus consecuencias no-realistas. Finalmente, se sugiere una reconsideración de la dicotomía realismo-pragmatismo. (shrink)

order to defend Putnam’s conceptual pluralism. Finally, the paper defends the compatibility between conceptual pluralism and the idea of convergence in a final opinion. Consequently, I conclude that objectivity depends on the particular vocabularies employed. This paper examines the concept of objectivity as a point of view without perspective. This sense of objectivity is present (among others) in Williams’ works (particularly in its notion of absolute conception of reality). The structure of the paper is the following: first, Williams’ physicalist program (...) is described. Secondly, the article presents some objections to Williams’ physicalism. Thirdly, some reasons are given against the notion of objectivity as a point of view without perspective in. (shrink)

This paper examines Rorty´s theory of truth in reference to concepts such as “falibilism” and “progress”. First, it claims that Rorty mixes inconsistently the pragmatist conception of truth, the Davidsonian thesis that “true” is a primitive and the deflacionist conception of truth. Secondly, it analyses the Rortyan attempt to “reduce” “true”” to “warranted assertibility” in order to show that this move is imcompatible with falibilism. It is argued that the distinction between truth and justification is essential to conceiving falibilism. Finally, (...) it is held that Rorty´s pragmatism is unable to explain scientific and philosophical progress. Three points in the Rortyan philosophy can be pointed out for that thesis: 1) incommensurability of vocabularies, 2) the idea that there is no reason to think that the beliefs best justified are those which are most likely to be true, 3) the “reduction” of “true” to “warranted assertibility”. (shrink)