The dominant theory of judgment in 1870 was one or other variety of combination theory: the act of judgment is an act of combining concepts or ideas in the mind of the judging subject. In the decades to follow a succession of alternative theories arose to address defects in the combination theory, starting with Bolzano’s theory of propositions in themselves, Brentano’s theory of judgment as affirmation or denial of existence, theories distinguishing judgment act from judgment content advanced by Brentano’s students (...) Twardowski, Husserl and Meinong, and finally, Adolf Reinach’s addition of a linguistic dimension to the Brentano-Husserlian theory of judgment – an account of judgments as ways of doing things with words in what Reinach called ‘social acts’. (shrink)

Our goal in this paper is to experimentally investigate whether folk conceptions of explanation are psychologistic. In particular, are people more likely to classify speech acts as explanations when they cause understanding in their recipient? The empirical evidence that we present suggests this is so. Using the side-effect effect as a marker of mental state ascriptions, we argue that lay judgments of explanatory status are mediated by judgments of a speaker’s and/or audience’s mental states. First, we show that attributions of (...) both understanding and explanation exhibit a side-effect effect. Next, we show that when the speaker’s and audience’s level of understanding is stipulated, the explanation side-effect effect goes away entirely. These results not only extend the side-effect effect to attributions of understanding, they also suggest that attributions of explanation exhibit a side-effect effect because they depend upon attributions of understanding, supporting the idea that folk conceptions of explanation are psychologistic. (shrink)

Die Eine von der Grundeigenschaften Gottes ist die Ewigkeit. Die Ewigkeit kann man traditionell als zeitlos oder modern als zeitlich verstehen. Zu den wichtigsten Kritikpunkten an der zeitlosen Ewigkeit gehört der Einwand, dass der zeitlose Gott in der Welt nicht wirken kann. Die Gründe für solche Behauptungen kommen daher, dass der zeitlose Gott nicht wissen kann, was sich in der Welt früher oder später ereignet, er weiß nicht, welche Ereignisse aktuell, vergangen oder zukünftig sind. Gott hat nur ein tatsächliches Wissen, (...) er hat kein propositionelles Wissen wie wir Menschen. Dagegen kann man einwenden, dass Gott zwar nur tatsächliches Wissen hat, aber er kann wissen, was die Menschen wissen, durch die Einsicht in ihr Wissen in seiner Essenz. Das direkte Wissen Gottes ist nur tatsächlich, aber mittelbar kann er auch propositionelles Wissen der Menschen durch die Kenntnis ihres Erlebens von Zeitbewusstsein erfassen, das ein Teil der propositionellen Erkenntnis der Menschen ist. So kann er auch das Zeitbewusstsein der einzelnen Menschen erkennen, was er in seinem Bewusstsein einsieht. Damit erweist sich der Einwand gegen die Möglichkeit eines Wirkens Gottes in der Welt samt dem Einwand gegen einen zeitlosen Gott als hinfällig. (shrink)

From the premise that our biology imposes cognitive constraints on our epistemic activities, a series of prominent authors – most notably Fodor, Chomsky and McGinn – have argued that we are cognitively closed to certain aspects and properties of the world. Cognitive constraints, they argue, entail cognitive closure. I argue that this is not the case. More precisely, I detect two unwarranted conflations at the core of arguments deriving closure from constraints. The first is a conflation of what I will (...) refer to as ‘representation’ and ‘object of representation’. The second confuses the cognitive scope of the assisted mind for that of the unassisted mind. Cognitive closure, I conclude, cannot be established from pointing out the (uncontroversial) existence of cognitive constraints. (shrink)

While there have been numerous claims of a resemblance between the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Zen Buddhism, few studies of the philosophy of Wittgenstein in detailed comparison with specific Zen thinkers have emerged. This paper attempts to fill this gap by considering Wittgenstein’s philosophy in relation to that of Eihei Dōgen, founder of the Sōtō school of Zen. Points of particular confluence are found in both thinkers’ approaches to language, experience, and practice. Through an elucidation of these points, this (...) paper argues that both Dōgen and Wittgenstein can be understood as putting forth a philosophy of transcendent ethics. (shrink)

The paper seeks to answer two new questions about truth and scientific change: What lessons does the phenomenon of scientific change teach us about the nature of truth? What light do recent developments in the theory of truth, incorporating these lessons, throw on problems arising from the prevalence of scientific change, specifically, the problem of pessimistic meta-induction?

This paper contains an argument to the effect that possible worlds semantics renders semantic knowledge impossible, no matter what ontological interpretation is given to possible worlds. The essential contention made is that possible worlds semantic knowledge is unsafe and this is shown by a parallel with the preface paradox.

La globalización y la era digital plantean un giro que trasciende a las realidades económica, científica, filosófica y educativa, llegando a afectar a la totalidad de la vida cotidiana. Este artículo examina en qué medida los factores históricos, culturales y sociales configuran al individuo de esta nueva era. En él se delibera sobre los condicionantes que permiten adscribirse a una era, así como aquellas circunstancias que determinan y justifican el paso de una era a la siguiente. Finalmente puede decirse que, (...) aunque con prudencia, porque es el tiempo quien debe darnos la razón, empezamos a vivir en la post-postmodernidad. (shrink)

Résumé J’examine la thèse défendue par Donald Davidson selon laquelle un être ne peut avoir des pensées que s’il a été en communication linguistique avec quelqu’un d’autre par le passé. Cette thèse, que j’appelle « l’interprétationnisme radical », dérive de la thèse A selon laquelle il est nécessaire d’avoir les concepts de croyance et de vérité objective pour avoir des croyances, et de la thèse B voulant que la communication linguistique soit requise pour l’acquisition du concept de vérité objective. En (...) réponse à A, je préconise un point de vue contextualiste, selon lequel les normes d’attribution de croyances dépendent du contexte conversationnel. Le contextualisme entraîne non pas que A est fausse, mais qu’elle doit être relative à un contexte. Je montre par ailleurs que contrairement à ce qu’affirme B, l’interaction avec autrui n’est pas nécessaire pour acquérir le concept de vérité objective. Je conclus que les arguments de Davidson soutiennent au mieux l’interprétationnisme modéré, c’est-à-dire l’idée selon laquelle un être a des pensées si et seulement si ces pensées sont interprétables par un interprète pleinement informé.I examine Donald Davidson’s thesis that a creature cannot have thoughts unless it has had a linguistic communication with another creature. This thesis, which I call “Radical Interpretationism”, derives from the claim that it is necessary to have the concepts of belief and objective truth in order to have beliefs and the claim that linguistic communication is required to acquire the concept of objective truth. In response to, I put forward a contextualist viewpoint, according to which the norms of belief attribution are context-dependent. Contextualism entails not that is false, but that it must be relativised to a context. I then show that contrary to what says, interaction with others is not necessary to acquire the concept of objective truth. I conclude that Davidson’s arguments at best support moderate interpretationism, that is, the view that a creature has thoughts if and only if these thoughts are interpretable by a fully-informed interpreter. (shrink)

A dialectical contradiction can be appropriately described within the framework of classical formal logic. It is in harmony with the law of noncontradiction. According to our definition, two theories make up a dialectical contradiction if each of them is consistent and their union is inconsistent. It can happen that each of these two theories has an intended model. Plenty of examples are to be found in the history of science.

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 describes Peirce's systems of logic diagrams, focusing on the so-called ''existential'' graphs, which are equivalent to the first-order predicate calculus. It analyses their implications for the nature of mental representations, particularly mental models with which they have many characteristics in common. The graphs are intended to be iconic, i.e., to have a structure analogous to the structure of what they represent. They have emergent logical consequences and a single graph can capture all the different ways in which a (...) possibility can occur. Mental models share these properties. But, as the graphs show, certain aspects of propositions cannot be represented in an iconic or visualisable way. They include negation, and the representation of possibilities qua possibilities, which both require representations that do not depend on a perceptual modality. Peirce took his graphs to reveal the fundamental operations of reasoning, and the paper concludes with an analysis of different hypotheses about these operations. (shrink)

A menudo se discute cómo cifrar el alcance de la herencia de Kant en la metafísica de Schopenhauer. Del corazón y sustancia de su Tebas de las mil puertas, la ética, Aramayo cree oportuno tomarla como una radicalización del formalismo kantiano. A mi juicio, para delimitar qué hay de continuidad, y qué de ruptura, es necesario hacer un examen atento del puente que conduce de uno a otro. En este sentido, la crítica dedicada a Kant en Sobre el fundamento de (...) la moral no ocupa un lugar accidental en su pensamiento único, pues contiene lo que le falta al apéndice crítico de su obra principal respecto al objeto que nos ocupa. Desde el análisis de conceptos hasta las lecturas genealógicas que se presentan en esta polémica, un mismo propósito subyace: la depuración del concepto de racionalidad práctica como solución a las aporías y los escollos del legado ético kantiano. (shrink)

Straipsnyje tiriama vidujybės kontekstualizacija, įvykusi XX a. filosofijoje. Doktrina, įgalinusi šį procesą, vadinama kontekstualizmu. Skiriama vidujybės kontekstualizacija silpnajame ir stipriajame kontekstualizmuose. Siplnasis kontekstualizmas tiria įvairius kontekstiškos vidujybės atvejus, o stiprusis kontekstualizmas siekia formuluoti bendruosius metodologinius principus apie kontekstiškos vidujybės ir kalbos prigimtį. Kaip alternatyva kontekstualizmui teigiama filosofinio klasicizmo pozicija, kuri į filosofinį mąstymą grąžina tiesą ir asmens tapatybę. Pasak pastarosios filosofinės pozicijos šalininkų, filosofo tapatybė yra jo tiesa. Nors grąžinamos klasikinės filosofijos problemos, tačiau filosofinis klasicizmas vengia naiviojo realizmo ir siekia (...) išmokti kantišką-vitgenšteinišką-deridišką pamoką. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s atomist picture, as embodied in his Tractatus, is initially very appealing. However, it faces the famous colour-exclusion problem. In this paper, I shall explain when the atomist picture can be defended in the face of that problem; and, in the light of this, why the atomist picture should be rejected. I outline the atomist picture in Section 1. In Section 2, I present a very simple necessary and sufficient condition for the tenability of the atomist picture. The condition is: (...) logical space is a power of two. In Sections 3 and 4, I outline the colour-exclusion problem, and then show how the cardinality-condition supplies a response to exclusion problems. In Section 5, I explain how this amounts to a distillation of a proposal due to Moss, which goes back to Carruthers. And in Section 6, I show how all this vindicates Wittgenstein’s ultimate rejection of the atomist picture. The brief reason is that we have no guarantee that there are any solutions to a given exclusion problem but, if there are any, then there are far too many. (shrink)

This discussion paper proposes that a meaningful distinction between science and technoscience can be found at the level of the objects of research. Both notions intermingle in the attitudes, intentions, programs and projects of researchers and research institutions—that is, on the side of the subjects of research. But the difference between science and technoscience becomes more explicit when research results are presented in particular settings and when the objects of research are exhibited for the specific interest they hold. When an (...) experiment is presented as scientific evidence which confirms or disconfirms a hypothesis, this agrees with traditional conceptions of science. When organic molecules are presented for their capacity to serve individually as electric wires that carry surprisingly large currents, this would be a hallmark of technoscience. Accordingly, we propose research on the ontology of research objects. The focus on the character and significance of research objects makes this a specifically philosophical project. (shrink)

Confronting the Liar Paradox is commonly viewed as a prerequisite for developing a theory of truth. In this paper I turn the tables on this traditional conception of the relation between the two. The theorist of truth need not constrain his search for a “material” theory of truth, i.e., a theory of the philosophical nature of truth, by committing himself to one solution or another to the Liar Paradox. If he focuses on the nature of truth (leaving issues of formal (...) consistency for a later stage), he can arrive at material principles that prevent the Liar Paradox from arising in the first place. I argue for this point both on general methodological grounds and by example. The example is based on a substantivist theory of truth that emphasizes the role of truth in human cognition. The key point is that truth requires a certain complementarity of “immanence” and “transcendence”, and this means that some hierarchical structure is inherent in truth. Approaching the Liar Paradox from this perspective throws new light on its existent solutions: their differences and commonalities, their purported ad-hocness, and the relevance of natural language and bivalence to truth and the Liar. (shrink)

Recently we proposed “quantum language”, which was not only characterized as the metaphysical and linguistic turn of quantum mechanics but also the linguistic turn of Descartes = Kant epistemology. And further we believe that quantum language is the only scientifically successful theory in dualistic idealism. If this turn is regarded as progress in the history of western philosophy (i.e., if “philosophical progress” is defined by “approaching to quantum language”), we should study the linguistic mind-body problem more than the epistemological mind-body (...) problem. In this paper, we show that to solve the mind-body problem and to propose “measurement axiom” in quantum language are equivalent. Since our approach is always within dualistic idealism, we believe that our linguistic answer is the only true solution to the mindbody problem. (shrink)

This paper is a conceptual study in the philosophy of logic. The question considered is 'How may formulae of the propositional calculus be brought into a representational relation to the world?'. Four approaches are distinguished: (1) the denotational approach, (2) the abbreviational approach, (3) the truth-conditional approach, and (4) the modelling approach. (2) and (3) are very familiar, so I do not discuss them. (1), which is now largely obsolete, led to some interesting twists and turns in early analytic philosophy (...) which will come as news to many contemporary readers, so I discuss it in some detail. The modelling approach is, to the best of my knowledge, newly introduced here. I am not presenting it as a rival to the other approaches, but as a philosophically interesting possibility. (shrink)

In this paper I will discuss some interesting philosophical questions bound to color science, in its variant founded by Berlin and Kay’s linguistic and anthropological research. I will first refer to various criticisms, expressed by dissenting scientists. Further criticisms implied by a rather philosophical perspective will follow; a particular attention is paid to the question of synchronicity vs . diachronicity. The controversy about Berlin and Kay’s conception is paralleled by the development of Wittgenstein’s views on color that I will sketch (...) in short. Wittgenstein’s philosophy offers tools for illuminating the problem from yet another point of view. In the final part of the paper, I will try to point to the limits of the conception of basic color categories, but also to assess its relevance and possible philosophical contribution in terms of language games variety; especially with respect to the Color Incompatibility The orem and its implications. (shrink)

The Four-Colour Theorem (4CT) proof, presented to the mathematical community in a pair of papers by Appel and Haken in the late 1970's, provoked a series of philosophical debates. Many conceptual points of these disputes still require some elucidation. After a brief presentation of the main ideas of Appel and Haken’s procedure for the proof and a reconstruction of Thomas Tymoczko’s argument for the novelty of 4CT’s proof, we shall formulate some questions regarding the connections between the points raised by (...) Tymoczko and some Wittgensteinian topics in the philosophy of mathematics such as the importance of the surveyability as a criterion for distinguishing mathematical proofs from empirical experiments. Our aim is to show that the “characteristic Wittgensteinian invention” (Mühlhölzer 2006) – the strong distinction between proofs and experiments – can shed some light in the conceptual confusions surrounding the Four-Colour Theorem. (shrink)

El presente estudio ofrece una interpretación de naturaleza ontológica a uno de los fenómenos más divulgados recientemente por los medios informativos de comunicación: la displicencia de los sujetos al seguimiento de normas sociales. El trabajo se centra, especialmente, en los casos en los que se asume que la indiferencia a las normas tiene como causa la condición del privilegiado social. Argumenta que la inobservancia a las normas, más que ser un asunto de desigualdad social, es la sintomatología de importantes hendiduras (...) en la ontología de la realidad social. Así, tres partes conforman este trabajo. En la primera se describen algunos casos que, desde los medios de comunicación, se presentan como representativos en la inobservancia a las normas sociales, especialmente, aquellos que son interpretados como un asunto de abuso de privilegio social. En la segunda parte, a partir de algunos trabajos de John Austin, Ulises Moulines y Gottlob Frege, se presenta una concepción de normas sociales, y su valor para la construcción de la ontología social. En la tercera parte, desde la propuesta del filósofo John Searle, se describen algunos rasgos esenciales de la ontología de la realidad social. Se concluye que el no seguimiento de las normas sociales socava los modos de existencia de la realidad social, y que los casos interpretados por los medios de comunicación como asunto de desigualdad social, requieren una interpretación que tenga en cuenta la estructura de la realidad social. (shrink)

El proceso de aprehensión de lo cognoscible, en la filosofía contemporánea, ha sido tratado desde diversas perspectivas, entre ellas la fenomenológica y la analítica. Cada una de estas perspectivas aportan unos presupuestos filosóficos y procesos metodológicos que nos proporcionan marcos de trabajo para indagar en las vías de aprehensión del conocimiento; sin embargo, empleadas por separado son insuficientes y limitadas. En absoluto se trata de procurar un método universal, sino de integrar e indagar sobre diversos presupuestos, procesos, patrones y estructuras (...) para avanzar en la indagación de la aprehensión del conocimiento. En este sentido, en la primera parte, abordaremos la necesidad de tener reglas (definitorias y estratégicas) para ser parte y avanzar en cualquier «juego», en especial el del conocimiento. En la segunda y tercera, describiremos los «métodos» desarrollados por José Ferrater Mora (operaciones filosóficas) y Nicolai Hartmann (pensar sistemático), los que pueden ser un punto de partida, vías a considerar en este proceso. En la parte final, a modo de contraste, se ofrece en un gráfico un esquema metodológico de los dos métodos analizados. (shrink)